The Duke of Sunborough having only a castle in Scotland, a palace in the
Midlands, a detached house with a garden in the centre of London, a
shooting-lodge in the north of England, and an old manor-house on the
border of Wales, had acquired in his stormy youth a little place in
Surrey some twelve or fifteen miles from town, a villa with terraces and
cedar-trees and hothouses and shady lawns sloping to the river, where,
if Rumour may be credited, there had sometimes been fine goings-on, but
which was now only used on rare occasions for what it has become the
fashion to call ‘week-end parties.’
This modest retreat, which would have seemed to most people a good-sized
country-house, had been lent to the young couple for their honeymoon,
and thither they repaired, for greater state and privacy, in a large
closed carriage with four horses and postillions, their two new
dressing-bags sitting solemnly opposite to them on the back seat, while
the servants and luggage went by train.
Cissy, attired in the latest fashion and the palest hues, with a very
white face and very red eyes and nose, sat huddled in one corner and
stared out of the window, occasionally dabbing her features with a
little damp ball of a pocket-handkerchief. From the other end of the
long seat, on which a third person could easily have found room between
the little bride and bridegroom, Sainty watched her compassionately. He
contrasted the woebegone aspect and silent aloofness of his companion
with the cheerful garrulity of the same young lady when she had driven
about the country with him only a few months before. Then, had she
seemed depressed or unhappy, he would not have hesitated to ask the
cause of her melancholy, to offer help or at least consolation. Why,
now, was he afraid to attempt to comfort or even to make a movement
towards her? The explanation seemed a strange one: then she had been an
acquaintance, now she was his wife. His wife! The words struck with a
certain irony on his startled consciousness. It was that half-hour in
church which was to make them ‘one flesh’ which had thrust them so far
asunder.
At last the silence became unendurable.
‘Cissy,’ he said suddenly, ‘are you very miserable?’
His voice breaking in on the monotonous sounds of their progress
startled himself hardly less than his companion.
Cissy shook herself and raised her head.
‘Yes,’ she said defiantly, without looking round.
‘Because of me?’
‘Yes--because of you.’
‘Why, what have I done?’ There was a relief in speech. If she would only
talk, no matter what she said; she might abuse him, accuse him--anything
was better than that horrible mute damp woe. But Cissy would not answer.
‘Won’t you tell me how I have offended you? What have I done that you
don’t like?’
‘You’ve married me,’ she snapped at him.
‘Isn’t that a little unjust?’
‘Most likely it is, horribly unjust. I don’t care if it is. I hate
myself and you and everybody, and I wish I was dead.’
‘Cissy, Cissy,’ cried Sainty, dreadfully pained, ‘don’t say such
things.’
‘Then why did you ask me?’ she retorted; ‘why can’t you let me alone?’
Sainty told himself that if there was ever a moment for patience it was
now; so much might depend on what he said next. He made a motion as
though he would take her hand, but at that there flashed out of her face
a look so evil, such a genuine naked horror as civilisation seldom lets
us show. Sainty fell back appalled; he felt that he had seen in her eyes
the very bottom of her feeling towards him, and viewed in the light of
that revelation the whole hopelessness of their future relations stood
momentarily clear before him. He lay back dazed and frightened, thankful
as a man to whom lightning has shown the danger of his surroundings for
the friendly darkness that once more veils them from his sight; and for
the rest of the drive neither occupant of the carriage said a word.
When at last they drew up at their destination the house was on Cissy’s
side, and as soon as a bowing servant had opened the carriage-door she
jumped out before Sainty could offer her any assistance. A little shower
of rice that had lodged in the folds of her gown fell pattering from her
in the precipitancy of her flight, which caused a discreet grin on the
damp, red faces of the postillions and of the duke’s under-butler, who
had been sent down to help Sainty’s valet with the service.
Belchamber caught a glimpse of an inscription framed in laurel leaves
stretched across the lintel, of which all that was clear to him were the
words ‘happy pair,’ as he followed his bride into the hall. Here the
women who had charge of the house were drawn up together with Cissy’s
new maid and his own valet.
The housekeeper had embarked on a little speech, evidently prepared with
care. ‘May I be permitted,’ she was saying, ‘on behalf of myself and
fellow-servants, to welcome your ladyship on this auspicious occasion,
and to wish you and the marquis every happiness, and I am sure we shall
do our very best to make you comfortable, and his lordship too.’ Seeing
that Cissy stared at the woman with a dull eye, Sainty came to the
rescue.
