first was Mrs. Julius Delamayn. The second was Lady Lundie.
"Exquisite!" cried her ladyship, surveying the old mullioned
windows of the house, with their framing of creepers, and the
grand stone buttresses projecting at intervals from the wall,
each with its bright little circle of flowers blooming round the
base. "I am really grieved that Sir Patrick should have missed
this."
"I think you said, Lady Lundie, that Sir Patrick had been called
to Edinburgh by family business?"
"Business, Mrs. Delamayn, which is any thing but agreeable to me,
as one member of the family. It has altered all my arrangements
for the autumn. My step-daughter is to be married next week."
"Is it so near as that? May I ask who the gentleman is?"
"Mr. Arnold Brinkworth."
"Surely I have some association with that name?"
"You have probably heard of him, Mrs. Delamayn, as the heir to
Miss Brinkworth's Scotch property?"
"Exactly! Have you brought Mr. Brinkworth here to-day?"
"I bring his apologies, as well as Sir Patrick's. They went to
Edinburgh together the day before yesterday. The lawyers engage
to have the settlements ready in three or four days more, if a
personal consultation can be managed. Some formal question, I
believe, connected with title-deeds. Sir Patrick thought the
safest way and the speediest way would be to take Mr. Brinkworth
with him to Edinburgh--to get the business over to-day--and to
wait until we join them, on our way south, to-morrow."
"You leave Windygates, in this lovely weather?"
"Most unwillingly! The truth is, Mrs. Delamayn, I am at my
step-daughter's mercy. Her uncle has the authority, as her
guardian--and the use he makes of it is to give her her own way
in every thing. It was only on Friday last that she consented to
let the day be fixed--and even then she made it a positive
condition that the marriage was not to take place in Scotland.
Pure willfulness! But what can I do? Sir Patrick submits; and Mr.
Brinkworth submits. If I am to be present at the marriage I must
follow their example. I feel it my duty to be present--and, as a
matter of course, I sacrifice myself. We start for London
to-morrow."
"Is Miss Lundie to be married in London at this time of year?"
"No. We only pass through, on our way to Sir Patrick's place in
Kent--the place that came to him with the title; the place
associated with the last days of my beloved husband. Another
trial for _me!_ The marriage is to be solemnized on the scene of
my bereavement. My old wound is to be reopened on Monday
next--simply because my step-daughter has taken a dislike to
Windygates."
"This day week, then, is the day of the marriage?"
"Yes. This day week. There have been reasons for hurrying it
which I need not trouble you with. No words can say how I wish it
was over.--But, my dear Mrs. Delamayn, how thoughtless of me to
assail _ you_ with my family worries! You are so sympathetic.
That is my only excuse. Don't let me keep you from your guests. I
could linger in this sweet place forever! Where is Mrs. Glenarm?"
"I really don't know. I missed her when we came out on the
terrace. She will very likely join us at the lake. Do you care
about seeing the lake, Lady Lundie?"
"I adore the beauties of Nature, Mrs. Delamayn--especially
lakes!"
"We have something to show you besides; we have a breed of swans
on the lake, peculiar to the place. My husband has gone on with
some of our friends; and I believe we are expected to follow, as
soon as the rest of the party--in charge of my sister--have seen
the house."
"And what a house, Mrs. Delamayn! Historical associations in
every corner of it! It is _such_ a relief to my mind to take
refuge in the past. When I am far away from this sweet place I
shall people Swanhaven with its departed inmates, and share the
joys and sorrows of centuries since."
As Lady Lundie announced, in these terms, her intention of adding
to the population of the past, the last of the guests who had
been roaming over the old house appeared under the porch. Among
the members forming this final addition to the garden-party were
Blanche, and a friend of her own age whom she had met at
Swanhaven. The two girls lagged behind the rest, talking
confidentially, arm in arm--the subject (it is surely needless to
add) being the coming marriage.
"But, dearest Blanche, why are you not to be married at
Windygates?"
"I detest Windygates, Janet. I have the most miserable
associations with the place. Don't ask me what they are! The
effort of my life is not to think of them now. I long to see the
last of Windygates. As for being married there, I have made it a
condition that I am not to be married in Scotland at all."
"What has poor Scotland done to forfeit your good opinion, my
dear?"
"Poor Scotland, Janet, is a place where people don't know whether
they are married or not. I have heard all about it from my uncle.
And I know somebody who has been a victim--an innocent victim--to
a Scotch marriage."
"Absurd, Blanche! You are thinking of runaway matches, and making
Scotland responsible for the difficulties of people who daren't
own the truth!"
"I am not at all absurd. I am thinking of the dearest friend I
have. If you only knew--"
"My dear! _I_ am Scotch, remember! You can be married just as
well--I really must insist on that--in Scotland as in England."
"I hate Scotland!"
"Blanche!"
"I never was so unhappy in my life as I have been in Scotland. I
never want to see it again. I am determined to be married in
England--from the dear old house where I used to live when I was
a little girl. My uncle is quite willing. _He_ understands me and
feels for me."
