A FOUR-IN-HAND AND ONE IN THE BUSH.
The four-in-hand which was drawn up in front of the great terrace of
Ripon House the next morning reflected much credit upon Mr. Jawkins's
_savoir faire_. The new harness glistened in the sunlight of the bright
November morning; the grooms, in the nattiest of coats and the whitest
and tightest of breeches, were standing at the horses' heads; and the
horses themselves, beautifully matched, clean-limbed and glossy, were
fresh from a toilet as carefully made as that of a professional beauty,
or even Mrs. Oswald Carey's own. And that lady stood on the threshold of
the Doric portal, her clinging driving-dress seeming loath to hide the
grand curves of her figure, and her violet eyes drinking in the day. As
she stood there, she seemed anything but the flower of a moribund
civilization, the last blossom of an ancient _regime_; but there is a
certain force which flourishes in anarchy, a life which feeds upon the
decay of other lives, and grows but the more beautiful for it. Geoffrey
looked upon her with a half-repelled, unwilling admiration, little
knowing how near he had been to her the night before. Then Maggie
Windsor came out, and he tried to look at her instead.
"Remarkably fine horses, those, Mr. Windsor," remarked the Duke, with a
gravely approving nod of his polished head. "Remarkably fine horses," he
repeated, as if one could not have too much of a good thing from a duke;
and this time he threw in a wave of his patrician hand, gratis. Jawkins
looked at him with admiration, and again felt that he was a prime
investment. The strawberry-colored dome of his bald head was alone worth
the money, not to mention the strawberry leaves.
"And does not your Grace admire the break?" asked Mr. Jawkins, with a
preliminary bow and smirk. "It is a new pattern; and the panels picked
out in cream color are thought to give a monstrous fine tone to the
body. And as for the horses--they're from ex-President Rourke's state
stables."
The Duke looked as if he deprecated the introduction of any such recent
personage into the company, even by the mention of his name; and at that
moment the Duchess arrived with Sir John Dacre. Sir John did not look
much like the member of a coaching party; a close observer might have
noted a slight mutual glance of intelligence passing between his eyes
and Geoffrey's. Mrs. Oswald Carey was that close observer.
"A four-in-hand is all very well for those that like it," observed Mr.
Windsor to the Duke, "but give me a box buggy and a span of long-tailed
horses. Are you off to-day, Jawkins?"
"Yes; the Prince has sent telegrams at twenty-minute intervals all
through the morning, and in the latest one he began to swear. The Prince
is a natural linguist and can swear in fifteen different languages. I
must be off to Brighton at once. I will return late at night. I have
left one of my young men, who will take good care of you, you know.
Good-by, Mr. Windsor--your Grace, I am your most obedient--" Jawkins
bowed low and jumped into his little dog-cart. By this time the break
had got fairly loaded; the horses were given their heads; the horn
sounded; and in the wake of the great equipment provided for Mr.
Jawkins's clients, Jawkins himself rattled contentedly along to the
station.
A fine show made the paint and silver and the flowers and the gay cloaks
and furs and the beautiful women among them. What is more dashing and
brilliant than a coaching-party? What more inspiring to the eye, more
light and careless; what fun more fast and furious? And many a man that
morning, who felt his hand clothed with all the might of the people,
looked curiously at the equipage of the Yankee millionaire and envied
these gay people, the haughty beauty of the women, the gentlemen with
their calm, unruffled exterior, and the light-heartedness, the
carelessness of it all.
Now, upon this coach were six people; and as they bowled along in the
crisp November morning they were thinking of many things. Let us fancy,
if we can, what some of these gay thoughts were. On the inside seat was
Mr. Sydney, the hired wit, the broken-down man-about-town; his health
gone, his future gone, with no family, no friends, no faith in a
hereafter and no joy in the present; and the day preceding, at dinner,
he had eaten a _vol-au-vent_ which had disagreed with him. Next Mr.
Sydney came the Duchess, the gaunt and dignified lady who awed even
Jawkins to repose. There was not a night of her life that she did not
cry like any schoolgirl whose lover has forgotten her, at the shame of
her life, and the bitterness and humiliation of her daily bread. She
would rail at the old Duke, who had come to it so easily, and was
willing to prostitute the honors of his race for gross creature
comforts, his claret, his cigar; and every morning, when her old eyes
opened, she hated the daylight that told her she was not yet dead.
