sat on Lord Baudesert's right hand and on her left was Senator March.
Mrs. Vernon was a better listener than talker. She had not the naive
effervescence of the American women, but she had a softness, a charming
air of listening with profound attention, which few American women ever
acquire. Senator March, struck from the beginning by her manner of the
highest breeding, admiring her mature beauty and charmed by her subtle
and even silent flattery, thought it the pleasantest dinner he had ever
attended. Eleanor Chantrey sat on the other side of him and he
experienced a glow of pleasure which a man feels when he basks in
beauty's light. But Eleanor Chantrey was not much older than Lucy
Armytage and her range of conversation was strictly limited to what had
happened since she came out in society. Senator March had passed his
fiftieth birthday and liked to talk about things which happened
twenty-five years before. He had an agreeable feeling with Mrs. Vernon
of being contemporaries, which he could not feel with a younger woman.
Alicia Vernon, on her part, recognised Senator March's virtues as a
dinner man and was tactful enough to keep to herself the surprise she
felt at finding an American so accomplished.
When the ladies left the table and the gentlemen's ranks were closed up
for that comfortable after-dinner conversation, which is still the
heritage of the Englishman, Lord Baudesert took pains to bring General
Talbott and Senator March into conversation together. Between the two
men a good understanding was instantly established. General Talbott did
not lose interest in Senator March's eyes for being the father of the
charming woman who had sat next him. With the frank friendliness of the
American, he made greater headway in General Talbott's acquaintanceship
during their half-hour's talk than many Englishmen make in a month's
companionship. Simultaneously Senator March asked permission to call,
and General Talbott gave a cordial invitation to him to do so. Lord
Baudesert was in high feather. The dinner had been pleasant and
agreeable and he was pleased that General Talbott should see what
admirable dinner guests Americans of the best sort made. Sir Percy
Carlyon appeared to be in his usual form, but, as he sat smoking and
talking pleasantly, the thought that Lucy Armytage and Alicia Vernon
were at that moment in the same room, on the same terms, and reckoned to
be of the same sort, gnawed him like some ravenous beast.
Mrs. Vernon at that very time was sitting on a sofa with Lucy Armytage,
and with perfect art and tact was finding out from her many things which
the girl was quite unconscious of betraying. Alicia Vernon was puzzled
by the fact of a secret engagement, because Sir Percy had told her that
the girl he loved had promised to marry him, and this was evidently
unknown to the rest of the world. Without the least trouble, by asking
a few half-laughing questions about the custom of engagements in
America, Alicia Vernon discovered that such things as unannounced
engagements existed and were not considered discreditable. Lucy
answered readily, but in speaking her pale cheeks took on a colour like
the faint pink of the azalea. Alicia led her on without questions, but
with clever suggestions, to tell of her employments, of the books she
read and many other things, which Lucy told frankly and without the
slightest suspicion that she was being cross-examined, and was adding
link by link to the chain of evidence which had begun with the mere
probabilities of a guess.
Alicia Vernon's heart burned within her. She would like to have
forgotten Sir Percy Carlyon long ago, as she had forgotten many others.
She knew that her feeling for him was an infatuation, but in some
strange manner he had dominated her imagination from the beginning. It
was the most dangerous, on account of General Talbott, of all the
affairs in which she had ever been engaged; but all women like Alicia
Vernon have one tragic love. The old Greek superstition that those who
defy love are punished works out in a different civilisation with those
who dishonour love, paying for it in blood and tears.
Alicia Vernon had said to Lucy:
"Sir Percy Carlyon and I are old friends. We met first in India twelve
years ago."
Lucy had enough mother wit not to express surprise or to betray how much
she knew of the incidents of Sir Percy's life. But she was no match in
_finesse_ for Alicia Vernon, who found out, without the least trouble,
that the girl knew certain dates, places and events which she could not
have known except from Sir Percy Carlyon.
The sight which greeted Sir Percy when he entered the drawing-room was
Alicia Vernon and Lucy Armytage still sitting upon the small sofa
together, apparently conversing with intimacy. A tall, red-shaded lamp
cast a rosy glow over the woman and the girl, and fell upon Alicia
Vernon's rich hair, in which a few grey threads showed. Her beautiful
eyes were fixed upon Lucy with an expression which Sir Percy Carlyon
knew perfectly well. He surmised in a moment what had happened. Lucy
was clever as girls are clever, but with Alicia Vernon she was as a bird
in the snare of the fowler. His poor little Lucy!
