Lundie’s train--exchanged their opinions on the merits of the house,
standing on a terrace at the back, near a flight of steps which led down
into the garden. They formed the van-guard of the visitors, appearing by
twos and threes from the reception rooms, and all bent on going to see
the swans before the amusements of the day began. Julius Delamayn came
out with the first detachment, recruited Smith and Jones, and other
wandering bachelors, by the way, and set forth for the lake. An interval
of a minute or two passed--and the terrace remained empty. Then two
ladies--at the head of a second detachment of visitors--appeared under
the old stone porch which sheltered the entrance on that side of the
house. One of the ladies was a modest, pleasant little person, very
simply dressed. The other was of the tall and formidable type of “fine
women,” clad in dazzling array. The first was Mrs. Julius Delamayn. The
second was Lady Lundie.
“Exquisite!” cried her ladyship, surveying the old mullioned windows
of the house, with their framing of creepers, and the grand stone
buttresses projecting at intervals from the wall, each with its bright
little circle of flowers blooming round the base. “I am really grieved
that Sir Patrick should have missed this.”
“I think you said, Lady Lundie, that Sir Patrick had been called to
Edinburgh by family business?”
“Business, Mrs. Delamayn, which is any thing but agreeable to me, as one
member of the family. It has altered all my arrangements for the autumn.
My step-daughter is to be married next week.”
“Is it so near as that? May I ask who the gentleman is?”
“Mr. Arnold Brinkworth.”
“Surely I have some association with that name?”
“You have probably heard of him, Mrs. Delamayn, as the heir to Miss
Brinkworth’s Scotch property?”
“Exactly! Have you brought Mr. Brinkworth here to-day?”
“I bring his apologies, as well as Sir Patrick’s. They went to Edinburgh
together the day before yesterday. The lawyers engage to have the
settlements ready in three or four days more, if a personal consultation
can be managed. Some formal question, I believe, connected with
title-deeds. Sir Patrick thought the safest way and the speediest
way would be to take Mr. Brinkworth with him to Edinburgh--to get the
business over to-day--and to wait until we join them, on our way south,
to-morrow.”
“You leave Windygates, in this lovely weather?”
“Most unwillingly! The truth is, Mrs. Delamayn, I am at my
step-daughter’s mercy. Her uncle has the authority, as her guardian--and
the use he makes of it is to give her her own way in every thing. It was
only on Friday last that she consented to let the day be fixed--and even
then she made it a positive condition that the marriage was not to take
place in Scotland. Pure willfulness! But what can I do? Sir Patrick
submits; and Mr. Brinkworth submits. If I am to be present at
the marriage I must follow their example. I feel it my duty to be
present--and, as a matter of course, I sacrifice myself. We start for
London to-morrow.”
“Is Miss Lundie to be married in London at this time of year?”
“No. We only pass through, on our way to Sir Patrick’s place in
Kent--the place that came to him with the title; the place associated
with the last days of my beloved husband. Another trial for _me!_ The
marriage is to be solemnized on the scene of my bereavement. My old
wound is to be reopened on Monday next--simply because my step-daughter
has taken a dislike to Windygates.”
“This day week, then, is the day of the marriage?”
“Yes. This day week. There have been reasons for hurrying it which
I need not trouble you with. No words can say how I wish it was
over.--But, my dear Mrs. Delamayn, how thoughtless of me to assail
_you_ with my family worries! You are so sympathetic. That is my only
excuse. Don’t let me keep you from your guests. I could linger in this
sweet place forever! Where is Mrs. Glenarm?”
“I really don’t know. I missed her when we came out on the terrace. She
will very likely join us at the lake. Do you care about seeing the lake,
Lady Lundie?”
“I adore the beauties of Nature, Mrs. Delamayn--especially lakes!”
“We have something to show you besides; we have a breed of swans on the
lake, peculiar to the place. My husband has gone on with some of our
friends; and I believe we are expected to follow, as soon as the rest of
the party--in charge of my sister--have seen the house.”
“And what a house, Mrs. Delamayn! Historical associations in every
corner of it! It is _such_ a relief to my mind to take refuge in the
past. When I am far away from this sweet place I shall people Swanhaven
with its departed inmates, and share the joys and sorrows of centuries
since.”
