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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13288 ***
+
+[Illustration: "Look there, Doris--you see that path? Let's go on to
+the moor a little."]
+
+A Great Success
+
+By
+
+Mrs. Humphry Ward
+Author of "Eltham House," "Delia Blanchflower," etc.
+
+New York
+Hearst's International Library Co.
+1916
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"Arthur,--what did you give the man?"
+
+"Half a crown, my dear! Now don't make a fuss. I know exactly what
+you're going to say!"
+
+"_Half a crown!_" said Doris Meadows, in consternation. "The fare was
+one and twopence. Of course he thought you mad. But I'll get it back!"
+
+And she ran to the open window, crying "Hi!" to the driver of a
+taxi-cab, who, having put down his fares, was just on the point of
+starting from the door of the small semi-detached house in a South
+Kensington street, which owned Arthur and Doris Meadows for its master
+and mistress.
+
+The driver turned at her call.
+
+"Hi!--Stop! You've been over-paid!"
+
+The man grinned all over, made her a low bow, and made off as fast as he
+could.
+
+Arthur Meadows, behind her, went into a fit of laughter, and as his
+wife, discomfited, turned back into the room he threw a triumphant arm
+around her.
+
+"I had to give him half a crown, dear, or burst. Just look at these
+letters--and you know what a post we had this morning! Now don't bother
+about the taxi! What does it matter? Come and open the post."
+
+Whereupon Doris Meadows felt herself forcibly drawn down to a seat on
+the sofa beside her husband, who threw a bundle of letters upon his
+wife's lap, and then turned eagerly to open others with which his own
+hands were full.
+
+"H'm!--Two more publishers' letters, asking for the book--don't they
+wish they may get it! But I could have made a far better bargain if I'd
+only waited a fortnight. Just my luck! One--two--four--autograph fiends!
+The last--a lady, of course!--wants a page of the first lecture. Calm!
+Invitations from the Scottish Athenaeum--the Newcastle Academy--the
+Birmingham Literary Guild--the Glasgow Poetic Society--the 'British
+Philosophers'--the Dublin Dilettanti!--Heavens!--how many more! None of
+them offering cash, as far as I can see--only fame--pure and undefiled!
+Hullo!--that's a compliment!--the Parnassians have put me on their
+Council. And last year, I was told, I couldn't even get in as an
+ordinary member. Dash their impudence!... This is really astounding!
+What are yours, darling?"
+
+And tumbling all his opened letters on the sofa, Arthur Meadows rose--in
+sheer excitement--and confronted his wife, with a flushed countenance.
+He was a tall, broadly built, loose-limbed fellow, with a fine shaggy
+head, whereof various black locks were apt to fall forward over his
+eyes, needing to be constantly thrown back by a picturesque action of
+the hand. The features were large and regular, the complexion dark, the
+eyes a pale blue, under bushy brows. The whole aspect of the man,
+indeed, was not unworthy of the adjective "Olympian," already freely
+applied to it by some of the enthusiastic women students attending his
+now famous lectures. One girl artist learned in classical archaeology,
+and a haunter of the British Museum, had made a charcoal study of a
+well-known archaistic "Diespiter" of the Augustan period, on the same
+sheet with a rapid sketch of Meadows when lecturing; a performance which
+had been much handed about in the lecture-room, though always just
+avoiding--strangely enough--the eyes of the lecturer.... The expression
+of slumbrous power, the mingling of dream and energy in the Olympian
+countenance, had been, in the opinion of the majority, extremely well
+caught. Only Doris Meadows, the lecturer's wife, herself an artist, and
+a much better one than the author of the drawing, had smiled a little
+queerly on being allowed a sight of it.
+
+However, she was no less excited by the batch of letters her husband had
+allowed her to open than he by his. Her bundle included, so it appeared,
+letters from several leading politicians: one, discussing in a most
+animated and friendly tone the lecture of the week before, on "Lord
+George Bentinck"; and two others dealing with the first lecture of the
+series, the brilliant pen-portrait of Disraeli, which--partly owing to
+feminine influence behind the scenes--had been given _verbatim_ and with
+much preliminary trumpeting in two or three Tory newspapers, and had
+produced a real sensation, of that mild sort which alone the British
+public--that does not love lectures--is capable of receiving from the
+report of one. Persons in the political world had relished its plain
+speaking; dames and counsellors of the Primrose League had read the
+praise with avidity, and skipped the criticism; while the mere men and
+women of letters had appreciated a style crisp, unhackneyed, and alive.
+The second lecture on "Lord George Bentinck" had been crowded, and the
+crowd had included several Cabinet Ministers, and those great ladies of
+the moment who gather like vultures to the feast on any similar
+occasion. The third lecture, on "Palmerston and Lord John"--had been not
+only crowded, but crowded out, and London was by now fully aware that it
+possessed in Arthur Meadows a person capable of painting a series of La
+Bruyère-like portraits of modern men, as vivid, biting, and
+"topical"--_mutatis mutandis_--as the great French series were in their
+day.
+
+Applications for the coming lecture on "Lord Randolph" were arriving by
+every post, and those to follow after--on men just dead, and others
+still alive--would probably have to be given in a much larger hall than
+that at present engaged, so certain was intelligent London that in going
+to hear Arthur Meadows on the most admired--or the most
+detested--personalities of the day, they at least ran no risk of
+wishy-washy panegyric, or a dull caution. Meadows had proved himself
+daring both in compliment and attack; nothing could be sharper than his
+thrusts, or more Olympian than his homage. There were those indeed who
+talked of "airs" and "mannerisms," but their faint voices were lost in
+the general shouting.
+
+"Wonderful!" said Doris, at last, looking up from the last of these
+epistles. "I really didn't know, Arthur, you were such a great man."
+
+Her eyes rested on him with a fond but rather puzzled expression.
+
+"Well, of course, dear, you've always seen the seamy side of me," said
+Meadows, with the slightest change of tone and a laugh. "Perhaps now
+you'll believe me when I say that I'm not always lazy when I seem
+so--that a man must have time to think, and smoke, and dawdle, if he's
+to write anything decent, and can't always rush at the first job that
+offers. When you thought I was idling--I wasn't! I was gathering up
+impressions. Then came an attractive piece of work--one that suited
+me--and I rose to it. There, you see!"
+
+He threw back his Jovian head, with a look at his wife, half combative,
+half merry.
+
+Doris's forehead puckered a little.
+
+"Well, thank Heaven that it _has_ turned out well!" she said, with a
+deep breath. "Where we should have been if it hadn't I'm sure I don't
+know! And, as it is--By the way, Arthur, have you got that packet ready
+for New York?" Her tone was quick and anxious.
+
+"What, the proofs of 'Dizzy'? Oh, goodness, that'll do any time. Don't
+bother, Doris. I'm really rather done--and this post is--well, upon my
+word, it's overwhelming!" And, gathering up the letters, he threw
+himself with an air of fatigue into a long chair, his hands behind his
+head. "Perhaps after tea and a cigarette I shall feel more fit."
+
+"Arthur!--you know to-morrow is the last day for catching the New York
+mail."
+
+"Well, hang it, if I don't catch it, they must wait, that's all!" said
+Meadows peevishly. "If they won't take it, somebody else will."
+
+"They" represented the editor and publisher of a famous New York
+magazine, who had agreed by cable to give a large sum for the "Dizzy"
+lecture, provided it reached them by a certain date.
