Part 19

Lady Bridgminster drew a deep sigh of relief. “Then those wretched creditors of yours can be disposed of. The interviews I have had with them! What is the world coming to? My own are not more vulgar and impertinent. But this is only a respite, Johnny. Two years hence you will be in the same predicament; worse, no doubt. Bridg is good for twenty years yet. Did you persuade him to increase your income?”

“No, and he never will.”

“Then you must marry at once. Let us not beat about the bush.”

“I am not ready to marry. Please remember that I am barely twenty-four.”

“Fiddlesticks! You are forty. You are the sort in whom years count for next to nothing. Besides, your father was married at twenty-two, my father when he was six months younger. But that has little to do with it. There are certain times in life when opportunities seem fairly to fly at one. Ignore these caprices of Fortune, and you may spend the rest of your life chasing her. One of the greatest heiresses in England is dying to marry you. Not only have I carefully prepared her mind, but she has always been more or less in love with you, although she has not seen you now for five years.”

“Who can she be?”

“Manlike! Probably you will not even recall her when I tell you her name, for when she used to come to Ordham with her mother you were following the yellow curls of Jessie Middleton about her father’s park and never looked at poor Rosamond.”

A dark flush rose to Ordham’s very hair and he drew his brows together. “You surely do not mean Rosamond Hayle?”

“Ah! You do remember her?”

“Her front teeth stuck out. Her hair was like tow. Her pasty skin was covered with green freckles—”

“Oh, that was years ago. She has vastly improved.”

“Time cannot have altered the formation of her upper jaw. I doubt if it could put colour into her hair. You know quite well that I shall never marry an ugly woman. I even hate ugly men and children. I don’t set up to be an æsthetic ass, but beauty I will have if I can command it, and at least I need not fasten myself for life to a woman whose ugliness is not even distinguished. As I recall Rosamond Hayle she was the apotheosis of the commonplace—and that was only five years ago.”

“My son, remember that she has forty thousand a year in her own right. They discovered coal mines on unentailed lands in Nottinghamshire and she was the only child.”

“I hope she may enjoy it. What of the American beauty and heiress you were so keen about?”

“Do you mean Mabel Cutting?” Lady Bridgminster dipped her tones in ice.

“Of course. Are there so many?”

“I thought favourably of her at first; but really, Mrs. Cutting was too keen. It was indecent. If we must put ourselves up for sale, let us not admit the fact to these outsiders. Her silly pedantic little daughter may have more money than Rosamond, but she is not our sort.”

“Pedantic?” Ordham had lost the rest of his mother’s observations. A vision of the deliciously pretty empty-headed little chatterbox had risen before him, alluring indeed after the frightful menace of Lady Rosamond Hayle. “Are we talking of the same person?”

“Rather. When the child first came over I liked her. She was a sweet, innocent, well-bred little thing, who knew no more than a young girl should. But the change soon began. Nearly every marriageable man in London ran after her, which was natural enough. I will do several the justice to believe that they were really in love with her, irrespective of the millions. Youth and beauty and sweet manners go far, and I suppose there is romance left even in London. I did not mind her head being turned. That also was natural, with artists painting her for the Academy and all the rest of it—although it was too silly of her to insist upon having that ridiculous LaLa in every picture. Well—when after a mere three months of such a success as few girls enjoy, she suddenly announced herself bored with society, declared that she did not yet know enough to waste so much time, that men talked only nonsense to her, and therefore taught her nothing, she forced her unfortunate mother, who loves society more than any woman I ever met, to retire to the country with a staff of tutors—oh, I have no patience with such nonsense. When girls have youth and beauty, the less brains they have the more attractive they are.”

“Oh?” Ordham had risen to his feet, his eyes very bright.

“Is not that too brief period for enjoyment pure and simple? Intellect does well enough when everything else has deserted a woman. What a waste of time and energy before! It has made this little American insufferable. When I heard yesterday they were in town I went out of common civility—as well as curiosity—to call. The girl looks moonstruck. She had not a word to say. No doubt her brains are addled.”

“Then they are in town? I must call to-morrow.”

Lady Bridgminster rose, and, sweeping over to her son’s side (she never merely walked), laid her hand on his shoulder. Her face was flushed and there were tears in her voice.

“My son,” she said solemnly, “let these people alone. Their ways are not our ways. They never make themselves really like us. It was only my desire to see you care-free in your youth that made me consider Mabel Cutting for a time. I have always disapproved of these international marriages. Americans are a thin, passionless, hybrid race, and, I am sure, vulgar at the core, no matter how deep the veneer. How could it be otherwise? Marry a woman of your own class and race—”

“Not Rosamond Hayle.”

“Don’t be tiresome.” She almost shook him. “No man knows how his wife looks six months after he has married her.”

