Chapter IV: Book II: Three Potters (3)

She suddenly loathed him. That she had given him value received made her loathe him, and herself, the more. She shrank until she expected to hear her jewels rattle together, then raised her eyes again and flashed them about the house. She picked out twenty women in that glance who had sold their beauty for what their jewels represented, although, for the most part, they had the saving grace to be owned by gentlemen. But were they so much better off? Jones, at least, was now inoffensive in his manners and speech. Many gentlemen she knew were not, and one duke had a habit of catching her by the arm and leering into her crimsoning ear a horrid story. But that was not the point. What was the point? That women who married men for jewels and not for love were no better than the women of the street? Most women would have stopped there. It is a sentimental form of reasoning, eminently satisfactory to many women, and to some male novelists. But Ishbel had been born with a clear logical brain in which the fatal gift of humor was seldom dormant, and of late this brain had shown symptoms of impatience at neglect, muttered vague demands for recognition. Youth, a natural love of gayety, pleasure, splendor, reigning as a beauty, a laudable desire to help one’s family,—all very well—but—

Ishbel’s inner vision pierced straight down to the root (ornamentally overlaid) of the whole matter. The portionless woman, whether there was love between herself and her husband or not, was a property, a subject, an annex, nothing more, not even if she bore him children. Indeed, in the latter case she but proved the old contention that in bearing children she fulfilled her only mission on earth.

Ishbel had heard, as one hears of all civilized activities, of Woman’s Suffrage; this, too, passed in review before that search-light in her mind, and she wondered if the women asking for it dared to do so unless economically independent. She and Bridgit, when resting on their labors two years before,—a breathing spell in the grouse season,—had amused themselves in the library tracing the course of woman during those periods of the world’s history when she had been famous for her innings; and both had been struck by the fact that when nations were at peace and man enjoyed prosperity and comparative leisure, woman’s eminence and apparent freedom had been but her lord’s opportunity to display his riches and gratify the non-military side of his vanity. Only in a small minority of cases had this eminence and freedom been the result of self-support, inherited wealth, genius, or dynastic authority: the vast majority had been toys, jewel-laden henchwomen; even the great courtesans had been dependent upon their youth and charm and the caprice of man.

* * * * *

No wonder so few women had left an impress on history. How could any brain, even if endowed with true genius, reach the highest order of development while the character remained flaccid in its willing dependence upon the reigning sex? And man had despised woman throughout the ages, even when most enslaved by her, knowing that on him depended her very existence. He had the physical strength to wring her neck, and the legal backing to treat her as partner or servant, whichever he found agreeable or convenient. She and Bridgit had discussed this phenomenon philosophically but impersonally, it being understood that when they did give their brains exercise, it should not interfere with their youthful enjoyment of life; nor should the exercise continue long enough to become a habit; time enough for that sort of thing when one had turned thirty. But it occurred to Ishbel in these moments of painful clarity. She had not taken the least interest in Woman’s Suffrage, a movement under a cloud at this time, but she had a sudden and poignant desire to be independent, and a simultaneous conviction that no woman was worthy of anything better than being one of man’s miscellaneous properties until she were. What right had women, supported by men, living on their exertions or fortunes, displayed or used at their pleasure, tricking them by a thousand ingenious devices to gain their ends, to be regarded as equals, political or otherwise? The most democratic of woman employers, unless a faddist, did not regard her employees, particularly her servants, as equals; and yet they, at least, worked for their bread, were economically independent, could throw up their situations without scandal. Ishbel had twenty-three servants in her ugly Park Lane mansion, and in the bitterness of her humiliation she felt herself the inferior of the scullery maid. She opened her eyes wide, staring out upon the world through the glittering curtain before her. What an extraordinary world it was! How silly! How uncivilized! How incomplete! What might not women attain with complete self-respect, and how utterly hopeless was their case without it!

“What are you thinking about?” asked Mr. Jones, curiously. He had been watching her for some moments.

“That I ache with all these ridiculous jewels.” Ishbel stood up and walked deliberately to the back of the box. “I feel as if I were wearing an old-fashioned crystal chandelier. Will you kindly put my cloak on?”

Jones had risen (being well trained in the small courtesies), but he showed no intention of following her.

“Certainly not,” he said peremptorily. “Sit down. I wish you to remain here until it is time to go to the duchess’s ball—”

“I’m not going to the duchess’s ball. I’m going home.”

He stared at her, his long straight mouth opening slightly, and his heavy underjaw twitching. Like many millionnaires, self-made, he looked like a retired prize-fighter, and for the moment he felt as old gods of the ring must feel when brushed contemptuously aside by arrogant youth. This was the first time his wife had shown the slightest hint of rebellion, deviated from a sweetness and tact that was without either condescension from her lofty birth, or servility to his wealth. But there was neither sweetness nor tact in her small pinched face. Her mouth was as compressed as his own could be, and the expression of her eyes frightened him.