+
+Doris twisted her lip.
+
+"Arthur, _do_ think of the bills!"
+
+"Darling, don't be a nuisance! If I succeed I shall make money. And if
+this isn't a success I don't know what is." He pointed to the letters on
+his lap, an impatient gesture which dislodged a certain number of them,
+so that they came rustling to the floor.
+
+"Hullo!--here's one you haven't opened. Another coronet! Gracious! I
+believe it's the woman who asked us to dinner a fortnight ago, and we
+couldn't go."
+
+Meadows sat up with a jerk, all languor dispelled, and held out his hand
+for the letter.
+
+"Lady Dunstable! By George! I thought she'd ask us,--though you don't
+deserve it, Doris, for you didn't take any trouble at all about her
+first invitation--"
+
+"We were _engaged_!" cried Doris, interrupting him, her eyebrows
+mounting.
+
+"We could have got out of it perfectly. But now, listen to this:
+
+    "Dear Mr. Meadows,--I hope your wife will excuse my writing to you
+    instead of to her, as you and I are already acquainted. Can I induce
+    you both to come to Crosby Ledgers for a week-end, on July 16? We
+    hope to have a pleasant party, a diplomat or two, the Home
+    Secretary, and General Hichen--perhaps some others. You would, I am
+    sure, admire our hill country, and I should like to show you some of
+    the precious autographs we have inherited.
+
+                              "Yours sincerely,
+                                   "RACHEL DUNSTABLE.
+
+    "If your wife brings a maid, perhaps she will kindly let me know."
+
+Doris laughed, and the amused scorn of her laugh annoyed her husband.
+However, at that moment their small house-parlourmaid entered with the
+tea-tray, and Doris rose to make a place for it. The parlourmaid put it
+down with much unnecessary noise, and Doris, looking at her in alarm,
+saw that her expression was sulky and her eyes red. When the girl had
+departed, Mrs. Meadows said with resignation--
+
+"There! that one will give me notice to-morrow!"
+
+"Well, I'm sure you could easily get a better!" said her husband
+sharply.
+
+Doris shook her head.
+
+"The fourth in six months!" she said, sighing. "And she really is a good
+girl."
+
+"I suppose, as usual, she complains of me!" The voice was that of an
+injured man.
+
+"Yes, dear, she does! They all do. You give them a lot of extra work
+already, and all these things you have been buying lately--oh, Arthur,
+if you _wouldn't_ buy things!--mean more work. You know that copper
+coal-scuttle you sent in yesterday?"
+
+"Well, isn't it a beauty?--a real Georgian piece!" cried Meadows,
+indignantly.
+
+"I dare say it is. But it has to be cleaned. When it arrived Jane came
+to see me in this room, shut the door, and put her back against it
+'There's another of them beastly copper coal-scuttles come!' You should
+have seen her eyes blazing. 'And I should like to know, ma'am, who's
+going to clean it--'cos I can't.' And I just had to promise her it might
+go dirty."
+
+"Lazy minx!" said Meadows, good-humouredly, with his mouth full of
+tea-cake. "At last I have something good to look at in this room." He
+turned his eyes caressingly towards the new coal-scuttle. "I suppose I
+shall have to clean it myself!"
+
+Doris laughed again--this time almost hysterically--but was checked by a
+fresh entrance of Jane, who, with an air of defiance, deposited a heavy
+parcel on a chair beside her mistress, and flounced out again.
+
+"What is this?" said Doris in consternation. "_Books_? More books?
+Heavens, Arthur, what have you been ordering now! I couldn't sleep last
+night for thinking of the book-bills."
+
+"You little goose! Of course, I must buy books! Aren't they my tools, my
+stock-in-trade? Haven't these lectures justified the book-bills a dozen
+times over?"
+
+This time Arthur Meadows surveyed his wife in real irritation and
+disgust.
+
+"But, Arthur!--you could get them _all_ at the London Library--you know
+you could!"
+
+"And pray how much time do I waste in going backwards and forwards after
+books? Any man of letters worth his salt wants a library of his
+own--within reach of his hand."
+
+"Yes, if he can pay for it!" said Doris, with plaintive emphasis, as she
+ruefully turned over the costly volumes which the parcel contained.
+
+"Don't fash yourself, my dear child! Why, what I'm getting for the Dizzy
+lecture is alone nearly enough to pay all the book bills."
+
+"It isn't! And just think of all the others! Well--never mind!"
+
+Doris's protesting mood suddenly collapsed. She sat down on a stool
+beside her husband, rested her elbow on his knee, and, chin in hand,
+surveyed him with a softened countenance. Doris Meadows was not a
+beauty; only pleasant-faced, with good eyes, and a strong, expressive
+mouth. Her brown hair was perhaps her chief point, and she wore it
+rippled and coiled so as to set off a shapely head and neck. It was
+always a secret grievance with her that she had so little positive
+beauty. And her husband had never flattered her on the subject. In the
+early days of their marriage she had timidly asked him, after
+one of their bridal dinner-parties in which she had worn her
+wedding-dress--"Did I look nice to-night? Do you--do you ever think I
+look pretty, Arthur?" And he had looked her over, with an odd change of
+expression--careless affection passing into something critical and
+cool:--"I'm never ashamed of you, Doris, in any company. Won't you be
+satisfied with that?" She had been far from satisfied; the phrase had
+burnt in her memory from then till now. But she knew Arthur had not
+meant to hurt her, and she bore him no grudge. And, by now, she was too
+well acquainted with the rubs and prose of life, too much occupied with
+house-books, and rough servants, and the terror of an overdrawn account,
+to have any time or thought to spare to her own looks. Fortunately she
+had an instinctive love for neatness and delicacy; so that her little
+figure, besides being agile and vigorous--capable of much dignity too on
+occasion--was of a singular trimness and grace in all its simple
+appointments. Her trousseau was long since exhausted, and she rarely had
+a new dress. But slovenly she could not be.
+
+It was the matter of a new dress which was now indeed running in her
+mind. She took up Lady Dunstable's letter, and read it pensively through
+again.
+
+"You can accept for yourself, Arthur, of course," she said, looking up.
+"But I can't possibly go."
+
+Meadows protested loudly.
+
+"You have no excuse at all!" he declared hotly. "Lady Dunstable has
+given us a month's notice. You _can't_ get out of it. Do you want me to
+be known as a man who accepts smart invitations without his wife? There
+is no more caddish creature in the world."
+
+Doris could not help smiling upon him. But her mouth was none the less
+determined.
+
+"I haven't got a single frock that's fit for Crosby Ledgers. And I'm not
+going on tick for a new one!"
+
+"I never heard anything so absurd! Shan't we have more money in a few
+weeks than we've had for years?"
+
+"I dare say. It's all wanted. Besides, I have my work to finish."
+
+"My dear Doris!"
+
+A slight red mounted in Doris's cheeks.
+
+"Oh, you may be as scornful as you like! But ten pounds is ten pounds,
+and I like keeping engagements."
+
+The "work" in question meant illustrations for a children's book. Doris
+had accepted the commission with eagerness, and had been going regularly
+to the Campden Hill studio of an Academician--her mother's brother--who
+was glad to supply her with some of the "properties" she wanted for her
+drawings.
+
+"I shall soon not allow you to do anything of the kind," said Meadows
+with decision.
