because she was a tall woman their eyes were on a level. Her own big and
honest ones were wide and full of crystal tears.
"Oh!" she said in helpless woe. "Oh!"
It was perhaps the most effective thing a woman ever did. It was so
simple that it was heartbreaking. She could not have uttered a word, he
was such a powerful and great person, and she was so without help or
stay.
Since the occurring of this incident, she has often been spoken of as a
beauty, and she has, without doubt, had her fine hours; but Walderhurst
has never told her that the most beautiful moment of her life was
undoubtedly that in which she stood upon the heather, tall and straight
and simple, her hands hanging by her sides, her large, tear-filled hazel
eyes gazing straight into his. In the femininity of her frank
defencelessness there was an appeal to nature's self in man which was
not quite of earth. And for several seconds they stood so and gazed into
each other's souls--the usually unilluminated nobleman and the prosaic
young woman who lodged on a third floor back in Mortimer Street.
Then, quite quickly, something was lighted in his eyes, and he took a
step toward her.
"Good heavens!" he demanded. "What do you suppose I am asking of you?"
"I don't--know," she answered; "I don't--know."
"My good girl," he said, even with some irritation, "I am asking you to
be my wife. I am asking you to come and live with me in an entirely
respectable manner, as the Marchioness of Walderhurst."
Emily touched the breast of her brown linen blouse with the tips of her
fingers.
"You--are--asking--_me_?" she said.
"Yes," he answered. His glass had dropped out of his eye, and he picked
it up and replaced it. "There is Black with the cart," he said. "I will
explain myself with greater clearness as we drive back to Mallowe."
The basket of fish was put in the cart, and Emily Fox-Seton was put in.
Then the marquis got in himself, and took the reins from his groom.
"You will walk back, Black," he said, "by that path," with a wave of the
hand in a diverging direction.
As they drove across the heather, Emily was trembling softly from head
to foot. She could have told no human being what she felt. Only a woman
who had lived as she had lived and who had been trained as she had been
trained could have felt it. The brilliance of the thing which had
happened to her was so unheard of and so undeserved, she told herself.
It was so incredible that, even with the splendid gray mare's high-held
head before her and Lord Walderhurst by her side, she felt that she was
only part of a dream. Men had never said "things" to her, and a man was
saying them--the Marquis of Walderhurst was saying them. They were not
the kind of things every man says or said in every man's way, but they
so moved her soul that she quaked with joy.
"I am not a marrying man," said his lordship, "but I must marry, and I
like you better than any woman I have ever known. I do not generally
like women. I am a selfish man, and I want an unselfish woman. Most
women are as selfish as I am myself. I used to like you when I heard
Maria speak of you. I have watched you and thought of you ever since I
came here. You are necessary to every one, and you are so modest that
you know nothing about it. You are a handsome woman, and you are always
thinking of other women's good looks."
Emily gave a soft little gasp.
"But Lady Agatha," she said. "I was sure it was Lady Agatha."
"I don't want a girl," returned his lordship. "A girl would bore me to
death. I am not going to dry-nurse a girl at the age of fifty-four. I
want a companion."
"But I am so _far_ from clever," faltered Emily.
The marquis turned in his driving-seat to look at her. It was really a
very nice look he gave her. It made Emily's cheeks grow pink and her
simple heart beat.
"You are the woman I want," he said. "You make me feel quite
sentimental."
When they reached Mallowe, Emily had upon her finger the ruby which Lady
Maria had graphically described as being "as big as a trouser button."
It was, indeed, so big that she could scarcely wear her glove over it.
She was still incredible, but she was blooming like a large rose. Lord
Walderhurst had said so many "things" to her that she seemed to behold a
new heaven and a new earth. She had been so swept off her feet that she
had not really been allowed time to think, after that first gasp, of
Lady Agatha.
When she reached her bedroom she almost returned to earth as she
remembered it. Neither of them had dreamed of this--neither of them.
What could she say to Lady Agatha? What would Lady Agatha say to her,
though it had not been her fault? She had not dreamed that such a thing
could be possible. How could she, oh, how could she?
She was standing in the middle of her room with clasped hands. There was
a knock upon the door, and Lady Agatha herself came to her.
