In the drawing-room at Heston Park two ladies were seated. One was a
well-preserved woman of fifty, with a large oblong face, good features,
a double chin, and abundant gray hair arranged in waved _bandeaux_ above
a forehead which should certainly have implied strength of character,
and a pair of challenging black eyes. Lady Barnes moved and spoke with
authority; it was evident that she had been accustomed to do so all her
life; to trail silk gowns over Persian carpets, to engage expensive
cooks and rely on expensive butlers, with a strict attention to small
economies all the time; to impose her will on her household and the
clergyman of the parish; to give her opinions on books, and expect them
to be listened to; to abstain from politics as unfeminine, and to make
up for it by the strongest of views on Church questions. She belonged to
an English type common throughout all classes--quite harmless and
tolerable when things go well, but apt to be soured and twisted by
adversity.
And Lady Barnes, it will be remembered, had known adversity. Not much of
it, nor for long together; but in her own opinion she had gone through
"great trials," to the profit of her Christian character. She was quite
certain, now, that everything had been for the best, and that Providence
makes no mistakes. But that, perhaps, was because the "trials" had only
lasted about a year; and then, so far as they were pecuniary, the
marriage of her son with Miss Daphne Floyd had entirely relieved her of
them. For Roger now made her a handsome allowance and the chastened
habits of a most uncomfortable year had been hastily abandoned.
Nevertheless, Lady Barnes's aspect on this autumn afternoon was not
cheerful, and her companion was endeavouring, with a little kind
embarrassment, both to soothe an evident irritation and to avoid the
confidences that Roger's mother seemed eager to pour out. Elsie French,
whom Washington had known three years before as Elsie Maddison, was in
that bloom of young married life when all that was lovely in the girl
seems to be still lingering, while yet love and motherhood have wrought
once more their old transforming miracle on sense and spirit. In her
afternoon dress of dainty sprigged silk, with just a touch of austerity
in the broad muslin collar and cuffs--her curly brown hair simply parted
on her brow, and gathered classically on a shapely head--her mouth a
little troubled, her brow a little puckered over Lady Barnes's
discontents--she was a very gracious vision. Yet behind the gentleness,
as even Lady Barnes knew, there were qualities and characteristics of a
singular strength.
Lady Barnes indeed was complaining, and could not be stopped.
"You see, dear Mrs. French," she was saying, in a rapid, lowered voice,
and with many glances at the door, "the trouble is that Daphne is never
satisfied. She has some impossible ideal in her mind, and then
everything must be sacrificed to it. She began with going into ecstasies
over this dear old house, and now!--there's scarcely a thing in it she
does not want to change. Poor Edward and I spent thousands upon it, and
we really flattered ourselves that we had some taste; but it is not good
enough for Daphne!"
The speaker settled herself in her chair with a slight but emphatic
clatter of bangles and rustle of skirts.
"It's the ceilings, isn't it?" murmured Elsie French, glancing at the
heavy decoration, the stucco bosses and pendants above her head which
had replaced, some twenty years before, a piece of Adam design, sparing
and felicitous.
"It's everything!" Lady Barnes's tone was now more angry than fretful.
"I don't, of course, like to say it--but really Daphne's self-confidence
is too amazing!"
"She does know so much," said Elsie French reflectively. "Doesn't she?"
"Well, if you call it knowing. She can always get some tiresome person,
whom she calls an 'expert,' to back her up. But I believe in liking what
you _do_ like, and not being bullied into what you don't like."
"I suppose if one studies these things----" Elsie French began timidly.
"What's the good of studying!" cried Lady Barnes; "one has one's own
taste, or one hasn't."
Confronted with this form of the Absolute, Elsie French looked
perplexed; especially as her own artistic sympathies were mainly with
Daphne. The situation was certainly awkward. At the time of the Barnes's
financial crash, and Sir Edward Barnes's death, Heston Park, which
belonged to Lady Barnes, was all that remained to her and her son. A
park of a hundred acres and a few cottages went with the house; but
there was no estate to support it, and it had to be let, to provide an
income for the widow and the boy. Much of the expensive furniture had
been sold before letting, but enough remained to satisfy the wants of a
not very exacting tenant.
Lady Barnes had then departed to weep in exile on a pittance of about
seven hundred a year. But with the marriage of her son to Miss Floyd and
her millions, the mother's thoughts had turned fondly back to Heston
Park. It was too big for her, of course; but the young people clearly
must redeem it, and settle there. And Daphne had been quite amenable.