+
+"On the contrary! I shall always take paid work when I can get it," was
+the firm reply--"unless--"
+
+"Unless what?"
+
+"You know," she said quietly. Meadows was silent a moment, then reached
+out for her hand, which she gave him. They had no children; and, as he
+well knew, Doris pined for them. The look in her eyes when she nursed
+her friends' babies had often hurt him. But after all, why despair? It
+was only four years from their wedding day.
+
+But he was not going to be beaten in the matter of Crosby Ledgers. They
+had a long and heated discussion, at the end of which Doris surrendered.
+
+"Very well! I shall have to spend a week in doing up my old black gown,
+and it will be a botch at the end of it. But--_nothing--will induce
+me_--to get a new one!"
+
+She delivered this ultimatum with her hands behind her, a defeated, but
+still resolute young person. Meadows, having won the main battle, left
+the rest to Providence, and went off to his "den" to read all his
+letters through once more--agreeable task!--and to write a note of
+acceptance to the Home Secretary, who had asked him to luncheon. Doris
+was not included in the invitation. "But anybody may ask a husband--or a
+wife--to lunch, separately. That's understood. I shan't do it often,
+however--that I can tell them!" And justified by this Spartan temper as
+to the future, he wrote a charming note, accepting the delights of the
+present, so full of epigram that the Cabinet Minister to whom it was
+addressed had no sooner read it than he consigned it instanter to his
+wife's collection of autographs.
+
+Meanwhile Doris was occupied partly in soothing the injured feelings of
+Jane, and partly in smoothing out and inspecting her one evening frock.
+She decided that it would take her a week to "do it up," and that she
+would do it herself. "A week wasted!" she thought--"and all for nothing.
+What do we want with Lady Dunstable! She'll flatter Arthur, and make him
+lazy. They all do! And I've no use for her at all. _Maid_ indeed! Does
+she think nobody can exist without that appendage? How I should like to
+make her live on four hundred a year, with a husband that will spend
+seven!"
+
+She stood, half amused, half frowning, beside the bed on which lay her
+one evening frock. But the frown passed away, effaced by an expression
+much softer and tenderer than anything she had allowed Arthur to see of
+late. Of course she delighted in Arthur's success; she was proud,
+indeed, through and through. Hadn't she always known that he had this
+gift, this quick, vivacious power of narrative, this genius--for it was
+something like it--for literary portraiture? And now at last the
+stimulus had come--and the opportunity with it. Could she ever forget
+the anxiety of the first lecture--the difficulty she had had in making
+him finish it--his careless, unbusiness-like management of the whole
+affair? But then had come the burst of praise and popularity; and
+Arthur was a new man. No difficulty--or scarcely--in getting him to work
+since then! Applause, so new and intoxicating, had lured him on, as she
+had been wont to lure the black pony of her childhood with a handful of
+sugar. Yes, her Arthur was a genius; she had always known it. And
+something of a child too--lazy, wilful, and sensuous--that, too, she had
+known for some time. And she loved him with all her heart.
+
+"But I won't have him spoilt by those fine ladies!" she said to herself,
+with frowning clear-sightedness. "They make a perfect fool of him. Now,
+then, I'd better write to Lady Dunstable. Of course she ought to have
+written to me!"
+
+So she sat down and wrote:
+
+    Dear Lady Dunstable,--We have much pleasure in accepting your kind
+    invitation, and I will let you know our train later. I have no maid,
+    so--
+
+But at this point Mrs. Meadows, struck by a sudden idea, threw down her
+pen.
+
+"Heavens!--suppose I took Jane? Somebody told me the other day that
+nobody got any attention at Crosby Ledgers without a maid. And it might
+bribe Jane into staying. I should feel a horrid snob--but it would be
+rather fun--especially as Lady Dunstable will certainly be immensely
+surprised. The fare would be only about five shillings--Jane would get
+her food for two days at the Dunstables' expense--and I should have a
+friend. I'll do it."
+
+So, with her eyes dancing, Doris tore up her note, and began again:
+
+    Dear Lady Dunstable,--We have much pleasure in accepting your kind
+    invitation, and I will let you know our train later. As you kindly
+    permit me, I will bring a maid.
+
+                              Yours sincerely,
+                                   DORIS MEADOWS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The month which elapsed between Lady Dunstable's invitation and the
+Crosby Ledgers party was spent by Doris first in "doing up" her frock,
+and then in taking the bloom off it at various dinner-parties to which
+they were already invited as the "celebrities" of the moment; in making
+Arthur's wardrobe presentable; in watching over the tickets and receipts
+of the weekly lectures; in collecting the press cuttings about them; in
+finishing her illustrations; and in instructing the awe-struck Jane, now
+perfectly amenable, in the mysteries that would be expected of her.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Meadows heard various accounts from artistic and literary
+friends of the parties at Crosby Ledgers. These accounts were generally
+prefaced by the laughing remark, "But anything _I_ can say is ancient
+history. Lady Dunstable dropped us long ago!"
+
+Anyway, it appeared that the mistress of Crosby Ledgers could be
+charming, and could also be exactly the reverse. She was a creature of
+whims and did precisely as she pleased. Everything she did apparently
+was acceptable to Lord Dunstable, who admired her blindly. But in one
+point at least she was a disappointed woman. Her son, an unsatisfactory
+youth of two-and-twenty, was seldom to be seen under his parents' roof,
+and it was rumoured that he had already given them a great deal of
+trouble.
+
+"The dreadful thing, my dear, is the _games_ they play!" said the wife
+of a dramatist, whose one successful piece had been followed by years of
+ill-fortune.
+
+"_Games?_" said Doris. "Do you mean cards--for money?"
+
+"Oh, dear no! Intellectual games. _Bouts-rimés;_ translations--Lady
+Dunstable looks out the bits and some people think the
+words--beforehand; paragraphs on a subject--in a particular
+style--Pater's, or Ruskin's, or Carlyle's. Each person throws two slips
+into a hat. On one you write the subject, on another the name of the
+author whose style is to be imitated. Then you draw. Of course Lady
+Dunstable carries off all the honours. But then everybody believes she
+spends all the mornings preparing these things. She never comes down
+till nearly lunch."
+
+"This is really appalling!" said Doris, with round eyes. "I have
+forgotten everything I ever knew."
+
+As for her own impressions of the great lady, she had only seen her once
+in the semi-darkness of the lecture-room, and could only remember a
+long, sallow face, with striking black eyes and a pointed chin, a
+general look of distinction and an air of one accustomed to the "chief
+seat" at any board--whether the feasts of reason or those of a more
+ordinary kind.
+
+As the days went on, Doris, for all her sturdy self-reliance, began to
+feel a little nervous inwardly. She had been quite well-educated, first
+at a good High School, and then in the class-rooms of a provincial
+University; and, as the clever daughter of a clever doctor in large
+practice, she had always been in touch with the intellectual world,
+especially on its scientific side. And for nearly two years before her
+marriage she had been a student at the Slade School. But since her
+imprudent love-match with a literary man had plunged her into the
+practical work of a small household, run on a scanty and precarious
+income, she had been obliged, one after another, to let the old
+interests go. Except the drawing. That was good enough to bring her a
+little money, as an illustrator, designer of Christmas cards, etc.; and
+she filled most of her spare time with it.
