CHAPTER II.

It was not often in the London season that Lady Perivale could taste the pleasures of solitude, a long evening by her own fireside, unbroken by letters, messages, telegrams, sudden inroads of friends breaking in upon her at eleven o'clock, between a dinner and a dance, wanting to know why she had not been at the dinner, and whether she was going to the dance, or dances, of the evening, what accident or caprice had eclipsed their star. But on this night of her return the visitor's bell sounded no more after Susan Rodney left her. The quiet of her house was so strange a thing that it almost scared her.

"I begin to understand what a leper must feel in his cavern in the wilderness," she said to herself with a laugh. "The thing is almost tragic, and yet so utterly absurd. It is tragic to discover what society friendships are made of—ropes of sand that fly away with the first wind that blows unkindly."

She pretended to dine, for the servants might have heard of the scandal, and she did not want them to think her crushed by unmerited slights. They, of course, knew the truth, since she had two witnesses among them to prove an alibi, Johnson the butler, and her devoted maid, Emily Scott.

She did not know that the first footman and the cook had both laughed off Johnson's indignant statement that his mistress had never left Porto Maurizio.

"You're not the man to give her away if she had gone off for a bit of a scamper. You and Miss Scott would look the other way when her boxes were being labelled."

"And she'd take a courier maid instead of Emily," said the cook. "After all, it's only finn der seecle."

"Why don't she marry him, and ha' done with it?" said the footman.

Butler and maid were goaded into a fury by talk of this kind, and it was only the force of esprit de corps, and the fact that James was six foot one, and a first rate plate-cleaner, that prevented Mr. Johnson sacking him on the instant.

"Did you ever know me tell a lie?" he asked indignantly.

"Or me?" sobbed Emily.

"Not on your own account," said the cook; "but you'd tell a good big one to screen your mistress."

"And so I might perhaps," said the girl, "if she wanted screening; but she don't, and, what's more, she never will."

"Well, all I can say is it's all over London," said James, "and it's made it very unpleasant for me at the Feathers, for, of course, I stand up for my lady in public, and swear it's a pack of lies. But here we're tiled in, and I'm free to confess I don't believe in smoke without fire."

They went on wrangling till bedtime, while Grace sat by the fire in the little drawing-room with her brown poodle lying on the lace flounces of her tea-gown, and tried to read. She tried book after book, Meredith, Hardy, Browning, Anatole France, taking the volumes at random from a whirligig book-stand, twisting the stand about impatiently to find a book that would calm her agitation, and beguile her thoughts into a new channel. But literature was no use to her tonight.

"I see it is only happy people who can read," she thought. She opened no more books, and let her mind work as it would. There had been sorrows in her life, deep and lasting sorrow, in the early death of a husband to whom she had been fondly attached, and in the previous loss of a father she had adored. But in spite of these losses, which had darkened her sky for a long time, her life had been happy; she had a happy disposition, the capacity for enjoyment, the love of all that was bright and beautiful in the world, art, music, flowers, scenery, horses, dogs—and even people. She loved travelling, she loved the gaiety of a London season, she loved the quiet of her Italian villa. Her childhood had been spent in a rustic solitude, and all her girlish pleasures had been of the simplest. The only child of a father who had done with the world when he read the burial service over his young wife, and who had lived in almost unbroken retirement in an East Anglian Rectory. He was a student, and could afford a curate to take the burden of parish work, in a sparsely populated parish, where distance, not numbers, had to be considered. He kept good horses, mounted his curate, and drove or rode about among his flock, and was beloved even by the roughest of them.

That girl-child was the one human thing he had to love, and he lavished love upon her. He taught her, trained her to appreciate all that is best in literature, yet kept her simple as a child, and thought of her as if she were still a child after her eighteenth birthday, and so was taken by surprise when Sir Hector Perivale, who had met her at friendly parties in the neighbourhood, came to him at the end of the shooting season, and asked to be accepted as her future husband.

He had offered himself to Grace, and Grace had not said no. Grace had allowed him to call upon the rector.

Mr. Mallandine looked up from his book like a man in a dream.