‘I am sure we are both very much obliged to you all,’ he said, ‘but Lady
Belchamber is very tired, and would be glad to see her room, if you will
show it to her.’ Cissy started at the sound of her new name in the mouth
of her husband, but moved off in the wake of the housekeeper, who had
dropped from the monumental tone of her welcome into a more comfortable
colloquialism. ‘I am sure your ladyship _must_ be tired--it’s a most
trying day; and you’ll like to see your room, and would you like a cup
of tea or anything after your long drive? Dinner isn’t ordered till
eight, and it’s only half-past six. Tea is set out in the morning-room,
but it will be quite easy to bring it up to you. I have tried to think
of everything, but, of course, anything your ladyship wishes
altered....’ Sainty heard her voice growing fainter down the corridor as
Cissy and the maid followed her to the staircase. He watched the little
procession out of sight and then turned wearily into the first room he
came to and dropped with a long sigh upon the gaudy chintz flowers of a
comfortable easy-chair. For him, too, the day had been ‘trying’ in more
ways than one.
His man brought him a cup of tea and said that ‘her ladyship’ was having
hers in her room and was going to rest till dinner-time. He had not yet
been four hours wedded, and he noted with shocked surprise the distinct
relief with which he hailed the prospect of being free for a little from
the strain of his wife’s presence. Four hours! The morning seemed a
hundred years ago! For the rest of his natural life had he got always to
face this mute resentment? And for what? He had not forced her to marry
him; indeed he had adjured her not to. It was unheard of that she should
treat him as a criminal; he examined his conscience and found that so
far from having anything with which to reproach himself, he had behaved
to her throughout with the most scrupulous consideration. Could Lady
Eccleston be right, and might Cissy’s behaviour be nothing but the
natural nervousness of a modest young woman? Were girls always so
terrified in presence of the bridal mysteries? If that were all, she
might count on his perfect sympathy. No girl could be more of a stranger
to all that side of life than he, or approach it with more invincible
shyness. In all their talks it had seemed to him that the balance of
true modesty had been rather on his side than hers; he had often been
shocked by things she had said, but he could recollect no occasion on
which any remark of his had appeared to embarrass her in the least.
Tired nature must have come to rescue him from his many perplexities,
for he was recalled to consciousness from a doze by the clock striking a
half-hour, and finding it was half-past seven, he decided to go upstairs
and get ready for dinner. He had no difficulty in finding his room.
Through almost the first door on the upper landing he saw his new
brushes adorning the dressing-table, his clothes laid out upon the bed.
As he turned in, he noticed the sharp click of a key in another door
from that by which he had entered, and which evidently communicated with
the next room, for behind it he could hear sounds of people moving
about, the opening and shutting of drawers and cupboards, and
occasionally Cissy’s voice speaking to her maid. That he heard all these
sounds but indistinctly was presently explained to him. Having changed
his clothes he tapped discreetly, and receiving no answer proceeded to
turn the handle; to his pleasure it yielded; he had been mistaken then;
she had not the distrust of him he had fancied. But his gratification
was shortlived; there were double doors between the rooms, and the inner
one was quite securely fastened.
‘Who’s there?’ cried Cissy sharply.
‘I hope you’re rested,’ Sainty called in a voice which he tried to make
pleasantly indifferent; ‘I’m going down, shall I tell them to get
dinner, or are you not ready?’
‘I’ll be down in a minute. Don’t wait for me,’ she called back, but made
no offer to undo the door.
Dinner was not a cheerful meal, when presently Cissy appeared in a smart
new tea-gown, and took her place opposite to him. She crumpled her bread
and drank a great deal of water, and played with the wine-glasses and
her rings and the lace upon her dress. The meal passed almost in
silence, the two men gliding softly about and handing the dishes. Cissy
ate nothing, and Sainty felt obliged to break and taste a long
succession of undesired meats.
‘They have given us much too much,’ he said. ‘We must tell that good
lady to-morrow that we don’t want all these things.’
Cissy assented indifferently.
‘You’re not eating anything,’ Sainty said, after a pause.
‘I’m not hungry. I had tea so late.’
Sainty found himself talking to the servants, and asking for things he
did not want, to break the oppressiveness of the atmosphere.