+
+But now she feverishly looked out some of her old books--Pater's
+"Studies," a volume of Huxley's Essays, "Shelley" and "Keats" in the
+"Men of Letters" series. She borrowed two or three of the political
+biographies with which Arthur's shelves were crowded, having all the
+while, however, the dispiriting conviction that Lady Dunstable had been
+dandled on the knees of every English Prime Minister since her birth,
+and had been the blood relation of all of them, except perhaps Mr. G.,
+whose blood no doubt had not been blue enough to entitle him to the
+privilege.
+
+However, she must do her best. She kept these feelings and preparations
+entirely secret from Arthur, and she saw the day of the visit dawn in a
+mood of mingled expectation and revolt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+It was a perfect June evening: Doris was seated on one of the spreading
+lawns of Crosby Ledgers,--a low Georgian house, much added to at various
+times, and now a pleasant medley of pillared verandahs, tiled roofs,
+cupolas, and dormer windows, apparently unpretending, but, as many
+people knew, one of the most luxurious of English country houses.
+
+Lady Dunstable, in a flowing dress of lilac crêpe and a large black hat,
+had just given Mrs. Meadows a second cup of tea, and was clearly doing
+her duty--and showing it--to a guest whose entertainment could not be
+trusted to go of itself. The only other persons at the tea-table--the
+Meadowses having arrived late--were an elderly man with long Dundreary
+whiskers, in a Panama hat and a white waistcoat, and a lady of uncertain
+age, plump, kind-eyed, and merry-mouthed, in whom Doris had at once
+divined a possible harbour of refuge from the terrors of the situation.
+Arthur was strolling up and down the lawn with the Home Secretary,
+smoking and chatting--talking indeed nineteen to the dozen, and entirely
+at his ease. A few other groups were scattered over the grass; while
+girls in white dresses and young men in flannels were playing tennis in
+the distance. A lake at the bottom of the sloping garden made light and
+space in a landscape otherwise too heavily walled in by thick woodland.
+White swans floated on the lake, and the June trees beyond were in their
+freshest and proudest leaf. A church tower rose appropriately in a
+corner of the park, and on the other side of the deer-fence beyond the
+lake a herd of red deer were feeding. Doris could not help feeling as
+though the whole scene had been lately painted for a new "high life"
+play at the St. James's Theatre, and she half expected to see Sir George
+Alexander walk out of the bushes.
+
+"I suppose, Mrs. Meadows, you have been helping your husband with his
+lectures?" said Lady Dunstable, a little languidly, as though the heat
+oppressed her. She was making play with a cigarette and her half-shut
+eyes were fixed on the "lion's" wife. The eyes fascinated Doris. Surely
+they were artificially blackened, above and below? And the lips--had art
+been delicately invoked, or was Nature alone responsible?
+
+"I copy things for Arthur," said Doris. "Unfortunately, I can't type."
+
+At the sound of the young and musical voice, the gentleman with the
+Dundreary whiskers--Sir Luke Malford--who had seemed half asleep, turned
+sharply to look at the speaker. Doris too was in a white dress, of the
+simplest stuff and make; but it became her. So did the straw hat, with
+its wreath of wild roses, which she had trimmed herself that morning.
+There was not the slightest visible sign of tremor in the young woman;
+and Sir Luke's inner mind applauded her.
+
+"No fool!--and a lady," he thought. "Let's see what Rachel will make of
+her."
+
+"Then you don't help him in the writing?" said Lady Dunstable, still
+with the same detached air. Doris laughed.
+
+"I don't know what Arthur would say if I proposed it. He never lets
+anybody go near him when he's writing."
+
+"I see; like all geniuses, he's dangerous on the loose." Was Lady
+Dunstable's smile just touched with sarcasm? "Well!--has the success of
+the lectures surprised you?"
+
+Doris pondered.
+
+"No," she said at last, "not really. I always thought Arthur had it in
+him."
+
+"But you hardly expected such a run--such an excitement!"
+
+"I don't know," said Doris, coolly. "I think I did--sometimes. The
+question is how long it will last."
+
+She looked, smiling, at her interrogator.
+
+The gentleman with the whiskers stooped across the table.
+
+"Oh, nothing lasts in this world. But that of course is what makes a
+good time so good."
+
+Doris turned towards him--demurring--for the sake of conversation. "I
+never could understand how Cinderella enjoyed the ball."
+
+"For thinking of the clock?" laughed Sir Luke. "No, no!--you can't mean
+that. It's the expectation of the clock that doubles the pleasure. Of
+course you agree, Rachel!"--he turned to her--"else why did you read me
+that very doleful poem yesterday, on this very theme?--that it's only
+the certainty of death that makes life agreeable? By the way, George
+Eliot had said it before!"
+
+"The poem was by a friend of mine," said Lady Dunstable, coldly. "I read
+it to you to see how it sounded. But I thought it poor stuff."
+
+"How unkind of you! The man who wrote it says he lives upon your
+friendship."
+
+"That, perhaps, is why he's so thin."
+
+Sir Luke laughed again.
+
+"To be sure, I saw the poor man--after you had talked to him the other
+night--going to Dunstable to be consoled. Poor George! he's always
+healing the wounds you make."
+
+"Of course. That's why I married him. George says all the civil things.
+That sets me free to do the rude ones."
+
+"Rachel!" The exclamation came from the plump lady opposite, who was
+smiling broadly, and showing some very white teeth. A signal passed from
+her eyes to those of Doris, as though to say "Don't be alarmed!"
+
+But Doris was not at all alarmed. She was eagerly watching Lady
+Dunstable, as one watches for the mannerisms of some well-known
+performer. Sir Luke perceived it, and immediately began to show off his
+hostess by one of the sparring matches that were apparently frequent
+between them. They fell to discussing a party of guests--landowners from
+a neighbouring estate--who seemed to have paid a visit to Crosby Ledgers
+the day before. Lady Dunstable had not enjoyed them, and her tongue on
+the subject was sharpness itself, restrained by none of the ordinary
+compunctions. "Is this how she talks about all her guests--on Monday
+morning?" thought Doris, with quickened pulse as the biting sentences
+flew about.
+
+... "Mr. Worthing? Why did he marry her? Oh, because he wanted a stuffed
+goose to sit by the fire while he went out and amused himself.... Why
+did she marry him? Ah, that's more difficult to answer. Is one obliged
+to credit Mrs. Worthing with any reasons--on any subject? However, I
+like Mr. Worthing--he's what men ought to be."
+
+"And that is--?" Doris ventured to put in.
+
+"Just--men," said Lady Dunstable, shortly.
+
+Sir Luke laughed over his cigarette.
+
+"That you may fool them? Well, Rachel, all the same, you would die of
+Worthing's company in a month."
+
+"I shouldn't die," said Lady Dunstable, quietly. "I should murder."
+
+"Hullo, what's my wife talking about?" said a bluff and friendly voice.
+Doris looked up to see a handsome man with grizzled hair approaching.
+
+"Mrs. Meadows? How do you do? What a beautiful evening you've brought!
+Your husband and I have been having a jolly talk. My word!--he's a
+clever chap. Let me congratulate you on the lectures. Biggest success
+known in recent days!"
+
+Doris beamed upon her host, well pleased, and he settled down beside
+her, doing his kind best to entertain her. In him, all those protective
+feelings towards a stranger, in which his wife appeared to be
+conspicuously lacking, were to be discerned on first acquaintance. Doris
+was practically sure that his inner mind was thinking--"Poor little
+thing!--knows nobody here. Rachel's been scaring her. Must look after
+her!"