The photographs charmed her. The house, she said, was evidently in a
pure style, and it would be a delight to make it habitable again. The
tenant, however, had a lease, and refused to turn out until at last
Daphne had frankly bribed him to go. And now, after three years of
married life, during which the young couple had rented various "places,"
besides their house in London and a villa at Tunis, Heston Park had been
vacated, Daphne and Roger had descended upon it as Lady Barnes's tenants
at a high rent, intent upon its restoration; and Roger's mother had been
invited to their councils.
Hence, indeed, these tears. When Daphne first stepped inside the
ancestral mansion of the Trescoes--such had been Lady Barnes's maiden
name--she had received a severe shock. The outside, the shell of the
house--delightful! But inside!--heavens! what taste, what
decoration--what ruin of a beautiful thing! Half the old mantelpieces
gone, the ceilings spoiled, the decorations "busy," pretentious,
overdone, and nothing left to console her but an ugly row of bad Lelys
and worse Highmores--the most despicable collection of family portraits
she had ever set eyes upon!
Roger had looked unhappy. "It was father and mother did it," he admitted
penitently. "But after all, Daphne, you know they _are_ Trescoes!"--this
with a defensive and protecting glance at the Lelys.
Daphne was sorry for it. Her mouth tightened, and certain lines appeared
about it which already prophesied what the years would make of the young
face. Yet it was a pretty mouth--the mouth, above all, of one with no
doubts at all as to her place and rights in the world. Lady Barnes had
pronounced it "common" in her secret thoughts before she had known its
owner six weeks. But the adjective had never yet escaped the "bulwark of
the teeth." Outwardly the mother and daughter-in-law were still on good
terms. It was indeed but a week since the son and his wife had
arrived--with their baby girl--at Heston Park, after a summer of
yachting and fishing in Norway; since Lady Barnes had journeyed thither
from London to meet them; and Mr. and Mrs. French had accepted an urgent
invitation from Roger, quite sufficiently backed by Daphne, to stay for
a few days with Mr. French's old pupil, before the reopening of Eton.
During that time there had been no open quarrels of any kind; but Elsie
French was a sensitive creature, and she had been increasingly aware of
friction and annoyance behind the scenes. And now here was Lady Barnes
let loose! and Daphne might appear at any moment, before she could be
re-caged.
"She puts you down so!" cried that lady, making gestures with the
paper-knife she had just been employing on the pages of a Mudie book.
"If I tell her that something or other--it doesn't matter what--cost at
least a great deal of money, she has a way of smiling at you that is
positively insulting! She doesn't trouble to argue; she begins to laugh,
and raises her eyebrows. I--I always feel as if she had struck me in the
face! I know I oughtn't to speak like this; I hadn't meant to do it,
especially to a country-woman of hers, as you are."
"Am I?" said Elsie, in a puzzled voice.
Lady Barnes opened her eyes in astonishment.
"I meant"--the explanation was hurried--"I thought--Mrs. Barnes was a
South American? Her mother was Spanish, of course; you see it in
Daphne."
"Yes; in her wonderful eyes," said Mrs. French warmly; "and her
grace--isn't she graceful! My husband says she moves like a sea-wave.
She has given her eyes to the child."
"Ah! and other things too, I'm afraid!" cried Lady Barnes, carried away.
"But here is the baby."
For the sounds of a childish voice were heard echoing in the domed hall
outside. Small feet came pattering, and the drawing-room door was burst
open by Roger Barnes, holding a little girl of nearly two and a half by
the hand.
Lady Barnes composed herself. It is necessary to smile at children, and
she endeavoured to satisfy her own sense of it.
"Come in, Beatty; come and kiss granny!" And Lady Barnes held out her
arms.
But the child stood still, surveyed her grandmother with a pair of
startling eyes, and then, turning, made a rush for the door. But her
father was too quick for her. He closed it with a laugh, and stood with
his back to it. The child did not cry, but, with flaming cheeks, she
began to beat her father's knees with her small fists.
"Go and kiss granny, darling," said Roger, stroking her dark head.
Beatty turned again, put both her hands behind her, and stood immovable.
"Not kiss granny," she said firmly. "Don't love granny."
"Oh, Beatty"--Mrs. French knelt down beside her--"come and be a good
little girl, and I'll show you picture-books."
