CHAPTER XXIV.
SEMI-AMBUSTUS EVASIT.
Are you curious to know how, all this while, it fared with the Great Earl and his beautiful bride? If the truth is to be told, I fear the answer must be unsatisfactory. No one, well acquainted with the contracting parties, believed that the marriage would be a very happy one; but they hoped it would turn out as well as the generality of conventional alliances. It was not so. Alan Wyverne was right enough in thinking that Clydesdale was most unfitted to the task of managing a haughty, wilful wife; but even he never supposed that dissension would arise so quickly, and rankle so constantly. There had been few overt or actual disputes, but a spirit of bitter antagonism was ever at work, which sooner or later was certain to have an evil ending.
It would be unfair in infer that the fault was all on the Earl's side. It was his manner and demeanour that told most against him: he had been so accustomed to adulation from both sexes, that he could not understand why his wife should not accept his dictatorial and overbearing ways, as patiently as his other dependents: so even his kindnesses were spoilt by the way in which they were offered, or rather enforced. But—at all events, in the early days of their married life—he was really anxious that not a wish or whim of Helen's should remain ungratified, and spared neither trouble nor money to insure this.
The fair Countess was certainly not free from blame. She had said to Maud Brabazon—"I will try honestly to be a good wife, if he will let me." Now, her most partial friend could hardly assert, that she had fairly acted up to this good resolve. Perhaps it would have been too much to expect that she should entertain a high respect or a devoted affection for her consort; but she might have masked indifference more considerately, or, at least, have dissembled disdain. Her hasty, impetuous nature seemed utterly changed; she never by any chance lost her temper now, at any provocation, especially when such came from her husband. It would have been much better if she had done so, occasionally: nothing chafes a character like Clydesdale's so bitterly, as that imperial nonchalance, which seems to waver between contempt and pity. Besides, her notions of conjugal obedience were rather peculiar. The Earl was, at first, perpetually interfering with her arrangements, by suggestions for or against, which sounded unpleasantly like orders; if these chanced to square with Helen's inclination, or if the question was simply indifferent to her, she acted upon them, without claiming any credit for so doing; if otherwise—she disregarded and disobeyed them with a serene determination, and seemed to think, "having changed her mind since she saw him," quite a sufficient apology to her exasperated Seigneur.
An incident very characteristic of this had, somehow, got abroad.
Lady Clydesdale was about to accompany her husband to a tremendous State-dinner, the host being one of the great personages in this realm, next to royalty—no other than the Duke of Camelot. When she came down, ready to start, one would have found it impossible to have found a fault in her toilette. But the Earl chose to consider himself an authority on feminine attire, and chanced to be in a particularly captious humour that evening: the ground colour of Helen's dress—a dark Mazarine blue—did not please him at all, though really nothing could match better with her parure of sapphires and diamonds. She listened to his comments and strictures without contradicting them, apparently not thinking the subject worth discussion: her silent indifference irritated Clydesdale excessively. At last he said—
"Helen, I positively insist on your taking off that dress; there will be time enough if you go up immediately. Do you hear me?"
For an instant she seemed to hesitate; then she rose, with an odd smile on her proud lip—"Yes, there will be time enough," she said, and so left the room.