"Those who have called the world profane have succeeded in
making it so."--J. H. THOM.
The dreams of youth and love so frequently fade unfulfilled into "the
light of common day," that it is a pleasure to be able to record that
Madeleine saw the greater part of hers realized. She was received with
what she termed _eclat_ in her new neighbourhood. She remarked with
complacency that everybody made much too much of her; that she had been
quite touched by the enthusiasm of her reception. It was an ascertained
fact that she would open the hunt ball with the President--a point on
which her maiden meditation had been much exercised. The Duchess of
Southark was among the first to call upon her. If that lady's principal
motive in doing so was curiosity to see what kind of wife Sir Henry, or,
as he was called in his own county, "the Solicitor-General," had at
length procured, Madeleine was comfortably unaware of the fact. After
that single call, the duration of which was confined to nine minutes,
Madeleine spoke of the duchess as "kindness and cordiality itself."
She was invited to stay at Alvery, and afterwards to fill her house for
a fancy ball, in October, in honour of the coming of age of Lord Elver,
the duke's eldest son and chief thorn in the flesh; a young man of great
promise "when you got to know him," as Madeleine averred, in which case
few shared that advantage with her.
Other invitations poured in. The neighbourhood was really surprised at
the grace and beauty of the bride--_considering_. It was soon rumoured
that she was a saint as well; that she read prayers every morning at
Cantalupe, which the stablemen were expected to attend; and that she
taught in the Sunday school. The ardent young vicar of the parish, who
had hitherto languished unsupported and misunderstood at Sir Henry's
door, in the flapping draperies that so well become the Church militant,
was enthusiastic about her. She was what he called "a true woman." Those
who use this expression best know what it means. Processions, monster
candles, crucifixes, and other ingredients of the pharmacopoeia of
religion, swam before his mental vision. The little illegal side-altar,
to which his two "crosses," namely, the churchwardens, had objected, but
without which his soul could not rest in peace, was reinstated after a
conversation with Madeleine. A promise on that lady's part to embroider
an altar-cloth for the same was noised abroad.
Sir Henry was jubilant at his wife's popularity, which lost nothing from
her own comments on it. Although nearly six months had elapsed since his
marriage, he was still in a state of blind adoration--an adoration so
blind that none of the ordinary events by which disillusion begins had
any power to affect him.
He was not conscious that once or twice during the season in London he
had been duped; that the jealousy which had flamed up so suddenly
against Archie Tempest had more grounds than the single note he found in
his wife's pocket, when in a fit of clumsy fondness he had turned out
all its contents on her knee, solely to cogitate and wonder over them.
He had a habit which tried her more than his slow faculties had any
idea of, of examining Madeleine's belongings. His admiring curiosity had
no suspicion in it. He liked to look at them solely because they were
hers.
One day, shortly after their arrival at Cantalupe, when he was sitting
in stolid inconvenient sympathy in her room, whither she had vainly
retreated from him on the plea of a headache, he occupied himself by
opening the drawers of her dressing-table one after the other,
investigating with aboriginal interest small boxes of hairpins,
curling-irons, and that various assortment of feminine gear which the
hairdresser elegantly designates as "toilet requisites." At last he
peeped into a box where, carefully arranged side by side, were the
dearest of curls on tortoiseshell combs which he had often seen on his
wife's head, and some smaller much becrimped bodies which filled him
with wondering dislike--hair caricatured--_frisettes_.
"What _are_ you doing?" said Madeleine, faintly, lying on the sofa with
her back to him, holding her salts to her nose. Oh, if he would only go
away, this large dreadful man, and leave her half an hour in peace,
without hearing him clear his throat and sniff! On the contrary, he came
and sat down by her chuckling, holding the curls and frisettes in his
thick hands. She dropped her smelling-bottle and looked at them in an
outraged silence. Was there, then, no sanctity, no privacy, in married
life? Was everything about her to be made common and profane? She hated
Sir Henry at that moment. As long as he had remained an invoice
accompanying the arrival of coveted possessions, she had felt only a
vague uneasiness about him. Directly he became, after the wedding, a
heavy bill demanding cash payment "to account rendered," she had found
that the marriage market is not a very cheap one after all.
Sir Henry was not the least chagrined at a discovery which might have
tried the devotion of a more romantic lover.
"Why, Maddy," he said, "you are much too young and pretty to wear this
sort of toggery. Leave 'em to the old dowagers, my dear;" and he dropped
them into the fire.
She saw them burn, but she made no sign. Presently, however, when he had
left her, she began to cry feebly; for even feminine fortitude has its
limits. She was in reality satisfied with her marriage on the whole,
though she was wiping away a few natural tears at this moment. But in
this class of union there is generally one item which is found almost
intolerable, namely, the husband. He really was the only drawback in
this case. The furniture, the house, the southern aspect of the
reception-rooms, everything else, was satisfactory. The park was
handsomer than she had expected. And she had not known there was a
silver dinner-service. It had been a love match as far as that was
concerned. If Henry himself had only been different, Madeleine often
reflected! If he had not been so red, and if he had had curly hair, or
any hair at all! But whose lot has not some secret sorrow?