"I not Beatty--I Jemima Ann," said the small thin voice. "Not be a dood
dirl--do upstairs."
She looked at her father again, and then, evidently perceiving that he
was not to be moved by force, she changed her tactics. Her delicate,
elfish face melted into the sweetest smile; she stood on tiptoe, holding
out to him her tiny arms. With a laugh of irrepressible pride and
pleasure, Roger stooped to her and lifted her up. She nestled on his
shoulder--a small Odalisque, dark, lithe, and tawny, beside her
handsome, fair-skinned father. And Roger's manner of holding and
caressing her showed the passionate affection with which he regarded
her.
He again urged her to kiss her grandmother; but the child again shook
her head. "Then," said he craftily, "father must kiss granny." And he
began to cross the room.
But Lady Barnes stopped him, not without dignity. "Better not press it,
Roger: another time."
Barnes laughed, and yielded. He carried the child away, murmuring to
her, "Naughty, naughty 'ittie girl!"--a remark which Beatty, tucked
under his ear, and complacently sucking her thumb, received with
complete indifference.
"There, you see!" said the grandmother, with slightly flushed cheeks, as
the door closed: "the child has been already taught to dislike me, and
if Roger had attempted to kiss me, she would probably have struck me."
"Oh, no!" cried Mrs. French. "She is a loving little thing."
"Except when she is jealous," said Lady Barnes, with significance. "I
told you she has inherited more than her eyes."
Mrs. French rose. She was determined not to discuss her hostess any
more, and she walked over to the bow window as though to look at the
prospects of the weather, which had threatened rain. But Roger's mother
was not to be repressed. Resentment and antagonism, nurtured on a
hundred small incidents and trifling jars, and, to begin with, a matter
of temperament, had come at last to speech. And in this charming New
Englander, the wife of Roger's best friend, sympathetic, tender, with a
touch in her of the nun and the saint, Lady Barnes could not help trying
to find a supporter. She was a much weaker person than her square build
and her double chin would have led the bystander to suppose; and her
feelings had been hurt.
So that when Mrs. French returned to say that the sun seemed to be
coming out, her companion, without heeding, went on, with emotion: "It's
my son I am thinking of, Mrs. French. I know you're safe, and that Roger
depends upon Mr. French more than upon anyone else in the world, so I
can't help just saying a word to you about my anxiety. You know, when
Roger married, I don't think he was much in love--in fact, I'm sure he
wasn't. But now--it's quite different. Roger has a very soft heart, and
he's very domestic. He was always the best of sons to me, and as soon as
he was married he became the best of husbands. He's devoted to Daphne
now, and you see how he adores the child. But the fact is, there's a
person in this neighbourhood" (Lady Barnes lowered her voice and looked
round her)--"I only knew it for certain this morning--who ... well, who
might make trouble. And Daphne's temper is so passionate and
uncontrolled that----"
"Dear Lady Barnes, please don't tell me any secrets!" Elsie French
implored, and laid a restraining hand on the mother's arm, ready,
indeed, to take up her work and fly. But Lady Barnes's chair stood
between her and the door, and the occupant of it was substantial.
Laura Barnes hesitated, and in the pause two persons appeared upon the
garden path outside, coming towards the open windows of the
drawing-room. One was Mrs. Roger Barnes; the other was a man, remarkably
tall and slender, with a stoop like that of an overgrown schoolboy,
silky dark hair and moustache, and pale gray eyes.
"Dr. Lelius!" said Elsie, in astonishment. "Was Daphne expecting him?"
"Who is Dr. Lelius?" asked Lady Barnes, putting up her eyeglass.
Mrs. French explained that he was a South German art-critic, from
Würzburg, with a great reputation. She had already met him at Eton and
at Oxford.
"Another expert!" said Lady Barnes with a shrug.
The pair passed the window, absorbed apparently in conversation. Mrs.
French escaped. Lady Barnes was left to discontent and solitude.
But the solitude was not for long.
When Elsie French descended for tea, an hour later, she was aware, from
a considerable distance, of people and tumult in the drawing-room.
Daphne's soprano voice--agreeable, but making its mark always, like its
owner--could be heard running on. The young mistress of the house seemed
to be admonishing, instructing, someone. Could it be her mother-in-law?
When Elsie entered, Daphne was walking up and down in excitement.
