As Bettina had found the London season delightful, and yet had been
quite content to see it close, and as the same had been true of her
experience, both as hostess and as guest, at the country-house
parties which had followed the season, so it was also with her
foreign travels, although she found much to interest and delight her
in the various cities which she visited with Lord Hurdly. He was
received with distinction everywhere--a fact partly due to his
prominent position in Parliament, and partly to his social importance
and the acknowledged beauty of his wife.
Bettina enjoyed it, certainly, and found it very helpful to her in
carrying out her resolve to banish the agitating thoughts which would
recur whenever she thought of Horace. She had managed to stop
thinking of him almost entirely, and to live only for the
satisfaction of each day as it passed.
After a while, however, she began to feel that there was a certain
flatness in the sort of pleasure which consisted so largely in being
an object of admiration, for she had not been able herself to feel
much enthusiasm for the people whom she met. She did not make friends
easily, perhaps because she did not greatly care to have friends. Her
mother's delicate health had left her little time for other
companionships, even if she had desired them, and since the loss of
her mother her heart had seemed to close up, and her capacity for
caring for people, never very great, was lessening every day.
Several times during her travels she had heard Horace spoken of.
On these occasions she had not betrayed the fact that she had
any knowledge of him, and so the talk about him had been quite
unrestrained. She had heard it said by one man that "he was turning
out a very earnest fellow"; by another that "his pamphlets were
making quite a stir"; and, again, that he "might do something worth
while in diplomacy if he'd let philanthropy alone." Another man had
said that "all he needed was to marry money, and he'd have a great
career before him."
When Bettina returned from her travels these few remarks, overheard
at dinner-tables or in public places, seemed in some unaccountable
way to be the most important things she had secured out of her late
experiences. Certainly they were the most insistently recurring, and
the idea was forced upon her that the way in which men spoke of
Horace Spotswood was a strong contrast to the tone of the letter from
Lord Hurdly's friend.
All this was a source of distress to her. She would have preferred to
believe the letter, for such a belief would have rid her of the sting
of self-reproach; but, try as she might, she could not wholly get her
consent to it.
On her way back to England she stopped in Paris to choose her
costumes for the coming season. It was a pleasure to her to try on
these beautiful things, which she bought without any thought of the
cost of them; but it was a pleasure which she had become accustomed
to, and so its keenness was gone. Besides this, she had nothing to
look forward to except the London season, and custom had also
detracted from the zest of that. She was in the attitude of always
looking beyond. Surely, with such a position and such a fortune as
she had attained to, there must be something to satisfy the vague
longing within her which she called desire for happiness.
It was decided that they were to stay at Kingdon Hall a short time
before going up to town, and Bettina had looked forward to the
freedom of the country life with a hopefulness which reality
disappointed. Here again she thought of Horace, and the possible
injustice she had done him forced its way into her consciousness, and
so disturbed her with doubts and misgivings that she determined to
overcome her reluctance to mention Horace's name to her husband, and
ask boldly whether he had actually received the sum of money which
she had been promised that he should have. It had become so essential
to her to know about this that she determined to use her very first
opportunity of asking.
Not ten minutes after she had made this resolution she unexpectedly
encountered Lord Hurdly, in crossing a hall. He had been out on
horseback, and still wore his riding-clothes. The correct and
carefully fitted leggings showed legs that were thin and shapeless.
Beneath them were small feet, on which their owner did not step very
firmly. The somewhat showy waistcoat and short coat had an air of
displaying themselves and concealing the form beneath them, which
was perhaps a high tribute to his tailor's art. His chest looked
narrower, his face more wrinkled, his hair thinner, than Bettina had
before noticed them to be, and there was a certain loose-jointedness
in his figure which, as he moved toward her on his narrow and closely
booted feet, gave him the sort of teetering motion of the elderly
beau. His face, neutral and cold as ever, showed the signs of age
less, yet Bettina felt that it masked the inadequacy of his soul as
distinctively as his clothes masked that of his body.
As they came toward each other--this man and this woman, whose
marriage was supposed to be a union of two into one--the face of each
might, by an eye sensitive to the subtleties of human expression,
have been seen to harden slightly. Lord Hurdly took off his hat with
an automatic motion which might have prompted the thought that the
action arose from his ideal of himself rather than from any
association with the woman before him.
"Excuse me for detaining you a moment," said Bettina, "but I want to
know whether Horace Spotswood actually received the money which you
made over to him at the time of your marriage to me. I have heard
that he is leading a very active life, on lines where money will be
of great use to him. Naturally I am anxious to be sure of the fact
that he has suffered no injury, however indirectly, through me."
She had been able to control both her voice and expression
entirely--a fact on which she fervently congratulated herself.
