They had travelled through the night, and in the early morning left the
express at a junction. Honora sat in the straight-backed seat of the
smaller train with parted lips and beating heart, gazing now and again
at the pearly mists rising from the little river valley they were
climbing. Chiltern was like a schoolboy.
“We'll soon be there,” he cried, but it was nearly nine o'clock when
they reached the Gothic station that marked the end of the line. It
was a Chiltern line, he told her, and she was already within the feudal
domain. Time indeed that she awoke! She reached the platform to confront
a group of upturned, staring faces, and for the moment her courage
failed her. Somehow, with Chiltern's help, she made her way to a waiting
omnibus backed up against the boards. The footman touched his hat, the
grey-headed coachman saluted, and they got in. As the horses started off
at a quick trot, Honora saw that the group on the station platform had
with one consent swung about to stare after them.
They passed through the main street of the town, lined with plate-glass
windows and lively signs, and already bustling with the business of the
day, through humbler thoroughfares, and presently rumbled over a bridge
that spanned a rushing stream confined between the foundation walls of
mills. Hundreds of yards of mills stretched away on either side; mills
with windows wide open, and within them Honora heard the clicking and
roaring of machinery, and saw the men and women at their daily tasks.
Life was a strange thing that they should be doing this while she should
be going to live in luxury at a great country place. On one of the walls
she read the legend Chiltern and Company.
“They still keep our name,” said Hugh, “although they are in the trust.”
He pointed out to her, with an air of pride, every landmark by the
roadside. In future they were to have a new meaning--they were to be
shared with her. And he spoke of the times--as child and youth, home
from the seashore or college, he had driven over the same road. It wound
to the left, behind the mills, threaded a village of neat wooden houses
where the better class of operatives lived, reached the river again, and
turned at last through a brick gateway, past a lodge in the dense
shade of sheltering boughs, into a wooded drive that climbed, by gentle
degrees, a slope. Human care for generations had given to the place a
tradition. People had lived here and loved those trees--his people. And
could it be that she was to inherit all this, with him? Was her name
really Chiltern?
The beating of her heart became a pain when in the distance through the
spreading branches she caught a glimpse of the long, low outline of the
house, a vision at once familiar and unreal. How often in the months
gone by had she called up the memory of the photograph she had once
seen, only to doubt the more that she should ever behold that house and
these trees with him by her side! They drew up before the door, and
a venerable, ruddy-faced butler stood gravely on the steps to welcome
them. Hugh leaped out. He was still the schoolboy.
“Starling,” he said, “this is Mrs. Chiltern.”
Honora smiled tremulously.
“How do you do, Starling?” she said.
“Starling's an old friend, Honora. He's been here ever since I can
remember.”
The blue eyes of the old servant were fixed on her with a strange,
searching expression. Was it compassion she read in them, on this that
should be the happiest of her days? In that instant, unaccountably, her
heart went out to the old man; and something of what he had seen,
and something of what was even now passing within him, came to her
intuitively. It was as though, unexpectedly, she had found a friend--and
a friend who had had no previous intentions of friendship.
“I'm sure I wish you happiness, madame,--and Mr. Hugh, he said in a
voice not altogether firm.
“Happiness!” cried Hugh. “I've never known what it was before now,
Starling.”
The old man's eyes glistened.
“And you've come to stay, sir?”
“All my life, Starling,” said Hugh.
They entered the hall. It was wide and cool, white panelled to
the ceiling, with a dark oak floor. At the back of it was an
eighteenth-century stairway, with a band of red carpet running up the
steps, and a wrought-iron guard with a velvet-covered rail. Halfway up,
the stairway divided at a landing, lighted by great triple windows of
small panes.
“You may have breakfast in half an hour, Starling,” said Chiltern, and
led Honora up the stairs into the east wing, where he flung open one
of the high mahogany doors on the south side. “These are your rooms,
Honora. I have had Keller do them all over for you, and I hope you'll
like them. If you don't, we'll change them again.”