As Lady Lundie announced, in these terms, her intention of adding to the
population of the past, the last of the guests who had been roaming over
the old house appeared under the porch. Among the members forming this
final addition to the garden-party were Blanche, and a friend of her own
age whom she had met at Swanhaven. The two girls lagged behind the rest,
talking confidentially, arm in arm--the subject (it is surely needless
to add) being the coming marriage.
“But, dearest Blanche, why are you not to be married at Windygates?”
“I detest Windygates, Janet. I have the most miserable associations with
the place. Don’t ask me what they are! The effort of my life is not to
think of them now. I long to see the last of Windygates. As for being
married there, I have made it a condition that I am not to be married in
Scotland at all.”
“What has poor Scotland done to forfeit your good opinion, my dear?”
“Poor Scotland, Janet, is a place where people don’t know whether they
are married or not. I have heard all about it from my uncle. And I
know somebody who has been a victim--an innocent victim--to a Scotch
marriage.”
“Absurd, Blanche! You are thinking of runaway matches, and making
Scotland responsible for the difficulties of people who daren’t own the
truth!”
“I am not at all absurd. I am thinking of the dearest friend I have. If
you only knew--”
“My dear! _I_ am Scotch, remember! You can be married just as well--I
really must insist on that--in Scotland as in England.”
“I hate Scotland!”
“Blanche!”
“I never was so unhappy in my life as I have been in Scotland. I never
want to see it again. I am determined to be married in England--from the
dear old house where I used to live when I was a little girl. My uncle
is quite willing. _He_ understands me and feels for me.”
“Is that as much as to say that _I_ don’t understand you and feel for
you? Perhaps I had better relieve you of my company, Blanche?”
“If you are going to speak to me in that way, perhaps you had!”
“Am I to hear my native country run down and not to say a word in
defense of it?”
“Oh! you Scotch people make such a fuss about your native country!”
“_We_ Scotch people! you are of Scotch extraction yourself, and you
ought to be ashamed to talk in that way. I wish you good-morning!”
“I wish you a better temper!”
A minute since the two young ladies had been like twin roses on one
stalk. Now they parted with red cheeks and hostile sentiments and
cutting words. How ardent is the warmth of youth! how unspeakably
delicate the fragility of female friendship!
The flock of visitors followed Mrs. Delamayn to the shores of the lake.
For a few minutes after the terrace was left a solitude. Then there
appeared under the porch a single gentleman, lounging out with a flower
in his mouth and his hands in his pockets. This was the strongest man at
Swanhaven--otherwise, Geoffrey Delamayn.
After a moment a lady appeared behind him, walking softly, so as not to
be heard. She was superbly dressed after the newest and the most
costly Parisian design. The brooch on her bosom was a single diamond of
resplendent water and great size. The fan in her hand was a master-piece
of the finest Indian workmanship. She looked what she was, a person
possessed of plenty of superfluous money, but not additionally blest
with plenty of superfluous intelligence to correspond. This was the
childless young widow of the great ironmaster--otherwise, Mrs. Glenarm.
The rich woman tapped the strong man coquettishly on the shoulder with
her fan. “Ah! you bad boy!” she said, with a slightly-labored archness
of look and manner. “Have I found you at last?”
Geoffrey sauntered on to the terrace--keeping the lady behind him with
a thoroughly savage superiority to all civilized submission to the
sex--and looked at his watch.
“I said I’d come here when I’d got half an hour to myself,” he mumbled,
turning the flower carelessly between his teeth. “I’ve got half an hour,
and here I am.”
“Did you come for the sake of seeing the visitors, or did you come for
the sake of seeing Me?”
Geoffrey smiled graciously, and gave the flower another turn in his
teeth. “You. Of course.”
The iron-master’s widow took his arm, and looked up at him--as only a
young woman would have dared to look up--with the searching summer light
streaming in its full brilliancy on her face.