+
+And look after her he did. He was by no means an amusing companion.
+Lazy, gentle, and ineffective, Doris quickly perceived that he was
+entirely eclipsed by his wife, who, now that she was relieved of Mrs.
+Meadows, was soon surrounded by a congenial company--the Home Secretary,
+one or two other politicians, the old General, a literary Dean, Lord
+Staines, a great racing man, Arthur Meadows, and one or two more. The
+talk became almost entirely political--with a dash of literature. Doris
+saw at once that Lady Dunstable was the centre of it, and she was not
+long in guessing that it was for this kind of talk that people came to
+Crosby Ledgers. Lady Dunstable, it seemed, was capable of talking like a
+man with men, and like a man of affairs with the men of affairs. Her
+political knowledge was astonishing; so, evidently, was her background
+of family and tradition, interwoven throughout with English political
+history. English statesmen had not only dandled her, they had taught
+her, walked with her, written to her, and--no doubt--flirted with her.
+Doris, as she listened to her, disliked her heartily, and at the same
+time could not help being thrilled by so much knowledge, so much contact
+with history in the making, and by such a masterful way, in a woman,
+with the great ones of the earth. "What a worm she must think me!"
+thought Doris--"what a worm she _does_ think me--and the likes of me!"
+
+At the same time, the spectator must needs admit there was something
+else in Lady Dunstable's talk than mere intelligence or mere
+mannishness. There was undoubtedly something of "the good fellow," and,
+through all her hard hitting, a curious absence--in conversation--of the
+personal egotism she was quite ready to show in all the trifles of life.
+On the present occasion her main object clearly was to bring out Arthur
+Meadows--the new captive of her bow and spear; to find out what was in
+him; to see if he was worthy of her inner circle. Throwing all
+compliment aside, she attacked him hotly on certain statements--certain
+estimates--in his lectures. Her knowledge was personal; the knowledge of
+one whose father had sat in Dizzy's latest Cabinet, while, through the
+endless cousinship of the English landed families, she was as much
+related to the Whig as to the Tory leaders of the past. She talked
+familiarly of "Uncle This" or "Cousin That," who had been apparently the
+idols of her nursery before they had become the heroes of England; and
+Meadows had much ado to defend himself against her store of anecdote and
+reminiscence. "Unfair!" thought Doris, breathlessly watching the contest
+of wits. "Oh, if she weren't a woman, Arthur could easily beat her!"
+
+But she was a woman, and not at all unwilling, when hard pressed, to
+take advantage of that fact.
+
+All the same, Meadows was stirred to most unwonted efforts. He proved to
+be an antagonist worth her steel; and Doris's heart swelled with secret
+pride as she saw how all the other voices died down, how more and more
+people came up to listen, even the young men and maidens,--throwing
+themselves on the grass, around the two disputants. Finally Lady
+Dunstable carried off the honours. Had she not seen Lord Beaconsfield
+twice during the fatal week of his last general election, when England
+turned against him, when his great rival triumphed, and all was lost?
+Had he not talked to her, as great men will talk to the young and
+charming women whose flatteries soften their defeats; so that, from the
+wings, she had seen almost the last of that well-graced actor, caught
+his last gestures and some of his last words?
+
+"Brava, brava!" said Meadows, when the story ceased, although it had
+been intended to upset one of his own most brilliant generalisations;
+and a sound of clapping hands went round the circle. Lady Dunstable, a
+little flushed and panting, smiled and was silent. Meadows, meanwhile,
+was thinking--"How often has she told that tale? She has it by heart.
+Every touch in it has been sharpened a dozen times. All the same--a
+wonderful performance!"
+
+Lord Dunstable, meanwhile, sat absolutely silent, his hat on the back
+of his head, his attention fixed on his wife. As the group broke up, and
+the chairs were pushed back, he said in Doris's ear--"Isn't she an
+awfully clever woman, my wife?"
+
+Before Doris could answer, she heard Lady Dunstable carelessly--but none
+the less peremptorily--inviting her women guests to see their rooms.
+Doris walked by her hostess's side towards the house. Every trace of
+animation and charm had now vanished from that lady's manner. She was as
+languid and monosyllabic as before, and Doris could only feel once again
+that while her clever husband was an eagerly welcomed guest, she herself
+could only expect to reckon as his appendage--a piece of family luggage.
+
+Lady Dunstable threw open the door of a spacious bedroom. "No doubt you
+will wish to rest till dinner," she said, severely. "And of course your
+maid will ask for what she wants." At the word "maid," did Doris dream
+it, or was there a satiric gleam in the hard black eyes? "Pretender," it
+seemed to say--and Doris's conscience admitted the charge.
+
+And indeed the door had no sooner closed on Lady Dunstable before an
+agitated knock announced Jane--in tears.
+
+She stood opposite her mistress in desperation.
+
+"Please, ma'am--I'll have to have an evening dress--or I can't go in to
+supper!"
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" said Doris, staring at her.
+
+"Every maid in this 'ouse, ma'am, 'as got to dress for supper. The maids
+go in the 'ousekeeper's room, an' they've all on 'em got dresses
+V-shaped, or cut square, or something. This black dress, ma'am, won't do
+at all. So I can't have no supper. I couldn't dream, ma'am, of goin' in
+different to the others!"
+
+"You silly creature!" said Doris, springing up. "Look here--I'll lend
+you my spare blouse. You can turn it in at the neck, and wear my white
+scarf. You'll be as smart as any of them!"
+
+And half laughing, half compassionate, she pulled her blouse out of the
+box, adjusted the white scarf to it herself, and sent the bewildered
+Jane about her business, after having shown her first how to unpack her
+mistress's modest belongings, and strictly charged her to return half an
+hour before dinner. "Of course I shall dress myself,--but you may as
+well have a lesson."
+
+The girl went, and Doris was left stormily wondering why she had been
+such a fool as to bring her. Then her sense of humour conquered, and her
+brow cleared. She went to the open window and stood looking over the
+park beyond. Sunset lay broad and rich over the wide stretches of grass,
+and on the splendid oaks lifting their dazzling leaf to the purest of
+skies. The roses in the garden sent up their scent, there was a plashing
+of water from an invisible fountain, and the deer beyond the fence
+wandered in and out of the broad bands of shadow drawn across the park.
+Doris's young feet fidgeted under her. She longed to be out exploring
+the woods and the lake. Why was she immured in this stupid room, to
+which Lady Dunstable had conducted her with a chill politeness which had
+said plainly enough "Here you are--and here you stay!--till dinner!"
+
+"If I could only find a back-staircase," she thought, "I would soon be
+enjoying myself! Arthur, lucky wretch, said something about playing
+golf. No!--there he is!"
+
+And sure enough, on the farthest edge of the lawn going towards the
+park, she saw two figures walking--Lady Dunstable and Arthur! "Deep in
+talk of course--having the best of times--while I am shut up
+here--half-past six!--on a glorious evening!" The reflection, however,
+was, on the whole, good-humoured. She did not feel, as yet, either
+jealous or tragic. Some day, she supposed, if it was to be her lot to
+visit country houses, she would get used to their ways. For Arthur, of
+course, it was useful--perhaps necessary--to be put through his paces by
+a woman like Lady Dunstable. "And he can hold his own. But for me? I
+contribute nothing. I don't belong to them--they don't want me--and what
+use have I for them?"