"Marry my Grace!" he cried. "Why, she has hardly done with her dolls. It seems only yesterday she was sitting on the carpet over there"—pointing to a corner of his library—"playing with her doll's-house."

"Indeed, rector, she is a woman, and a very clever woman. She gave me excellent advice the other day when we were threatened with a strike in the north. She has a better head for business than I have."

"That may be," said Mr. Mallandine, smiling at him. "But she is not old enough to be married."

"She will be nineteen on her next birthday, sir."

"What a pertinacious young man you are. Her next birthday is nearly a year off. She shall not take the cares of a husband and a household until she is twenty."

"That means two years, rector. What am I to do with myself all that time?" Sir Hector asked ruefully.

"Do as other young men do. Isn't there sport enough and travel enough for such as you? Go to Canada, to the North Pole, to the Pamirs, over the roof of the world. I thought no young man of spirit was satisfied till he had crossed the Pamirs, or shot lions in Bechuanaland."

"I have left off caring for such things since I have known Grace."

"Well, you'll have to possess your soul in patience. My daughter's girlhood belongs to me. Two years hence she will be a woman, and able to know whether she loves you well enough to live and die with you, or whether she only wants to be called my lady. It will be hard enough for me to part with her then."

"You shall not part with her, rector. You will have a son as well as a daughter. That will be the only difference."

"All prospective sons-in-law say the same thing. Come, Sir Hector, I don't want to be selfish. Grace has been the sunshine of my life ever since she and I were left alone in the world together. I want to see her happily married before I lay me down for the long sweet sleep; but I will not have her marry till she has had time to fall in love and out of love a good many times with the man who is to have the charge of her destiny."

There was no choice but to submit, since Grace thought as her father thought, so Sir Hector reconciled himself to a two years' engagement, but could but smile as he thought how brief need have been his probation had his choice fallen in the Mayfair marriage market.

Fate was on his side, after all. For a little more than half a year Grace and he were betrothed lovers, meeting under restrictions; and the rector had leisure to study his future son-in-law's character.

He found no evil in Hector Perivale, and he found much good—a warm heart, an honest, open disposition, pluck such as should go with good blood. It was quite true that Grace was the cleverer of the two, and could even give good advice in the difficulties between capital and labour, always in favour of concessions, yet always counselling a firm attitude when labour put on the aspect of an enemy, and refused to hear reason.

Then, one day, when it was least expected of him, the rector held out his hand to Sir Hector over their evening wine, and said—

"I believe you are a good fellow, Hector, and that you will make my Grace happy. Marry her as soon as you and she like—the sooner the better for me!"

"Oh, sir, this is indeed generous."

"No; it is only prudent. I told you I wanted to see my daughter happily married before I die. Well, when I was in London the other day I saw a specialist—at the advice of Ringston, here—and he told me my life is not quite so good as I thought."

"Oh, sir, I hope he was wrong."

"So do I, Hector. But I shall act as if I was sure he was right. There is nothing certain about his verdict—a man and a mortal disease may jog on for years together—so not a word to alarm Grace. I would not have the bright morning of her life clouded by fears about me. You can tell her that I admire your character so much that I want to secure you at once as my son-in-law. I shall only tell her to set about her trousseau."

Grace required a great deal of talking to, on her father's part and on Hector's, before she was reconciled to a speedy marriage. She was sure her father wanted her. He had not been looking well lately. He had left off those early morning rides which had been so delightful, and which she had often shared with him—those long scampers on the broad margins of greensward on the edge of the pine-woods, in the freshness of the new day. He let his groom drive for him, even his favourite cob, whose mouth no hand but his own had been allowed to control till lately.

Her father laughed off her fears.

"Did you think I was never going to be an old man, Gracie?"

"Not yet, father! Oh, not yet for a score of years. Why, it was only last summer everybody was telling me how young you looked—growing younger instead of older."

"That was last summer, Gracie. Où sont les neiges d'antan? Don't you know that when Time has seemed to stand still for ever so long, he seems to move on very fast all of a sudden? It is all only seeming. The sands are always falling, and the scythe is always moving—slow and sure, my love, slow and very sure. But I shall be a happy old man when I see my darling married to the man of her choice."