“Think of those six months.”

“And a plain wife is so safe. In a diplomatic career, of all things, you want no scandals. How should you like being married to a professional beauty?”

“I should not mind a bit. I should find it insufferable to be the husband of a wife that every other man rejoiced was not his.”

“No man ever rejoiced that a woman with forty thousand pounds a year was not his wife.”

“I should if she were ugly.”

“Are you going to Grosvenor Square?”

“Of course. They showed me great politeness in Munich. It is a matter of common decency.”

“I believe they came up on purpose.” Lady Bridgminster’s well-composed features were in disarray. “What else would bring them up at this season? Their excuse, that Mabel wished to attend a series of concerts, was too silly. I might have suspected at once. You will not be such a silly little fly as to rush into their parlour?”

“There is no moat and drawbridge about the house in Grosvenor Square, I suppose? Don’t be foolish, Lady Pat.” (Everlastings rarely train their children to address them as “mother.”) “I must call on Mrs. Cutting. It commits me to nothing. If you can find me a beautiful and not too-English English girl, I will marry her, but not Rosamond Hayle.”

“I don’t know of another English girl of her class with such a fortune. I know these upstarts will get you!”

“Well, I shall not propose to-morrow,” he said lightly. And then he changed the conversation so deliberately that his mother sighed and rested on her arms for the present.

XXXI ORDHAM ESCAPES A HANSOM IN PICCADILLY

On the following morning he rose at the comparatively early hour of ten, and, repairing to Piccadilly, bought presents for the servants at Ordham and even sent them off himself. He had intended to omit this exertion in favour of Hines, but the morning was so fresh, and he felt so young and buoyant, particularly after having turned his check into the bank, and the prospect of meeting the beautiful Mabel once more was so unexpectedly enlivening, that he was equal to almost any form of energy.

He even sauntered into the Green Park, and there he met Mrs. Cutting, taking the famous pug for an airing. She dropped the leash when she saw Ordham, and although there was no warmth in her cold pure eyes, her smile was dazzling.

“Dear Mr. Ordham! What a pleasure! Lady Bridgminster told me that you were in England, but I gathered that you intended to remain in the north and shoot for weeks to come.”

“I do not care for shooting and had rather intended to go back to the Continent for a time—to perfect myself in languages. It may, however, be merely an excuse to put off those six months in the F. O. as long as possible.”

“But you have passed your examinations!”

“Heaven only knows how. But my French and German are really very bad. I need the theatres more than anything else.”

“I won’t attempt to conceal my disappointment. To be sure, I was resigned not to see you for a few weeks—but now that I have seen you—well, if it must be, at least you will come to us before you leave? I must show you what I have made of my little girl. She had an enormous success in society. Just now she thinks she wants to be intellectual, artistic, musical, although she played far better than most girls already. It is rather a bore for me, but I am hoping it will pass. I tell her it is a pity she did not have the seizure while at school. But I fancy it is merely the reaction from the rush of the season, and a little too much frivolity, perhaps too many suitors. But I should not say that!”

“Oh, my mother has told me. I hear she uses her scalps as cotillon favours!”

“How like you! But I wish she had fewer.” Mrs. Cutting wrinkled her brows delicately. “She was so sweetly simple and natural before—do you remember what a chatterbox she was? And all this adulation has made her bored, indifferent. I don’t think she is conceited, but I am afraid she has permitted the idea to take lodgment in that clever little head of hers that all men are far too easy game, and therefore to be despised. I have hinted gently that without the bait of her fortune even her beauty and cleverness might not have made her the belle of a London season, but you cannot convince eighteen that men are mercenary, and no doubt some of the poor fellows were sincere enough.”

“Unfortunately, most men cannot afford to be too sincere.” Ordham smiled grimly. “For instance, I could not dream of marrying a poor girl. And it must be far easier even to love a pretty rich girl than a pretty poor one. We have not been brought up on the love-in-a-cottage ideal, and when we try it generally come a cropper.”

She remembered that he had taken her breath away with his audacious candour more than once during the fortnight of their previous acquaintance, and smiled gayly.

“But a rich girl _can_ be loved. That is the point to bear in mind. It is Mabel’s argument, by the way, and even I believe that a really lovely woman need not be eclipsed by her money. Of course I am quite aware of your point of view. But all the same I believe you to be capable of what the world calls folly.”

“You mean that I would marry a poor girl?”

“You are capable of it.”

“Possibly. But I know of no folly that I have less intention of committing.”

