still, looking straight before her. From the street below came the
sound of voices, of traffic; outside her window black and white sparrows
were wheeling and chattering, and a linden tree in full leaf close by
the broad window waved softly in the breeze, making delicate green
shadows pass over the room and Alicia's pale face. The phase of
existence on which she had entered was as strange to her as if it were
that of another planet. Senator March's offer of marriage had not taken
her by surprise; she had seen it coming for weeks and had made up her
mind from the first to accept it. Nevertheless, when it came she was
overwhelmed with the strangeness of her new position. Of all of those
who had ever made love to her, he was the first man who believed her to
be the soul of truth and purity. It produced in her a faint stirring of
a wish to be a little like what Roger March thought her to be. If only
she could put Sir Percy Carlyon out of her mind! But his presence, when
he came to tell her of his engagement to another woman, had agitated her
more than Senator March had been able to do, even in the moment of
asking her love.
Suddenly the door opened, and a boy ushered in the person farthest from
Alicia Vernon's mind at that moment--Nicholas Colegrove. His personality
was so strong that he could not come and go anywhere unnoticed. The
sight of his handsome, iron-grey head, the grasp of his firm hand,
brought Alicia Vernon to her feet and dispelled instantly the strange,
benumbing dream into which she had fallen. Colegrove was saying in his
rich voice:
"I took the liberty of a friend, albeit a new one, in coming to offer
you my felicitations on what I heard this morning."
Alicia Vernon, now quite herself, smiled and thanked him prettily and
asked him to be seated.
"Marriage is a very different thing between men and women and between
boys and girls," he said in a tone of good-humoured cynicism. "When a
full-grown man and woman marry, I have often noticed they assume a
defensive attitude, one to the other; it is best in the long run. Of
course, they don't admit it--everything in this blessed country is on
the basis of the slightest sentiment--but it is a fact just the same."
Alicia smiled and answered:
"I don't think that American men have ever been on the defensive with
women."
"Quite true in a way," answered Colegrove. "My interest in the subject
is purely academic. I was married at nineteen to a pink-cheeked girl
three years older than myself. We found out our mistake at the end of a
few years. I am not a brute and I am willing to give her everything she
wants, but she doesn't know what she wants. Sometimes she thinks it's a
divorce, but as soon as I agree to it she finds out that she doesn't
want it at all. Of course," continued Colegrove, rising and walking
about the room, "the time may come when I shall meet a woman who will
mean a good deal to me. So far, however, not one of them has been able
to make any impression on me as deep as the action of the Board of
Directors of the A.F.& O. Railroad. If you don't mind my saying it,
however, now that it is too late, I was very much impressed by you.
Your type, you know, is very unusual."
Yes; Alicia Vernon knew that her type was very unusual and never in her
life had her pride and self-love been more flattered than by Colegrove's
frank and debonair admission.
"However," he said, coming and standing before her, "it won't keep me
from being friends with Senator March; he is a very strong man in every
way, and I hope you will let me be a friend of yours, too. Recollect,
if you ever get into a financial tangle, I can give you some good
advice."
"I have been in a financial tangle all my life," murmured Alicia, "but
now that is past."
"Not if you have been in it all your life, my dear lady; those things
are matters of temperament and bear a very indirect relation to the rise
and fall of one's income. That's one thing in which I have been always
very indulgent towards women. Very few of them have any real idea of
the value of money, and the charming and beautiful among them should
have it just as they should have plenty of air and sunlight."
This sentiment was peculiarly acceptable to Alicia Vernon.
Colegrove remained twenty minutes longer, and when he left Alicia
reflected that in him was embodied that American type of which she had
heard so much--men who can deny nothing to women.
The next day Lord Baudesert, cursing and swearing, and Mrs. Vereker,
sighing and lamenting, while Jane, Sarah and Isabella sighed and
lamented at home, went to call upon Lucy Armytage as the _fiancee_ of
Sir Percy Carlyon. Luckily Lucy was not at home, for which mercy Mrs.