Next the Duchess came Maggie Windsor. Come now (you might say), she, at
least, is in her place upon a four-in-hand, with her young life, her
happy lot, her pretty, pouting lips and laughing eyes? I do not know; I
marked the quiver of those pretty lips, and the flush of her fresh face,
as her eyes, no longer laughing, looked at Mrs. Carey, just in front.
Beside her sits Sir John Dacre. His lips are closed firmly above the
square blue chin, and his eyes, beneath a prematurely wrinkled brow,
look straight before him out upon the road. Perhaps you would not call
Sir John's face attractive; his expression does not change enough for
charm, and there is not light enough in those still gray eyes. As you
see it now, so his expression has been these twenty years, from his
studious youth at Oxford on. The four horses break into a furious canter
down the hill; the coach sways from side to side; and Dacre still looks
far ahead and down the road. If there is no light in the eyes, there is
no tremor of the lips; just so he looked when at the doorway, all
unconscious that Mary Lincoln was looking at his eyes and finding them
attractive. Dacre has never thought of women; his life has had but a
single thought, a single hope, and that, perhaps, a forlorn one.
In front, on the box-seat, is Geoffrey Ripon, driving, and Ripon is
miserable that Maggie Windsor is there, miserable that Eleanor Carey is
there, so miserable about either that he half forgets he has promised
his life to Dacre, and with him, so close that her full arm touches
his, and troubles him as if it had some magnetic influence, sits the
beautiful woman whose girlhood he had loved; she, now knowing this, now
conscious of the might of love, and of the power that it gave her
womanhood upon this man; and in her heart the madness of her misery, the
scorning of her world, the courage and the passion of despair.
It is a gay coaching party, and many such another rattles through this
world with the footmen and the shining trappings and the pomp of paint
and varnish. Oddly enough, no one speaks for moments, while they whirl
down the avenue beneath the stately trees. "Where shall I drive you to?"
finally says Ripon to the company.
"Where you like," says Miss Windsor, after a pause. "You must know the
prettiest place--you have known this country from your childhood."
Ripon drove them up to the highest crest of the down, where the long
main wave of the green hills stretches eastward along the coast, and the
faint blue sea sleeps glimmering in the south. Still no one spoke;
Dacre's eyes were lost over the ocean; even Miss Windsor was grave and
silent. Mrs. Carey tried to point out a sail to Geoffrey; he could not
see it, and she leaned over close to him that he might follow the
direction of her eye. Her breath seemed warm upon his face after the sea
breeze.
"Your eyes are not so good as they used to be," said she. Geoffrey
looked at her, and thought to himself that hers were deeper. He said so;
but she only laughed the more and looked at him again. "Do you remember
our rides in the pony-carriage?" she went on. "Poor Neddy!"
He did remember the rides in the pony-carriage only too well; when he
sat beside the laughing girl, and she looked up at him as they drove
through the leafy lanes when the shadows lengthened till the sunbeams
crept under the old trees and touched her hair with gold. It was in one
of these drives that he had vowed that he would always love her. He had
broken a sixpence with her in earnest of their betrothal contract. But
he did not like to have those drives recalled with Maggie Windsor
sitting just behind them. The horses were conveniently restive just
then, and perhaps Geoffrey did not put on quite so much brake going down
the hill as was necessary. The heavy vehicle went down with a rush;
Geoffrey and Mrs. Carey were not looking at the horses, the Duchess was
indifferent, Sydney looked on dyspeptically, and Dacre was looking far
ahead, as was his wont. Only Maggie Windsor gave a little scream and
grasped the rail.
"It was not so hard to drive Neddy as that four," Mrs. Carey went on.
"If I remember aright, the reins were often on the dash-board, and we
were not always absorbed in the scenery, I fear." Mrs. Carey sighed, and
looked away over the green hills and valleys.
"Poor old Neddy!" said Geoffrey, lightly. "I suppose he carries no such
happy burdens now."
"Some people are happy yet," the woman answered. "I told you yesterday I
had never blamed you for forgetting me after you went to Oxford. It was
true. But I missed you very much." There was a little tremor in her
voice as she said this. Geoffrey pricked his horses nervously.