“Oh, I don’t say that you will. It is merely your capacity for the sudden and romantic wrecking of your life that makes you so interesting.” She stooped and recovered the leash. Her face, when she stood upright once more, was flushed, but she looked him straight in the eyes. “I have always hoped that you would marry Mabel,” she said, and her courage touched his chivalric nerve while it flushed his face. “I shall be perfectly frank. I wished it from the moment we met. She was too young to think of such a thing, and you were obliged to remain in Germany. But now—she has developed quite wonderfully, and you are quite free. I shall continue to be frank. When I brought Mabel over Lady Bridgminster took a great fancy to her, and I feel sure that she had some such idea herself, although naturally we could not speak of it; but latterly she seems to have taken a dislike to the poor child, and to have set her heart upon a frightfully plain English heiress—”

“She heard my opinion on that subject last night. I fancy she will not broach it again.” Ordham spoke ironically, but his blush had deepened and he moved about nervously.

Mrs. Cutting shook her head with a little absent gesture of despair. “Your mother is not the woman to relinquish lightly any cherished plan, and this Lady Rosamond Hayle seems to be a particular friend of hers. You could never be married against your will—at least I think you could not. But you will see Lady Rosamond quite intimately, you will become fascinated with her virtues, which no one can dispute, and forget her plainness.”

“I have no intention of entering the possibly dangerous zone of her virtues. But you are very kind. Why on earth have you selected me? There are bigger fish in this great pond.”

“That is as it may be. But I am very exacting. I want far more than a title—which, no doubt, you will inherit in due course. You see I am really frank! I got to know you very well in Munich, remember, and of all the young men I have ever met you are the only one to whom I care to intrust my daughter. That is, if you really could love her.”

“Oh! Love!” Ordham’s eyes stared far beyond his companion in a manner not at all to her taste. She resumed sadly:

“Of course she might not be able to interest you after your experience of so many complicated European women. And she—well, Mabel is a mystery even to me—what girl is not a mystery? When we left Munich I fancied that you had made an indelible impression upon her cloistered little heart. But now—as I told you—she affects to despise all men; and so much has happened since then. A girl is no sooner launched in the world than she grows a year every day. And I did not feel that I should be justified in keeping your memory green in her mind, for how could I know that you would not have loved and married before we met again? But I wish! I wish! If she does not marry you, I hope it will be many years before she marries at all. Of course there are many fine men in the world, and she can afford to wait. A fortune hunter shall never have her. Of that I am determined.”

“There are thousands of fine fellows in the world,” said Ordham, generously, increasingly desirous of meeting the enigmatic and difficult Mabel. “When may I call? I should not think of leaving London without renewing that delightful acquaintance. I had intended to try my luck this afternoon.”

“Come at five. And perhaps you will dine with us before you go? You cannot be rushed with engagements at this season, and it will be pleasant to see a bit of you, even if—”

Ordham laughed and shook hands with the handsome charming woman, who looked so unconventionally eager in spite of her cool eyes. “I have never been so flattered in my life, and it is wonderful of you to be so enchantingly frank. Men must get so sick of transparent angling—I wonder that anything induces the big fish to bite. Please don’t let Miss Cutting know that you like me, or she will be sure to hate me. Of course I shall call at five to-day. And dine with you to-morrow? May I?”

He walked to his club in a very thoughtful mood. Here, no doubt, was the natural solution of his difficulties. But with the prospect of that easy escape came a passionate wave of protest, the protest of masculine youth at paying the price. He had not the faintest idea that he could fall in love with Mabel Cutting; and were her millions an adequate compensation for the loss of his precious liberty? He felt that a man’s youth should last until thirty. Time enough then for shackles: wife—and children! He blushed angrily at the thought. This cursed question of money! If his brother would settle two thousand a year on him, he would not consider matrimony with the most beautiful girl that walked.

And deep down in his heart he heard a murmured demand for the woman by the Isar. Was this woman, perchance, his mate? He stopped, appalled at the thought, in the middle of Piccadilly, and was nearly run over by a hansom cab. To what end? The difference in their ages meant nothing to him, but he could not ask the various diplomatic circles of the world to accept Margarethe Styr. Nor was there the least probability that she would renounce her career to keep house for him and devote her talents to the advancement of his own. Even if she loved him—and did she?—how could he demand such a sacrifice? Society would be a poor substitute for art, for the adulation of the multitude. Moreover, there was the question of money again. She might possess small fortune, but it would not go far in his world. To permit her to remain on the stage he would not consider for a moment. He would neither abandon his career nor would he live on a woman’s earnings. To marry a girl with a large inheritance was one thing, but to loaf about while his famous wife sang to a public ignorant of his very name, that neither might want for the luxuries to which they were accustomed—good God!