Her answer was an exclamation of delight. There was a bedroom in pink,
with brocaded satin on the walls, and an oriel window thrust out over
the garden; a panelled boudoir at the corner of the house, with a marble
mantel before which one of Marie Antoinette's duchesses had warmed her
feet; and shelves lined with gold-lettered books. From its windows,
across the flowering shrubbery and through the trees, she saw the
gleaming waters of a lake, and the hills beyond. From this view she
turned, and caught her breath, and threw her arms about her husband's
neck. He was astonished to see that her eyes were filled with tears.
“Oh, Hugh,” she cried, “it's too perfect! It almost makes me afraid.”
“We will be very happy, dearest,” he said, and as he kissed her he
laughed at the fates.
“I hope so--I pray so,” she said, as she clung to him. “But--don't
laugh,--I can't bear it.”
He patted her cheek.
“What a strange little girl you are!” he said. “I suppose I shouldn't be
mad about you if you weren't that way. Sometimes I wonder how many women
I have married.”
She smiled at him through her tears.
“Isn't that polygamy, Hugh?” she asked.
It was all like a breathless tale out of one of the wonder books of
youth. So, at least, it seemed to Honora as she stood, refreshed with
a new white linen gown, hesitating on the threshold of her door before
descending. Some time the bell must ring, or the cock crow, or the fairy
beckon with a wand, and she would have to go back. Back where? She did
not know--she could not remember. Cinderella dreaming by the embers,
perhaps.
He was awaiting her in the little breakfast room, its glass casements
open to the garden with the wall and the round stone seat. The simmering
urn, the white cloth, the shining silver, the big green melons that
the hot summer sun had ripened for them alone, and Hugh's eyes as they
rested on her--such was her illusion. Nor was it quite dispelled when he
lighted a pipe and they started to explore their Eden, wandering through
chambers with, low ceilings in the old part of the house, and larger,
higher apartments in the portion that was called new. In the great
darkened library, side by side against the Spanish leather on the walls,
hung the portraits of his father and mother in heavy frames of gilt.
Her husband was pleased that she should remain so long before them. And
for a while, as she stood lost in contemplation, he did not speak.
Once she glanced at him, and then back at the stern face of the
General,--stern, yet kindly. The eyes, deep-set under bushy brows, like
Hugh's, were full of fire; and yet the artist had made them human, too.
A dark, reddish brown, close-trimmed mustache and beard hid the mouth
and chin. Hugh had inherited the nose, but the father's forehead was
wider and fuller. Hugh was at once a newer type, and an older. The
face and figure of the General were characteristic of the mid-century
American of the northern states, a mixture of boldness and caution and
Puritanism, who had won his battles in war and commerce by a certain
native quality of mind.
“I never appreciated him,” said Hugh at length, “until after he
died--long after. Until now, in fact. At times we were good friends,
and then something he would say or do would infuriate me, and I would
purposely make him angry. He had a time and a rule for everything, and I
could not bear rules. Breakfast was on the minute, an hour in his study
to attend to affairs about the place, so many hours in his office at the
mills, in the president's room at the bank, vestry and charity meetings
at regular intervals. No movement in all this country round about was
ever set on foot without him. He was one to be finally reckoned with.
And since his death, many proofs have come to me of the things he did
for people of which the world was ignorant. I have found out at last
that his way of life was, in the main, the right way. But I know now,
Honora,” he added soberly, slipping his hand within her arm, “I know now
that without you I never could do all I intend to do.”
“Oh, don't say that!” she cried. “Don't say that!”
“Why not?” he asked, smiling at her vehemence. “It is not a confession
of weakness. I had the determination, it is true. I could--I should have
done something, but my deeds would have lacked the one thing needful
to lift them above the commonplace--at least for me. You are the
inspiration. With you here beside me, I feel that I can take up this
work with joy. Do you understand?”
She pressed his hand with her arm.
“Hugh,” she said slowly, “I hope that I shall be a help, and not--not a
hindrance.”
“A hindrance!” he exclaimed. “You don't know, you can't realize, what
you are to me.”
She was silent, and when she lifted her eyes it was to rest them on the
portrait of his mother. And she seemed to read in the sweet, sad eyes a
question--a question not to be put into words. Chiltern, following her
gaze, did not speak: for a space they looked at the portrait together,
and in silence....