If Cissy ate nothing while the servants were present, she made up for it
when they had left the room, by piling a whole dish of strawberries on
her plate, covering them with cream, and eating them voraciously. Sainty
watched her uneasily, with a sudden dread that she might be going mad.
Things were not much more lively after dinner. The smiling housekeeper
had explained that she had not had the drawing-room lit up as she
thought they would be more ‘cosy’ in the ‘boodwar.’ Cissy sank deep in a
big armchair, and appeared to be immersed in a novel she had brought
with her. Sainty tried to read too, but his attention wandered; his eyes
fell first on his companion, the swirl of diaphanous drapery that
escaped from the arms of her chair and flowed out upon the floor like
water between the piers of a bridge, the little foot in its bead-wrought
slipper, the hands flashing with new rings that held the gaudy
book-cover like a shield between her face and him. From her they roved
to her surroundings. The room in which they sat had been decorated about
the year 1860 by Italian artists. Trellised grape vines were painted on
the walls, mixed with roses and large blue flowers of the convolvulus
family. Birds of gay plumage and highly imaginative butterflies were
sprinkled about them, and here and there a plump cupid in a pink
loincloth stood poised on one foot among the foliage, swinging a basket
of flowers. Cupids, indeed, were everywhere; several of them floated
round a hook in the sky-coloured ceiling, and made believe that it was
not it, but they, who supported the glass chandelier. They crawled in
white marble all over the bulging sides of the low flamboyant
mantelpiece. On the French clock above it, a gilt Eros perpetually
clasped his Psyche, while from the console between the elaborately
draped windows, a biscuit representation of the same divinity held his
finger discreetly to his lips.
The note of old-fashioned gaiety which is somehow lacking in our more
correct modern apartments seemed specially to fit the place to be the
frame of love. Its amoretti and impossible flowers, its white marble and
gilding and pale silks, suggested accustomed complicity. In presence of
what human kisses had those little ormolu lovers continued their
indifferent embraces? What scenes of passion had been multiplied in
endless reproduction by those tall opposing mirrors? Perhaps in that
very room, Sainty thought, his grandmother might have been tempted
towards the breaking of those same vows he had that day taken on
himself. He came on her portrait presently in a book of beauty, bound
with much tooling in faded crimson calf, which he was idly turning over
on the red velvet centre-table. He took it over and showed it to Cissy.
‘Look at grandmamma,’ he said; ‘wasn’t she beautiful?’
Cissy took the picture and stared at it with no answering smile. It
seemed to have a curious fascination for her. ‘How like!’ she murmured.
‘How very like!’
‘Oh! come,’ said Sainty, glad to get her to talk about anything. ‘I
can’t say I think her grace looks much like that nowadays.’
‘I didn’t mean that it was like the duchess,’ said Cissy with a
hysterical gulp. ‘But don’t you see the extraordinary likeness to Cl----
to your cousin Mr. Morland?’
Sainty could not have explained why the sudden mention of Claude was
displeasing to him.
‘He is thought like our grandmother,’ he said shortly, ‘but he is not
nearly so good-looking; the duchess was a great beauty in her youth.’
Cissy did not discuss the question, but she kept the book absently in
her lap, and when Sainty had returned to his reading, he could see her
turning the pages.
As the long hours wore away, Belchamber became intolerably weary, and he
suspected Cissy of being not less so; but when taxed with fatigue, she
eagerly repudiated the idea, and professed a tremendous interest in her
book. ‘I _must_ see how it is going to come out,’ she said; ‘it’s
awfully exciting.’
Sainty ached all over, but he could not insist. He returned to his own
reading, which he found less stimulating than Cissy seemed to find hers.
After a while he noticed that she had moved into a harder and more
upright chair. She was struggling against sleep; in half an hour she had
not turned a page of the work she found so enthralling. Finally, towards
midnight, he saw the book waving to and fro, the fair head bowed almost
down on it. He went softly over to her, and touched her. With a cry she
started to her feet; the book fell on the floor with a bang.
‘You must go to bed, Cissy,’ Sainty said kindly; ‘you’re dropping with
sleep.’
‘I’m not tired; I’m not sleepy,’ she cried. ‘I must finish this--it’s so
interesting.’
‘Nonsense. I’ve been watching you; you haven’t read a page in half an
hour; you can’t keep your eyes open.’
Her eyes were open enough now, wide and strange, like those of a hunted
animal. She made a gesture with her hands as though to thrust him back.