He wondered, as he turned abruptly from the door of his club and strolled down into St. James’s Park, that the idea of marrying Margarethe Styr had postulated itself. It had not even occurred to him before. He had looked forward to seeing her as often as he could manage, to keeping her in his life, but not even to being her lover. Did he love her? Had he loved her during those enchanting months, and been too contented, too occupied, to understand? Had she purposely refrained from exercising those seductions of which she must be passed mistress, because she knew that love would devastate the lives of both? For a moment he seemed to be peering over the edge of a round wall into the great wells of human nature. He had a passing impression that Margarethe Styr was Nature herself, that in her bosom were all the mysteries, the secrets, the treasures of life, and that they were his, whether he could ever take them or not.

Did he love her? He drew his brows together in the deepest perplexity he had ever experienced. There was no turbulence of emotion in him, no madness of passion, no desire. It was a mental longing—that and something deeper, which he did not pretend to define, but which, so far at least, did not affect his senses. Were they on fire, with the instinct of man for his mate, he knew that he should take the next train for the Continent. But they were not, and the idea suddenly entered his cool wise young brain that he had better stay away from the Continent altogether. It was quite possible that a multiplicity of causes, her own subtle manipulation among them, had delayed his loving this most complete of all women, and it was on the cards that they both would lose their heads the moment they met again. Well! They had got through a dangerous summer safely, and its memory was wholly delightful. He, at least, would not defy the gods, but steer clear of the siren’s rock. Aside from motives of prudence, he was by no means sure that he wanted to experience a tremendous passion; the indolence, the super-civilization in him shrank from elemental tumults. He had locked up the memory of the scene with his brother, but he heard the key rattle for a moment, and his distaste for the primitive increased.

He jerked up the thought of his career and forced his mind to dwell upon it, succeeding so thoroughly that he felt ambition incarnate as he headed for home. He would begin his duties in the Foreign Office on the morrow instead of demanding a leave of absence; that would keep him in England for six months to come. Then he would manage to be sent to St. Petersburg or Madrid, instead of to Berlin, as he had contemplated.

At luncheon he was forced to listen to eulogies of a woman he would not have married had she presented him with a million in the funds, and revenged himself by talking about Mabel Cutting. But deep down in his being went on that same mysterious protest, mutter, demand for the supreme rights of mortal on this imperfect plane called life.

XXXII EVERY MAN HIS OWN PILOT

Mrs. Cutting had bought, several years since, the lease of one of the great houses in Grosvenor Square from a bachelor who, late in life, had inherited it among other properties, and had lived comfortably at his club too long to move or to think favorably of matrimony. At his tenant’s tactful suggestion he reserved the ancestral furniture and pictures, sending them to one of his country houses, and Mrs. Cutting, in refurnishing, had wisely gone to Paris. Knowing the importance of the least of individualizations in a city which resents the unorthodox and is correspondingly fascinated by it, she had, instead of making her mansion the replica of a thousand other fine houses or even of permitting herself to be seduced by æstheticism, that bastard of the Brotherhood, re-created the big heavy rooms into a setting appropriate for a marquise of the eighteenth century. But too wise, or too indifferent, to become the slave of any period, her house was merely light, gay, brilliant, not too full of exquisite furniture gilded and brocaded; there were pastels in very old frames, costly trifles, the whole effect infinitely _French_. Everybody pronounced the word vaguely upon entering the series of reception rooms, drawing-rooms, and boudoirs, barely noting if the effect were produced by the pale brocades set in the white and gold of the panelled walls, the polished floors, the old but beautiful rugs, or by the numberless details, such as the bluish grey inner blinds, drawn up on either side and in the middle, that one sees in any modern French house. But the effect was there, that bright delicate luxurious setting for two beautiful women as dainty and splendid as ever the aristocracy of France achieved before her people found themselves; and all London approved and went there to be refreshed. Although it was now quite three years since the house had been remodelled and thrown open, the illness and death of her husband, followed by litigation, had called Mrs. Cutting so often from the city of her heart that the season just past was the first she had spent uninterruptedly in London since she had been able to equip herself for conquest. An outsider, lacking the halo of fame, no matter how wealthy, cannot impress herself deeply upon a vast and busy society with no more obvious setting than a house hired from some economical noble. But this past season was a very pleasant memory to Mrs. Cutting, not only on account of her daughter’s unqualified success, but because no American in London could dispute the fact that her house had been the scene of the most superb and perfectly appointed entertainments with which dollars had ever defied sovereigns.

Lady Bridgminster, at once the most exclusive and the most independent of women (her Bohemian protégés belonged to the aristocracies of the art world), had been her sponsor, and she had met at once many great people, ordinarily indifferent to or disapproving of rich Americans, whom she might not have met for years, if ever. She was booked for certain country houses in the autumn and early winter which she had long felt she owed it to her American pride to visit, but, even with her already select acquaintance and social tact, hitherto inaccessible. In consequence, never had two women been such devoted friends from the middle of April until the middle of July as “Lady Pat” and Mrs. Cutting, and society had been considerably amused.