So Madeleine cried a little, and then wiped her eyes, and fell to
thinking of her gown for the fancy ball at Alvery next month. She called
to mind Di's height and regal figure with a pang. Perhaps, after all,
she had been unwise in asking her dear friend, whom it would be
difficult to eclipse, for this particular ball. Madeleine was under the
impression that she was "having Di" out of good nature. This was her
tame caged motive, kept for the inspection of others, especially of Di.
Nevertheless there were others which were none the less genuine because
they did not wait to have salt put on their tails, and invariably flew
away at the approach of strangers.
Madeleine had not remembered to be good-natured until a certain obstacle
to the completion of her ball-party, as she intended it, had arisen. The
subject of young men was one which she had approached with the utmost
delicacy; for, according to Sir Henry, all young men--at least, all
good-looking ones--were fools and oafs whom he was not going to have
wounding _his_ birds. She agreed with him entirely, but reminded him of
the duchess's solemn injunction to bring a party of even numbers.
Sir Henry at last gave in so far as to propose an elderly colonel.
Madeleine in turn suggested Lord Hemsworth, who was allowed to be "a
good sort," and was invited.
"Then we ought to have Miss Di Tempest, if we have Hemsworth," said Sir
Henry, blowing like a grampus, as his manner was in moments of
inspiration. "I'm quite a matchmaker now I'm married myself. Ask her to
meet him, Maddy. She's your special pal, ain't she?"
Madeleine felt that she required strength greater than her own to bear
with a person who says "ain't" and "a good sort," and designates a
lady-friend as a "pal."
She pressed the silver knob of her pencil to her lips. There was, she
remarked, no one whom she would like to have so much as Di; but Mr.
Lumley was her next suggestion, and Sir Henry slapped himself on the
leg, and said he was the very thing.
"We want one other man," said Madeleine, reflectively, after a few more
had passed through the needle's eye of Sir Henry's criticism. "Let me
see. Oh, there's Captain Tempest. He dances well."
"I won't have him," said Sir Henry at once, his eyes assuming their most
prawnlike expression. "You may have his cousin if you like, the owl with
the jowl, as Lumley calls him--Tempest of Overleigh."
"He is sure to be asked to the house itself, being a relation," said
Madeleine, dropping the subject of Archie instantly. She did not recur
to it again. But after their return home from the visit to the
Hemsworths', at which she had met Di, she told her husband she had
invited Di for the fancy ball, as he had wished her to do.
"Me?" said Sir Henry, reddening. "Lord bless me, what do I want with
her?" And it was some time before he could be made to recollect what he
had said nearly a month ago about asking Di to meet Lord Hemsworth.
"You forget your own wishes more quickly than I do," she said, putting
her hand in his.
He did, by Jove, he did; and he bent over the little hand and kissed it,
while she noticed how red the back of his neck was. When he became
unusually apoplectic in appearance, as at this moment, Madeleine always
caught a glimpse of herself as a young widow, and the idea softened her
towards him. If he were once really gone, without any possibility of
return, she felt that she could have said, "Poor Henry!"
"The only awkward part about having asked Di," said Madeleine, after a
pause, "is that Mrs. Courtenay does not allow her to visit alone."
"Well, my dear, ask Mrs. Courtenay. I like her. She has always been very
civil to me."
She had indeed.
"I don't like her very much myself," said Madeleine. "She is so worldly;
and I think she has made Di so. And she would be the only older person.
You know you decided it should be a _young_ party this time. It is very
awkward Di not being able to come alone, at her age. She evidently
wanted me to ask her brother to bring her, who, she almost told me, was
anxious to meet Miss Crupps, the carpet heiress; but I did not quite
like to ask him without your leave."
"Ask him by all means," said Sir Henry, entirely oblivious of his former
refusal. "After that poor little girl, is he? Well, we'll sit out
together, and watch the lovemaking, eh?"
Madeleine experienced a tremor wholly unmixed with compunction at
gaining her point. She would have been aware, if she had read it in a
book, that any one who had acted as she had done, had departed from the
truth in suggesting that Di could not visit alone. She would have felt
also that it was reprehensible in the extreme to invite to her house a
man who had secretly, though not without provocation, made love to her
since her marriage.
But just in the same way that what we regret as conceit in others we
perceive to be a legitimate self-respect in ourselves, so Madeleine, as
on previous occasions, "saw things very differently."
She was incapable of what she called "a low view." She had often
"frankly" told herself that she took a deep interest in Archie. She had
put his initials against some of her favourite passages in her morocco
manual. She prayed for him on his birthday, and sometimes, when she woke
up and looked at her luminous cross at night. She believed that she had
a great influence for good over him which it was her duty to use. She
was sincere in her wish to proselytize, but the sincerity of an
insincere nature is like the kernel of a deaf nut; a mere shred of
undeveloped fibre. What Madeleine wished to believe became a reality to
her. Gratification of a very common form of vanity was a religious duty.
She wrote to Archie with a clear conscience, and, when he accepted, had
a box of autumn hats down from London.