‘I can’t--I won’t,’ she panted. ‘You shan’t make me. Keep away. Don’t
touch me.’
‘My poor child,’ Sainty said, ‘what are you afraid of? Do you think I
would do anything you don’t like? You can’t sit up all night. You are
dead tired, and must have rest. I won’t come near you, if you don’t wish
it.’
She looked at him but half reassured. ‘Do you mean it?’ she said
doubtfully. ‘Can I trust you?’
‘I am not accustomed to lie,’ Sainty answered. ‘Do you think I would
take advantage of you by a shabby trick?’
She sighed, and half turned away, then suddenly faced him again. ‘It is
not enough,’ she cried. ‘It is not only to-night. You may as well know
it first as last. You are odious to me--horrible. I can
never--never----’
‘Hush, hush!’ Sainty interrupted her. ‘Take care what you say. You are
tired, excited, overwrought. So am I. Go to bed now, in God’s name. You
know you have nothing to fear. We will talk of this some other time,
calmly if we can, but not to-night, not to-night.’
‘Yes, now, to-night,’ she insisted. ‘Why put it off? It’s got to be
faced, and why not at once? I tell you you are repulsive to me. I can
never be your wife in anything but name. I thought I could, but when it
comes to the point, I can’t do it. It’s stronger than me. It’s no use.’
She spread her hands with the gesture of one who renounces a struggle.
On her finger blazed the ring he had given her, and below it shone the
plain gold hoop which he had placed there that morning, the outward and
visible sign of the obligation she was repudiating.
Sainty staggered as though she had struck him in the face. ‘I don’t
understand,’ he whispered. ‘If you feel like this towards me, if I am
repulsive, loathsome to you, why did you marry me?’
‘Oh, it’s simple enough,’ she answered, with a little cruel laugh. ‘You
had so many things that I have always wanted, money, position, rank,
everything I have been brought up to think desirable. Since I can
remember, not a girl has been married among our friends that the first
question has not been, was she making a “good” marriage? which meant,
was she getting a big enough share of all these things in exchange for
herself? No one could say I wasn’t. I’ve made the match of the season.
There isn’t a girl I know, or a mother, who isn’t green with envy of me.
You can’t say it wasn’t a temptation.’ And she laughed again
hysterically.
‘But feeling as you did about me, as you must before the end have known
you felt, why in heaven’s name didn’t you turn back, when I gave you the
chance, before it was too late?’
‘Do you think I was allowed a minute to think? Wasn’t my mother there
every minute of the day? At the very time you speak of, wasn’t she
listening at the door, and didn’t she come hurrying in before I’d time
to answer? If for a moment I ever forgot the title, and the money, and
the jewels, the big house, all the things I’d set my heart on, she was
always ready to talk about them, to dangle them before me. If I ever
wavered, she would tell me what a slur it was on a girl whose engagement
was broken off, how no one would ever believe I had given up all these
things of my own free will, how people would say there was something
against me, and how I should never marry. There wasn’t an oldish poor
girl we knew, losing her looks, and still tagging about to balls, and
trying to pretend she was cheerful, that she didn’t remind me of. Never
directly, mind you. They were just casually mentioned. O Lord! if I so
much as suggested to her that she wanted me to marry for money, she was
all virtuous indignation.’
‘How ghastly!’ Sainty whispered in horror. ‘I’ve read of such things, of
mothers selling their daughters, bullying them into marrying men they
couldn’t love for the sake of an establishment; but I’ve always thought
it was exaggerated, not true to life. I didn’t think a mother _could_
condemn her own child to lifelong misery.’
‘Oh, you mustn’t be too hard on mamma,’ Cissy said. ‘She thought she was
doing the best thing for me. Remember she has the very highest opinion
of you, and was quite sure you would make an excellent husband; and she
knew how much I wanted all the other things. If marriage were nothing
but that, nothing but living in the house with a person who was
good-natured and never interfered with one, and provided all the good
things of life for one, it would be well enough. That is what every one
in England always talks to girls as if it were. Mamma would have thought
it most indelicate to suggest there was another side. You are made to
forget that as much as possible. Oh, of course I _knew_, because I’m not
a fool, and girls are not such ninnies as people think them; but I tried
to forget, and when I didn’t see you, I _did_ forget. That was why, when
I did see you, I was always so beastly to you; for I’m quite ready to
admit I _was_ beastly to you.’