“What on earth’s the matter with you?” he asked roughly.

“I tell you I don’t like the idea of looking like an idol, a chandelier, a begum, what you will; of having on more jewels than any woman in the house; of looking nouveau riche, if you will have it. And I am tired and am going home to bed. You can come or not, as you like.”

She put on her cloak. Jones, swearing under his breath, but helpless, caught up his own coat and hat and followed her out of the house. But although he stormed, protested, even condescended to beg, all the way home, she would not utter another word, and when she reached her room, locked the door behind her.

X

THE next morning she sought Bridgit, having ascertained by telephone that her friend was alone. The Hon. Mrs. Herbert, although “masculine” only in so far as Nature had endowed her with a strong positive mind and character, physical and mental courage, and a disdain of all pettiness (the hypothetical masculine ideal), thought boudoirs silly, and called her personal room in South Audley Street a den. Not that it in the least resembled a man’s den. It was a long and narrow room on the first floor at the back of the house, and furnished with deep chairs and sofas covered with flowered chintzes, and several good pieces of Sheraton. She was known for her fine collection of remarque etchings, and the best of them were in this room. The large table was set out with reviews and new books, which she bought on principle, although she found time for little more than a glance at their contents. Her cigarette-box was of elaborately chased silver. Good a sportswoman as she was, she was not in the least “sporty,” being too well balanced and well bred to assume a pose of any sort. She was a woman of the world with many tastes, who was destined to have a good many more.

When Ishbel entered, she was walking up and down, her hands clasped behind her, her heavy black brows drawn above the brooding darkness below. She, too, was in an unenviable frame of mind.

Her brows relaxed as she saw Ishbel. “What on earth is the matter?” she exclaimed.

Ishbel, who had not slept but was quite calm, sat down and told her story.

“I don’t suppose you quite understand how I feel,” she concluded; “for you have always had your own fortune, have never even been dependent on your father. But of one thing I am positive: if you found yourself in my position, you would feel exactly as I do. So I have come to you to talk it out.”

“Of course I understand.” Bridgit turned her back and walked to the end of the room. She longed to add: “It is quite as humiliating to keep a husband as to be kept by one; rather worse, as tradition and instincts don’t sanction it.” But there are some things that cannot be said, save, indeed, through the offices of the pineal gland; and as Bridgit, on her return march, paused and looked down upon Ishbel, standing in an attitude of rigid defiance, with quivering, nostrils and fierce half-closed eyes, possibly her friend received a telepathic flash, for she exclaimed impulsively:—

“You are in trouble, too. What is it?”

“Trouble is a fine general term for my ailment. I’m merely disgusted, dissatisfied—on general principles. Possibly it’s the effect of reading Nigel’s book.”

“I haven’t had time to read it, but I’m so happy it has created a _furore_, and hope he’ll come back to be lionized. Odd he should write about the slums.”

“Not at all. The slums are always being discovered by bright young men, who, with the true ardor of the explorer, proceed to enlighten the world. Nigel—the story’s not up to much—but he has the genius of expression, and, having made the amazing discovery of poverty, communicates his own amazement that it should have continued to exist in civilized countries up to the eve of the twentieth century—and his horror at its forms. Some of his scenes are quite awfully vivid. But he’s no sentimentalist; he doesn’t call for more charities; he doesn’t even pity the poor; he despises them as they deserve to be despised for being poor, for their asininity in permitting and enduring. But he demands in their name, since the best of them are wholly incompetent as thinkers, that the educated shall favor a form of Socialism which shall not only provide remunerative employment for them, but compel them to work—grinding the idle, the worthless, the vicious to the wall, and training the new generation to annihilate poverty. Great heaven! What a disgrace it is—that poverty—to the individual, to the world, to the poor, to the rich. I never realized it until I read that book. Other ‘discoverers’ have put my back up. But Nigel is one of us; and when he sees it—and what a clear vision he has—”

“How splendid!” cried Ishbel, also forgetting her own trouble for the moment. “And to be able to write like that will help him to forget Julia—must make all personal affairs seem insignificant. Would that we all had such a solace!”

“Solace! We are both strong enough to scorn the word. But having been awakened, I should have no excuse if I went to sleep again. Nor you. I haven’t made up my mind what I’ll do yet, merely that I’ll do something. I’m sick of society. It’s a bally grind. Five years of it are enough for any woman with brains instead of porridge in her skull. I’m glad you’ve had a shock about the same time—should have administered it if you hadn’t. Of course I shall continue to hunt, and keep house for Geoffrey, and watch over my child, but all that uses up about one-tenth of my energies, and no more. What I’ll do, I don’t know. I’m floundering. Lovers are no solution for me. They’re démodés, anyhow. I’m after some big solution both elemental and progressive. Of course I shall begin with politics—by studying our problems on all sides, I mean, not having hysterics over the party claptrap of the moment. That and a hard course in German literature will tone my mind up. It’s all run to seed. The rest will come in due course. Tell me what you propose to do. But of course you’ve had no time to decide.”