Vereker was humbly thankful. The visit, however, had to be returned,
and within the week Mrs. Armytage and Lucy drove in a hired carriage to
the British Embassy and were shown into the drawing-room. Never was
there a meeting with greater elements of danger. Besides Mrs. Vereker
and the three girls, they had General Talbott, Alicia Vernon and Senator
March. It was enough to disconcert a trained woman of the world, but
Lucy Armytage, with the natural tact and self-control which was her
heritage, bore herself beautifully. She had long since divined that the
three Vereker girls followed their mother as if she were a bell cow,
while Lord Baudesert was the supreme arbiter of their destinies. Lucy
took up the best possible strategic position--a chair next to Lord
Baudesert. The Ambassador, in spite of his tendency to harass his
womenkind, was a gentleman, and while cursing Lucy from the bottom of
his heart, treated her with courtly attention. Something in the
softness of her manner and the fearlessness of her eyes struck Lord
Baudesert with a sneaking admiration. Lucy Armytage had neither great
beauty, great talents, nor great fortune, but she was a conqueror of
hearts and her empire was over men. No man had ever withstood her charm
when she deliberately chose to exercise it. On this occasion she
proceeded with infinite tact to captivate Lord Baudesert. Sir Percy,
secretly diverted in spite of himself, watched Lucy serenely walking
into the good graces of the Ambassador, and that by a path which few had
the courage to tread--the path of polite disagreement with him. Mrs.
Vereker turned pale when she heard Lucy say, smilingly, to Lord
Baudesert concerning a certain public question then under discussion:
"I speak with much ignorance and more prejudice, but just the same I
can't agree with you."
And Lord Baudesert, instead of eating her up in two mouthfuls on the
spot, answered amiably:
"My dear young lady, you are no more ignorant and prejudiced than nine
men out of ten who have discussed it."
Then Lucy told him, with quiet drollery, of her own views and opinions
on the subject and the various others which she had heard expressed by
the public men who discussed it, and Lord Baudesert laughed with
appreciation. And then they found a book or two in common, and Lord
Baudesert made the amazing discovery that a girl might browse about in a
library and get hold of interesting odds and ends of knowledge, which
she knew how to use without pedantry or affectation. Lucy's information
about the Indian Mutiny was a mine of gold to her. Lord Baudesert had
been a cornet in the days when there were still cornets, and had been
both at Delhi and Lucknow, and sewn upon the breast of his court costume
was the medal of the Alighur, which he would not have exchanged for the
blue ribbon of the Garter. Lucy was the first woman he had met in
America who even knew the date of the Mutiny, and Lord Baudesert
therefore soon reckoned her above and beyond the rest of the nation.
The visit was to Lucy a little triumph of her own, which was not lost
upon any one present, least of all Alicia Vernon. The manner between
these two women was perfect. Lucy had not forgotten Sir Percy Carlyon's
word of warning. She knew not why he had no desire for her to be
intimate with Mrs. Vernon, but his wishes were respected. Each was
carefully polite to the other, and the little shade of reserve was too
delicate to be noticed by any one present except Sir Percy Carlyon;
Senator March did not notice it in the least, but came up to Lucy as she
was leaving, and said in a low voice:
"I hope that you and Mrs. Vernon will become great friends. I owe Sir
Percy a debt of gratitude: it was through him, you know, I met Mrs.
Vernon."
"Thank you," replied Lucy. "Sir Percy is always laying people under
obligations to him," and she turned away smiling.
When, after a short visit, Mrs. Armytage rose to go, Lord Baudesert
tried to pin Lucy down. Lucy stayed a little longer, but not even Lord
Baudesert's blandishments made her commit the blunder of staying too
long.
Lord Baudesert's first remark on finding himself alone in the bosom of
his family was to Mrs. Vereker:
"Have her to dinner as soon as you can. Delightful girl, she is. After
all, perhaps Percy didn't make any blunder."
Mrs. Vereker shook her heard like a Chinese mandarin, and sighed; she
had been shaking her head and sighing ever since the engagement was
announced.
The dinner two weeks later was another and greater triumph for Lucy
Armytage. Sir Percy had expected her to be frightened out of her wits
at the thought of sitting next Lord Baudesert during the whole of the
dinner, and he could not quite bring himself to believe that Lucy's calm
courage was not foolhardiness. But where men were concerned, Lucy
Armytage knew what to say and do as well as any woman that ever lived.
As she sat next to Lord Baudesert at the long and glittering
dinner-table, she talked with him so prettily, controlling her natural
effervescence, but occasionally sparkling into brilliance, that Lord
Baudesert found himself captivated as he had never been before in his
life. Senator March and Alicia Vernon were present also; it seemed to
Sir Percy as if the Fates were still at their terrible work between
Alicia Vernon and him.