What had occurred? Something. It was to be seen in the girl's eyes, and
in a certain delicate shyness in her manner.
"Something very nice has happened," she said.
"Something nice?" repeated Emily.
Lady Agatha sat down. The letter from Curzon Street was in her hand half
unfolded.
"I have had a letter from mamma. It seems almost bad taste to speak of
it so soon, but we have talked to each other so much, and you are so
kind, that I want to tell you myself. Sir Bruce Norman has been to talk
to papa about--about me."
Emily felt that her cup filled to the brim at the moment.
"He is in England again?"
Agatha nodded gently.
"He only went away to--well, to test his own feelings before he spoke.
Mamma is delighted with him. I am going home to-morrow."
Emily made a little swoop forward.
"You always liked him?" she said.
Lady Agatha's delicate mounting colour was adorable.
"I was quite _unhappy_," she owned, and hid her lovely face in her
hands.
In the morning-room Lord Walderhurst was talking to Lady Maria.
"You need not give Emily Fox-Seton any more clothes, Maria," he said. "I
am going to supply her in future. I have asked her to marry me."
Lady Maria lightly gasped, and then began to laugh.
"Well, James," she said, "you have certainly much more sense than most
men of your rank and age."
PART TWO
Chapter Seven
When Miss Emily Fox-Seton was preparing for the extraordinary change in
her life which transformed her from a very poor, hardworking woman into
one of the richest marchionesses in England, Lord Walderhurst's cousin,
Lady Maria Bayne, was extremely good to her. She gave her advice, and
though advice is a cheap present as far as the giver is concerned, there
are occasions when it may be a very valuable one to the recipient. Lady
Maria's was valuable to Emily Fox-Seton, who had but one difficulty,
which was to adjust herself to the marvellous fortune which had befallen
her.
There was a certain thing Emily found herself continually saying. It
used to break from her lips when she was alone in her room, when she was
on her way to her dressmaker's, and in spite of herself, sometimes when
she was with her whilom patroness.
"I can't believe it is true! I can't believe it!"
"I don't wonder, my dear girl," Lady Maria answered the second time she
heard it. "But what circumstances demand of you is that you should learn
to."
"Yes," said Emily, "I know I must. But it seems like a dream.
Sometimes," passing her hand over her forehead with a little laugh, "I
feel as if I should suddenly find myself wakened in the room in Mortimer
Street by Jane Cupp bringing in my morning tea. And I can see the
wallpaper and the Turkey-red cotton curtains. One of them was an inch or
so too short. I never could afford to buy the new bit, though I always
intended to."
"How much was the stuff a yard?" Lady Maria inquired.
"Sevenpence."
"How many yards did you need?"
"Two. It would have cost one and twopence, you see. And I really could
get on without it."
Lady Maria put up her lorgnette and looked at her protégée with an
interest which bordered on affection, it was so enjoyable to her
epicurean old mind.
"I didn't suspect it was as bad as that, Emily," she said. "I should
never have dreamed it. You managed to do yourself with such astonishing
decency. You were actually nice--always."
"I was very much poorer than anyone knew," said Emily. "People don't
like one's troubles. And when one is earning one's living as I was, one
must be agreeable, you know. It would never do to seem tiresome."
"There's cleverness in realising that fact," said Lady Maria. "You were
always the most cheerful creature. That was one of the reasons
Walderhurst admired you."
The future marchioness blushed all over. Lady Maria saw even her neck
itself blush, and it amused her ladyship greatly. She was intensely
edified by the fact that Emily could be made to blush by the mere
mention of her mature fiancé's name.
"She's in such a state of mind about the man that she's delightful," was
the old woman's internal reflection; "I believe she's in love with him,
as if she was a nurse-maid and he was a butcher's boy."