"You may feel quite at ease on that score, I assure you," Lord Hurdly
answered, in his cold, incisive tones. "He received the money, and
has probably used it for the furtherance of these ridiculous and
sentimental schemes of his. This should give you the gratifying
assurance that he has been bettered, and not worsted, by reason of
his connection with you."
The tone in which he spoke was galling to Bettina, but she made no
answer, though no words which she could have spoken would have
conveyed a greater resentment of his speech than did her disdainful
silence. She made a motion to move away, but he deliberately placed
himself in front of her, saying, in the same hard tone:
"It occurred to me, from time to time while we were abroad, that you
were rather eager in gleaning information about the person we have
been speaking of, and I want to tell you that what has been evident
to me may be evident to others. You may not care how the thing
looks, but as I do, perhaps you will be more careful in the future."
His use of the word "eager" in connection with her attitude in this
affair gave Bettina swift offence, and this feeling was heightened by
the suggestion that she had made herself liable to criticism on such
a subject.
"You cannot, I think," she answered, in a tone of proud resentment,
"be more careful than I am that I shall act with propriety as your
wife. Since there is so little besides the form to be complied with,
I see the greater necessity for punctiliousness in observing that.
The rebuke you have just given me is utterly unmerited, and I shall
therefore not change my manner of conducting myself in any
particular."
"Perhaps you will think better of that decision, and will oblige me
by not making yourself conspicuous by holding your breath to listen
whenever that person chances to be mentioned. You are not unlikely to
hear him alluded to during the coming season, as he has been making a
bid for popularity at his new post by taking up the matter of the
famine, and," he added with a sneering smile, "relieving it with the
money I paid him."
The word cut into Bettina's heart.
"Paid him?" she said, scrutinizing him with a glance before which
even his hard eyes faltered. "Paid him for what?"
"Oh, for keeping himself out of my way!"
She felt that she had compelled him to this response, and that he
would have liked to put it more brutally. As it was, there lurked a
sting in it which provoked her to reply.
"Did he hold the privilege of your proximity at so large a price?"
A smile of quiet irony accompanied the words. As it curved her lips
alluringly, Lord Hurdly felt himself touched with the sudden sense of
her powerful charm. No one else on earth would have dared to say this
to him, or anything remotely comparable with it. There was something
very piquant to his jaded palate in the flavor of this audacious
speech. Instead of scowling, therefore, he smiled.
"I have heard," he said, amiably, "that America was the land of the
free and the home of the brave, and certainly you seem to warrant one
in accepting that belief."
Bettina, a good deal relieved at this turn of affairs, took the
opportunity that the moment gave her to say, gravely:
"No; I do not consider myself free. I have bound myself, in my
marriage to you, and I have no intention or desire to forget the
duties which I owe you. But I tell you frankly, Lord Hurdly, that I
am not accustomed to either surveillance or tyranny, and I shall not
tamely submit to them. In the carrying out of this resolution, at
least, you will find that I can be brave."
She looked more than ordinarily beautiful as she stood erect before
him and said these words, and he had not gazed so fully into her eyes
for a long time. He had almost forgotten their magnetic loveliness.
At sight of them now his pulses beat quicker. A desire for the
mastery of this splendid creature returned to him with a force he
would not have believed possible.
"Bettina," he said, in a voice which showed an emotion most unusual
to him, "have you ever known what it was to love, I wonder?"
"Once--once only," she answered, a quaver in her voice and a sudden
suffusion of tears in her eyes. "I loved my mother. No one that ever
lived could have loved more truly and more ardently than I loved her;
but there it began and ended. I never deceived you as to that. I
promised you duty and good faith, and I have not failed in these. I
never shall so fail. But love, no! I haven't it to give."
She made a movement to go forward, and he stood aside and let her
pass him. She avoided meeting his gaze, and perhaps it was well that
she did. For slowly its expression changed. A look of hardness that
was almost significant of dislike came into his eyes and compressed
his lips. From the day of their marriage this woman had thwarted and
baffled him. He had tried to get the mastery of her, but he had
failed, and the sense of that failure angered him. He had been used
to dominating every one with whom he came into any sort of close
contact. He had married this American girl with the determination to
dominate her, and he had found himself as powerless as if she had
been a mist maiden. There was no way in which he could lay hold upon
her.
Concerning Bettina's attitude toward him he had a theory. He believed
that she had really loved Horace. She was too absolutely in the
shadow of the sorrow of her mother's death to give full play to any
other feeling, but he had always felt, in every effort that he had
made to win her, that it was the image of Horace Spotswood in her
mind which put him in total eclipse. This theory time had deepened.
His suspicious watchfulness over her every word and look had made
him aware that she listened with interest when Horace's name was
mentioned, and his imagination heightened the effect of her interest,
and caused him to conjecture as to what she might have heard and
felt at such times as he was not by. Moreover, a certain secret
consciousness in his own soul stimulated him in his suspicions.