+
+Her meditations, however, were here interrupted by a knock. On her
+saying "Come in"--the door opened cautiously to admit the face of the
+substantial lady, Miss Field, to whom Doris had been introduced at the
+tea-table.
+
+"Are you resting?" said Miss Field, "or only 'interned'?"
+
+"Oh, please come in!" cried Doris. "I never was less tired in my life."
+
+Miss Field entered, and took the armchair that Doris offered her,
+fronting the open window and the summer scene. Her face would have
+suited the Muse of Mirth, if any Muse is ever forty years of age. The
+small, up-turned nose and full red lips were always smiling; so were the
+eyes; and the fair skin and still golden hair, the plump figure and gay
+dress of flower-sprigged muslin, were all in keeping with the part.
+
+"You have never seen my cousin before?" she inquired.
+
+"Lady Dunstable? Is she your cousin?"
+
+Miss Field nodded. "My first cousin. And I spend a great part of the
+year here, helping in different ways. Rachel can't do without me now, so
+I'm able to keep her in order. Don't ever be shy with her! Don't ever
+let her think she frightens you!--those are the two indispensable rules
+here."
+
+"I'm afraid I should break them," said Doris, slowly. "She does
+frighten me--horribly!"
+
+"Ah, well, you didn't show it--that's the chief thing. You know she's a
+much more human creature than she seems."
+
+"Is she?" Doris's eyes pursued the two distant figures in the park.
+
+"You'd think, for instance, that Lord Dunstable was just a cipher? Not
+at all. He's the real authority here, and when he puts his foot down
+Rachel always gives in. But of course she's stood in the way of his
+career."
+
+Doris shrank a little from these indiscretions. But she could not keep
+her curiosity out of her eyes, and Miss Field smilingly answered it.
+
+"She's absorbed him so! You see he watches her all the time. She's like
+an endless play to him. He really doesn't care for anything else--he
+doesn't want anything else. Of course they're very rich. But he might
+have done something in politics, if she hadn't been so much more
+important than he. And then, naturally, she's made enemies--powerful
+enemies. Her friends come here of course--her old cronies--the people
+who can put up with her. They're devoted to her. And the young
+people--the very modern ones--who think nice manners 'early Victorian,'
+and like her rudeness for the sake of her cleverness. But the
+rest!--What do you think she did at one of these parties last year?"
+
+Doris could not help wishing to know.
+
+"She took a fancy to ask a girl near here--the daughter of a clergyman,
+a great friend of Lord Dunstable's, to come over for the Sunday. Lord
+Dunstable had talked of the girl, and Rachel's always on the look-out
+for cleverness; she hunts it like a hound! She met the young woman too
+somewhere, and got the impression--I can't say how--that she would 'go.'
+So on the Saturday morning she went over in her pony-carriage--broke in
+on the little Rectory like a hurricane--of course you know the people
+about here regard her as something semi-divine!--and told the girl she
+had come to take her back to Crosby Ledgers for the Sunday. So the poor
+child packed up, all in a flutter, and they set off together in the
+pony-carriage--six miles. And by the time they had gone four Rachel had
+discovered she had made a mistake--that the girl wasn't clever, and
+would add nothing to the party. So she quietly told her that she was
+afraid, after all, the party wouldn't suit her. And then she turned the
+pony's head, and drove her straight home again!"
+
+"Oh!" cried Doris, her cheeks red, her eyes aflame.
+
+"Brutal, wasn't it?" said the other. "All the same, there are fine
+things in Rachel. And in one point she's the most vulnerable of women!"
+
+"Her son?" Doris ventured.
+
+Miss Field shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"He doesn't drink--he doesn't gamble--he doesn't spend money--he doesn't
+run away with other people's wives. He's just nothing!--just incurably
+empty and idle. He comes here very little. His mother terrifies him. And
+since he was twenty-one he has a little money of his own. He hangs about
+in studios and theatres. His mother doesn't know any of his friends.
+What she suffers--poor Rachel! She'd have given everything in the world
+for a brilliant son. But you can't wonder. She's like some strong plant
+that takes all the nourishment out of the ground, so that the plants
+near it starve. She can't help it. She doesn't mean to be a vampire!"
+
+Doris hardly knew what to say. Somehow she wished the vampire were not
+walking with Arthur! That, however, was not a sentiment easily
+communicable; and she was just turning it into something else when Miss
+Field said--abruptly, like someone coming to the real point--
+
+"Does your husband like her?"
+
+"Why yes, of course!" stammered Doris. "She's been awfully kind to us
+about the lectures, and--he loves arguing with her."
+
+"She loves arguing with _him_!" 'said Miss Field triumphantly. "She
+lives just for such half-hours as that she gave us on the lawn after
+tea--and all owing to him--he was so inspiring, so stimulating. Oh,
+you'll see, she'll take you up tremendously--if you want to be taken
+up!"
+
+The smiling blue eyes looked gaily into Doris's puzzled countenance.
+Evidently the speaker was much amused by the Meadowses' situation--more
+amused than her sense of politeness allowed her to explain. Doris was
+conscious of a vague resentment.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't see what Lady Dunstable will get out of me," she
+said, drily.
+
+Miss Field raised her eyebrows.
+
+"Are you going then to let him come here alone? She'll be always asking
+you! Oh, you needn't be afraid--" and this most candid of cousins
+laughed aloud. "Rachel isn't a flirt--except of the intellectual kind.
+But she takes possession--she sticks like a limpet."
+
+There was a pause. Then Miss Field added:
+
+"You mustn't think it odd that I say these things about Rachel. I have
+to explain her to people. She's not like anybody else."
+
+Doris did not quite see the necessity, but she kept the reflection to
+herself, and Miss Field passed lightly to the other guests--Sir Luke, a
+tame cat of the house, who quarrelled with Lady Dunstable once a month,
+vowed he would never come near her again, and always reappeared; the
+Dean, who in return for a general submission, was allowed to scold her
+occasionally for her soul's health; the politicians whom she could not
+do without, who were therefore handled more gingerly than the rest; the
+military and naval men who loved Dunstable and put up with his wife for
+his sake; and the young people--nephews and nieces and cousins--who
+liked an unconventional hostess without any foolish notions of
+chaperonage, and always enjoyed themselves famously at Crosby Ledgers.
+
+"Now then," said Miss Field, rising at last, "I think you have the
+_carte du pays_--and there they are, coming back." She pointed to
+Meadows and Lady Dunstable, crossing the lawn. "Whatever you do, hold
+your own. If you don't want to play games, don't play them. If you want
+to go to church to-morrow, go to church. Lady Dunstable of course is a
+heathen. And now perhaps, you might _really_ rest."
+
+"Such a jolly walk!" said Meadows, entering his wife's room flushed
+with exercise and pleasure. "The place is divine, and really Lady
+Dunstable is uncommonly good talk. Hope you haven't been dull, dear?"
+
+Doris replied, laughing, that Miss Field had taken pity on what would
+otherwise have been solitary confinement, and that now it was time to
+dress. Meadows kissed her absently, and, with his head evidently still
+full of his walk, went to his dressing-room. When he reappeared, it was
+to find Doris attired in a little black gown, with which he was already
+too familiar. She saw at once the dissatisfaction in his face.