"You see," Emily went on in her nice, confiding way (one of the most
surprising privileges of her new position was that it made it possible
for her to confide in old Lady Maria), "it was not only the living from
day to day that made one anxious, it was the Future!" (Lady Maria knew
that the word began in this case with a capital letter.) "No one knows
what the Future is to poor women. One knows that one must get older, and
one may not keep well, and if one could not be active and in good
spirits, if one could not run about on errands, and things fell off,
_what_ could one do? It takes hard work, Lady Maria, to keep up even the
tiniest nice little room and the plainest presentable wardrobe, if one
isn't clever. If I had been clever it would have been quite different, I
dare say. I have been so frightened sometimes in the middle of the
night, when I wakened and thought about living to be sixty-five, that I
have lain and shaken all over. You see," her blush had so far
disappeared that she looked for the moment pale at the memory, "I had
nobody--nobody."
"And now you are going to be the Marchioness of Walderhurst," remarked
Lady Maria.
Emily's hands, which rested on her knee, wrung themselves together.
"That is what it seems impossible to believe," she said, "or to be
grateful enough for to--to--" and she blushed all over again.
"Say 'James'," put in Lady Maria, with a sinful if amiable sense of
comedy; "you will have to get accustomed to thinking of him as 'James'
sometimes, at all events."
But Emily did not say "James." There was something interesting in the
innocent fineness of her feeling for Lord Walderhurst. In the midst of
her bewildered awe and pleasure at the material splendours looming up in
her horizon, her soul was filled with a tenderness as exquisite as the
religion of a child. It was a combination of intense gratitude and the
guileless passion of a hitherto wholly unawakened woman--a woman who had
not hoped for love or allowed her thoughts to dwell upon it, and who
therefore had no clear understanding of its full meaning. She could not
have explained her feeling if she had tried, and she did not dream of
trying. If a person less inarticulate than herself had translated it to
her she would have been amazed and abashed. So would Lord Walderhurst
have been amazed, so would Lady Maria; but her ladyship's amazement
would have expressed itself after its first opening of the eyes, with a
faint elderly chuckle.
When Miss Fox-Seton had returned to town she had returned with Lady
Maria to South Audley Street. The Mortimer Street episode was closed, as
was the Cupps' house. Mrs. Cupp and Jane had gone to Chichester, Jane
leaving behind her a letter the really meritorious neatness of which was
blotted by two or three distinct tears. Jane respectfully expressed her
affectionate rapture at the wondrous news which "Modern Society" had
revealed to her before Miss Fox-Seton herself had time to do so.
"I am afraid, miss," she ended her epistle, "that I am not experienced
enough to serve a lady in a grand position, but hoping it is not a
liberty to ask it, if at any time your own maid should be wanting a
young woman to work under her, I should be grateful to be remembered.
Perhaps having learned your ways, and being a good needlewoman and fond
of it, might be a little recommendation for me."
"I _should_ like to take Jane for my maid," Emily had said to Lady
Maria. "Do you think I might make her do?"
"She would probably be worth half a dozen French minxes who would amuse
themselves by getting up intrigues with your footmen," was Lady Maria's
astute observation. "I would pay an extra ten pounds a year myself for
slavish affection, if it was to be obtained at agency offices. Send her
to a French hairdresser to take a course of lessons, and she will be
worth anything. To turn you out perfectly will be her life's ambition."
To Jane Cupp's rapture the next post brought her the following letter:--
DEAR JANE,--It is just like you to write such a nice letter to me, and I
can assure you I appreciated all your good wishes very much. I feel that
I have been most fortunate, and am, of course, very happy. I have spoken
to Lady Maria Bayne about you, and she thinks that you might make me a
useful maid if I gave you the advantage of a course of lessons in
hairdressing. I myself know that you would be faithful and interested
and that I could not have a more trustworthy young woman. If your mother
is willing to spare you, I will engage you. The wages would be
thirty-five pounds a year (and beer, of course) to begin with, and an
increase later as you became more accustomed to your duties. I am glad
to hear that your mother is so well and comfortable. Remember me to her
kindly.
Yours truly,
EMILY FOX-SETON
Jane Cupp trembled and turned pale with joy as she read her letter.
"Oh, mother!" she said, breathless with happiness. "And to think she is
almost a marchioness this very minute. I wonder if I shall go with her
to Oswyth Castle first, or to Mowbray, or to Hurst?"
"My word!" said Mrs. Cupp, "you are in luck, Jane, being as you'd rather
be a lady's maid than live private in Chichester. You needn't go out to
service, you know. Your uncle's always ready to provide for you."