“Oh, but I have. I’m going to open a milliner shop.”

“What?” Mrs. Herbert sat down.

“You may think me vain, but I _know_ that I can trim hats better than any woman in London.”

“Yes—of course. But Mr. Jones?”

“I think I can make him consent—advance me the money—by persuading him that it is a new fad with the aristocracy—I’ll point out to him several titles over shops in Bond Street.”

“You have an Irish imagination. He won’t hear of it.”

“I’m sure I can talk him over—”

“Besides, it isn’t fair. It will make no end of talk, and him ridiculous. If you go in for independence—and do, by all means—don’t begin your sex emancipation with the sex methods of second-rate women. Men are supposed to be direct, straightforward, above the petty wiles to which women have been compelled to resort since man owned them. They are not, but, being the ruling sex, have forced the world to accept them at their own estimate. Besides, they find the standard convenient. That it is a worthy standard, no one will dispute. At least if we women cannot be wholly truthful, we need not be greater liars than they are. And we can score a point by adopting the same standard. Tell Mr. Jones that you have decided upon independence, that if he doesn’t put up the money, I will; but don’t throw dust in his eyes—I doubt if you could, anyhow.”

“Would you really?”

“Of course I would. It would be great fun. But what is the rest of your program? Do you propose to leave him? To cook his social goose?”

“No, he has been too generous, whatever his motives. No girl has ever had a better time, and nothing can alter the fact that he has rescued my family from poverty. Even if he cut both daddy and myself off his pay-roll, Aleece and Hermione and Shelah are rich enough to take care of the rest. I have done my duty by the family! No, I am quite willing to occupy a room in his house, go to the opera with him, even to such social affairs as I have time and strength for—I really intend to work, mind you, and to start in rather a small way, that I may pay back what I borrow the sooner.”

“How you have thought it all out! I wish I had something definite in sight. I despise the women that merely fill in time with intellectual pursuits, and I’ll be hanged if I take to settlement work—the last resource of the novelist who wants to make his elevated heroine ‘do something.’ I must find my particular ability and exercise it. To work with you actively in the shop would be a mere subterfuge, as I don’t need money. But never mind me—When are you going to speak to Mr. Jones?”

“This afternoon. I wanted to talk it out with you first. We Irish _are_ extravagant. I was afraid I might have got off my base a bit.”

“The world will think you mad, of course. But that only proves how sane you are. I wish I could get together about a hundred women, prominent socially—merely because society women are supposed to be all frivolous—to set a pace. I assume that the average woman in any class is a fool, but there is no reason why she should remain one; and the exceptional women, of whom there must be thousands, only lack courage, initiative, a leader. By the way, what do you hear of Julia? I haven’t had a letter for two months.”

“They are to remain at Bosquith until the dissolution of Parliament, nursing their constituency. She is doing the lady-of-the-manor act, visiting among the poor, petting babies, and all the rest of it—but putting in most of her time with her beloved books. She rarely mentions France’s name.”

“Never to me. But I know from one of my aunts—Peg—that he’s too occupied getting back his health and pleasing the duke to drink or let his temper go. No doubt he’s making a very decent husband. It may last. But whether it does or not, I’m not going to let Julia go. She’s made of uncommon stuff and must become one of us.”

XI

IT was with some trepidation that Ishbel sought her husband in the library a few hours later, and, in spite of her resolve to “be square,” could not resist assuming her most ingratiating manner. Her eyes were full of witchery, her kissable mouth wore its most provocative curves. Anything less like an emancipated wife or a prospective business woman never rose upon man’s haunted imagination; and as for Mr. Jones, who had been waiting for an explanation of some sort, he thought that she had come to apologize, to confess to a passing hysteria, possibly to jealousy induced by the fact that the wife of one of the South African millionaires had worn a ruby the night before that was the talk of the town. Well, she should have a bigger one if the earth could be made to yield it up.

Mr. Jones returned home every afternoon at precisely the same hour, and to-day, having “smartened up,” was sitting in a leather chair near the window with a finance review in his hand, when Ishbel entered. He did not rise, but asked her if she felt better, indicated a chair opposite his own, and waited for her to begin. She should have her ruby, or whatever it was she wanted, but not until she was properly humble and asked for it.

Ishbel smiled into those eyes that always reminded her of shoe buttons, and said sweetly, “I was horrid, of course, last night—”

“You were. And it was extremely unpleasant for me at the ball. Nobody addressed me except to ask where you were. I felt like a keeper minus his performing bear.” His tone was not without bitterness.

“I am so sorry. But I could not go. I wanted to think.”

“Think? Why on earth should you think? You have nothing to think about; merely to spend money and look beautiful.”

Ishbel smiled again, showing her dimples. There was not an edge of her inflexible will visible in the beautiful hazel eyes that she turned full upon him. “Well, the fact remains that I did think. And this is the result: I wish to earn my living.”