"If you call yourself an old man, I won't marry him," Grace said almost angrily. "If you are an old man, you want a spinster daughter to take care of you—and in that case I shall never marry."

He smiled at her with a touch of mournfulness. She would not have long to wait, perhaps, if she insisted on staying to the end.

After this he was careful to talk in a cheerful strain, and played his part so well that she left him for an Italian honeymoon without the faintest apprehension of evil—left him a gay and happy bride, going out into a beautiful world of which she knew nothing but East Anglia.

The whole of May was spent on the lakes—first Maggiore, and then Como. They stayed at Baveno, lived most of their life on the lake, and visited the three islands till they knew them by heart—the gardens, the palaces, the fishermen's huts, the caffes, the people, old and young, crones, children, boatmen, priests. Those island gardens in their glory of Maytime made a region of enchantment that even Grace's dreams over Rogers's Italy had never equalled. The facilities of travel, repetition, the crowding of tourists, may have cheapened these exquisite scenes; but to each of us on that first Italian journey they offer the same magic philter, the same revelation of a loveliness beyond our power of dreaming.

Then came Bellagio, Cadenabbia, Varenna, a leisurely tour of that still lovelier lake; and then, when June began and the days waxed hot, a quiet week at Promontogno, roaming in chestnut woods, driving up the hill to Soglio. Then to the cool breezes of the Engadine.

It was at Pontresina that a telegram came—one of those fatal messages that are opened so lightly, expectant of some trivial intelligence, and which bring despair—

"The Rector dangerously ill. Pray come home immediately.—Mary."

Mary was Mr. Mallandine's cook and housekeeper, an admirable person, not without considerable dignity, and a black silk gown for Sundays; but who had risen from the ranks, and was still only "Mary," as she had been when she was a kitchen-maid at seven pounds a year.

That hurried journey through the long June days was a never-to-be-forgotten experience. Sir Hector planned everything, so that not a minute should be lost. They left Pontresina at two in the morning in a carriage and four, and halted only to change horses; reached Coire in time for the express, and halted no more till they were at Victoria. Then across London to Liverpool Street, and then to the grey quiet of the Suffolk Rectory, in the second evening of their journey.

Grace was not too late. Her father lingered for nearly a month after her return, and all the consolation that last hours and fond words, mutual prayers, tears, and kisses, can give in the after time, were given to her. She never forgot those solemn hours, that sweet communion and confession of faith, her education for eternity. Never, perhaps, until those sad hours had she known how true a Christian her father was, or realized the perfect beauty of the Christian life and the Christian death.

She had further evidence of his goodness in the grief of his parishioners, to whom his bounty had been limited only by his means, life at the Rectory being planned with a Spartan simplicity, so as to leave the wider margin for the poor.

When all was over Sir Hector took his wife back to Switzerland; but not to the scenes where those evil tidings had found her. He was all the world to her now, and his heart was a fountain of tenderness. The bond between husband and wife was strengthened by Grace's sorrow. They lived alone in the loveliest places of the earth for more than a year, and then it was for Hector's sake that Grace took up the burden of life, and began her new duties as mistress of the house in Grosvenor Square, and the Castle in Northumberland. The town house had been refurnished while they were on their travels. All the ponderous early Victorian rosewood and mahogany had been swept into the limbo of things that were once thought beautiful. The chairs with curved backs and Brussels sprouts upon their gouty legs, the acres of looking glass framed in cabbage leaves, the loo-tables, and heavy valances shutting out the top-light of every window, all the draperies making for darkness, disappeared under the ruthless hand of improvement; and from the dust and shadow of a lumber-room filled by past generations, mirrors crowned with golden eagles, chairs with shield-shaped backs and wheatsheaf carving, were brought out into the light of day, and were deemed worthy.

"I wonder whether anybody will ever want the loo-tables and Victorian sideboards back again?" Grace said; but the upholsterer had provided against that contingency by carrying everything away, to be sold for firewood, he told Sir Hector, and a very small item on the credit side of his account was supposed to represent their value in that capacity.

