Elster's Folly Part 63

The dowager was fuming. "Don't you think I'm capable of regulating these things, Hartledon, I'd beg leave to ask?"

"No doubt. I beg you will make yourself at home whilst you stay with us.

Some tea, Hedges."

She could have thrown the coffee-pot at him. There was incipient defiance in his every movement; latent war in his tones. He was no longer the puppet he had been; that day had gone by for ever.

Perhaps Val could not himself have explained the feeling that was this morning at work within him. It was the first time he and the dowager had met since the marriage, and she brought before him all too prominently the ill-omened past: her unjustifiable scheming--his own miserable weakness. If ever Lord Hartledon felt shame and repentance for his weak yielding, he felt it now--felt it in all its bitterness; and something very like rage against the dowager was bubbling up in his spirit, which he had some trouble to suppress.

He did suppress it, however, though it rendered him less courteous than usual; and the meal proceeded partly in silence; an interchanged word, civil on the surface, pa.s.sing now and then. The dowager thoroughly entered into her breakfast, and had little leisure for anything else.

"What makes you take nothing?" she asked, perceiving at length that he had only a piece of toast on his plate, and was playing with that.

"I have no appet.i.te."

"Have you left off taking breakfast?"

"To a great extent."

"What's the matter with you?"

Lord Hartledon slightly raised his eyebrows. "One can't eat much in the heat of summer."

"Heat of summer! it's nothing more than autumn now. And you are as thin as a weasel. Try some of that excellent raised pie."

"Pray let my appet.i.te alone, Lady Kirton. If I wanted anything I should take it."

"Let you alone! yes, of course! You don't want it noticed that you are out of sorts," snapped the dowager. "Oh, _I_ know the signs. You've been raking about London--that's what you've been at."

The "raking about London" presented so complete a contrast to the lonely life he had really pa.s.sed, that Hartledon smiled in very bitterness. And the smile incensed the dowager, for she misunderstood it.

"It's early days to begin! I don't think you ought to have married Maude."

"I don't think I ought."

She did not expect the rejoinder, and dropped her knife and fork. "Why _did_ you marry her?"

"Perhaps you can tell that better than I."

The countess-dowager pushed up her hair.

"Are you going to throw off the mask outright, and become a bad husband as well as a neglectful one?"

Val rose from his seat and went to the window, which opened to the ground. He did not wish to quarrel with her if he could help it. Lady Kirton raised her voice.

"Staying away, as you have, in London, and leaving Maude here to pine alone."

"Business kept me in London."

"I dare say it did!" cried the wrathful dowager. "If Maude died of ennui, you wouldn't care. She can't go about much herself just now, poor thing!

I do wish Edward had lived."

"I wish he had, with all my heart!" came the answer; and the tone struck surprise on the dowager's ear--it was so full of pain. "Maude's coming to Hartledon without me was her own doing," he remarked. "I wished her not to come."

"I dare say you did, as her heart was set upon it. The fact of her wis.h.i.+ng to do a thing would be the signal for your opposing it; I've gathered that much. My advice to Maude is, to a.s.sert her own will, irrespective of yours."

"Don't you think, Lady Kirton, that it may be as well if you let me and my wife alone? We shall get along, no doubt, without interference; _with_ interference we might not do so."

What with one thing and another, the dowager's temper was inflammable that morning; and when it reached that undesirable state she was apt to say pretty free things, even for her.

"Edward would have made her the better husband."

"But she didn't like him, you know!" he returned, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng with the remembrance of an old thought; and the countess-dowager took the sentence literally, and not ironically.

"Not like him. If you had had any eyes as Val Elster, you'd have seen whether she liked him or not. She was dying for him--not for you."

He made no reply. It was only what he had suspected, in a half-doubting sort of way, at the time. A little spaniel, belonging to one of the gardeners, ran up and licked his hand.

"The time that I had of it!" continued the dowager. "But for me, Maude never would have been forced into having you. And she _shouldn't_ have had you if I'd thought you were going to turn out like this."

He wheeled round and faced her; his pale face working with emotion, but his voice subdued to calmness. Lady Kirton's last words halted, for his look startled even her in its resolute sternness.

"To what end are you saying this, madam? You know perfectly well that you almost moved heaven and earth to get me: _you_, I say; I prefer to leave my wife's name out of this: and I fell into the snare. I have not complained of my bargain; so far as I know, Maude has not done so: but if it be otherwise--if she and you repent of the union, I am willing to dissolve it, as far as it can be dissolved, and to inst.i.tute measures for living apart."

Never, never had she suspected it would come to this. She sat staring at him, her eyes round, her mouth open: scarcely believing the calm resolute man before her could be the once vacillating Val Elster.

"Listen whilst I speak a word of truth," he said, his eyes bent on her with a strange fire that, if it told of undisguised earnestness, told also of inward fever. "I married your daughter, and I am ready and willing to do my duty by her in all honour, as I have done it since the day of the marriage. Whatever my follies may have been as a young man, I am at least incapable of wronging my wife as a married one. _She_ has had no cause to complain of want of affection, but--"

"Oh, what a hypocrite!" interrupted the dowager, with a shriek. "And all the time you've left her here neglected, while you were taking your amus.e.m.e.nt in London! You've been dinner-giving and Richmond-going, and theatre-frequenting, and card-playing, and race-horsing--and I shouldn't wonder but you've been c.o.c.k-fighting, and a hundred other things as disreputable, and have come down here worn to a skeleton!"

"But if she is discontented, if she does not care for me, as you would seem to intimate," he resumed, pa.s.sing over the attack without notice; "in short, if Maude would be happier without me, I am quite willing, as I have just said, to relieve her of her distasteful husband."

"Of all the wicked plotters, you must be the worst! My darling unoffending Maude! A divorce for her!"

"We are neither of us eligible for a divorce," he coolly rejoined. "A separation alone is open to us, and that an amicable one. Should it come to it, every possible provision can be made for your daughter's comfort; she shall retain this home; she shall have, if she wishes, a town-house; I will deny her nothing."

Lady Kirton rubbed her face carefully with her handkerchief. Not until this moment had she believed him to be in earnest, and the conviction frightened her.

"Why do you wish to separate from her?" she asked, in a subdued tone.

"I do not wish it. I said I was willing to do so if she wished it. You have been taking pains to convince me that Maude's love was not mine, that she was only forced into the marriage with me. Should this have been the case, I must be distasteful to her still; an enc.u.mbrance she may wish to get rid of."

The countess-dowager had overshot her mark, and saw it.

"Oh well! Perhaps I was mistaken about the past," she said, staring at him very hard, and in a sort of defiance. "Maude was always very close.

If you said anything about separation now, I dare say it would kill her.

My belief is, she does care for you, and a great deal more than you deserve."

"It may be better to ascertain the truth from Maude--"