Reduced to the plain expression of what it is really worth, the average
English idea of beauty in women may be summed up in three words--youth,
health, plumpness. The more spiritual charm of intelligence and
vivacity, the subtler attraction of delicacy of line and fitness of
detail, are little looked for and seldom appreciated by the mass of
men in this island. It is impossible otherwise to account for the
extraordinary blindness of perception which (to give one instance only)
makes nine Englishmen out of ten who visit France come back declaring
that they have not seen a single pretty Frenchwoman, in or out of Paris,
in the whole country. Our popular type of beauty proclaims itself, in
its fullest material development, at every shop in which an illustrated
periodical is sold. The same fleshy-faced girl, with the same inane
smile, and with no other expression whatever, appears under every form
of illustration, week after week, and month after month, all the year
round. Those who wish to know what Mrs. Glenarm was like, have only to
go out and stop at any bookseller’s or news-vendor’s shop, and there
they will see her in the first illustration, with a young woman in it,
which they discover in the window. The one noticeable peculiarity in
Mrs. Glenarm’s purely commonplace and purely material beauty, which
would have struck an observant and a cultivated man, was the curious
girlishness of her look and manner. No stranger speaking to this
woman--who had been a wife at twenty, and who was now a widow at
twenty-four--would ever have thought of addressing her otherwise than as
“Miss.”
“Is that the use you make of a flower when I give it to you?” she said
to Geoffrey. “Mumbling it in your teeth, you wretch, as if you were a
horse!”
“If you come to that,” returned Geoffrey, “I’m more a horse than a man.
I’m going to run in a race, and the public are betting on me. Haw! haw!
Five to four.”
“Five to four! I believe he thinks of nothing but betting. You great
heavy creature, I can’t move you. Don’t you see I want to go like the
rest of them to the lake? No! you’re not to let go of my arm! You’re to
take me.”
“Can’t do it. Must be back with Perry in half an hour.”
(Perry was the trainer from London. He had arrived sooner than he had
been expected, and had entered on his functions three days since.)
“Don’t talk to me about Perry! A little vulgar wretch. Put him off. You
won’t? Do you mean to say you are such a brute that you would rather be
with Perry than be with me?”
“The betting’s at five to four, my dear. And the race comes off in a
month from this.”
“Oh! go away to your beloved Perry! I hate you. I hope you’ll lose the
race. Stop in your cottage. Pray don’t come back to the house. And--mind
this!--don’t presume to say ‘my dear’ to me again.”
“It ain’t presuming half far enough, is it? Wait a bit. Give me till the
race is run--and then I’ll presume to marry you.”
“You! You will be as old as Methuselah, if you wait till I am your wife.
I dare say Perry has got a sister. Suppose you ask him? She would be
just the right person for you.”
Geoffrey gave the flower another turn in his teeth, and looked as if he
thought the idea worth considering.
“All right,” he said. “Any thing to be agreeable to you. I’ll ask
Perry.”
He turned away, as if he was going to do it at once. Mrs. Glenarm put
out a little hand, ravishingly clothed in a blush-colored glove, and
laid it on the athlete’s mighty arm. She pinched those iron muscles (the
pride and glory of England) gently. “What a man you are!” she said. “I
never met with any body like you before!”
The whole secret of the power that Geoffrey had acquired over her was in
those words.
They had been together at Swanhaven for little more than ten days; and
in that time he had made the conquest of Mrs. Glenarm. On the day
before the garden-party--in one of the leisure intervals allowed him by
Perry--he had caught her alone, had taken her by the arm, and had asked
her, in so many words, if she would marry him. Instances on record of
women who have been wooed and won in ten days are--to speak it with all
possible respect--not wanting. But an instance of a woman willing to
have it known still remains to be discovered. The iron-master’s widow
exacted a promise of secrecy before the committed herself When Geoffrey
had pledged his word to hold his tongue in public until she gave
him leave to speak, Mrs. Glenarm, without further hesitation, said
Yes--having, be it observed, said No, in the course of the last two
years, to at least half a dozen men who were Geoffrey’s superiors in
every conceivable respect, except personal comeliness and personal
strength.
There is a reason for every thing; and there was a reason for this.
However persistently the epicene theorists of modern times may deny it,
it is nevertheless a truth plainly visible in the whole past history of
the sexes that the natural condition of a woman is to find her master in
a man. Look in the face of any woman who is in no direct way dependent
on a man: and, as certainly as you see the sun in a cloudless sky,
you see a woman who is not happy. The want of a master is their
great unknown want; the possession of a master is--unconsciously to
themselves--the only possible completion of their lives. In ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred this one primitive instinct is at the bottom of
the otherwise inexplicable sacrifice, when we see a woman, of her own
free will, throw herself away on a man who is unworthy of her. This
one primitive instinct was at the bottom of the otherwise inexplicable
facility of self-surrender exhibited by Mrs. Glenarm.