"My heart gave a great leap when you came into the room--it should not
leap, being Oswald's," she continued, in a more worldly tone, "but it
did all the same. A woman's heart cannot forget its first possessor,
you know; even now that you have lost it--with the rest of your
estates," she added maliciously.
"With the rest of my estates," Geoffrey repeated, almost unconsciously.
They had crossed the highest hill by this time, and were upon a lower
ridge; before them a long green band of velvety turf stretched away over
the billowy downs, the chalk shining through the bare places where the
grass was worn away, like flecks of foam. Geoffrey had a sudden thought,
and, leaving the road, he cannoned the four noble horses over the close,
hard turf.
"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Carey after a moment. "And are all your estates
really gone? Can you get none of them back? But where is this--where are
you going?"
"I say," said Sydney, "do you know where you are, Brompton? This used to
be Goodwood Race-course." Goodwood Race-course; so it was. There was the
track, stretching like a band of broad green ribbon over hill and dale;
there was the glorious oak wood to the west, above the smooth bit of
grass which used to be the lawn, where the ladies of the reign of
Victoria had their picnics and showed their dresses, and book-makers
used to jostle ministers in the betting-ring. "Ah," said Sydney, "my
father has told me of great doings here--when King George's grandfather
was the Prince of Wales."
The break rolled silently over the soft greensward, and Geoffrey feared
Miss Windsor could overhear their every word, as Mrs. Carey spoke again.
"This is a glorious day--a glorious country," she said. "Do you know, I
have not felt so happy since those old days?" She looked up again, and
Geoffrey met the magic of her eyes, and lost himself in them. Suddenly
she turned them from him. "You should be saying all this--not I," she
said.
"When were you married to Mr. Oswald Carey?" asked Geoffrey, abruptly.
He felt that he was slipping from his moral moorings and wished to lash
himself to them again.
"I have been married four years," she said, coldly. "But you really must
be careful of your driving, Lord Brompton. I distract you by talking."
"Not at all," said Geoffrey, half troubled that his parrying question
had answered his purpose so well. Mrs. Carey turned round with an
indifferent air.
"My dear Duchess, is not the view charming?"
The Duchess made so slight an inclination of her head that it was hardly
an affirmative. She did not approve of Mrs. Oswald Carey. Not that her
approval mattered anything nowadays. But she thought it bad enough to be
a professional beauty and sell one's photograph; and worse still to rent
one's face out to enliven dining-parties, and one's neck and shoulders
to adorn dinners. True, she herself rented their great name, their ducal
title; but then she never could get used to it in others.
If Mrs. Carey noticed the snub, she showed no sign in her face, but
turned to Mr. Sydney. He also had found the Duchess rather thorny; and
was ready as ever to pay the homage that one who is only a wit owes to
beauty. And we know that beauty is more queen than ever in this material
age. It is long since our grandfathers first found the folly of dreams
and banished art and poetry from England--with opium and other idle
drugs.
"Mr. Sydney, you look as fresh as a daisy. I am so glad the
_vol-au-vent_ agreed with you."
"My dear madam, you know not of what you speak. My night was terrible,
and no such aurora as yourself was in my troubled dream at dawn." Sydney
looked over at the Duchess, fancying this speech was rather nicely
turned; but her Grace was quite impassive, and evidently maintaining a
sort of conversational armed neutrality.
"Oh, Mr. Sydney, you should have more care of yourself, or I fear the
day will come when you will dine no longer, but merely sit up and take
nourishment. Now, we expect you to be so funny at luncheon."
Sydney began to be offended thinking this too flippant treatment of a
man of his position. Meantime Maggie Windsor had been asking Dacre about
the beauty. "She told me last night she was a very old friend of Lord
Brompton's?"
"Yes, I believe she was. I fancy even there may have been some childish
love affair between them." Dacre spoke bluntly, as usual. Love affairs
had found no place in Dacre's mind; his only thought was his country and
his King; and he spoke with little consciousness of the individual human
life his words might wound.
"Look there!" cried Sydney, "there is Goodwood House." Geoffrey looked
across the park (they had gone down the hill, through the wood, and were
now in the open again) and saw a great, rambling house, the central part
of white stone, with two semicircular bays. This part was evidently old,
but long brick wings were added of more modern construction. "The county
has bought it for a lunatic asylum, I hear from Jawkins," said the wit
grimly.
"Where is the Duke of Richmond?" asked Geoffrey. "Still in Russia?"