The irruption of the gentlemen into the drawing-room was greeted with
enthusiasm, as it always is. Mrs. Chantrey made a dive for the
Ambassador, and, wedging him into a corner with a chair, leaned over it
girlishly and ogled him, much to Lord Baudesert's delight. Nothing he
had ever known in his life had diverted him quite so much as Mrs.
Chantrey's determination to become Lady Baudesert if she could possibly
contrive it. Lord Baudesert, as usual, made plaint of his poverty
outside of his official income, and omitted to mention that his private
income was something like L10,000 a year. Mrs. Chantrey then held forth
eloquently upon the worthlessness of money except to help those one
loves. Lord Baudesert, with _malice prepense_, led her to the verge of
an offer of marriage before making his escape.
Sir Percy Carlyon drew up a chair close to the sofa on which sat the
woman he hated and the woman he loved, and smiling and outwardly at
ease, talked with both of them. Senator March, too, soon gravitated
that way. He wished to see more of his late neighbour with her low,
delicious voice and her beautiful, melancholy eyes. Then quite
naturally came out the story of the late house party at his country
house, and what the guests did to amuse themselves.
"It is very quiet up there," said Senator March; "we are in the Maryland
mountains, you see, and there are no ruined abbeys to visit, no hunt
balls, or anything of the sort. We simply walk and read and rest and
talk; but my friends who give me the privilege of their company are so
kind that I feel that they enjoy their visits almost as much as I do."
Lucy hastened to corroborate this, and Sir Percy added pleasantly:
"The pleasure you offer us is just what we like best. I remember those
country walks in which the ladies sometimes did us the honour to join
us. Don't you remember them, Miss Armytage?"
Alicia Vernon understood this as a cool defiance of her.
"You must pay me another visit as soon as possible," cried Senator
March. "The country is looking beautiful, now that spring is
approaching. Perhaps Mrs. Vernon and General Talbott will do me the
honour to join us? Of course, I count upon you, Miss Armytage and Sir
Percy?"
Lucy accepted promptly. So did Sir Percy, with the mental reservation
that Lucy should stay away from any house-party of which Alicia Vernon
was to be a member.
As the guests were leaving, Alicia passed Sir Percy and said to him,
unheard by any one else:
"It is she."
Driving back in the carriage, General Talbott expressed to Alicia his
enjoyment of the evening.
"I have not been to a pleasanter party for a long time. What a fine
fellow Senator March is! He has an enormous fortune, Lord Baudesert
tells me, but lives very simply. He has no capacity for money-making,
and the beginning of his fortune was an inheritance, and he became rich
rather by accident than effort. It is years since I met a man who
pleased me so well."
Then Alicia told the thought which had occurred to her many times during
the evening:
"I didn't think that Americans could have such good manners as some of
those people had."
But even while she was speaking her mind was upon that strange problem,
why could she not cast off the memory, the passion for Sir Percy
Carlyon? He hated her and she knew it, but that only made her love him
the more, as she reckoned love--so curious a thing is the heart of a
woman.
*VII*
The very next day Senator March called upon General Talbott and Mrs.
Vernon and found them both at home. Alicia seemed to him even more
charming than on the evening before. There are few occasions that a
woman appears better than when dispensing the simple hospitality of her
own tea-table, and it is a charm which many Englishwomen possess. Alicia
Vernon had it in great perfection, and her tea-table gave an air of home
to the hotel sitting-room. Senator March remained a full hour and
enjoyed every minute of it. Alicia Vernon's voice was the soul of
music, and her soft and gracious manners completed the charm of her
voice. Then, too, she was not so ridiculously young. Before Senator
March left, he had arranged for a dinner at his own house, and also for
a week-end at his country place. Just as he was leaving, Mrs. Chantrey
came fluttering in, and that meant still another dinner for the English
visitors, and Senator March, being a court card, was at once grabbed by
Mrs. Chantrey for her dinner. The next week was to be one of Grand
Opera, and Senator March, who loved music, determined to take the best
box at the theatre, chiefly for the pleasure of having Alicia Vernon in
it. Quite naturally, in all these plans for pleasure, Sir Percy Carlyon
was included. Senator March and himself had become almost chums from
the beginning of their acquaintance, and what could be more suitable
than that Sir Percy should be one of the party when his old friends were
entertained? Then Senator March's fondness for Lucy Armytage, and his
somewhat limited acquaintance among the younger set, brought her into
the circle.