Up to the time of her meeting with Geoffrey, the young widow had
gathered but one experience in her intercourse with the world--the
experience of a chartered tyrant. In the brief six months of her married
life with the man whose grand-daughter she might have been--and ought to
have been--she had only to lift her finger to be obeyed. The doting old
husband was the willing slave of the petulant young wife’s slightest
caprice. At a later period, when society offered its triple welcome to
her birth, her beauty, and her wealth--go where she might, she found
herself the object of the same prostrate admiration among the suitors
who vied with each other in the rivalry for her hand. For the first time
in her life she encountered a man with a will of his own when she met
Geoffrey Delamayn at Swanhaven Lodge.
Geoffrey’s occupation of the moment especially favored the conflict
between the woman’s assertion of her influence and the man’s assertion
of his will.
During the days that had intervened between his return to his brother’s
house and the arrival of the trainer, Geoffrey had submitted himself
to all needful preliminaries of the physical discipline which was to
prepare him for the race. He knew, by previous experience, what exercise
he ought to take, what hours he ought to keep, what temptations at the
table he was bound to resist. Over and over again Mrs. Glenarm tried to
lure him into committing infractions of his own discipline--and over
and over again the influence with men which had never failed her before
failed her now. Nothing she could say, nothing she could do, would move
_this_ man. Perry arrived; and Geoffrey’s defiance of every attempted
exercise of the charming feminine tyranny, to which every one else had
bowed, grew more outrageous and more immovable than ever. Mrs. Glenarm
became as jealous of Perry as if Perry had been a woman. She flew
into passions; she burst into tears; she flirted with other men; she
threatened to leave the house. All quite useless! Geoffrey never once
missed an appointment with Perry; never once touched any thing to eat
or drink that she could offer him, if Perry had forbidden it. No other
human pursuit is so hostile to the influence of the sex as the pursuit
of athletic sports. No men are so entirely beyond the reach of women as
the men whose lives are passed in the cultivation of their own physical
strength. Geoffrey resisted Mrs. Glenarm without the slightest effort.
He casually extorted her admiration, and undesignedly forced her
respect. She clung to him, as a hero; she recoiled from him, as a brute;
she struggled with him, submitted to him, despised him, adored him, in a
breath. And the clew to it all, confused and contradictory as it seemed,
lay in one simple fact--Mrs. Glenarm had found her master.
“Take me to the lake, Geoffrey!” she said, with a little pleading
pressure of the blush-colored hand.
Geoffrey looked at his watch. “Perry expects me in twenty minutes,” he
said.
“Perry again!”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Glenarm raised her fan, in a sudden outburst of fury, and broke it
with one smart blow on Geoffrey’s face.
“There!” she cried, with a stamp of her foot. “My poor fan broken! You
monster, all through you!”
Geoffrey coolly took the broken fan and put it in his pocket. “I’ll
write to London,” he said, “and get you another. Come along! Kiss, and
make it up.”
He looked over each shoulder, to make sure that they were alone then
lifted her off the ground (she was no light weight), held her up in the
air like a baby, and gave her a rough loud-sounding kiss on each
cheek. “With kind compliments from yours truly!” he said--and burst out
laughing, and put her down again.
“How dare you do that?” cried Mrs. Glenarm. “I shall claim Mrs.
Delamayn’s protection if I am to be insulted in this way! I will never
forgive you, Sir!” As she said those indignant words she shot a look at
him which flatly contradicted them. The next moment she was leaning on
his arm, and was looking at him wonderingly, for the thousandth time, as
an entire novelty in her experience of male human kind. “How rough
you are, Geoffrey!” she said, softly. He smiled in recognition of that
artless homage to the manly virtue of his character. She saw the smile,
and instantly made another effort to dispute the hateful supremacy of
Perry. “Put him off!” whispered the daughter of Eve, determined to lure
Adam into taking a bite of the apple. “Come, Geoffrey, dear, never mind
Perry, this once. Take me to the lake!”
Geoffrey looked at his watch. “Perry expects me in a quarter of an
hour,” he said.
Mrs. Glenarm’s indignation assumed a new form. She burst out crying.
Geoffrey surveyed her for a moment with a broad stare of surprise--and
then took her by both arms, and shook her!
“Look here!” he said, impatiently. “Can you coach me through my
training?”
“I would if I could!”
“That’s nothing to do with it! Can you turn me out, fit, on the day of
the race? Yes? or No?”
“No.”
