After luncheon, which had been carried through with all the proper
ceremonies of the olden time according to Jimmy Danvers and Young
Billy's interpretation of them, it came on to pour with rain; so these
masters of the revels said that now the medieval dances should begin,
and accordingly they turned on the gramophone that stood in the corner
to amuse the children at the school treats. And Mary and her admirer,
Lord Henry Burns, and Emily and a Captain Hume, and Lady Betty and Jimmy
Danvers, gayly took the floor, while Young Billy offered himself to the
bride, as he said he as the representative of the Lord of the Castle had
a right to the loveliest lady; and, with his young, stolid
self-confidence, he pushed Lord Elterton aside.
Zara had not danced for a very long time--four years at least--and she
had not an idea of the two-steps and barn-dances and other sorts of
whirling capers that they invented; but she did her best, and gradually
something of the excitement of the gay young spirits spread to her, and
she forgot her sorrows and began to enjoy herself.
"You don't ever dance, I suppose, Mr. Markrute?" Lady Ethelrida asked,
as she stopped, with the gallant old Crow, flushed and smiling by the
daïs, where the financier and Lady Anningford sat. "If you ever do, I,
as the Lady of the Castle, ask you to 'tread a measure' with me!"
"No one could resist such, an invitation," he answered, and put his arm
around her for a valse.
"I do love dancing," she said, as they went along very well. She was so
surprised that this "grave and reverend signor," as she called him,
should be able to valse!
"So do I," said Francis Markrute--"under certain circumstances. This is
one of them." And then he suddenly held her rather tight, and laughed.
"Think of it all!" he went on. "Here we are, in thick boots and country
clothes capering about like savages round their fire, and, for all sorts
of reasons, we all love it!"
"It is just the delicious exercise with me," said Lady Ethelrida.
"And it has nothing at all to do with that reason with me," returned her
partner.
And Lady Ethelrida quivered with some sort of pleasure and did not ask
him what his reason was. She thought she knew, and her eyes sparkled.
They were the same height, and he saw her look; and as they went on, he
whispered:
"I have brought you down the book we spoke of, you know, and you will
take it from me, won't you? Just as a remembrance of this day and how
you made me young for an hour!"
They stopped by one of the benches at the side and sat down, and Lady
Ethelrida answered softly,
"Yes, if--you wish me to--"
Lord Elterton had now dislodged Young Billy and was waltzing with Zara
himself: his whole bearing was one of intense devotion, and she was
actually laughing and looking up in his face, still affected by the
general hilarity, when the door of the wooden porch that had been built
on as an entrance opened noiselessly, and some of the shooters peeped
into the room. It had been too impossibly wet to go on, and they had
sent the ladies back in the motors and had come across the park on their
way home, and, hearing the sound of music, had glanced in. Tristram was
in front of the intruders and just chanced to catch his bride's look at
her partner, before either of them saw they were observed.
He felt frightfully jealous. He had never before seen her so smiling, to
begin with, and never at all at himself. He longed to kick Arthur
Elterton! Confounded impertinence!--And what tommyrot--dancing like
this, in the afternoon with boots on! And when they all stopped and
greeted the shooters, and crowded round the fire, he said, in a tone of
rasping sarcasm--in reply to Jimmy Danvers' announcement that they were
back in the real life of a castle in the Middle Ages:
"Any one can see that! You have even got My Lady's fool. Look at
Arthur--with mud on his boots--jumping about!"
And Lord Elterton felt very flattered. He knew his old friend was
jealous, and if he were jealous then the charming, cold lady must have
been unbelievingly nice to him, and that meant he was getting on!
"You are jealous because your lovely bride prefers me, Young Lochinvar,"
and he laughed as he quoted:
"'For so faithful in love and so dauntless in war--
There ne'er was a gallant like Young Lochinvar!'"
And Zara saw that Tristram's eyes flashed blue steel, and that he did
not like the chaff at all. So, just out of some contrariness--he had
been with Lady Highford all day so why should she not amuse herself,
too; indeed, why should either of them care what the other did--so just
out of contrariness she smiled again at Lord Elterton and said:
"'Then tread we a measure, my Lord Lochinvar.'"
And off they went.
And Tristram, with his face more set than the Crusader ancestor's in
Wrayth Church, said to his uncle, Lord Charles, "We are all wet through:
let us come along."
And he turned round and went out.
And as he walked, he wondered to himself how much she must know of
English poetry to have been able to answer Arthur like that. If only
they could be friends and talk of the books he, too, loved! And then he
realized more strongly than ever the impossibility of the situation--he,
who had been willing to undertake it with the joyous self-confidence
with which he had started upon a lion hunt!
He felt he was getting to the end of his tether; it could not go on. Her
words that night at Dover, had closed down all the possible sources he
could have used for her melting.
And a man cannot in a week break through a thousand years of inherited
pride.