"I know he is," answered Jane, a little nervous lest obstacles might be
put in the way of her achieving her long-cherished ambition. "And it's
kind of him, and I'm sure I'm grateful. But--though I wouldn't hurt his
feelings by mentioning it--it is more independent to be earning your own
living, and there's more _life_, you see, in waiting on a titled lady
and dressing her for drawing-rooms and parties and races and things, and
travelling about with her to the grand places she lives in and visits.
Why, mother, I've heard tell that the society in the servants' halls is
almost like high life. Butlers and footmen and maids to high people has
seen so much of the world and get such manners. Do you remember how
quiet and elegant Susan Hill was that was maid to Lady Cosbourne? And
she'd been to Greece and to India. If Miss Fox-Seton likes travel and
his lordship likes it, I may be taken to all sorts of wonderful places.
Just think!"
She gave Mrs. Cupp a little clutch in her excitement. She had always
lived in the basement kitchen of a house in Mortimer Street and had
never had reason to hope she might leave it. And now!
"You're right, Jane!" her mother said, shaking her head. "There's a
great deal in it, particular when you're young. There's a great deal in
it."
When the engagement of the Marquis of Walderhurst had been announced, to
the consternation of many, Lady Maria had been in her element. She was
really fine at times in her attitude towards the indiscreetly or
tactlessly inquiring. Her management of Lady Malfry in particular had
been a delightful thing. On hearing of her niece's engagement, Lady
Malfry had naturally awakened to a proper and well-behaved if belated
interest in her. She did not fling herself upon her breast after the
manner of worldly aunts in ancient comedies in which Cinderella attains
fortune. She wrote a letter of congratulation, after which she called at
South Audley Street, and with not too great obviousness placed herself
and her house at the disposal of such female relatives as required
protection during the period of their preparation for becoming
marchionesses. She herself could not have explained exactly how it was
that, without being put through any particular process, she understood,
before her call was half over, that Emily's intention was to remain with
Lady Maria Bayne and that Lady Maria's intention was to keep her. The
scene between the three was far too subtle to be of the least use upon
the stage, but it was a good scene, nevertheless. Its expression was
chiefly, perhaps, a matter of inclusion and exclusion, and may also have
been largely telepathic; but after it was over, Lady Maria chuckled
several times softly to herself, like an elderly bird of much humour,
and Lady Malfry went home feeling exceedingly cross.
She was in so perturbed a humour that she dropped her eyelids and looked
rather coldly down the bridge of her nose when her stupidly cheery
little elderly husband said to her,--
"Well, Geraldine?"
"I beg pardon," she replied. "I don't quite understand."
"Of course you do. How about Emily Fox-Seton?"
"She seems very well, and of course she is well satisfied. It would not
be possible for her to be otherwise. Lady Maria Bayne has taken her up."
"She is Walderhurst's cousin. Well, well! It will be an immense position
for the girl."
"Immense," granted Lady Malfry, with a little flush. A certain tone in
her voice conveyed that discussion was terminated. Sir George knew that
her niece was not coming to them and that the immense position would
include themselves but slightly.
Emily was established temporarily at South Audley Street with Jane Cupp
as her maid. She was to be married from Lady Maria's lean old arms, so
to speak. Her ladyship derived her usual epicurean enjoyment from the
whole thing,--from too obviously thwarted mothers and daughters; from
Walderhurst, who received congratulations with a civilly inexpressive
countenance which usually baffled the observer; from Emily, who was
overwhelmed by her emotions, and who was of a candour in action such as
might have appealed to any heart not adapted by the flintiness of its
nature to the macadamising of roads.
If she had not been of the most unpretentious nice breeding and
unaffected taste, Emily might have been ingenuously funny in her process
of transformation.
"I keep forgetting that I can afford things," she said to Lady Maria.
"Yesterday I walked such a long way to match a piece of silk, and when I
was tired I got into a penny bus. I did not remember until it was too
late that I ought to have called a hansom. Do you think," a shade
anxiously, "that Lord Walderhurst would mind?"
"Just for the present, perhaps, it would be as well that I should see
that you shop in the carriage," her ladyship answered with a small grin.