"Is that as much as to say that _I_ don't understand you and feel
for you? Perhaps I had better relieve you of my company,
Blanche?"
"If you are going to speak to me in that way, perhaps you had!"
"Am I to hear my native country run down and not to say a word in
defense of it?"
"Oh! you Scotch people make such a fuss about your native
country!"
"_We_ Scotch people! you are of Scotch extraction yourself, and
you ought to be ashamed to talk in that way. I wish you
good-morning!"
"I wish you a better temper!"
A minute since the two young ladies had been like twin roses on
one stalk. Now they parted with red cheeks and hostile sentiments
and cutting words. How ardent is the warmth of youth! how
unspeakably delicate the fragility of female friendship!
The flock of visitors followed Mrs. Delamayn to the shores of the
lake. For a few minutes after the terrace was left a solitude.
Then there appeared under the porch a single gentleman, lounging
out with a flower in his mouth and his hands in his pockets. This
was the strongest man at Swanhaven--otherwise, Geoffr
ey Delamayn.
After a moment a lady appeared behind him, walking softly, so as
not to be heard. She was superbly dressed after the newest and
the most costly Parisian design. The brooch on her bosom was a
single diamond of resplendent water and great size. The fan in
her hand was a master-piece of the finest Indian workmanship. She
looked what she was, a person possessed of plenty of superfluous
money, but not additionally blest with plenty of superfluous
intelligence to correspond. This was the childless young widow of
the great ironmaster--otherwise, Mrs. Glenarm.
The rich woman tapped the strong man coquettishly on the shoulder
with her fan. "Ah! you bad boy!" she said, with a
slightly-labored archness of look and manner. "Have I found you
at last?"
Geoffrey sauntered on to the terrace--keeping the lady behind him
with a thoroughly savage superiority to all civilized submission
to the sex--and looked at his watch.
"I said I'd come here when I'd got half an hour to myself," he
mumbled, turning the flower carelessly between his teeth. "I've
got half an hour, and here I am."
"Did you come for the sake of seeing the visitors, or did you
come for the sake of seeing Me?"
Geoffrey smiled graciously, and gave the flower another turn in
his teeth. "You. Of course."
The iron-master's widow took his arm, and looked up at him--as
only a young woman would have dared to look up--with the
searching summer light streaming in its full brilliancy on her
face.
Reduced to the plain expression of what it is really worth, the
average English idea of beauty in women may be summed up in three
words--youth, health, plumpness. The more spiritual charm of
intelligence and vivacity, the subtler attraction of delicacy of
line and fitness of detail, are little looked for and seldom
otherwise to account for the extraordinary blindness of
perception which (to give one instance only) makes nine
Englishmen out of ten who visit France come back declaring that
they have not seen a single pretty Frenchwoman, in or out of
Paris, in the whole country. Our popular type of beauty proclaims
itself, in its fullest material development, at every shop in
which an illustrated periodical is sold. The same fleshy-faced
girl, with the same inane smile, and with no other expression
whatever, appears under every form of illustration, week after
week, and month after month, all the year round. Those who wish
to know what Mrs. Glenarm was like, have only to go out and stop
at any bookseller's or news-vendor's shop, and there they will
see her in the first illustration, with a young woman in it,
which they discover in the window. The one noticeable peculiarity
in Mrs. Glenarm's purely commonplace and purely material beauty,
which would have struck an observant and a cultivated man, was
the curious girlishness of her look and manner. No stranger
speaking to this woman--who had been a wife at twenty, and who
was now a widow at twenty-four--would ever have thought of
addressing her otherwise than as "Miss."
"Is that the use you make of a flower when I give it to you?" she
said to Geoffrey. "Mumbling it in your teeth, you wretch, as if
you were a horse!"
"If you come to tha t," returned Geoffrey, "I'm more a horse than
a man. I'm going to run in a race, and the public are betting on
me. Haw! haw! Five to four."
"Five to four! I believe he thinks of nothing but betting. You
great heavy creature, I can't move you. Don't you see I want to
go like the rest of them to the lake? No! you're not to let go of
my arm! You're to take me."
"Can't do it. Must be back with Perry in half an hour."
(Perry was the trainer from London. He had arrived sooner than he
had been expected, and had entered on his functions three days
since.)
"Don't talk to me about Perry! A little vulgar wretch. Put him
off. You won't? Do you mean to say you are such a brute that you
would rather be with Perry than be with me?"
"The betting's at five to four, my dear. And the race comes off
in a month from this."
"Oh! go away to your beloved Perry! I hate you. I hope you'll
lose the race. Stop in your cottage. Pray don't come back to the
house. And--mind this!--don't presume to say 'my dear' to me
again."
"It ain't presuming half far enough, is it? Wait a bit. Give me
till the race is run--and then I'll presume to marry you."
"You! You will be as old as Methuselah, if you wait till I am
your wife. I dare say Perry has got a sister. Suppose you ask
him? She would be just the right person for you."
Geoffrey gave the flower another turn in his teeth, and looked as
if he thought the idea worth considering.