Before the Canada scheme had presented itself he had rather thought of
joining with a friend for another trip to the Soudan: it might not be
too late still, when they had got over the Wrayth ordeal, the tenants'
dinners, and the speeches, and the cruel mockery of it all. He would
see--perhaps--what could be done, but to go on living in this daily
torture he would not submit to, for the "loving her less" had not yet
begun!
And when he had left, although she would not own it to herself, Zara's
joy in the day was gone.
The motors came to fetch them presently, and they all went back to the
Castle to dress and have tea.
Tristram's face was still stony and he had sat down in a sofa by Laura,
when a footman brought a telegram to Zara. He watched her open it, with
concentrated interest. Whom were these mysterious telegrams from? He saw
her face change as it had done in Paris, only not so seriously; and then
she crushed up the paper into a ball and threw it in the fire. The
telegram had been: "Very slightly feverish again," and signed "Mimo."
"Now I remember where I have seen your wife before," said Laura. And
Tristram said absently,
"Where?"
"In the waiting-room at Waterloo station--and yet--no, it could not have
been she, because she was quite ordinarily dressed, and she was talking
very interestedly to a foreign man." She watched Tristram's face and saw
she had hit home for some reason; so she went on, enchanted: "Of course
it could not have been she, naturally; but the type is so peculiar that
any other like it would remind one, would it not?"
"I expect so," he said. "It could not have been Zara, though, because
she was in Paris until just before the wedding."
"I remember the occasion quite well. It was the day after the engagement
was announced, because I had been up for Flora's wedding, and was going
down into the country."
Then in a flash it came to him that that was the very day he himself had
seen Zara in Whitehall, the day when she had not gone to Paris. And
rankling, uncomfortable suspicions overcame him again.
Laura felt delighted. She did not know why he should be moved at her
announcement; but he certainly was, so it was worth while rubbing it in.
"Has she a sister, perhaps? Because--now I come to think of it--the
resemblance is extraordinary. I remember I was rather interested at the
time because the man was so awfully handsome and as you know, dear boy,
I always had a passion for handsome men!"
"My wife was an only child," Tristram answered. What was Laura driving
at?
"Well, she has a double then," she laughed. "I watched them for quite
ten minutes, so I am sure. I was waiting for my maid, who was to meet
me, and I could not leave for fear of missing her."
"How interesting!" said Tristram coldly. He would not permit himself to
demand a description of the man.
"Perhaps after all it was she, before she went to Paris, and I may be
mistaken about the date," Laura went on. "It might have been her
brother--he was certainly foreign--but no, it could not have been a
brother." And she looked down and smiled knowingly.
Tristram felt gradually wild with the stings her words were planting,
and then his anger rebounded upon herself. Little natures always
miscalculate the effect of their actions, as factors in their desires,
for their ultimate ends.
Laura only longed--after hurting Tristram as a punishment--to get him
back again; but she was not clever enough to know that to make him mad
with jealousy about his wife was not the way.
"I don't understand what you wish to insinuate, Laura," he said in a
contemptuous voice; "but whatever it is, it is having no effect upon me.
I absolutely adore my wife, and know everything she does or does not
do."
"Oh! the poor, angry darling, there, there!" she laughed, spitefully,
"and was It jealous! Well, It shan't be teased. But what a clever
husband, to know all about his wife! He should be put in a glass case in
a museum!" And she got up and left him alone.
Tristram would like to have killed some one--he did not know whom--this
foreign man, "Mimo," most likely: he had not forgotten the name!
If his pride had permitted him he would have gone up to Zara, who had
now retired to her room, and asked straight out for an explanation. He
would if he had been sensible have simply said he was unhappy, and he
would have asked her to reassure him. It would all have been perfectly
simple and soon ended if treated with common sense. But he was too
obstinate, and too hurt, and too passionately in love. The bogey of his
insulted Tancred pride haunted him always, and, like all foolish things,
caused him more suffering than if it had been a crime.
So once more the pair dressed to go down to the ducal dinner, with
deeper estrangement in their hearts. And when Tristram was ready
to-night, he went out into the corridor and pretended to look at the
pictures. He would have no more servants' messages!--and there he was,
with a bitter smile on his face, when Lady Anningford, coming from her
room beyond, stopped to talk. She wondered at his being there--a very
different state of things to her own with her dear old man, she
remembered, who, after the wedding day, for weeks and weeks would hardly
let her out of his sight!
Then Henriette peeped out of the door and saw that the message she was
being sent upon was in vain, and went back; and immediately Zara
appeared.
Her dress was pale gray to-night--with her uncle's pearls--and both Lady
Anningford and Tristram noticed that her eyes were slumberous and had in
them that smoldering fierceness of pain. And remembering the Crow's
appeal Lady Anningford slipped her hand within her arm, and was very
gentle and friendly as they went down to the saloon.