"One cannot really live with bad pictures because they happen to be
one's ancestors! We won't do them any harm, mamma! of course not. There
is a room upstairs where they can be stored--most carefully--and anybody
who is interested in them can go and look at them. If they had only been
left as they were painted!--not by Lely, of course, but by some drapery
man in his studio--_passe encore_! they might have been just bearable.
But you see some wretched restorer went and daubed them all over a few
years ago."
"We went to the best man we could find! We took the best advice!" cried
Lady Barnes, sitting stiff and crimson in a deep arm-chair, opposite the
luckless row of portraits that Daphne was denouncing.
"I'm sure you did. But then, you see, nobody knew anything at all about
it in those days. The restorers were all murderers. Ask Dr. Lelius."
Daphne pointed to the stranger, who was leaning against an arm-chair
beside her in an embarrassed attitude, as though he were endeavouring to
make the chair a buffer between himself and Lady Barnes.
Dr. Lelius bowed.
"It is a modern art," he said with diffidence, and an accent creditably
slight--"a quite modern art. We hafe a great man at Würzburg."
"I don't suppose he professes to know anything about English pictures,
does he?" asked Lady Barnes with scorn.
"Ach!--I do not propose that Mrs. Barnes entrust him wid dese pictures,
Madame. It is now too late."
And the willowy German looked, with a half-repressed smile, at the row
of pictures--all staring at the bystander with the same saucer eyes, the
same wooden arms, and the same brilliance of modern paint and varnish,
which not even the passage of four years since it was applied had been
able greatly to subdue.
Lady Barnes lifted shoulders and eyes--a woman's angry protest against
the tyranny of knowledge.
"All the same, they are my forbears, my kith and kin," she said, with
emphasis. "But of course Mrs. Barnes is mistress here: I suppose she
will do as she pleases."
The German stared politely at the carpet. It was now Daphne's turn to
shrug. She threw herself into a chair, with very red cheeks, one foot
hanging over the other, and the fingers of her hands, which shone with
diamonds, tapping the chair impatiently. Her dress of a delicate pink,
touched here and there with black, her wide black hat, and the eyes
which glowed from the small pointed face beneath it; the tumbling masses
of her dark hair as contrasted with her general lightness and
slenderness; the red of the lips, the whiteness of the hands and brow,
the dainty irregularity of feature: these things made a Watteau sketch
of her, all pure colour and lissomeness, with dots and scratches of
intense black. Daphne was much handsomer than she had been as a girl,
but also a trifle less refined. All her points were intensified--her
eyes had more flame; the damask of her cheek was deeper; her grace was
wilder, her voice a little shriller than of old.
While the uncomfortable silence which the two women had made around them
still lasted, Roger Barnes appeared on the garden steps.
"Hullo! any tea going?" He came in, without waiting for an answer,
looked from his mother to Daphne, from Daphne to his mother, and laughed
uncomfortably.
"Still bothering about those beastly pictures?" he said as he helped
himself to a cup of tea.
"_Thank_ you, Roger!" said Lady Barnes.
"I didn't mean any harm, mother." He crossed over to her and sat down
beside her. "I say, Daphne, I've got an idea. Why shouldn't mother have
them? She's going to take a house, she says. Let's hand them all over to
her!"
Lady Barnes's lips trembled with indignation. "The Trescoes who were
born and died in this house, belong here!" The tone of the words showed
the stab to feeling and self-love. "It would be a sacrilege to move
them."
"Well then, let's move ourselves!" exclaimed Daphne, springing up. "We
can let this house again, can't we, Roger?"
"We can, I suppose," said Roger, munching his bread and butter; "but
we're not going to."
He raised his head and looked quietly at her.
"I think we'd better!" The tone was imperious. Daphne, with her thin
arms and hands locked behind her, paused beside her husband.
Dr. Lelius, stealthily raising his eyes, observed the two. A strange
little scene--not English at all. The English, he understood, were a
phlegmatic people. What had this little Southerner to do among them? And
what sort of fellow was the husband?
It was evident that some mute coloquy passed between the husband and
wife--disapproval on his part, attempt to assert authority, defiance, on
hers. Then the fair-skinned English face, confronting Daphne, wavered
and weakened, and Roger smiled into the eyes transfixing him.
"Ah!" thought Lelius, "she has him, de poor fool!"
Roger, coming over to his mother, began a murmured conversation. Daphne,
still breathing quick, consented to talk to Dr. Lelius and Mrs. French.
