Bettina had gone through her first London season as Lady Hurdly, and
certainly no girl's ambitious dreams could have forecast a more
brilliant experience. She had been far too ignorant to imagine such
subtle delights of the senses as resulted from the wealth and
eminence which she had attained to in marrying Lord Hurdly. And
beyond the mere sensuous appeal which was made to her by the wearing
of magnificent clothes and jewels, and the being always surrounded
with objects of beauty and means of luxury, she had the greater
delight of having her feverishly active mind continually supplied
with a stimulus, which it now more than ever needed. This was
furnished by the innumerable social demands made upon her, and the
complete power which she felt within herself to respond to them not
only creditably, but in a way that should make even Lord Hurdly
wonder at her.
True, she had had no social training, and in a less powerful position
she might have shown her ignorance and incapacity, for she would then
have had to take a personal supervision of the things which she now
left utterly alone, and which, being essential to be done, were
done--how and by whom she did not ask. Lord Hurdly had so long done
the honors of his house without a wife that it was natural to him to
continue the direction of household affairs, with the aid of the
accomplished assistants who were in his employment; so Bettina had no
more to do with such matters than if she had become the mistress of a
royal household. At the proper time she showed herself at Lord
Hurdly's side, and she had beauty enough and wit enough not only to
do credit to that high position, but to cast a glory over it which he
knew in his heart no other Lady Hurdly of them all had ever done.
That she enjoyed it, who could doubt that saw her, day after day and
evening after evening, beautifying with her presence the social
gatherings at her own splendid house, and at those of the new
acquaintances who sought her society and distinguished her with their
attentions wherever she might go.
Having had no experience of wealth, it never seemed to occur to her
that it could have its definite limit, and she ordered costumes and
invented ways of spending money which sometimes surprised her lord,
but which also pleased him. His fortune was so large, and had been so
long without such demands upon it, that it was a source of genuine
satisfaction to him to see that Bettina knew how to avail herself of
her brilliant opportunity. Save and except a wife, he was already
possessed of every adjunct that could do credit to his name and
position, and in marrying Bettina he had been largely influenced by
the fact that she was qualified to supply this one deficiency with a
distinction which no other woman he had ever seen could have bestowed
upon the position.
So, to the world, Bettina seemed completely satisfied, and in the
worldly sense she was so. In this sense, also, Lord Hurdly seemed and
was satisfied in his marriage. How it was with them in their hearts
no one knew, and perhaps there was no one who cared to know. The one
being to whom this question was of strong interest was very far away.
He had shifted his position from Russia to India about the time of
his cousin's marriage, and Bettina never heard his name mentioned,
nor did she ever utter it.
After the London season was over, Lord and Lady Hurdly had moved
from their town-house to the family seat, Kingdon Hall. Here, after
a day's stop, Lord Hurdly had left her, to return to town on some
public business; and so, for the first time since her marriage, she
had a few days to herself. Later they were to have the house filled
with guests, and after that to make some visits; so this time of
solitude was not likely to be repeated soon. Bettina was surprised
at herself to see how eagerly she clutched at it. It was, in some
faint degree, like the feeling which she had had after the rare and
short separations from her mother--a longing to get back to the
familiar and the accustomed. She now felt somewhat the same longing
to get back to herself. She had done her part in all that brilliant
pageant like a woman in a dream. She had enjoyed it, for power and
admiration were very dear to her, and she had revelled in their fresh
first-fruits. But she had not been herself for so long, had not for
so long looked herself in the face and searched her own heart, that
she did not know herself much more familiarly than she knew the other
brilliant personages who moved beside her across the crowded stage of
London life.
It was unaccountable even to herself how she rejoiced at the idea of
these few days of quiet and solitude. Nora, her old nurse, was of
course with her still, with a French maid to assist her and perform
the important functions of the toilet of which the elderly woman was
ignorant. This maid Bettina sent off on a holiday, so that she might
have only Nora about her.
The morning after her arrival at Kingdon, Bettina, having breakfasted
in her room, went for a ramble over the house. It seemed solemnly
vast and empty, and she would have lost herself many times had she
not encountered now and then a courtesying house-maid or an
obsequious footman, who answered her inquiries and told her into what
apartments she had strayed.
"Show me the way to the picture-gallery," she said to one of these,
"and then tell the housekeeper to come to me there presently."
She had taken a fancy to this white-haired old woman the night
before, when Lord Hurdly had presented the servants to their new
mistress in the great hall, where they had all been assembled to
receive her on her arrival.