At the dinner which Senator March gave in his big, old-fashioned house
Alicia saw, with her own eyes, evidence of inherited as well as acquired
wealth. There was a ton, more or less, of family silver on the
sideboards and cabinets, while the portraits of three generations hung
upon the walls.
Among the twenty-five guests were Lord Baudesert, Mrs. Vereker, Lucy
Armytage and Sir Percy Carlyon. The second meeting with Lucy Armytage
made Alicia Vernon's confirmation doubly sure; but there was a new
personality present which divided her interests with Sir Percy Carlyon
and Senator March: this was Colegrove, the man whom Senator March and
Sir Percy Carlyon had passed in the hotel lobby on the day of their
second meeting. He sat directly across the table from Alicia Vernon,
who was on Senator March's left, Mrs. Vereker being on his right. The
mellow glow from the shaded candelabra fell full upon Colegrove's head
and shoulders. He was instantly struck with the beauty of Alicia
Vernon's eyes, as most men were, but Alicia was no less struck with his.
They were clear, so compelling--they were the eyes of the commanding
officer on the field of battle. His well-shaped, iron-grey head, his
clear-cut features, spoke power in the lines of their contour. Alicia
Vernon found herself involuntarily glancing across at her neighbour, and
whenever she looked at him she found his glance fixed upon her.
When the ladies retired to the drawing-room the conversation turned upon
Colegrove, and Alicia found out that he was one of the great railway
magnates of America, one of those men of whom she had heard and read
about, who, beginning at the lowest rung of the ladder, make their way
up by sheer indomitable force to the top, and then kick the ladder down
after them. He had a wife, whom no one had ever seen, stowed away
somewhere in the West, but was never known to speak of her, much less to
present her. Fabulous tales were told of his wealth and of the
simplicity of his mode of living. His winters were generally spent at
Washington, in a comfortable but not expensive hotel, where he had a
modest suite of rooms. While the ladies were talking about him, the
gentlemen appeared from the dining-room. Colegrove walked straight up to
Alicia, and, seating himself, plunged into conversation with her.
Alicia, with infinite tact, led him to speak of himself, his affairs,
his wishes, his aspirations, and listened so intelligently that she
bewitched him even more than she had Roger March.
"I think," she said presently, in her slow, sweet voice, "that I am
getting new ideas all the time in this country about money. You
Americans are credited with thinking much about it. I never saw people
who value money so little."
"Why should we?" answered Colegrove, smiling. "We have no hereditary
nobility, no entailed property to keep up. Every generation here looks
out for itself. Then American ladies don't give their husbands the best
chance of saving money."
"How can any woman save money?" asked Alicia helplessly. "I am always
in want of money, have been all my life, and yet it doesn't seem to me
as if I have many costly things or expensive habits."
"Oh, the want of money with a woman is chronic," replied Colegrove
easily. "The right way to do would be to pay your bills and ask a smile
in return."
He looked at her with such frank admiration that it brought the colour
to Alicia Vernon's face; but she was not displeased with him; on the
contrary, she rather liked the sense of power, of innate force, which
was so plainly his. How trifling to him would seem the mountain of debt
under which Alicia had always laboured, and which she had only managed
to keep partially from her father's knowledge.
"I shouldn't mind a woman spending money on toilettes, jewelry,
carriages and such things. That would be just like buying toys," he
said, still smiling. "I am a man of simple tastes--you would be
disgusted at the plainness of my rooms at the hotel, but I can
understand that white birds should have downy nests."
Colegrove would have monopolised Mrs. Vernon, but Senator March would by
no means have it so. He came up and began to talk about the coming
house-party, taking Alicia into the library to show her pictures of the
place. Then her eyes fell upon pictures of Senator March's family home,
which was in a near-by Eastern State, and the photographs he showed of
it proved that it was a fine old Colonial house added to with taste and
judgment until it was a beautiful and spacious mansion. Also he had a
ranch far off in the Northwest, and his near-by country place in
Maryland.