Mrs. Vereker was sadly polite to Lucy, wondering all the time what Lord
Baudesert saw in her to delight him so obviously. When the last guest
had departed, Lord Baudesert, standing in front of the fire in the
hereditary attitude of the Englishman, with his feet wide apart and his
hands behind his back, remarked coolly:
"I think, Susan, when you go home this summer, you may as well arrange
to remain during the winter. I intend to take the future Lady Carlyon
in hand and show her a few things, and I can't do it as well with you
here. I shall ask her to preside here."
Mrs. Vereker gasped. The intimation was not wholly displeasing to her
after three years of trial with Lord Baudesert, but the idea of an
American woman doing the honours of Lord Baudesert's Embassy was enough
to stagger anybody, certainly a person so easily staggered as Mrs.
Vereker.
On a June morning in a small church in Bardstown, Kentucky, Lucy
Armytage became Lady Carlyon. It was the simplest little wedding
imaginable, without any token that Lucy was making a splendid marriage.
She was a charming and unaffected bride, and looked all happiness. Sir
Percy, however, after the manner of an Englishman who has attained his
heart's desire, was silent, and looked somewhat bored.
On the same day, at a fashionable church in Washington, Alicia Vernon
became Alicia March. The first news she heard of Sir Percy Carlyon was
that he was promoted, and appointed Minister at a small Continental
court. Thus Lady Carlyon and Mrs. March had separate orbits many
thousand miles apart.
*IX*
Four years and a half afterwards, on a mild, sunny December afternoon,
Senator March, whilst walking through the still fashionable, fine old
street in which his house was, saw a beautiful victoria, superbly
horsed, drawn up to the sidewalk. In it sat a lady and gentleman, whom
he instantly recognised as Sir Percy Carlyon, recently appointed
Ambassador to Washington, and Lady Carlyon. They had stopped for a
moment to speak to two beautiful little boys, three and two years of
age, in the care of a stately nursemaid and her assistant. Senator
March's eyes rested with longing upon the charming little children. He
was passionately fond of children, and they were the only gift of Heaven
which seemed denied to him. When the nurse moved away with her charges
Senator March stepped up and grasped Sir Percy's hand, and then Lady
Carlyon laid her little white-gloved hand in his.
"I didn't know you had arrived," said Senator March. "I watched the
newspapers, and so has Mrs. March, thinking that we would not let
twenty-four hours go by without seeing you."
"We reached town only last night," said Sir Percy; "and we were speaking
of you five minutes ago when we drove past your house."
While Sir Percy was speaking, Senator March, man-like, kept his eyes
fixed upon Lady Carlyon. One glance showed to him that she had found
herself; she was far prettier than she had ever been before, and there
was a new meaning and intelligence in her black eyes and added charm in
her agreeable and well-cultivated voice. She seemed to have grown
taller, and she had a sweet, unaffected dignity of wifehood and
motherhood. The dainty, high-bred girl had become a woman, had
developed into an Ambassadress worthy of the name. It was she who said
to Senator March:
"I hope Mrs. March is well, and of course she is happy?"
"She appears to be both," replied Senator March, smiling; "perhaps it is
only her British pluck which enables her to stand the American husband."
"I shall hope to see her very soon," said Lady Carlyon, and then Sir
Percy inquired about General Talbott.
"We are expecting him in the spring. As you may imagine, Mrs. March
does not let any long interval pass between her visits to General
Talbott in England and his visits to us. By the way, what an odd
fatality has always interfered with our seeing you and Lady Carlyon when
we have been in Europe. We seemed to be playing a game of
hide-and-seek, but now there will be no escaping each other, and we must
see as much as we can of you and Lady Carlyon."
"Thank you," answered Sir Percy, with the utmost cordiality, but it was
Lady Carlyon who added: "Yes, pray remember us to Mrs. March, and we
shall look forward to seeing General Talbott as soon as he arrives. We
shall expect to see you very shortly."
Then after a few moments more of conversation the carriage drove away.
A victoria, with a coachman and footman in hearing, is no place for a
private conversation, and nothing was said about Senator March and his
wife until Sir Percy and Lady Carlyon had reached home and were alone in
Sir Percy's library.
"Dearest," said Lady Carlyon, laying her little hand upon his sleeve,
"there is but one attitude to take: we must be friendly with her.
Remember Senator March's position and how you stand with General
Talbott."