Then began Grace Perivale's new phase of existence—a life of luxury that was as much a revelation as the loveliness of lakes and mountains, the blue of an Italian sky. She was only twenty, and she found herself almost a personage, one of the recognized beauties, who could not move without a paragraph. Her appearance on a tiara night at the opera, her diamonds, her frocks, her parties, her poodles were written about. All the lady journalists followed her movements with unflagging pens. She could not take up a newspaper, at least among those of the frivolous order, without seeing her name in it.

She laughed, was inclined to be disgusted, and made mock of the papers, but was not actually displeased. Even in East Anglia, after a round of tennis-parties in the gardens of neighbouring squarsons, in a district where almost everybody was a parson, and most of the parsons were land-owners and rich—even in those rural scenes she had discovered that people admired her; and then Sir Hector had come with his adulation, taking fire at her beauty as at a flame, and declaring that she was the loveliest girl in England. And at twenty to be called—even by irresponsible young women—a queen of Society, has its intoxication.

She plunged into the world of pleasure. Her husband was a member of all the pleasure clubs—Hurlingham, Sandown, and the rest. Had there been a hundred he would have belonged to them all. He was popular, and had scores of friends, and if Grace had been much less attractive, she would have been well received for Sir Hector's sake.

She caught the knack of entertaining, and her parties were pronounced right from the outset. She was open to advice from old hands, but had ideas of her own, and thought out the subject thoroughly. She imparted a touch of originality to the commonest things. Her dinner-table surprised with some flower that nobody else had thought of.

"I expect to see ferns and green frogs at your next dinner," said Mr. George Howard, famous in literature and politics, ultra Liberal scion of a Liberal house, and a great admirer of Lady Perivale's. "I don't think you can find anything new—short of frogs. They must have tiny gold chains to fasten them to the épergne, like the turtle that swim about under the jetty at Nice."

It was by the pleasantness and number of her parties that Grace established herself as an entertainer, rather than by their splendour. Who can be splendid in an age of African millionaires, of Americans with inexhaustible oil-springs? She did not vie with the oil and diamond people. She left them their proper element—the colossal. Her métier was to give small parties, and to bring nice people together. She studied every invitation as carefully as a move at chess. Her queen, her knights, her bishops—she knew exactly how to place them. The knights—those choicest pieces that move anyway—were her wits and brilliant talkers, the men whom everybody wants to meet, and who always say the right thing. Her queens were of every type; first the beauties, then the clever women, then the great ladies, dowagers or otherwise, the women whose social status is in itself an attraction.

She smiled when people praised her tact and savoir faire.

"I have so little to think about," she said; "no child, no near relations. And Hector spoils me. He encourages me to care for trivial things."

"Because he cares for them himself—if you call the pleasantness of life trivial. I don't. I call it the one thing worth thinking about. I could name a score of women in London who have all the essentials of happiness and yet their houses are intolerable."

Thus Mr. Howard, her self-appointed mentor. He went about praising her. Everybody wondered that a girl of twenty, who had been reared in a rural parsonage, could commit so few gaucheries.

"Few!" cried Howard, indignantly. "She has never been gauche. She is incapable of the kind of blunder Frenchmen call a gaffe. Some women are born with a feeling for society, as others are born with a feeling for art."

In Northumberland, as in London, Lady Perivale's success was unquestionable. Sir Hector's old chums—the shooting and hunting and fishing men—were delighted with his choice, and Sir Hector himself was in a seventh heaven of wedded bliss. One only blessing was denied him. Grace and her husband longed for a child on whom to lavish the overplus of love in two affectionate natures. But no child had come to them.

A child might have brought consolation in that dark season when, after three days and nights of acute anxiety, Grace Perivale found herself a widow, and more lonely in her wealth and station than women often are in that sad hour of bereavement.

Her father had been the last of an old Norfolk family in which only children were hereditary. She had neither uncles nor aunts. She had heard of remote cousinships, but her father had held but scantiest communion with those distant kindred, most of whom were distant in locality as well as in blood.