“Oh, bother! But it’s no use talking to a woman in love. You’ll sacrifice your youth to a selfish brute of a man and spend your thirties regretting it and your forties making up for lost time. I love Cecil, and of course I’m glad to see him happy, but he’s as selfish as all men, and you’re making him more so. I don’t say you won’t keep him. I believe you will, for he’s the sort that would rather be faithful to his wife than not—doesn’t take after his illustrious parent—but he’ll soon take you as a matter of course, and then you’ll realise what the world could do for you. God knows what I should have done without it, and if I ever have to go under, a dose of laudanum will do the rest.”
But Cecil gave no sign of taking his wife as a matter of course. It is true that he took all and gave nothing—except his love. That Lee might have an inner life of her own never crossed his mind; that it had ever crossed any one’s else that she was fitted for a career more or less apart from his own, however parallel with it, he would have resented as an insult to them both; and he had long since dismissed from his thoughts certain complexities which had puzzled and worried him during the weeks of their engagement. He was perfectly satisfied with her; although he had begged to be released from paying her compliments, and had received his discharge, he would have had her changed in nothing. Her beauty and passion held him in thrall, and he was more than grateful for the companionship she offered him, to say nothing of the incense. He would have liked to be rich that he might have had the pleasure of making her many beautiful presents, but he was philosophical, and wasted no time in regrets. And he was not wholly an egoist, for he occasionally reminded himself that he was the luckiest chap alive; and when he glanced along the future, and reflected that for each of the severe trials, mortifications, and disappointments of his public career he should find solace, and even forgetfulness, in his home, he felt that there were indeed no limits to his good fortune.
Did he ever think of Maundrell Abbey at this time? He gave no sign. But possibly he saw no reason for anxiety. Emmy was entertaining magnificently, and had informed her family that Chicago had taken a sudden leap in the direction of certain of her town lots, and trebled their value. Lee, in spite of the gossip with which Lady Mary Gifford regaled her concerning almost every woman in Society, was not inclined to think evil spontaneously of any one, but she overheard one woman say to another, with a shrug of the shoulders, that “Lady Barnstaple had taken up with the wrong man,” and she was surprised at the constant presence of Mr. Algernon Pix in her mother-in-law’s house. Mr. Pix had none of his sister’s aristocratic beauty, although he was good-looking in a common way; he was very dark, with eyes set close together, and he had a neat little figure. His manner was polite to exaggeration, but his accent was fatal, and three years of Society had not curbed his love of diamonds. In truth, his position was very precarious. Some women liked him, but the men barely accepted him, despite the determined bolstering of several of Victoria’s powerful friends; and as he had never even attempted to handle a gun, and feared a horse as he feared the snub of a Duchess, his social future ran off into vague perspectives. He was wise enough never to accept invitations to the country, and Lee had not met him until she moved up to town. He was the sort of man whom she had heretofore associated with drapers’ counters and railway trains, and inevitably she snubbed him.
“I’d be very much obliged to you if you’d treat my friends decently,” said Lady Barnstaple sharply, when they were alone.
“Surely he is not a friend of yours.”
“His sister is my very most intimate friend; and as for him—well, yes, I do like him—immensely. It means something to me, I can tell you, to have a man show me the thousand and one little attentions that women love—and to think me still beautiful; and he does. I don’t say he would if I were not the Countess of Barnstaple, and miles above him socially—I’m no fool—but that he can be really dazzled means a great deal to me, and when you’re my age you’ll know why.”
Lee reflected that probably the bond between them was the commonness of both, and that “Emmy” was a striking instance of heredity, then dismissed the subject from her mind. Lord Barnstaple, who never took a meal in his wife’s house, except in company with many others, and took many at the little house in Green Street, was apparently unaware of the existence of Mr. Pix, although he commented freely, and with caustic emphasis, upon the idiosyncrasies of his legal wife.
CHAPTER X
ON June twenty-eighth Parliament was prorogued for the elections, and Cecil and Lee went to Yorkshire at once.
Lord Maundrell made a number of speeches, made himself agreeable to many men whom he would have preferred to kick, and received his nomination. The contest was bitter and exciting, and Lee designated her husband during this period, for want of a better term, as “less English” than she had yet known him. There were times when he let her see just how perturbed and excited he was, carefully as he secluded his inner mind from others. Lee, in the little stone villages, that looked as if they might have been built by the heirs of the cave-dwellers, played the part made familiar to her by the novel and the stage, and, for the life of her, could not take herself seriously. Her difficulty was increased by the fact that she could not understand two words in ten of the Yorkshire dialect. The villagers understood her as little, but there was no doubt that her uncommon beauty and her gracious and magnetic manner duly impressed them.