As Cissy’s terror abated, her engaging frankness began to return to her.
Sainty couldn’t help liking her for it. He began to be so full of
sympathy with her point of view, so sorry for all she must have
suffered, that he almost forgot the cruel wrong she had done him.
‘Mamma knew I should never be happy with a poor man,’ she went on. ‘She
knew how I cared for all the things you could give me. She was quite
right, I _did_ want them; I wanted them awfully; I want them still as
much as ever: only when it comes to the point I can’t give the price. I
thought I could, but I can’t. Mamma was so far honester than me. She
never supposed that once the bargain was made I should hesitate to pay.
It’s so like me to want things dreadfully, and not to have the courage
to do what’s necessary to get them.’
Sainty was appalled by her cynicism, even while he admired her
straightforwardness. What became of his dreams of romance, of the eye
that had seen beneath his unattractive exterior, and loved him for the
beauties of his soul? The blue eyes had seen nothing but the sparkling
of diamonds. In her vision of married life he had been only the
necessary evil, the odious, inevitable condition to which she must
submit, if she would have his name and money, as the princess in the
story had to kiss the swineherd to get possession of the toys she
coveted. Still the princess _had_ kissed the herd, and even after all
that she had said he thought he would make one last appeal to her. If
she realised how much he felt for her, how entirely he understood her
unwillingness, how patient, how gentle he was ready to be, perhaps she
might be touched, might learn to think of him with something less of
horror. To him who had all his life wished for nothing but to make other
people happy, it was intolerable to think of himself as the brutal
gaoler, the tyrant before whom this young thing paled with terror.
In the eagerness of her explanation, Cissy had come nearer to him. They
were standing quite close together, face to face. ‘Cissy,’ he said
gently, ‘is it quite, quite impossible? Do you think that if we lived
together for a long time, you might in the end get used to me, even come
to care for me a little?’ But at that she sprang back from him again
with an unmistakable gesture of repugnance that said more than words.
‘No, no, no--never,’ she cried hurriedly. ‘I’ve told you it’s no good. I
can’t help it, my mind’s made up. I’d rather give up everything, face
anything, for of course I can’t expect you to keep me. You can send me
back to my mother. Life’ll be hell upon earth, but it’ll be better than
_that_.’
With all his desire to be fair to her, Sainty could not but be struck by
her intense egotism, her inability to appreciate any point of view but
her own. She was evidently unaware of the brutality of her attitude
towards him. To his morbid self-depreciation her undisguised horror of
him appeared only too natural. Still, no one likes to be told these
things quite so bluntly.
‘You have nothing to fear,’ he said a little loftily. ‘After what you
have said, you may be sure I shall never ask the smallest thing of you.
It is a little unfortunate that you didn’t make up your mind rather
earlier, as you have made it up so irrevocably now. Had you but been as
sure of your feelings a month, a week, even twenty-four hours ago, you
might have saved us both from what I hardly dare look forward to.’
‘I can go home; I had better go home,’ Cissy whimpered. Of course the
sight of distress melted Sainty at once.
‘Don’t you see,’ he said, ‘that to go home now would make just five
hundred times the talk and scandal that you felt you couldn’t face if
you had broken off your engagement?’
‘It can’t be helped,’ Cissy sobbed.
‘You have brought us both into a horrible situation,’ Sainty answered,
‘and I frankly don’t see just now what is best to be done; but I’m sure
that further talk will do no good just now. It is long past twelve
o’clock, and we are both tired out; you can’t go back to Chester Square
to-night, if you want to ever so much. If I were you I shouldn’t get up
to breakfast. Good-night.’
Some compunction seemed to seize Cissy as she got to the door. She
turned. ‘I’m awfully sorry, you know,’ she said. ‘I suppose, when you
come to think of it, I haven’t treated you any too well; and--and--of
course what I said wasn’t very civil, but I thought it best to be
honest----’
‘All right, all right,’ Sainty answered hastily; ‘please don’t say any
more about it.’
As he lay sleepless and uncomfortable on his lonely bed, he wished that
the necessity for honest dealing had impressed itself on his wife a
little sooner. He thought of the night three years before, when he had
lain awake (as he lay now) listening to the sounds that celebrated his
coming of age. Somehow the great festal days of his life did not seem to
bring him personally much enjoyment.