+
+"I can't help it!" she said, with emphasis. "I did my best with it,
+Arthur, but I'm not a genius at dressmaking. Never mind. Nobody will
+take any notice of me."
+
+He quite crossly rebuked her. She really must spend more on her dress.
+It was unseemly--absurd. She looked as nice as anybody when she was
+properly got up.
+
+"Well, don't buy any more copper coal-scuttles!" she said slyly, as she
+straightened his tie, and dropped a kiss on his chin. "Then we'll see."
+
+They went down to dinner, and on the staircase Meadows turned to say to
+his wife in a lowered voice:
+
+"Lady Dunstable wants me to go to them in Scotland--for two or three
+weeks. I dare say I could do some work."
+
+"Oh, does she?" said Doris.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What perversity drove Lady Dunstable during the evening and the Sunday
+that followed to match every attention that was lavished on Arthur
+Meadows by some slight to his wife, will never be known. But the fact
+was patent. Throughout the diversions or occupations of the forty-eight
+hours' visit, Mrs. Meadows was either ignored, snubbed, or
+contradicted. Only Arthur Meadows, indeed, measuring himself with
+delight, for the first time, against some of the keenest brains in the
+country, failed to see it. His blindness allowed Lady Dunstable to run a
+somewhat dangerous course, unchecked. She risked alienating a man whom
+she particularly wished to attract; she excited a passion of antagonism
+in Doris's generally equable breast, and was quite aware of it.
+Notwithstanding, she followed her whim; and by the Sunday evening there
+existed between the great lady and her guest a state of veiled war, in
+which the strokes were by no means always to the advantage of Lady
+Dunstable.
+
+Doris, for instance, with other guests, expressed a wish to attend
+morning service on Sunday at a famous cathedral some three miles away.
+Lady Dunstable immediately announced that everybody who wished to go to
+church would go to the village church within the park, for which alone
+carriages would be provided. Then Doris and Sir Luke combined, and
+walked to the cathedral, three miles there and three miles back--to the
+huge delight of the other and more docile guests. Sunday evening, again,
+was devastated by what were called "games" at Crosby Ledgers. "Gad, if I
+wouldn't sooner go in for the Indian Civil again!" said Sir Luke. Doris,
+with the most ingratiating manner, but quite firmly, begged to be
+excused. Lady Dunstable bit her lip, and presently, _à propos de
+bottes_, launched some observations on the need of co-operation in
+society. It was shirking--refusing to take a hand, to do one's
+best--false shame, indeed!--that ruined English society and English
+talk. Let everybody take a lesson from the French! After which the lists
+were opened, so to speak, and Lady Dunstable, Meadows, the Dean, and
+about half the young people produced elegant pieces of translation,
+astounding copies of impromptu verse, essays in all the leading styles
+of the day, and riddles by the score. The Home Secretary, who had been
+lassoed by his hostess, escaped towards the middle of the ordeal, and
+wandered sadly into a further room where Doris sat chatting with Lord
+Dunstable. He was carrying various slips of paper in his hand, and asked
+her distractedly if she could throw any light on the question--"Why is
+Lord Salisbury like a poker?"
+
+"I can't think of anything to say," he said helplessly, "except 'because
+they are both upright.' And here's another--'Why is the Pope like a
+thermometer?' I did see some light on that!" His countenance cheered a
+little. "Would this do? 'Because both are higher in Italy than in
+England.' Not very good!--but I must think of something."
+
+Doris put her wits to his. Between them they polished the riddle; but by
+the time it was done the Home Secretary had begun to find Meadows's
+little wife, whose existence he had not noticed hitherto, more agreeable
+than Lady Dunstable's table with its racked countenances, and its too
+ample supply of pencils and paper. A deadly crime! When Lady Dunstable,
+on the stroke of midnight, swept through the rooms to gather her guests
+for bed, she cast a withering glance on Doris and her companion.
+
+"So you despised our little amusements?" she said, as she handed Mrs.
+Meadows her candle.
+
+"I wasn't worthy of them," smiled Doris, in reply.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, I call that a delightful visit!" said Meadows as the train next
+morning pulled out of the Crosby Ledgers station for London. "I feel
+freshened up all over."
+
+Doris looked at him with rather mocking eyes, but said nothing. She
+fully recognised, however, that Arthur would have been an ungrateful
+wretch if he had not enjoyed it. Lady Dunstable had been, so to speak,
+at his feet, and all her little court had taken their cue from her. He
+had been flattered, drawn out, and shown off to his heart's content, and
+had been most naturally and humanly happy. "And I," thought Doris with
+sudden repentance, "was just a spiky, horrid little toad! What was wrong
+with me?" She was still searching, when Meadows said reproachfully:
+
+"I thought, darling, you might have taken a little more trouble to make
+friends with Lady Dunstable. However, that'll be all right. I told her,
+of course, we should be delighted to go to Scotland."
+
+"Arthur!" cried Doris, aghast. "Three weeks! I couldn't, Arthur! Don't
+ask me!"
+
+"And, pray, why?" he angrily inquired.
+
+"Because--oh, Arthur, don't you understand? She is a man's woman. She
+took a particular dislike to me, and I just had to be stubborn and
+thorny to get on at all. I'm awfully sorry--but I _couldn't_ stay with
+her, and I'm certain you wouldn't be happy either."
+
+"I should be perfectly happy," said Meadows, with vehemence. "And so
+would you, if you weren't so critical and censorious. Anyway"--his
+Jove-like mouth shut firmly--"I have promised."
+
+"You couldn't promise for me!" cried Doris, holding her head very high.
+
+"Then you'll have to let me go without you?"
+
+"Which, of course, was what you swore not to do!" she said, provokingly.
+"I thought my wife was a reasonable woman! Lady Dunstable rouses all my
+powers; she gives me ideas which may be most valuable. It is to the
+interest of both of us that I should keep up my friendship with her."
+
+"Then keep it up," said Doris, her cheeks aflame. "But you won't want
+me to help you, Arthur."
+
+He cried out that it was only pride and conceit that made her behave so.
+In her heart of hearts, Doris mostly agreed with him. But she wouldn't
+confess it, and it was presently understood between them that Meadows
+would duly accept the Dunstables' invitation for August, and that Doris
+would stay behind.
+
+After which, Doris looked steadily out of the window for the rest of the
+journey, and could not at all conceal from herself that she had never
+felt more miserable in her life. The only person in the trio who
+returned to the Kensington house entirely happy was Jane, who spent the
+greater part of the day in describing to Martha, the cook-general, the
+glories of Crosby Ledgers, and her own genteel appearance in Mrs.
+Meadows's blouse.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+During the weeks that followed the Meadowses' first visit to Crosby
+Ledgers, Doris's conscience was by no means asleep on the subject of
+Lady Dunstable. She felt that her behaviour in that lady's house, and
+the sudden growth in her own mind of a quite unmanageable dislike, were
+not to be defended in one who prided herself on a general temper of
+coolness and common sense, who despised the rancour and whims of other
+women, hated scenes, and had always held jealousy to be the smallest and
+most degrading of passions. Why not laugh at what was odious, show
+oneself superior to personal slights, and enjoy what could be enjoyed?
+And above all, why grudge Arthur a woman friend?