"All right," he said. "Any thing to be agreeable to you. I'll ask
Perry."
He turned away, as if he was going to do it at once. Mrs. Glenarm
put out a little hand, ravishingly clothed in a blush-colored
glove, and laid it on the athlete's mighty arm. She pinched those
iron muscles (the pride and glory of England) gently. "What a man
you are!" she said. "I never met with any body like you before!"
The whole secret of the power that Geoffrey had acquired over her
was in those words.
They had been together at Swanhaven for little more than ten
days; and in that time he had made the conquest of Mrs. Glenarm.
On the day before the garden-party--in one of the leisure
intervals allowed him by Perry--he had caught her alone, had
taken her by the arm, and had asked her, in so many words, if she
would marry him. Instances on record of women who have been wooed
and won in ten days are--to speak it with all possible
respect--not wanting. But an instance of a woman willing to have
it known still remains to be discovered. The iron-master's widow
exacted a promise of secrecy before the committed herself When
Geoffrey had pledged his word to hold his tongue in public until
she gave him leave to speak, Mrs. Glenarm, without further
hesitation, said Yes--having, be it observed, said No, in the
course of the last two years, to at least half a dozen men who
were Geoffrey's superiors in every conceivable respect, except
personal comeliness and personal strength.
There is a reason for every thing; and there was a reason for
this.
deny it, it is nevertheless a truth plainly visible in the whole
past history of the sexes that the natural condition of a woman
is to find her master in a man. Look in the face of any woman who
is in no direct way dependent on a man: and, as certainly as you
see the sun in a cloudless sky, you see a woman who is not happy.
The want of a master is their great unknown want; the possession
of a master is--unconsciously to themselves--the only possible
completion of their lives. In ni
nety-nine cases out of a hundred
this one primitive instinct is at the bottom of the otherwise
inexplicable sacrifice, when we see a woman, of her own free
will, throw herself away on a man who is unworthy of her. This
one primitive instinct was at the bottom of the otherwise
inexplicable facility of self-surrender exhibited by Mrs.
Glenarm.
Up to the time of her meeting with Geoffrey, the young widow had
gathered but one experience in her intercourse with the
world--the experience of a chartered tyrant. In the brief six
months of her married life with the man whose grand-daughter she
might have been--and ought to have been--she had only to lift her
finger to be obeyed. The doting old husband was the willing slave
of the petulant young wife's slightest caprice. At a later
period, when society offered its triple welcome to her birth, her
beauty, and her wealth--go where she might, she found herself the
object of the same prostrate admiration among the suitors who
vied with each other in the rivalry for her hand. For the first
time in her life she encountered a man with a will of his own
when she met Geoffrey Delamayn at Swanhaven Lodge.
Geoffrey's occupation of the moment especially favored the
conflict between the woman's assertion of her influence and the
man's assertion of his will.
During the days that had intervened between his return to his
brother's house and the arrival of the trainer, Geoffrey had
submitted himself to all needful preliminaries of the physical
discipline which was to prepare him for the race. He knew, by
previous experience, what exercise he ought to take, what hours
he ought to keep, what temptations at the table he was bound to
resist. Over and over again Mrs. Glenarm tried to lure him into
committing infractions of his own discipline--and over and over
again the influence with men which had never failed her before
failed her now. Nothing she could say, nothing she could do,
would move _this_ man. Perry arrived; and Geoffrey's defiance of
every attempted exercise of the charming feminine tyranny, to
which every one else had bowed, grew more outrageous and more
immovable than ever. Mrs. Glenarm became as jealous of Perry as
if Perry had been a woman. She flew into passions; she burst into
tears; she flirted with other men; she threatened to leave the
house. All quite useless! Geoffrey never once missed an
appointment with Perry; never once touched any thing to eat or
drink that she could offer him, if Perry had forbidden it. No
other human pursuit is so hostile to the influence of the sex as
the pursuit of athletic sports. No men are so entirely beyond the
reach of women as the men whose lives are passed in the
cultivation of their own physical strength. Geoffrey resisted
Mrs. Glenarm without the slightest effort. He casually extorted
her admiration, and undesignedly forced her respect. She clung to
him, as a hero; she recoiled from him, as a brute; she struggled
with him, submitted to him, despised him, adored him, in a
breath. And the clew to it all, confused and contradictory as it
seemed, lay in one simple fact--Mrs. Glenarm had found her
master.
"Take me to the lake, Geoffrey!" she said, with a little pleading
pressure of the blush-colored hand.
Geoffrey looked at his watch. "Perry expects me in twenty
minutes," he said.
"Perry again!"
"Yes."
Mrs. Glenarm raised her fan, in a sudden outburst of fury, and
broke it with one smart blow on Geoffrey's face.
"There!" she cried, with a stamp of her foot. "My poor fan
broken! You monster, all through you!"
Geoffrey coolly took the broken fan and put it in his pocket.
"I'll write to London," he said, "and get you another. Come
along! Kiss, and make it up."
He looked over each shoulder, to make sure that they were alone
then lifted her off the ground (she was no light weight), held