His jaw dropped. He thought she had lost her mind.

“It is quite true, and I mean to do it. I find I don’t like living on any one. We’ve never pretended to love each other. If we did—well, I think I should have felt the same way a little later. As it is, I don’t find it nice, living on you—”

“You’re my wife!” thundered Mr. Jones. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’ve no right to be your wife—”

“You’ve been a damned long time finding it out—”

“Five years. Bridgit says I have an Irish imagination. I’ve worked it persistently for five years, and worked it to death. I not only persuaded myself that I was doing you a tremendous service, but that I was entirely happy in being young and having all the luxuries and pleasures and gayeties that youth demands. I am only twenty-four. Five years in one’s first youth is not so long a time for delusion to last—”

“Have you fallen in love?”

“Not for more than three hours at a time. Somehow, you all fall short, one way or another. I think I have fallen in love with myself. At all events I want an individual place in the world, and, as the world is at present constituted, the only people that are really respected are those that either inherit fortunes or abstract the largest amount of money from other people. Even birth is going out of fashion. It doesn’t weigh a feather in the scale against money.”

“You’re talking like a lunatic. I couldn’t have got into society with all my millions without you, or some one else born with a marketable title, and you know it.” Mr. Jones was so astonished that only plain facts lighted the chaos of his mind.

“All the same you are far more respected than my poor old father, who is a lineal descendant of the O’Neil. Even if people did not respect you personally,—and of course they do,—they all respect you far more than they do me. Who would look at me if I had married one of your clerks—birth or no birth? And who regards me, as it is, but anything more than one of your best investments? I am useful to you and pay my way, but I’m of no earthly importance as an individual. I haven’t even as good a position as Bridgit, who inherited a fortune, although a bagatelle compared to yours—”

“Is that what you’re after—a slice of my fortune in your own right?”

“No, I only want enough to start me in business, and I shall pay it back—”

“I’ll have you put in a lunatic asylum. What business do you fancy you could make a go in? Mine?”

“No. The French bourgeoisie are about the only people that have solved the sex problem: every woman in the shop-keeping class, at least, is her husband’s working partner. But financial brains are not indigenous to my class. If I had one, I’d make myself useful to you in the only way that counts, and charge you high for my services. But as it is, I’m going to do the one thing I happen to be fitted for—I’m going to be a milliner.”

“A milliner!” roared Mr. Jones. His face was purple. It was all very well to assume that his butterfly had gone mad; he had a hideous premonition that she was in earnest and as sane as he was. In fact, he felt on the verge of lunacy himself. He could hear his house of cards rattling about him.

“Yes,” said Ishbel, smiling at him, as she had always smiled when asking him to invite another of her sisters to visit them. “I can trim hats beautifully. My hats are noted in London—”

“They ought to be. The bills that come from those Paris robbers—”

“I retrim every hat I get from the best of them. And I’ve pulled to pieces the hats of some of the richest of my friends. They will all patronize me. I shan’t rob them, and I have at least fifty ideas for this season that will be original without being bizarre—hats that will suit individual faces and not be duplicated. Oh, I know that I have a positive genius for millinery!”

The purple fell from Mr. Jones’s face, leaving it pallid. He stared at her, not only in consternation, but in deeper perplexity than he had ever felt in his life. Probably there is no state of the masculine mind so amusing to the disinterested outsider as the chaos into which it is thrown by some unexpected revelation of woman’s divergence from the pattern. It has only been during those long periods of the world’s history, as Bridgit and Ishbel had discovered, when men were at war, that women, poor, even in their castles, with every faculty strained to feed and rear their children, and no society of any sort, often without education, have given men the excuse to regard them as inferior beings—physical prowess at such times being the standard. But men have had so many rude awakenings that their continued blindness can only be explained by the fact that a large percentage of women, while no idler and lazier than many men, have been able to flourish as parasites through the accident of their sex. During every period of comparative peace and plenty, women of another caliber have shown themselves tyrannous, active, exorbitant in their demands, and mentally as alert as men. If they disappeared periodically, it was only because they had not fully found themselves, had exercised their abilities to no definite end. A recent German psychologist, one of the maddest and most ingenious, discovered something portentous in such periodicity as he took note of: the prominence of woman in the tenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and again in the nineteenth and twentieth, assuming it to be the result of an excess of hermaphrodite and sexually intermediate forms, a state of affairs not unknown in the vegetable kingdom. Therefore, must woman’s periodic revolt mean nothing more than a biological phenomenon.

This theory would furnish food for much uneasiness were it not that the philosopher overlooked, deliberately or otherwise, the fact that woman’s star has flamed at some period or other in nearly every century, and that these periods have coincided with man’s ingenuous elevation of her to gratify his vanity while his chests were full and his weapons idle. Since the beginning of time, so far as we have any record of it, women have sprung to the top the moment that peace permitted wealth, leisure, and servants; and so far from their success being due to abnormality, their progress and development have been steadily cumulative. To-day, for the first time, they are highly enough developed to take their places beside men in politics, know themselves well enough to hold on, not drop the reins the moment the world’s conditions demand the physical activities of the fighting sex.