"I know it all," answered Sir Percy doggedly.
They were standing together, and Sir Percy took his wife's hand and
kissed it.
"You are the better diplomatist of the two," he said; "I could not bring
myself to mention Alicia March's name. If it hadn't been for your
readiness Senator March must have suspected something. It must be hard
for you?"
"Very! But I have been preparing myself for this complication ever
since you told me that story. After all, it is quite natural that Mrs.
March should make a fight for her position in the world. It isn't every
woman who has it in her to be a Louise la Valliere."
"It is certainly not in Alicia March; however, there is nothing so
cowardly as for a man to complain of a woman. I should be glad to take
all the pain of my own wrongdoing, but you, poor, innocent child, must
suffer too."
"Let us not think of it," said Lady Carlyon, drawing her husband's lips
to hers.
Sir Percy said nothing, but his kiss and his eyes were eloquent of love
and gratitude. Then Lady Carlyon went into the drawing-room and Sir
Percy followed her. Deep in his heart he was a sentimentalist, and he
loved his wife with single-hearted devotion. He could not but compare
her, as she moved about the room, her white cloth gown trailing upon the
floor, with the slim, pretty and inconsequent young girl whose waltzing
had first charmed him. She was still slim and pretty, but she had grown
wise with soft, sweet wisdom. It was she, now, who thought for him,
smoothed over the rough places, practised an easy and graceful
self-control, and was all that the wife of an Ambassador should be.
The tea-tray was brought in, and Lady Carlyon gave Sir Percy his tea, a
thing comforting in itself, with the same gracious air that she would
have handed it to the Ambassador of France.
"It was in the ball-room that I first saw you, waltzing with young
Stanley, the naval officer," said Sir Percy, drinking his tea with calm
deliberation, "and it was in the library that Lord Baudesert warned me
that a diplomat should never marry an American, and I swore to him I
never would."
"It is all wrong in principle," replied Lady Carlyon, making a pretty
little grimace--she retained for Sir Percy's benefit alone all the
little roguish tricks and airs which made Lucy Armytage so charming, but
would scarcely have been becoming in Lady Carlyon--"I never thought that
anything would induce me to marry any man outside of Kentucky. I have
often been shocked by your want of knowledge of horses."
Sir Percy tweaked her ear. The form and ceremony with which horses were
treated in England had been a revelation to Lady Carlyon, and Sir Percy
himself was no mean judge of a horse. Nevertheless, Lady Carlyon, when
she chose to be once more Lucy Armytage, would give herself supercilious
airs to Sir Percy upon all equine subjects.
"You hardly know a horse from a cow, my Lady Lucy," he said.
This was the name by which he called his wife when they were alone. He
had explained to her at the beginning of their married life, when
instructing her in titles, that she could not really be Lady Lucy
Carlyon unless she were an earl's daughter, to which Lucy replied
demurely that she had always supposed every gentleman in Kentucky to be
the equal of the biggest earl in England. The small joke amused Sir
Percy, and from that on she became to him "Lady Lucy." In some way Lord
Baudesert had also caught the name, which so pleased his fancy that
"Lady Lucy" became applied in tenderness to Lady Carlyon. It recalled
Lord Baudesert, and Lady Carlyon said, as she gave Sir Percy his second
cup of tea:
"I don't think your uncle will be able to keep away long from
Washington. He will be sure to come back here as a visitor. He
declares that he finds London, Paris, Vienna and Berlin dull after
Washington."
"Perhaps it is because he is no longer an Ambassador, or else that the
English, French, German and Austrian sense of humour is not so acute as
he found the American, and my uncle can't have the ambassadorial joke as
he did here."
"And Mrs. Chantrey is still unmarried," said Lady Carlyon, and then they
both laughed.
Lady Carlyon kept away from the hateful subject of Mrs. March, but Sir
Percy understood well that his wife would shoulder the burden and carry
it bravely and quietly. The idea of Alicia March being under his roof
was odious and humiliating to Sir Percy Carlyon, but he saw no way out
of it. His immediate departure for England after his marriage, and
thence to his Continental post, had kept Lady Carlyon and Alicia March
apart. The Carlyons had not been to America but once since, and then
only for a few weeks, within a year of their marriage. Colonel Armytage
had been stricken with paralysis, and Lady Carlyon, with Sir Percy, had
hastened to him, arriving in time to find him conscious, but dying.