"When you are a marchioness you may make penny buses a feature of the
distinguished _insouciance_ of your character if you like. I shouldn't
myself, because they jolt and stop to pick up people, but you can, with
originality and distinction, if it amuses you."
"It doesn't," said Emily. "I hate them. I have longed to be able to take
hansoms. Oh! how I have _longed_--when I was tired."
The legacy left her by old Mrs. Maytham had been realised and deposited
as a solid sum in a bank. Since she need no longer hoard the income of
twenty pounds a year, it was safe to draw upon her capital for her
present needs. The fact made her feel comfortable. She could make her
preparations for the change in her life with a decent independence. She
would have been definitely unhappy if she had been obliged to accept
favours at this juncture. She felt as if she could scarcely have borne
it. It seemed as if everything conspired to make her comfortable as well
as blissfully happy in these days.
Lord Walderhurst found an interest in watching her and her methods. He
was a man who, in certain respects, knew himself very well and had few
illusions respecting his own character. He had always been rather given
to matter-of-fact analysis of his own emotions; and at Mallowe he had
once or twice asked himself if it was not disagreeably possible that the
first moderate glow of his St. Martin's summer might die away and leave
him feeling slightly fatigued and embarrassed by the new aspect of his
previously regular and entirely self-absorbed existence. You might think
that you would like to marry a woman and then you might realise that
there were objections--that even the woman herself, with all her
desirable qualities, might be an objection in the end, that any woman
might be an objection; in fact, that it required an effort to reconcile
oneself to the fact of a woman's being continually about. Of course the
arriving at such a conclusion, after one had committed oneself, would be
annoying. Walderhurst had, in fact, only reflected upon this possible
aspect of affairs _before_ he had driven over the heath to pick Emily
up. Afterwards he had, in some remote portion of his mentality, vaguely
awaited developments.
When he saw Emily day by day at South Audley Street, he found he
continued to like her. He was not clever enough to analyse her; he could
only watch her, and he always looked on at her with curiosity and a
novel sensation rather like pleasure. She wakened up at sight of him,
when he called, in a way that was attractive even to an unimaginative
man. Her eyes seemed to warm, and she often looked flushed and softly
appealing. He began to note vaguely that her dresses were better, and
oftener changed, than they had been at Mallowe. A more observant man
might have been touched by the suggestion that she was unfolding petal
by petal like a flower, and that each carefully chosen costume was a new
petal. He did not in the least suspect the reverent eagerness of her
care of herself as an object hoping to render itself worthy of his
qualities and tastes.
His qualities and tastes were of no exalted importance in themselves,
but they seemed so to Emily. It is that which by one chance or another
so commends itself to a creature as to incite it to the emotion called
love, which is really of importance, and which, not speaking in figures,
holds the power of life and death. Personality sometimes achieves this,
circumstances always aid it; but in all cases the result is the same and
sways the world it exists in--during its existence. Emily Fox-Seton had
fallen deeply and touchingly in love with this particular prosaic,
well-behaved nobleman, and her whole feminine being was absorbed in her
adoration of him. Her tender fancy described him by adjectives such as
no other human being would have assented to. She felt that he had
condescended to her with a generosity which justified worship. This was
not true, but it was true for her. As a consequence of this she thought
out and purchased her wardrobe with a solemnity of purpose such as might
well have been part of a religious ceremonial. When she consulted
fashion plates and Lady Maria, or when she ordered a gown at her
ladyship's dressmaker's, she had always before her mind, not herself,
but the Marchioness of Walderhurst--a Marchioness of Walderhurst whom
the Marquis would approve of and be pleased with. She did not expect
from him what Sir Bruce Norman gave to Lady Agatha.
Agatha and her lover were of a different world. She saw them
occasionally, not often, because the simple selfishness of young love so
absorbed them that they could scarcely realise the existence of other
persons than themselves. They were to be married, and to depart for
fairyland as soon as possible. Both were fond of travel, and when they
took ship together their intention was to girdle the world at leisure,
if they felt so inclined. They could do anything they chose, and were so
blissfully sufficient for each other that there was no reason why they
should not follow their every errant fancy.