Lelius, who travelled widely, had brought her news of some pictures in a
chateau of the Bourbonnais--pictures that her whole mind was set on
acquiring. Elsie French noticed the _expertise_ of her talk; the
intellectual development it implied; the passion of will which
accompanied it. "To the dollar, all things are possible"--one might have
phrased it so.
The soft September air came in through the open windows, from a garden
flooded with western sun. Suddenly through the subdued talk which filled
the drawing-room--each group in it avoiding the other--the sound of a
motor arriving made itself heard.
"Heavens! who on earth knows we're here?" said Barnes, looking up.
For they had only been camping a week in the house, far too busy to
think of neighbours. They sat expectant and annoyed, reproaching each
other with not having told the butler to say "Not at home." Lady
Barnes's attitude had in it something else--a little anxiety; but it
escaped notice. Steps came through the hall, and the butler, throwing
open the door, announced--
"Mrs. Fairmile."
Roger Barnes sprang to his feet. His mother, with a little gasp, caught
him by the arm instinctively. There was a general rise and a movement of
confusion, till the new-comer, advancing, offered her hand to Daphne.
"I am afraid, Mrs. Barnes, I am disturbing you all. The butler told me
you had only been here a few days. But Lady Barnes and your husband are
such old friends of mine that, as soon as I heard--through our old
postmistress, I think--that you had arrived, I thought I might venture."
The charming voice dropped, and the speaker waited, smiling, her eyes
fixed on Daphne. Daphne had taken her hand in some bewilderment, and was
now looking at her husband for assistance. It was clear to Elsie French,
in the background, that Daphne neither knew the lady nor the lady's
name, and that the visit had taken her entirely by surprise.
Barnes recovered himself quickly. "I had no idea you were in these
parts," he said, as he brought a chair forward for the visitor, and
stood beside her a moment.
Lady Barnes, observing him, as she stiffly greeted the new-comer--his
cool manner, his deepened colour--felt the usual throb of maternal pride
in him, intensified by alarm and excitement.
"Oh, I am staying a day or two with Duchess Mary," said the new-comer.
"She is a little older--and no less gouty, poor dear, than she used to
be. Mrs. Barnes, I have heard a great deal of you--though you mayn't
know anything about me. Ah! Dr. Lelius?"
The German, bowing awkwardly, yet radiant, came forward to take the hand
extended to him.
"They did nothing but talk about you at the Louvre, when I was there
last week," she said, with a little confidential nod. "You have made
them horribly uncomfortable about some of their things. Isn't it a pity
to know too much?"
She turned toward Daphne. "I'm afraid that's your case too." She smiled,
and the smile lit up a face full of delicate lines and wrinkles, which
no effort had been made to disguise; a tired face, where the eyes spoke
from caverns of shade, yet with the most appealing and persuasive
beauty.
"Do you mean about pictures?" said Daphne, a little coldly. "I don't
know as much as Dr. Lelius."
Humour leaped into the eyes fixed upon her; but Mrs. Fairmile only said:
"That's not given to the rest of us mortals. But after all, _having's_
better than knowing. Don't--_don't_ you possess the Vitali Signorelli?"
Her voice was most musical and flattering. Daphne smiled in spite of
herself. "Yes, we do. It's in London now--waiting till we can find a
place for it."
"You must let me make a pilgrimage--when it comes. But you know you'd
find a number of things at Upcott--where I'm staying now--that would
interest you. I forget whether you've met the Duchess?"
"This is our first week here," said Roger, interposing. "The house has
been let till now. We came down to see what could be made of it."
His tone was only just civil. His mother, looking on, said to herself
that he was angry--and with good reason.
But Mrs. Fairmile still smiled.
"Ah! the Lelys!" she cried, raising her hand slightly toward the row of
portraits on the wall. "The dear impossible things! Are you still
discussing them--as we used to do?"
Daphne started. "You know this house, then?"
The smile broadened into a laugh of amusement, as Mrs. Fairmile turned
to Roger's mother.
"Don't I, dear Lady Barnes--don't I know this house?"
Lady Barnes seemed to straighten in her chair. "Well, you were here
often enough to know it," she said abruptly. "Daphne, Mrs. Fairmile is a
distant cousin of ours."
"Distant, but quite enough to swear by!" said the visitor, gaily. "Yes,
Mrs. Barnes, I knew this house very well in old days. It has many
charming points." She looked round with a face that had suddenly become
coolly critical, an embodied intelligence.