Although the great Woman’s Suffrage movement was, for the moment, in the rear of the world’s problems, thousands of women in England and America were thinking of little else, planning and working quietly, awaiting their leader. This psychological wave had washed over Ishbel’s sensitive brain and done its work quite as thoroughly as if she had gone to Manchester and sat at the feet of Dr. Pankhurst. It is the fashion to give Ibsen the credit of the revolt of woman from the tyranny of man, but that is sheer nonsense to any one acquainted with the history of woman. Ibsen was a symptom, a voice, as all great artists are, but no radical changes spring full fledged from any brain; they are the slow work of the centuries.

“Perhaps I should have put it another way,” said Ishbel. “I fancy the point is, not that the world respects you more for amassing wealth, but that you respect yourself so enormously for having won in the greatest and most difficult game that men have ever played. Diplomacy is nothing to it. That only requires brains and training. To coax gold from full pockets into empty ones and remain on the right side of the law, requires a magnetic needle in the brain, and is a distinct form of genius. Talk about riches not bringing happiness, I don’t believe there is a rich man living, even if he has only inherited his wealth, who does not find happiness in his peculiar form of self-respect, and in his contempt for the failures. If he has inherited, it is an achievement to retain, and when he has made his fortune, he must feel a bigger man than any king. Well, in my little way, I purpose to enjoy that sensation. And to make money, to accumulate wealth, is, I am positive, one of the primary instincts—if it were not, the world would have been socialistic a thousand years ago. But the secret desire in too many millions of hearts has prevented it—”

“My God!” roared Mr. Jones. “Have you got brains?”

“I hope so.” She smiled mischievously. “I couldn’t make money without them.”

“Suppose you had half a dozen children?”

“Of course, if I hadn’t thought it all out in time, I should bring them up first. But I feel sure the time will come when every self-respecting woman will want to be the author of her own income—when no girl will marry until she is.”

Mr. Jones looked and felt like the fisherman who has gone out in a sail-boat to catch the small edible prizes of the sea, and landed a whale.

“You never thought that all out for yourself,” he growled. “Where did you get it, anyhow?”

“Last night I realized that I had been learning unconsciously for years, and remembered everything worth while I had ever heard men and women talk about. After all, you know, clever men do talk to me.”

“Clever men are always fools about a pretty face.”

He got up and moved restlessly about the large room, too full of furniture for a man with big feet, and long awkward arms which he did not always remember to hold close to his sides. He longed for his punch bag. Ishbel smiled and looked out of the window.

“What in hell’s come over women?” he demanded. “I thought they only wanted love when they talked of happiness.”

“Oh, you’re like too many men—have got your whole knowledge of women from novels. Perhaps you even read the neurotic ones that are having a vogue just now. Wouldn’t that be funny! We women want many things besides love, we Englishwomen, at least; for we belong to the most highly developed nation on the globe. And we are the daughters of men as well as of women, remember. And we have heard the affairs of the world discussed at table since we left the nursery. That man doesn’t realize what he has made of us is a proof that he is so soaked in conventions and traditions that he is in the same danger of decay and submergence that nations have been when too long a period of power has made them careless and flaccid—and blind. We want love, but as a man wants it; enough to make us comfortable and happy, but not to absorb our whole lives—”

“What?” Mr. Jones swung round upon her, his little black eyes emitting red sparks. “That’s the most immoral speech I ever heard a woman make.”

“I shall keep faith with you,” said Ishbel, carelessly. “Don’t worry yourself. I’ve made a bargain with you and I shall stick to it, just as I shall be perfectly square in business. All I want is to be as much of an individual as you are, not an annex.”

Mr. Jones had an inspiration and resumed his seat. “Look here!” he said. “You say you play a square game, that you will live up to your contract with me; and marriage _is_ a partnership, by God! Well—if you go setting up for yourself, you injure my credit. I’m in a lot of things where credit is everything. Money (actual gold and silver) is not so plentiful as you think, and the greatest coward on earth. If there should be the slightest suspicion that I was unsound—”

“Why should there be? You will continue to live here in the same style, and I shall keep my rooms, and go about with you once or twice a week—even wear some of your jewels. What more could you ask?”

“What more?” Jones was purple again. “This: I didn’t marry to be made a laughing-stock of. Everybody’ll say I’m mean—”

“Not if you set me up. And you can get your good friend, _The Mart_, to say that I am ambitious to set a new style in fads—”

“There are some statements that no fool will swallow—let alone sharp business men in the City. Fad, indeed—when you will be standing on your feet all day in a milliner shop—unless—” hopefully—“you merely mean to put your name over the door to draw customers, and pocket the proceeds. That would be bad enough—but—”

“By no means. What possible satisfaction could I get out of making other people do what I want to do myself? You might as well ask an author if he would be content to let some one else write his books so long as he had his name on the title page and pocketed the profits. The joy of succeeding must lie in the effort, in knowing that you are doing something that no one else can do in quite the same way. I can be an artist even in hats, and I propose to be one.”