In a few moments she found herself alone in the stately gallery,
going from picture to picture. On one side was a long line of the
ladies of Kingdon Hall, painted by contemporary artists, each
celebrated in his era. At the end of this line her own portrait, done
by a celebrated French painter who had come to London for the
purpose, had recently been put in place.
It was a magnificent thing in its manner as well as in its subject,
and the costume which Lord Hurdly's taste had conceived for her and a
French milliner had carried out was a marvel of rich effects. As she
paused in front of it her lips parted, and she said, whispering to
herself,
"Lady Hurdly--the present Lady Hurdly! And what has become of
Bettina?"
As she asked herself this question she sighed.
A sudden instinct made her move away. She wanted to escape from Lady
Hurdly. She had a chance to be herself to-day, and she felt a strong
desire to make the most of it.
Hearing a sound at her side, she turned and found the serious,
pleasant face of the housekeeper near her.
"Good-morning, my lady," she said, gently, in answer to Bettina's
friendly salutation. "Will your ladyship not have a shawl? This room
is always cool, no matter what the weather is."
Bettina declined the wrap, but passed on to the next picture,
requesting the woman to come with her and act as cicerone.
"What is your name? I ought to know it," she said.
"Parlett, your ladyship."
"And how long have you lived here, Parlett?"
"Over forty years, my lady. I was here in the old lord's time. That
is his picture, with his lady next to him."
Bettina looked with interest at the two pictures designated.
"He is thought to be very much like his present lordship," said the
housekeeper.
"Yes, I see it," said Bettina, feeling an instinct to guard her
countenance. Here were the same keen eyes, the same resolute jaw, the
same thin lips and hard lines about the mouth. Only in the older face
they were yet more accentuated, and instead of the not unbecoming
thinness of hair which showed in the son, there was a frank expanse
of bald head which made his features all the harder.
Hurrying away from the contemplation of this portrait, Bettina turned
to its companion. Here she encountered a face and form which were
truly all womanly, if by womanliness is meant abject submission and
self-effacement. The poor little lady looked patiently hopeless, and
her deprecating air seemed the last in the world calculated to hold
its own against such a lord. That she had not done so--of her own
full surrender of herself, in mind and soul and body--the picture
seemed a plain representation.
"Poor woman! She looks as if she had suffered," said Bettina.
"Oh yes, my lady," Parlett answered, as if divided between the
inclination to talk and the duty to be silent.
"She was unhappy, then?" said Bettina. "You need not hesitate to
answer. His lordship has told me what a trusted servant of the family
you are, and I shall treat you as such. You need not fear to speak to
me quite freely."
"Yes, my lady, she had a great deal of sadness in her life," went on
the housekeeper, thus encouraged. "She had six daughters before she
had a son, and this was naturally a disappointment to his lordship.
One after the other these children died, which grieved her ladyship
sorely, for she was a very devoted mother. His lordship had never
noticed them much, being angry at not having an heir, and this made
my lady all the fonder of them. She had little constitution herself,
and the children were sickly. At last, however, an heir was born, but
her ladyship died at his birth. It seemed a pity, my lady, did it
not? For his lordship was greatly pleased with the heir, and, of
course, my lady would have been much happier after that."
Bettina did not answer. The evident reasonableness of the father's
position, in the eyes of this good and gentle woman, made it
impossible for her to speak without dissent to such an atrocity as
Lord Hurdly's attitude seemed to her. So she moved away, and the
woman took the hint and said no more.
A little distance off, at the end of the long room, she had caught
sight of an object that made her heart beat suddenly. She did no more
than glance at it, and then returned to the contemplation of the
picture before which she was standing. But she had recognized Horace
Spotswood in the tall stripling of perhaps fifteen who stood in
riding-clothes at the side of a pawing gray horse.
By the time she had made her way to it, in its regular succession,
she had quite recovered her calmness and had made up her mind as to
her course.
"And who is this handsome boy?" she said, with perfect
self-possession, as they stood before the large canvas.
[Illustration: "'AND WHO IS THIS HANDSOME BOY?'"]
"That is Mr. Horace, my lady," said the woman, a sudden tone of
emotion mingling with the deference in her voice as her eyes dwelt
on the picture fondly.
And who could wonder at this? Surely a more winsome lad had never
been seen. He was even then tall, and in his riding coat and breeches
looked strangely slender, in contrast to the broad-shouldered
physique which she had lately known so well. But the eyes were just
the same--direct, frank, eager eyes, which looked straight at you and
seemed to make a demand upon you to be as open and frank in return.