Daphne, as though divining for the first time a listener worthy of her
steel, began to talk with some rapidity of the changes she wished to
make. She talked with an evident desire to show off, to make an
impression. Mrs. Fairmile listened attentively, occasionally throwing in
a word of criticism or comment, in the softest, gentlest voice. But
somehow, whenever she spoke, Daphne felt vaguely irritated. She was
generally put slightly in the wrong by her visitor, and Mrs. Fairmile's
extraordinary knowledge of Heston Park, and of everything connected with
it, was so odd and disconcerting. She had a laughing way, moreover, of
appealing to Roger Barnes himself to support a recollection or an
opinion, which presently produced a contraction of Daphne's brows. Who
was this woman? A cousin--a cousin who knew every inch of the house, and
seemed to be one of Roger's closest friends? It was really too strange
that in all these years Roger should never have said a word about her!
The red mounted in Daphne's cheek. She began, moreover, to feel herself
at a disadvantage to which she was not accustomed. Dr. Lelius,
meanwhile, turned to Mrs. Fairmile, whenever she was allowed to speak,
with a joyous yet inarticulate deference he had never shown to his
hostess. They understood each other at a word or a glance. Beside them
Daphne, with all her cleverness, soon appeared as a child for whom one
makes allowances.
A vague anger swelled in her throat. She noticed, too, Roger's silence
and Lady Barnes's discomfort. There was clearly something here that had
been kept from her--something to be unravelled!
Suddenly the new-comer rose. Mrs. Fairmile wore a dress of some pale
gray stuff, cobweb-light and transparent, over a green satin. It had the
effect of sea-water, and her gray hat, with its pale green wreath,
framed the golden-gray of her hair. Every one of her few adornments was
exquisite--so was her grace as she moved. Daphne's pink-and-black
vivacity beside her seemed a pinchbeck thing.
"Well, now, when will you all come to Upcott?" Mrs. Fairmile said
graciously, as she shook hands. "The Duchess will be enchanted to see
you any day, and----"
"Thank you! but we really can't come so far," said a determined voice.
"We have only a shaky old motor--our new one isn't ready yet--and
besides, we want all our time for the house."
"You make him work so hard?"
Mrs. Fairmile, laughing, pointed to the speaker. Roger looked up
involuntarily, and Daphne saw the look.
"Roger has nothing to do," she said, quickly. "Thank you very much: we
will certainly come. I'll write to you. How many miles did you say it
was?"
"Oh, nothing for a motor!--twenty-five. We used to think it nothing for
a ride, didn't we?"
The speaker, who was just passing through the door, turned towards
Roger, who with Lelius, was escorting her, with a last gesture--gay,
yet, like all her gestures, charged with a slight yet deliberate
significance.
They disappeared. Daphne walked to the window, biting her lip.
* * * * *
As she stood there Herbert French came into the room, looking a little
shy and ill at ease, and behind him three persons, a clergyman in an
Archdeacon's apron and gaiters, and two ladies. Daphne, perceiving them
sideways in a mirror to her right, could not repress a gesture and
muttered sound of annoyance.
French introduced Archdeacon Mountford, his wife and sister. Roger, it
seemed, had met them in the hall, and sent them in. He himself had been
carried off on some business by the head keeper.
Daphne turned ungraciously. Her colour was very bright, her eyes a
little absent and wild. The two ladies, both clad in pale brown stuffs,
large mushroom hats, and stout country boots, eyed her nervously, and as
they sat down, at her bidding, they left the Archdeacon--who was the
vicar of the neighbouring town--to explain, with much amiable
stammering, that seeing the Duchess's carriage at the front door, as
they were crossing the park, they presumed that visitors were admitted,
and had ventured to call.