"You have as many homes as a great English noble."
"But they are not castles; they are only houses; and a man alone, as I
am, has no home. This was my father's town house; he was in the Senate
before me, but you see that it is an old barn compared with the splendid
modern houses in Washington. Then the home, in my native State, is
where I was born, but I have lived there very little. After I left the
university I travelled for some years, and then went into public life,
and that has kept me pretty close to Washington. My own home is too far
away to go to for the week-end, so I have this little place a hundred
miles away in the mountains. I don't know exactly how I happened to
acquire the ranch. I went into a land purchase with some friends of
mine, and the first thing I knew was that I had a ranch, and I don't yet
quite understand how I came by it. I didn't know what to do with it, but
I went out there, and found it a gloriously lonely place, with an adobe
house and a courtyard, stuck up on the side of the mountain. The people
out there told me to stock the place--I have the title to a good part of
the big valley--I got a manager, and, strange to say, I haven't been
swindled. Every year or two I try to go out there for six weeks. It's
a superb climate and I live on horseback, as I did when I was a boy. I
should like so much to show you the ranch which I found in my pocket one
day."
Alicia smiled and shook her head.
"There is so much to see, and one can't stay in America for ever: it is
so expensive."
Senator March looked at her with secret pity. He thought what a nasty
freak of Fate it was that this exquisite creature should want what he
would so easily have given her, but could not.
Alicia Vernon, with a woman's subtlety, noticed and liked this attitude
of the American toward women--the eternal readiness to give. It was
distinctly different from that of the Englishman, who is strictly just
to his womankind, but is not expected to be generous, and the normal
woman hates justice as much as she loves generosity. Alicia, with a
sigh, recalled the storms concerning money in which her married life
with Guy Vernon had been passed, and the laborious subterfuges which she
was forced to employ to keep her father from knowing the exact state of
her finances. And here were two Americans, strangers to her, and with
oceans of money, who were as ready to give it to a wife as they would
give sugar-plums to children!
Colegrove determined to see more of his charming _vis-a-vis_, and went
up boldly to General Talbott and asked permission to call on him.
General Talbott, the kindliest of men under his English reserve,
cordially invited him.
It was a remarkably pleasant dinner to everybody, with one
exception--Sir Percy Carlyon. His pride, his self-respect, his
self-love, suffered cruelly every moment that Lucy Armytage was in the
company of Alicia Vernon. He had taken Lucy in to dinner, and he could
not but see the advance she had made, even in the short time, in tact
and self-possession. Not a self-conscious word or look escaped her as
she sat talking charming nothings to the man whose lips had been upon
hers only the night before, and no one would have dreamed that Sir Percy
Carlyon was upon any different footing with her than any other woman at
the dinner.
The next week was the week of Grand Opera. Senator March took a box for
the whole week, and three nights during that week Alicia Vernon and her
father were his guests. As Mrs. Vernon sat in the shadow of the box,
listening to the enchanting voice of one of the greatest tenors in the
world, it dawned upon her mind how privileged was the position of an
American woman where men were concerned. The social customs, which
permitted men to lie almost at the feet of a woman, were entirely new to
her, and when this was done with the tact and high breeding of Senator
March, he appealed to the craving for luxury in her which had been her
undoing. He had asked her to name which operas in the week's repertoire
she would like to hear, and when she had made her selection he called in
his carriage for her and her father, and she found a beautiful bouquet
waiting for her in the opera box and a supper after the performance.
Whither Senator March was drifting was plain to everybody except
himself. He had grown accustomed to consider himself as a bachelor for
life. He did not, himself, know the cause of his bachelorhood. Few
women pleased him thoroughly, and he had put off from year to year the
search for the other half of his being, and suddenly he found himself a
middle-aged man. He disliked the idea of an inequality in age and felt
no desire to make any of the sparkling young girls he knew Mrs. Roger
March, and the women who were suitable in age did not often retain the
power to please his aesthetic sense. He had no fancy for widows and did
not care to be the object of a woman's second love. When he heard
Alicia Vernon's history, however, it occurred to him that a woman's
second husband might possibly be her first love.