“Then dry your eyes and let Perry do it.”
Mrs. Glenarm dried her eyes, and made another effort.
“I’m not fit to be seen,” she said. “I’m so agitated, I don’t know what
to do. Come indoors, Geoffrey--and have a cup of tea.”
Geoffrey shook his head. “Perry forbids tea,” he said, “in the middle of
the day.”
“You brute!” cried Mrs. Glenarm.
“Do you want me to lose the race?” retorted Geoffrey.
“Yes!”
With that answer she left him at last, and ran back into the house.
Geoffrey took a turn on the terrace--considered a little--stopped--and
looked at the porch under which the irate widow had disappeared from
his view. “Ten thousand a year,” he said, thinking of the matrimonial
prospect which he was placing in peril. “And devilish well earned,” he
added, going into the house, under protest, to appease Mrs. Glenarm.
The offended lady was on a sofa, in the solitary drawing-room. Geoffrey
sat down by her. She declined to look at him. “Don’t be a fool!”
said Geoffrey, in his most persuasive manner. Mrs. Glenarm put her
handkerchief to her eyes. Geoffrey took it away again without ceremony.
Mrs. Glenarm rose to leave the room. Geoffrey stopped her by main force.
Mrs. Glenarm threatened to summon the servants. Geoffrey said, “All
right! I don’t care if the whole house knows I’m fond of you!” Mrs.
Glenarm looked at the door, and whispered “Hush! for Heaven’s sake!”
Geoffrey put her arm in his, and said, “Come along with me: I’ve got
something to say to you.” Mrs. Glenarm drew back, and shook her head.
Geoffrey put his arm round her waist, and walked her out of the room,
and out of the house--taking the direction, not of the terrace, but of
a fir plantation on the opposite side of the grounds. Arrived among the
trees, he stopped and held up a warning forefinger before the offended
lady’s face. “You’re just the sort of woman I like,” he said; “and there
ain’t a man living who’s half as sweet on you as I am. You leave off
bullying me about Perry, and I’ll tell you what I’ll do--I’ll let you
see me take a Sprint.”
He drew back a step, and fixed his big blue eyes on her, with a look
which said, “You are a highly-favored woman, if ever there was one yet!”
Curiosity instantly took the leading place among the emotions of Mrs.
Glenarm. “What’s a Sprint, Geoffrey?” she asked.
“A short run, to try me at the top of my speed. There ain’t another
living soul in all England that I’d let see it but you. _Now_ am I a
brute?”
Mrs. Glenarm was conquered again, for the hundredth time at least. She
said, softly, “Oh, Geoffrey, if you could only be always like this!” Her
eyes lifted themselves admiringly to his. She took his arm again of her
own accord, and pressed it with a loving clasp. Geoffrey prophetically
felt the ten thousand a year in his pocket. “Do you really love me?”
whispered Mrs. Glenarm. “Don’t I!” answered the hero. The peace was
made, and the two walked on again.
They passed through the plantation, and came out on some open ground,
rising and falling prettily, in little hillocks and hollows. The last
of the hillocks sloped down into a smooth level plain, with a fringe of
sheltering trees on its farther side--with a snug little stone cottage
among the trees--and with a smart little man, walking up and down before
the cottage, holding his hands behind him. The level plain was the
hero’s exercising ground; the cottage was the hero’s retreat; and the
smart little man was the hero’s trainer.
If Mrs. Glenarm hated Perry, Perry (judging by appearances) was in
no danger of loving Mrs. Glenarm. As Geoffrey approached with his
companion, the trainer came to a stand-still, and stared silently at the
lady. The lady, on her side, declined to observe that any such person
as the trainer was then in existence, and present in bodily form on the
scene.
“How about time?” said Geoffrey.
Perry consulted an elaborate watch, constructed to mark time to the
fifth of a second, and answered Geoffrey, with his eye all the while on
Mrs. Glenarm.
“You’ve got five minutes to spare.”
“Show me where you run, I’m dying to see it!” said the eager widow,
taking possession of Geoffrey’s arm with both hands.
Geoffrey led her back to a place (marked by a sapling with a little
flag attached to it) at some short distance from the cottage. She glided
along by his side, with subtle undulations of movement which appeared
to complete the exasperation of Perry. He waited until she was out of
hearing--and then he invoked (let us say) the blasts of heaven on the
fashionably-dressed head of Mrs. Glenarm.