From one end of the house to the other they went, Hugh reviving at the
sight of familiar objects a hundred memories of his childhood; and she
trying to imagine that childhood, so different from her own, passed
in this wonderful place. In the glass cases of the gun room, among the
shining, blue barrels which he had used in all parts of the world, was
the little shotgun his father had had made for him when he was twelve
years old. Hugh locked the door after them when they came out, and
smiled as he put the key in his pocket.
“My destroying days are over,” he declared.
Honora put on a linen hat and they took the gravelled path to the
stables, where the horses, one by one, were brought out into the
courtyard for their inspection. In anticipation of this hour there was a
blood bay for Honora, which Chiltern had bought in New York. She gave
a little cry of delight when she saw the horse shining in the sunlight,
his nostrils in the air, his brown eyes clear, his tapering neck
patterned with veins. And then there was the dairy, with the
fawn-coloured cows and calves; and the hillside pastures that ran down
to the river, and the farm lands where the stubbled grain was yellowing.
They came back by the path that wound through the trees and shrubbery
bordering the lake to the walled garden, ablaze in the mellow sunlight
with reds and purples, salvias and zinnias, dahlias, gladioli, and
asters.
Here he left her for a while, sitting dreamily on the stone bench. Mrs.
Hugh Chiltern, of Grenoble! Over and over she repeated that name to
herself, and it refused somehow to merge with her identity. Yet was she
mistress of this fair domain; of that house which had sheltered them
race for a century, and the lines of which her eye caressed with a
loving reverence; and the Chiltern pearls even then lay hidden around
her throat.
Her thoughts went back, at this, to the gentle lady to whom they had
belonged, and whose look began again to haunt her. Honora's superstition
startled her. What did it mean, that look? She tried to recall where
she had seen it before, and suddenly remembered that the eyes of the
old butler had held something not unlike it. Compassionate--this was
the only word that would describe it. No, it had not proclaimed her an
intruder, though it may have been ready to do so the moment before
her appearance; for there was a note of surprise in it--surprise and
compassion.
This was the lady in whose footsteps she was to walk, whose charities
and household cares she was to assume! Tradition, order, observance,
responsibility, authority it was difficult to imagine these as a logical
part of the natural sequence of her life. She would begin to-day, if
God would only grant her these things she had once contemned, and that
seemed now so precious. Her life--her real life would begin to-day. Why
not? How hard she would strive to be worthy of this incomparable gift!
It was hers, hers! She listened, but the only answer was the humming of
the bees in the still September morning.
Chiltern's voice aroused her. He was standing in the breakfast room
talking to the old butler.
“You're sure there were no other letters, Starling, besides these
bills?”
Honora became tense.
“No, sir,” she heard the butler say, and she seemed to detect in his
deferential voice the note of anxiety suppressed in the other's. “I'm
most particular about letters, sir, as one who lived so many years with
your father would be. All that came were put in your study, Mr. Hugh.”
“It doesn't matter,” answered Chiltern, carelessly, and stepped out into
the garden. He caught sight of her, hesitated the fraction of a moment,
and as he came forward again the cloud in his eyes vanished. And yet she
was aware that he was regarding her curiously.
“What,” he said gayly, “still here?”
“It is too beautiful!” she cried. “I could sit here forever.”
She lifted her face trustfully, smilingly, to his, and he stooped down
and kissed it....
To give the jealous fates not the least chance to take offence, the
higher life they were to lead began at once. And yet it seemed at times
to Honora as though this higher life were the gift the fates would most
begrudge: a gift reserved for others, the pretensions to which were a
kind of knavery. Merriment, forgetfulness, music, the dance; the cup of
pleasure and the feast of Babylon--these might more readily have been
vouchsafed; even deemed to have been bargained for. But to take that
which supposedly had been renounced--virtue, sobriety, security,
respect--would this be endured? She went about it breathlessly, like a
thief.
Never was there a more exemplary household. They rose at half-past
seven, they breakfasted at a quarter after eight; at nine, young Mr.