“And if I refuse you the capital?”

“Bridgit will lend it to me.”

“I am to be blackmailed, so!”

“What is blackmail?”

“As if a woman need ask! Every woman is a blackmailer by instinct. I suppose that if I won’t give you the money for this ridiculous enterprise, you will leave my house—ruin me socially, as well as financially?”

But Ishbel’s wits were far nimbler than his. “No,” she said sweetly, “I can never forget that I owe you a great deal. Whether you advance me the capital or not, I shall continue to live here, and entertain for you whenever I have time.”

The mere male was helpless, defeated. A month later his name was over a shop in Bond Street, and the success of the lady whose title preceded it was so immediate that he began to brag about her in the City. But he was by no means reconciled. His order of life, that new order in which he had revelled during five brief years, was sadly dislocated. Many husbands and wives are invited separately in London society, but he made the bitter discovery that when Ishbel was forced to decline an invitation for luncheon or dinner he was expected to follow suit. He could walk about at receptions or teas if he chose, but it became instantly patent that no woman, save those whose husbands were in his power, would see him at her table when she could get out of it. There were one or two new millionnaires in society that had achieved a full measure of personal popularity, and were sometimes asked without their wives, but Jones was hopelessly dull in conversation, and had a way of “walking up trains,” and knocking over delicate objects with his elbows. And then he was unpardonably ugly to look at; moreover, evinced no disposition to pay the bills of any woman but his wife. That was a fatal oversight on Mr. Jones’s part, but no one had ever been kind enough to give him a hint.

All this was bad enough, but in addition he perceived that while society patronized Ishbel’s shop, and pretended to admire or be amused, they had respected her far more when she was reigning as a beauty and spending her husband’s vast income as carelessly as the spoiled child smashes its costly toys. There is little real respect where there is no envy, and no one envies a working woman until she has made a fortune and can retire. Ishbel had dazzled the world with her splendid luck, added to her beauty and proud descent. It had called her “a spoiled darling of fortune,” a “fairy princess,” and such it had envied and worshipped. But she had stepped down from her pedestal; her halo had fallen off; she was no longer a member of the leisured class, haughty and privileged even when up to its neck in debt. Mr. Jones’s position in the City was not affected, for men knew him too well, but society suspected that his fortune was not what it had been, and that his wife wanted more money to spend, or was providing against a rainy day. If neither suspicion was true, then she was disloyal to her class, and a menace, a horrid example. Her personal popularity was unaffected, but her position was not what it was, no doubt of that, and the soul of Mr. Jones was exceeding bitter.

XII

LORD ROSEBERY’S government, despite the duke’s optimistic predictions, did not resign until June 24, consequently the general election was not fought until July, and during all this time Julia was kept at Bosquith; France, wholly amiable to his cousin’s wishes, stuck close to his borough. He had not a political dogma, cared no more for the Conservatives and Liberal-Unionists, than for Nationalists, Liberals, Radicals, and Socialists, and he had no intention of boring himself in Westminster save when his cousin required his vote. But he had planned a very definite and pleasant scheme of life, and the enthusiastic favor of the head of his house was essential to its success. He intended to re-let his own place in Hertfordshire, and live with the duke, both in London and in the country, until such time as his patience should be rewarded and the divine law of entail give him his own. He not only craved the luxury of the duke’s great establishments (as English people understand luxury), but, quite aware of the position he had forfeited among men, he was determined to win it back. Not that he felt any symptoms of regeneration, but the pride, which heretofore had raised him above public opinion, assumed a new form during his long convalescence, and prompted respectability and enjoyment of the social position he had inherited.

His cousin, although knowing vaguely that his heir had been “a bit wild,” and not as popular as he might be, was far too unsophisticated to guess the truth, and too surrounded by flatterers and toadies to hear what would manifestly displease him. Moreover, although France was under such strong suspicion of card cheating that no man would play with him, he had proved himself too clever to be caught, therefore had escaped an open scandal. He had twice avoided being co-respondent in divorce suits, once by shifting the burden on to the shoulders of a fellow-sinner, and once by securing, through a detective agency, such information that the wronged husband let the matter drop rather than suffer a counter-suit. But society was not his preserve. He was a man who had haunted byways where women were unprotected, and far from the limelight; and although there had been for twenty years the contemptuous impression that he was one of the greatest blackguards in Europe, that there was no villainy to which he had not stooped, he was, after all, little discussed, for he was much out of England, and, when off duty, went to Paris for his pleasures.