Daphne received the explanation without any cordiality. She did indeed
bid the callers sit down, and ordered some fresh tea. But she took no
pains to entertain them, and if Lady Barnes and Herbert French had not
come to the rescue, they would have fared but ill. The Archdeacon, in
fact, did come to grief. For him Mrs. Barnes was just a "foreigner,"
imported from some unknown and, of course, inferior _milieu_, one who
had never been "a happy English child," and must therefore be treated
with indulgence. He endeavoured to talk to her--kindly--about her
country. A branch of his own family, he informed her, had settled about
a hundred years before this date in the United States. He gave her, at
some length, the genealogy of the branch, then of the main stock to
which he himself belonged, presuming that she was, at any rate,
acquainted with the name? It was, he said, his strong opinion that
American women were very "bright." For himself he could not say that he
even disliked the accent, it was so "quaint." Did Mrs. Barnes know many
of the American bishops? He himself had met a large number of them at a
reception at the Church House, but it had really made him quite
uncomfortable! They wore no official dress, and there was he--a mere
Archdeacon!--in gaiters. And, of course, no one thought of calling them
"my lord." It certainly was very curious--to an Englishman. And
Methodist bishops!--such as he was told America possessed in
plenty--that was still more curious. One of the Episcopalian bishops,
however, had preached--in Westminster Abbey--a remarkable sermon, on a
very sad subject, not perhaps a subject to be discussed in a
drawing-room--but still----
Suddenly the group on the other side of the room became aware that the
Archdeacon's amiable prosing had been sharply interrupted--that Daphne,
not he, was holding the field. A gust of talk arose--Daphne declaiming,
the Archdeacon, after a first pause of astonishment, changing aspect and
tone. French, looking across the room, saw the mask of conventional
amiability stripped from what was really a strong and rather tyrannical
face. The man's prominent mouth and long upper lip emerged. He drew his
chair back from Daphne's; he tried once or twice to stop or argue with
her, and finally he rose abruptly.
"My dear!"--his wife turned hastily--"We must not detain Mrs. Barnes
longer!"
The two ladies looked at the Archdeacon--the god of their idolatry; then
at Daphne. Hurriedly, like birds frightened by a shot, they crossed the
room and just touched their hostess's hand; the Archdeacon, making up
for their precipitancy by a double dose of dignity, bowed himself out;
the door closed behind them.
"Daphne!--my dear! what is the matter?" cried Lady Barnes, in dismay.
"He spoke to me impertinently about my country!" said Daphne, turning
upon her, her black eyes blazing, her cheeks white with excitement.
"The Archdeacon!--he is always so polite!"
"He talked like a fool--about things he doesn't understand!" was
Daphne's curt reply, as she gathered up her hat and some letters, and
moved towards the door.
"About what? My dear Daphne! He could not possibly have meant to offend
you! Could he, Mr. French?" Lady Barnes turned plaintively towards her
very uncomfortable companions.
Daphne confronted her.
"If he chooses to think America immoral and degraded because American
divorce laws are different from the English laws, let him think it!--but
he has no business to air his views to an American--at a first visit,
too!" said Daphne passionately, and, drawing herself up, she swept out
of the room, leaving the others dumfoundered.
"Oh dear! oh dear!" wailed Lady Barnes. "And the Archdeacon is so
important! Daphne might have been rude to anybody else--but not the
Archdeacon!"
"How did they manage to get into such a subject--so quickly?" asked
Elsie in bewilderment.
"I suppose he took it for granted that Daphne agreed with him! All
decent people do."
Lady Barnes's wrath was evident--so was her indiscretion. Elsie French
applied herself to soothing her, while Herbert French disappeared into
the garden with a book. His wife, however, presently observed from the
drawing-room that he was not reading. He was pacing the lawn, with his
hands behind him, and his eyes on the grass. The slight, slowly-moving
figure stood for meditation, and Elsie French knew enough to understand
that the incidents of the afternoon might well supply any friend of
Roger Barnes's with food for meditation. Herbert had not been in the
drawing-room when Mrs. Fairmile was calling, but no doubt he had met her
in the hall when she was on her way to her carriage.
Meanwhile Daphne, in her own room, was also employed in meditation. She
had thrown herself, frowning, into a chair beside a window which
overlooked the park. The landscape had a gentle charm--spreading grass,
low hills, and scattered woods--under a warm September sun. But it had
no particular accent, and Daphne thought it both tame and depressing;
like an English society made up of Archdeacon Mountfords and their
women-kind! What a futile, irritating man!--and what dull creatures were
the wife and daughter!--mere echoes of their lord and master. She had
behaved badly, of course; in a few days she supposed the report of her
outburst would be all over the place. She did not care. Even for Roger's
sake she was not going to cringe to these poor provincial standards.
And all the time she knew very well that it was not the Archdeacon and
his fatuities that were really at fault. The afternoon had been decided
not by the Mountfords' call, but by that which had preceded it.