Had Bettina searched the world, she could not, as she knew, have
found a more significant contrast than the comparison of the honest
eyes with the guarded, cold, inscrutable ones into which it was now
her lot to look so often.
"Have you known him a long time?" she asked, pleasantly, as the woman
remained silent.
"Oh, since he was a little lad, my lady! We all love Mr. Horace here.
He is the handsomest and kindest young gentleman in the world, and
he's that good to me that I couldn't be fonder of my own son, not
forgetting the difference, my lady."
Bettina detected a tone of regretfulness in the woman's voice, and
also, she thought, an effort to conceal it. If there was a feeling
akin to this regret in her own heart, she also must conceal it. These
allusions to the handsome, enthusiastic young fellow to whom she had
promised herself in marriage had stirred her deeply. The idea of any
one, servant or equal, speaking in this way of the man who was her
husband, at any time in his life, gave her a nervous desire to laugh.
It was followed by an equally nervous impulse to cry.
Walking ahead of the housekeeper, she gained a moment's opportunity
for the recovery of her self-control, and she made good use of it.
"Parlett," she said, presently, "I do not want you to think that in
marrying Lord Hurdly I have done an injury to Mr. Spotswood." In
spite of herself, her voice shook at the name.
"Oh no, my lady--" began Parlett, but her mistress interrupted her,
saying, quickly:
"Of course he always knew that his lordship might marry, and could
not have been unprepared for such a possibility; but in order that he
might feel no difference in his present position on that account,
Lord Hurdly has settled on him what is really a handsome fortune--not
only the income of it, but the principal also. I tell you this that
you may understand that he is none the worse off, so far as money
goes, through his cousin's marriage to me."
"Yes, my lady. I understand, my lady. Thank you for telling me," said
Parlett, somewhat nervously. "Of course every one knows that you have
done him no harm, my lady, and we knew, of course, that his lordship
would do the handsome thing by him."
Somehow these civil, reassuring words smote painfully upon Bettina's
consciousness. When this woman spoke so confidently of Lord Hurdly's
doing the handsome thing by his former heir, she felt it to be the
hollow tribute of a conventional loyalty, and the assurance that it
was understood that she herself had done him no harm grated on her
also. Now that she was quite alone and free to think things out, as
she had shrunk from doing heretofore, and as, in the rush of the
London season, she had been able to avoid doing, she felt a sense of
compunction toward Horace that seriously depressed her.
Dismissing the housekeeper, she put on a shade-hat and went for a
ramble in the park. How beautiful it was! What shrubs, what trees,
what undulations of rich emerald turf! She could not in the least
feel that she had any right in it all. But how must a creature love
it who had looked upon its noble beauties from childhood up to
youth, and on to manhood, with the belief that it would some day be
his own! She could not stifle the feeling that she had wronged that
being if by her marriage she should be the means of depriving him of
such a fortune and position, and deep, deep down in her consciousness
she had a boding fear that, if all things hidden could be revealed,
it might be shown that in a keener sense than this she had also
wronged him.
For marriage had been in many ways an illumination to Bettina. The
revelation of her own heart which it had given her was one which she
tried hard to shut her eyes to. Twice she had consented to the idea
of marrying without love. Once she had actually done this thing. Only
her own heart knew what had been the consequences to her. But of one
thing she had often felt glad. This was that she had not entered into
a loveless marriage with a man who had loved her as she had believed
Horace did at the time he had so ardently wooed her. From such a
wrong as that might she be delivered!
As her thoughts now dwelt on Horace and the circumstances of their
brief past together, the memory of his honest, tender, self-forgetful
attitude toward her recurred to her half wistfully, in contrast to
her recent experiences. Lord Hurdly's manner toward her had, in
truth, changed from the very hour of their marriage. He no longer had
the air of a solicitous suitor, but took at once that of the assured
husband and master. It made her think what she had heard of his
father and of his poor little mother's history. Not that she could
fancy herself becoming, under any circumstances, a Griselda; though
she could without difficulty imagine him in his father's _rôle_.
But what right had she, she asked herself, to expect to reap where
she had not sown? She had married for money and position, and she had
got them. What more had she expected?
Nothing more, perhaps; but in one point she had been
disappointed--namely, in the power of these things to give her what
she longed for, and what she could define only under the indefinite
term happiness.