But although he had rather revelled in his dark reputation, he had now undergone a change of mind if not of heart. He had had a long draught of respectability, and of deference from his future menials and the several thousand good men in his constituency who had never heard of him before he came to Bosquith, as the convalescent heir of their popular duke, and won them by looking “every inch a man”; he had a young and beautiful wife with whom he was as much in love as was in him to love any one but himself, and in whom he recognized a valuable aid to his plan of social rehabilitation. Established in London as hostess of one of its oldest and most exclusive private palaces, with every opportunity to exercise her youthful charm (like the duke he despised brains in women), she would take but one season to draw about her a court anxious to stand well with the future Duchess of Kingsborough. And he was her husband. They could not ignore him if they would; and they would have less and less inclination, viewing him daily as a man ostentatioulsy devoted to his wife, taking his parliamentary duties very seriously indeed (he knew exactly the right phrases to get off), and living a life so exemplary and regular that his past would be dismissed with a good-natured smile (for was he not a future duke?), or openly doubted for want of proof. He knew that some people would never speak to him, others never invite him to their tables, although he might, with his wife and cousin, receive a card to their receptions; but, then, London society was very large, and he could endure the contempt of the few in the complaisance of the many.

His first quarry was the duke, already disposed to like him extremely, as they were the last males of their race, and latterly quite softened by certain sympathies and anxieties for his afflicted relative that had never infused his dry smug nature before. He was also one of those survivals that like anecdotes, and France, in his wandering life, had insensibly collected an infinite number. Naturally the most silent of men, he now made himself so agreeable that the duke, long companionless, himself suggested the permanent residence of the Frances under his several roofs, overrode all his cousin’s manly objections, and looked forward to a revival of the historic splendors of Kingsborough House with something like enthusiasm. France cemented the new bond when he appeared, as soon as his convalescence was over, at morning prayers, and even compelled the attendance of the rebellious Julia.

This alien in the great house of France detested family prayers. They were very long, the duke’s dull languid gaze travelled over his shoulder every time she sat when she should have knelt, and they came at an hour when she wanted to be on the moor or riding along the cliffs. But when she openly expressed herself, her husband, although he picked her up and kissed her many times, unobservant that she wriggled, replied peremptorily:—

“Not another word, my little beauty. To prayers you must go. It’s a rotten bore, but it’s the duty of a wife to advance her husband’s interests. Get our mighty cousin down on us, and we live in Hertfordshire all the year round.”

Although she hid the thought, Julia would have submitted to more than prayers to avoid living alone in a small house in the country with her husband. She had heard so much of duty during the last year (even her mother’s letters were full of it), that she had set her teeth in the face of matrimony, persuaded herself that France was no more offensive than other husbands, that hers was the common lot of woman, and, after reading Nigel’s book, that she was singularly fortunate in not having been born in the slums. But although she refused to admit to her consciousness a certain terrified mumbling in the depths of her brain, she did acknowledge that she no longer had the least desire for a child, and that she hated the scent of the pomade on her husband’s moustache. It was a pomade that had been fashionable for several years, and was used as sparingly as possible on France’s bristles; but lesser trifles have killed love in women, and Julia, frankly unloving, conceived an unconquerable aversion for this sickly scent; to this day it rises in her memory as associated with the abominable injustice that had been committed on her youth.

But she kept her mind and time fully occupied. She visited the sick, rode her good horse, and read until there was nothing left in the Bosquith library to satisfy her still insatiable mind. Then, for the first time, she realized that she had not a penny in her purse, had not had since her first few weeks in London. She made out a list of books she wanted, surmounted her diffidence, and asked her husband if she might order them from London. France, when she approached him, was smoking a pipe by the library fire, his cannon-ball head sunken luxuriously into the cushions of the chair, and his glassy eyes half closed. He pulled her down on his knee and read the list, then laughed aloud and pinched her ear.

“Never heard of one of these books, but they have an expensive look—wager not one of them costs under a pound. That would mean about ten pounds—by Gad! That would never do. I’m economizing and you must, too; for although we shall live with Kingsborough, we can’t expect him to pay for our clothes and all the rest of it. Besides, I don’t want an intellectual wife—had no idea you read such bally rot. Intellectual wives are bores, get red noses, and rims round their eyes. Jove! Think of those eyes gettin’ red and dim. I’d make a bonfire of all the books in England first. No, my lady, it’s your business to look pretty, and to remember a famous saying of our future king: ‘Bright women, yes; but no damned intellect.’ We want to have a rippin’ time as soon as Salisbury is in again, and I won’t have you frightenin’ people off.”

“I never supposed you would care so much for society,” said Julia, lamely. “I always think of you as a sailor.”

“I want what’ll be mine before long—what I’ve been kept out of long enough,” he answered savagely.

Julia was shocked. It was the first time he had betrayed himself, so anxious had he been for her good opinion, so careful not to excite himself with tempers until his heart was quite strong again. As she left his knee and turned her disconcerting eyes on him, he recovered himself with a laugh.