Mrs. Armytage had followed her husband within a fortnight, her last days
tended by Lady Carlyon, to whom she had been a mother. Within a month
all was over and Lady Carlyon returned to Europe without going near
Washington. The chapter of accidents which Senator March mentioned as
having kept him and his wife from meeting the Carlyons in Europe had
been really a series of clever stratagems on the part of the latter.
When the Marches were on the Continent, especially at the Capitol, where
Sir Percy Carlyon took his preliminary canter as Minister before winning
the blue ribbon of an Embassy, he and Lady Carlyon had found it
convenient to be absent at those times. Then when the Marches went to
London the Carlyons managed to be on the Continent. Sir Percy could not
possibly put himself in the position of avoiding General Talbott, who
had visited him at his Continental post, and had been made an honoured
guest. Only one person suspected why the Marches and the Carlyons had
never met, and that was Alicia March. Nor were the Carlyons the only
persons who avoided her, but of this her husband remained entirely
ignorant.
The stories of Senator March's wealth made a sensation in the sphere of
General Talbott's and Mrs. March's acquaintances. Mrs. March herself
gave evidence of it in the splendour of her jewels and the cost and
exquisiteness of her costumes. She spent with a lavish hand, and the
world knew it. Sir Percy Carlyon, hearing rumours of this, thought to
himself: "It is the same Alicia, whose passion for spending has grown by
what it feeds on." Sir Percy Carlyon turned these things over in his
mind while drinking tea on this December afternoon, but he said nothing
of them.
Then when tea was over, following the custom established after the birth
of their first boy, the Carlyons went upstairs to pay a visit to the
nursery. In saying good-night to the two beautiful little children,
Lady Carlyon knelt down by their cribs and made a silent prayer, and Sir
Percy, standing near her, did likewise, and thought himself the happiest
of men, but for one thing--that which had happened in the far-away
hill-country of India long years ago.
Meanwhile, on parting from the Ambassador and Lady Carlyon, Senator
March soon reached his own door. The outward aspect of the house had
been changed and wonderfully improved. The adjoining house on each side
had been demolished, and wings built out in the same simple but
dignified style of architecture of the original house. One wing was a
ball-room and the other was a picture gallery. As Senator March entered
the hall a footman handed him a box which contained a bouquet; this was
Roger March's daily tribute to his wife ever since his marriage. Within
the house the note of luxury was struck, and it increased in an
ascending scale until it came to Alicia March's boudoir, which was part
of the new building. Senator March's quarters alone had escaped the
tide of splendour, and his own rooms remained as simple as in his
bachelor days.
He knocked at the door of 'his wife's boudoir and Alicia bade him enter.
The four years and a half, which had developed Lucy Armytage into an
Ambassadress worthy of the name, had also made a subtle change in Alicia
March. She was apparently no older than on the day when she had first
seen Roger March. She was an admirable subject for the great London and
Paris dressmakers, and she had reached that stage of a woman's existence
where dress ceases to be a passion and becomes a fine art. Time had left
no mark on her, but her eyes--her beautiful violet eyes--had an
expression of apprehension, even of fear, in them, and she, heretofore
the most placid and self-controlled of women, had become strangely
nervous. She started as her husband entered, but smiled as she received
his gift of flowers with the graceful thanks which she never omitted.
Then Senator March asked her how the day had passed.
"Very well," she replied. "I didn't wish to go out until you had come
in. What have you been doing to-day?"
"I worked like a cart horse until three o'clock, then walked uptown for
exercise, and whom do you think I saw half-a-square away?"
"The Carlyons," answered Mrs. March calmly. "I saw them drive past.
Did you speak to them?"
"Oh, yes! I was delighted to see them again. You know I have a special
reason for gratitude to Carlyon, as it was through him I met you."
Mrs. March turned her beautiful eyes on her husband with a look which
every woman's eyes have when she receives a sincere compliment.
Senator March continued:
"Sir Percy is looking very well; that man has had unbroken good fortune
of the most brilliant sort. I believe him to be the youngest Ambassador
in the diplomatic service, and Lady Carlyon!--bless me--she is Lucy
Armytage and yet she is not Lucy Armytage--that is to say, she has grown
up. She has a charming dignity without the slightest pretension, and
one can see at a glance that she will do well anywhere. They had
stopped the carriage for a moment to speak to their children, two fine
boys."