These things all came to him before the soft spring days which Alicia
Vernon, her father and Sir Percy Carlyon spent at his country place.
Senator March had particularly desired Lucy Armytage's company. He had
been fond of her from childhood, and she was one of the few young girls
who did not worry him with the insistencies of youth, but Lucy, after
having accepted the first suggestion of the visit with enthusiasm, was
not now able to come. Senator March explained why at dinner the first
evening of his house-party, which was as large as his modest house could
accommodate, and numbered two ladies besides Alicia Vernon.
"I regret very much that my young friend, Miss Armytage, is not one of
us, but she found herself obliged to go out to Kentucky for a
fortnight's visit to some relatives," he said. "I believe that in
Kentucky people are in bondage to their relations. However, I shall
hope to have Miss Armytage at our next reunion, for we must come here
often. Congress promises to sit into the summer and we must take refuge
in the country as often as we can."
Alicia Vernon, sitting on Senator March's right hand, with Sir Percy
Carlyon on her left, turned towards him with a look which held a
meaning. It was Sir Percy who would not let Lucy stay under the same
roof with her, Alicia Vernon. No repulse he had ever given her stung
like this. For the first time she felt an impulse of fury towards him
and a desire to make him suffer. She lay awake in her bed that night,
hot and cold with rage.
The next day was Sunday, and in the afternoon the usual Sunday walk
along the mountains was proposed. Senator March was too accomplished a
host to devote himself to any lady of the party, and as there were not
enough to pair off all the gentlemen, he attached himself to General
Talbott for the afternoon. A little clever management on Alicia's part,
in the presence of her father, secured Sir Percy Carlyon as her escort.
Sir Percy made no effort to escape. He knew that strange liking which
women have for opening the grave of a dead passion and dragging the
bones of it into life, weeping and wringing their hands over it and
crying aloud to it, commanding it to live again.
They walked together in the April afternoon through the budding woods,
looking down upon the wide, peaceful valley before them, with the blue
peaks cutting the edge of the clear horizon. It was the same walk which
Sir Percy had taken Lucy Armytage two months before on the Sunday
afternoon, and the recollection of it, and the strangeness of Alicia
Vernon being his companion now, almost bewildered him. When they came to
a sunny spot on the hillside, where a grey, flat rock afforded a
resting-place under the pine-trees, Alicia would have stopped, but Sir
Percy said to her almost roughly:
"Not here; we must go on farther."
"Why not?" asked Alicia. "Was it because you and Lucy Armytage once
rested here and therefore I am not worthy to stop for a moment in this
place?"
It was a chance shot, but it went home. Sir Percy turned his back, and
Alicia, with a feeling of triumph, seated herself upon the flat stone
where Lucy had first heard the words of love from Sir Percy Carlyon.
When he turned round she saw in his face, dark and displeased, that she
had scored against him.
"I wish I could forget you," she said, "and not care whether I can hurt
you or not, but I can't. You see, there are some parts of a woman's
life which she can live only once, and the memory is always tormenting
her. This is the first walk we have taken together since--since that
time in India. It was a hilly country somewhat like this."
Sir Percy made no answer; the rage in his heart against Alicia Vernon
had received an accession in the last fortnight.
"Of course," she continued in a voice of suppressed anger, "you forbade
Miss Armytage to come here. You didn't wish her to be under the same
roof with me. One would think that I were the only sinner in the
world."
"I sinned as much and more than you," replied Sir Percy, "but I have
repented."
"That is to say, you grew weary of your passion for me. I think that is
what men call penitence."
Sir Percy looked at her, amazed for the thousandth time. Outwardly she
could observe every canon of dignity and refinement, but secretly, like
every woman who had ever gone wrong, as far as Sir Percy Carlyon's
experience went, she had lost all sense of justice, of proportion, of
reticence, of discipline, and even of sound sense. He had heard stories
of women who trod the downward path and then retrieved themselves, but
he had never met one. These women and Alicia Vernon, with her heritage
of the best birth and breeding, "were sisters under their skins." The
thing which really surprised him was that Alicia maintained so outwardly
and unbrokenly the high standard of her birth and breeding, and was
still capable of disinterested affection--her love for her father.