“I believe it’s all your mother’s fault. She told me it was your fate—by all the stars!—to be a duchess, and I don’t think I’ve got it out of my head since. But you know I’m devilish fond of my cousin—only one I’ve got, for those old hags don’t count. I’ll chuck such ideas, and—” his voice became sonorous with virtue—“think only of his kindness and of serving my country when my time comes.”

The time came in July, and he carried his borough almost without effort, so irresistible was the conservative reaction. He was not much of an orator, but not much was required of him. He made a fine appearance on a platform, and when, after a flattering introduction by the chairman, he stood up before a sympathetic audience, and between some scraps of party wisdom, furnished by the duke, doubled up his aristocratic hand and wedged it firmly into his manly thigh, and brought out in all its inflections: “Indeed, I _may_ say—Indeed, _I_ may say—Indeed, I may _say_—_Indeed_ I may say!” the applause was stupendous.

Julia, sitting behind him with the duke, had much ado not to laugh aloud, but, then, Julia was an alien, and had no appreciation of gentlemen’s oratory.

She had taken more interest in the wives of the voters, and been relieved to find that their poverty was rather picturesque than bitter—Nigel’s book had given her a profound shock—but had wept at some of the tales told by women that had relatives in London and the great manufacturing towns of the north. After France’s final triumph, when he had been carried back to Bosquith on the shoulders of several honest yeomen, followed by a cheering mob of several hundred more, she asked him impulsively (being electrified herself for the moment) if he might not serve his country best by making a crusade against poverty. But he looked at her in such genuine bewilderment that she dropped the subject.

XIII

TO France’s intense disgust Parliament met on August 12, that consecrated date when grouse are first hunted from their lairs. There was nothing for it, however, but to go up to London with the triumphant duke and sit on a bench through at least one hot hour each day. The rest of his hours he spent at his club, to avoid meeting his patriotic relative, and Julia, for the first time, found herself possessed of a certain measure of liberty. To be sure, she was several times caged in the House of Commons, and once slept above the peers, but for the most part she was left to herself, the duke almost forgetting her in the joy of his occasional chats in the lobby with Lord Salisbury, and the excitements provided by Mr. Chamberlain. He had neither hope nor wish for the onerous duties of a cabinet minister, but for many years politics had formed the only excitement of his rather colorless life; whether his party were in or out, he always managed to be of some slight use to it in the upper House. He was laughed at sometimes by the giants of his party, but on the whole regarded as a safe reliable man, and received doles of flattery to keep his enthusiasm alive.

Everybody was out of town except Ishbel, who was casting nets for the rich tourists, and Julia sat for hours in the gay little shop on the second floor of an old building in Bond Street, watching her friend with wide admiring eyes, and even envying her a little. This, however, she suppressed. She was to be a duchess, and that was the end of it. She would fill her high destiny to the best of her ability, but she wished that meanwhile she could earn a little money, or some unknown relative would leave her a legacy. France was still “economizing” and gave her no allowance; she literally had not money for cab fare. She was determined, however, never to ask him for money again, so deep had been her mortification when he had refused her simple request for books.

Parliament remained in session something over a month, being prorogued on September 15. The duke returned to Bosquith for the rest of the grouse season, opened his house in Derbyshire for the pheasant shooting, and went again to Bosquith for partridges and hunting. This time there were guests. Many of them were carefully selected from the most ardent supporters of the present Government; but Mrs. Winstone, who, deeply to her satisfaction, was invited to coach and assist the young chatelaine, was permitted to invite “a few younger people, but no really young people.” The duke was alive to the necessity of maturing his heir’s wife as rapidly as possible. The company was always an extremely distinguished one, as Mrs. Winstone took pains to impress upon the somewhat indifferent Julia; not the least exalted members of the Government honored the various parties, and a good many of the younger men accepted invitations which would force them into association with Harold France, partly to please Mrs. Winstone, partly out of curiosity, and principally because the duke’s shootings, always kept up but seldom placed at the service of guests, were famous. Julia, alive to her responsibilities, set her mind upon becoming an accomplished hostess, and although the everlasting talk of politics and sport bored her, she was rewarded with a few pleasant acquaintances, who in a measure consoled her for the temporary loss of Bridgit and Ishbel.

There was a fine old Jacobean mansion on the estate in Derbyshire, and Julia reminded herself that she was realizing a youthful dream, admired the brilliant appearance of the women at dinner, and went occasionally to the coverts. But the immense beautiful house had the more notable attraction of a fine library, and Julia’s happiness was further increased from October until the middle of February by the fact that she saw less of her husband than formerly. No more ardent sportsman breathed; he could kill all day, and when he came home at night was agreeably fatigued and ready for sleep. He was as much in love as ever, but it was long since he had been able to command all the pleasures of his class, and he meant to enjoy every good that came his way to the last nibble. No more methodical soul ever lived. Julia sometimes wondered if he were not a creature manufactured and wound up, like Frankenstein, rather than man born of woman, but it was long before she found the clew to his character.