Manning, the farm superintendent, was in waiting, and Hugh spent two
or more hours in his company, inspecting, correcting, planning; for
two thousand acres of the original Chiltern estate still remained. Two
thousand acres which, since the General's death, had been at sixes and
sevens. The General's study, which was Hugh's now, was piled high with
new and bulky books on cattle and cultivation of the soil. Government
and state and private experts came and made tests and went away again;
new machinery arrived, and Hugh passed hours in the sun, often with
Honora by his side, installing it. General Chiltern had been president
and founder of the Grenoble National Bank, and Hugh took up his duties
as a director.
Honora sought, with an energy that had in it an element of desperation,
to keep pace with her husband. For she was determined that he should
have no interests in which she did not share. In those first days it was
her dread that he might grow away from her, and instinct told her that
now or never must the effort be made. She, too, studied farming; not
from books, but from him. In their afternoon ride along the shady river
road, which was the event of her day, she encouraged him to talk of his
plans and problems, that he might thus early form the habit of bringing
them to her. And the unsuspecting male in him responded, innocent of the
simple subterfuge. After an exhaustive discourse on the elements lacking
in the valley soil, to which she had listened in silent intensity, he
would exclaim:
“By George, Honora, you're a continual surprise to me. I had no idea a
woman would take an interest in these things, or grasp them the way you
do.”
Lordly commendations these, and she would receive them with a flush of
gratitude.
Nor was it ever too hot, or she too busy with household cares, for her
to follow him to the scene of his operations, whatever these might be:
she would gladly stand for an hour listening to a consultation with the
veterinary about an ailing cow. Her fear was lest some matter of like
importance should escape her. She had private conversations with
Mr. Manning, that she might surprise her husband by an unsuspected
knowledge. Such were her ruses.
The housekeeper who had come up from New York was the subject of a
conjugal conversation.
“I am going to send her away, Hugh,” Honora announced. “I don't
believe---your mother had one.”
The housekeeper's departure was the beginning of Honora's real intimacy
with Starling. Complicity, perhaps, would be a better word for the
commencement of this relationship. First of all, there was an
inspection of the family treasures: the table-linen, the silver, and
the china--Sevres, Royal Worcester, and Minton, and the priceless
dinner-set, of Lowestoft which had belonged to Alexander Chiltern,
reserved, for great occasions only: occasions that Starling knew by
heart; their dates, and the guests the Lowestoft had honoured. His air
was ceremonial as he laid, reverently, the sample pieces on the table
before her, but it seemed to Honora that he spoke as one who recalls
departed glories, who held a conviction that the Lowestoft would never
be used again.
Although by unalterable custom he submitted, at breakfast, the menus
of the day to Hugh, the old butler came afterwards to Honora's boudoir
during her struggle with the account books. Sometimes she would look up
and surprise his eyes fixed upon her, and one day she found at her elbow
a long list made out in a painstaking hand.
“What's this, Starling?” she asked.
“If you please, madame,” he answered, “they're the current prices in the
markets--here.”
She thanked him. Nor was his exquisite delicacy in laying stress upon
the locality lost upon her. That he realized the magnitude--for her--of
the task to which she had set herself; that he sympathized deeply with
the spirit which had undertaken it, she was as sure as though he had
said so. He helped her thus in a dozen unobtrusive ways, never once
recognizing her ignorance; but he made her feel the more that that
ignorance was a shameful thing not to be spoken of. Speculations upon
him were irresistible. She was continually forgetting the nature of his
situation, and he grew gradually to typify in her mind the Grenoble
of the past. She knew his principles as well as though he had spoken
them--which he never did. For him, the world had become awry; he
abhorred divorce, and that this modern abomination had touched the house
of Chiltern was a calamity that had shaken the very foundations of
his soul. In spite of this, he had remained. Why? Perhaps from habit,
perhaps from love of the family and Hugh,--perhaps to see!
And having stayed, fascination had laid hold of him,--of that she was
sure,--and his affections had incomprehensibly become involved. He was
as one assisting at a high tragedy not unworthy of him, the outcome of
which he never for an instant doubted. And he gave Honora the impression
that he alone, inscrutable, could have pulled aside the curtain and
revealed the end.