"Giving boxing lessons," said Dacre.
The rest of the ride was made in silence. They went down through a
valley naturally fertile. None of the large older houses seemed to be
occupied, but were falling into waste. Early in the afternoon they drew
up at Chichester Cathedral, among the ruins of which they were to lunch.
The grooms took the horses off to an inn in the little village near by,
and Jawkins's man proceeded to unpack the hampers.
For some reason, Miss Windsor avoided Geoffrey. The Duchess and Sir John
sat silently beside one another; Ripon was left to Mrs. Carey. It was a
pretty picnic; but the party did not seem to enjoy it very much. From
the Chichester ruin the roof has quite disappeared, but the pointed
arches of the nave still stand; and these and the flying buttresses of
the choir make a half inclosure of the place, into which the sunlight
breaks and slants like broken bars of music through the soft greensward.
Here you may lose yourself among the arches and pillars, the broken
altars, the overturned fonts, and the old tombs and marble tablets
speaking of dead worthies long forgotten. And if you lose yourself with
the right person, your loss may be (as these same epitaphs read) her
eternal gain.
Geoffrey wandered in here with Mrs. Carey. He had been trying to find
Miss Windsor; but he met the other first. He could not treat her rudely,
perhaps he did not wish to; but to his speech she answered but in
monosyllables or not at all. Finally they sat down on the grass, leaning
on an old stone pillar overthrown in a corner, half sheltered by what
had been an altar in the old days, before the church was disestablished.
Geoffrey did not speak for some time, and when he looked at her he saw
that she was crying. Great tears were in her eyes, and as he bent down
they seemed tenfold even their usual depth.
"Mrs. Carey! Eleanor!" he cried in despair, "what can be so wrong with
you! Pray tell me--please tell me--" She made no answer; her hand was
cold and unresisting as he raised it with the soft white arm from the
grass; the sleeve fell back, and the setting sunlight showed each little
vein in her transparent skin. "Pray, tell me!" Geoffrey went on, and
then, more softly, "You know I have never forgotten you!"
Her breast was rising and falling with her weeping; but only a single
sigh escaped her lips. At his words a deep sob seemed to break from a
full heart; half rising, on an elbow, she placed her hand on Geoffrey's
shoulder and drew his head in the bend of her wrist down close to her as
she lay. Her lips almost brushed his cheek as she poured into his ear a
torrent of words. "I am so miserable! so miserable!" was all he could
distinguish. Then she arose, sitting upright.
"Geoffrey Ripon, my life is a lie--a mean, unbroken lie. You know why I
married Carey--he could give me position, _eclat_, fashion--fashion,
which is all we moderns prize, who have killed our nobles and banished
honor from the dictionary. I sold myself to him and I have queened it,
there in London, among the lucky gamblers and the demagogues and the
foreign millionaires. All that this world--all that the world can give I
have had, Geoffrey Ripon. And I tell you that there is nothing but love,
love, love. It is these things that are the lie, Geoffrey--not love and
truth and honesty. Oh, forgive me, Geoffrey, but I do so crave for love
alone."
Ripon looked at her, speechless. As she spoke the glorious lips had a
curl that was above the earth, and the eyes a glory that was beyond it;
and the grand lines of her figure formed and melted and new formed again
as she leaned, restless, upon the fallen stone. She threw her arm about
his neck, and drew him down to her.
"Geoffrey, did you ever love me? You never could have loved me, when you
left me so. See, the broken sixpence you gave me. I have still got it. I
have always kept it." And she tore her collar open, and showed him the
broken silver, hanging on a ribbon of her hair about her neck. "Oh,
Geoffrey, you never knew that I loved you so! See--" and she drew out
the coin and ribbon, and placed it, still warm from her bosom, in his
hand. "Geoffrey, I care for nothing but love--this world is a wreck, a
sham, a ruin--all is gone--all is gone but love--dear love--"
She drew him closer to her breast. For a moment Geoffrey looked into her
marvellous eyes. Then a faint shadow passed across them, and looking
aside he thought he saw Miss Windsor, alone, passing one of the arches.
"Hush!" he cried; and throwing the ribbon down he rose and stepped a
pace or so aside. "Forgive me, Eleanor," he said to her, as she looked
at him, "I loved you once--God knows--but now--it is too late."