+
+None of these arguments, however, availed at all to reconcile Doris to
+the new intimacy growing under her eyes. The Dunstables came to town,
+and invitations followed. Mr. and Mrs. Meadows were asked to a large
+dinner-party, and Doris held her peace and went. She found herself at
+the end of a long table with an inarticulate schoolboy of seventeen, a
+ward of Lord Dunstable's, on her left, and with an elderly colonel on
+her right, who, after a little cool examination of her through an
+eyeglass, decided to devote himself to the _débutante_ on his other
+side, a Lady Rosamond, who was ready to chatter hunting and horses to
+him through the whole of dinner. The girl was not pretty, but she was
+fresh and gay, and Doris, tired with "much serving," envied her spirits,
+her evident assumption that the world only existed for her to
+laugh and ride in, her childish unspoken claim to the best of
+everything--clothes, food, amusements, lovers. Doris on her side made
+valiant efforts with the schoolboy. She liked boys, and prided herself
+on getting on with them. But this specimen had no conversation--at any
+rate for the female sex--and apparently only an appetite. He ate
+steadily through the dinner, and seemed rather to resent Doris's
+attempts to distract him from the task. So that presently Doris found
+herself reduced to long tracts of silence, when her fan was her only
+companion, and the watching of other people her only amusement.
+
+Lord and Lady Dunstable faced each other at the sides of the table,
+which was purposely narrow, so that talk could pass across it. Lady
+Dunstable sat between an Ambassador and a Cabinet Minister, but Meadows
+was almost directly opposite to her, and it seemed to be her chief
+business to make him the hero of the occasion. It was she who drew him
+into political or literary discussion with the Cabinet Minister, so that
+the neighbours of each stayed their own talk to listen; she who would
+insist on his repeating "that story you told me at Crosby Ledgers;" who
+attacked him abruptly--rudely even, as she had done in the country--so
+that he might defend himself; and when he had slipped into all her traps
+one after the other, would fall back in her chair with a little
+satisfied smile. Doris, silent and forgotten, could not keep her eyes
+for long from the two distant figures--from this new Arthur, and the
+sallow-faced, dark-eyed witch who had waved her wand over him.
+
+_Wasn't_ she glad to see her husband courted--valued as he
+deserved--borne along the growing stream of fame? What matter, if she
+could only watch him from the bank?--and if the impetuous stream were
+carrying him away from her? No! She wasn't glad. Some cold and deadly
+thing seemed to be twining about her heart. Were they leaving the dear,
+poverty-stricken, debt-pestered life behind for ever, in which, after
+all, they had been so happy: she, everything to Arthur, and he, so
+dependent upon her? No doubt she had been driven to despair, often, by
+his careless, shiftless ways; she had thirsted for success and money;
+just money enough, at least, to get along with. And now success had
+come, and money was coming. And here she was, longing for the old, hard,
+struggling past--hating the advent of the new and glittering future. As
+she sat at Lady Dunstable's table, she seemed to see the little room in
+their Kensington house, with the big hole in the carpet, the piles of
+papers and books, the reading-lamp that would smoke, her work-basket,
+the house-books, Arthur pulling contentedly at his pipe, the
+fire crackling between them, his shabby coat, her shabby
+dress--Bliss!--compared to this splendid scene, with the great Vandycks
+looking down on the dinner-table, the crowd of guests and servants, the
+costly food, the dresses, and the diamonds--with, in the distance, _her_
+Arthur, divided, as it seemed, from her by a growing chasm, never
+remembering to throw her a look or a smile, drinking in a tide of
+flattery he would once have been the first to scorn, captured,
+exhibited, befooled by an unscrupulous, egotistical woman, who would
+drop him like a squeezed orange when he had ceased to amuse her. And the
+worst of it was that the woman was not a mere pretender! She had a fine,
+hard brain,--"as good as Arthur's--nearly--and he knows it. It is that
+which attracts him--and excites him. I can mend his socks; I can listen
+while he reads; and he used to like it when I praised. Now, what I say
+will never matter to him any more; that was just sentiment and nonsense;
+now, he only wants to know what _she_ says;--that's business! He writes
+with her in his mind--and when he has finished something he sends it off
+to her, straight. I may see it when all the world may--but she has the
+first-fruits!"
+
+And in poor Doris's troubled mind the whole scene--save the two central
+figures, Lady Dunstable and Arthur--seemed to melt away. She was not the
+first wife, by a long way, into whose quiet breast Lady Dunstable had
+dropped these seeds of discord. She knew it well by report; but it was
+hateful, both to wifely feeling and natural vanity, that _she_ should
+now be the victim of the moment, and should know no more than her
+predecessors how to defend herself. "Why can't I be cool and
+cutting--pay her back when she is rude, and contradict her when she's
+absurd? She _is_ absurd often. But I think of the right things to say
+just five minutes too late. I have no nerve--that's the point!--only
+_l'esprit d'escalier_ to perfection. And she has been trained to this
+sort of campaigning from her babyhood. No good growling! I shall never
+hold my own!"
+
+Then, into this despairing mood there dropped suddenly a fragment of her
+neighbour, the Colonel's, conversation--"Mrs. So-and-so? Impossible
+woman! Oh, one doesn't mind seeing her graze occasionally at the other
+end of one's table--as the price of getting her husband, don't you
+know?--but--"
+
+Doris's sudden laugh at the Colonel's elbow startled that gentleman so
+that he turned round to look at her. But she was absorbed in the menu,
+which she had taken up, and he could only suppose that something in it
+amused her.
+
+A few days later arrived a letter for Meadows, which he handed to his
+wife in silence. There had been no further discussion of Lady Dunstable
+between them; only a general sense of friction, warnings of hidden fire
+on Doris's side, and resentment on his, quite new in their relation to
+each other. Meadows clearly thought that his wife was behaving very
+badly. Lady Dunstable's efforts on his behalf had already done him
+substantial service; she had introduced him to all kinds of people
+likely to help him, intellectually and financially; and to help him was
+to help Doris. Why would she be such a little fool? So unlike her,
+too!--sensible, level-headed creature that she generally was. But he was
+afraid of losing his own temper, if he argued with her. And indeed his
+lazy easy-goingness loathed argument of this domestic sort, loathed
+scenes, loathed doing anything disagreeable that could be put off.
+
+But here was Lady Dunstable's letter:
+
+    Dear Mr. Arthur,--Will your wife forgive me if I ask you to come to
+    a tiny _men's_ dinner-party next Friday at 8.15--to meet the
+    President of the Duma, and another Russian, an intimate friend of
+    Tolstoy's? All males, but myself! So I hope Mrs. Meadows will let
+    you come.
+
+                              Yours sincerely,
+                                   RACHEL DUNSTABLE.
+
+
+"Of course, I won't go if you don't like it, Doris," said Meadows with
+the smile of magnanimity.
+
+"I thought you were angry with me--once--for even suggesting that you
+might!" Doris's tone was light, but not pleasing to a husband's ears.
+She was busy at the moment in packing up the American proofs of the
+Disraeli lecture, which at last with infinite difficulty she had
+persuaded Meadows to correct and return.
+
+"Well--but of course--this is exceptional!" said Meadows, pacing up and
+down irresolutely.
+
+"Everything's exceptional--in that quarter," said Doris, in the same
+tone. "Oh, go, of course!--it would be a thousand pities not to go."
+
+Meadows at once took her at her word. That was the first of a series of
+"male" dinners, to which, however, it seemed to Doris, if one might
+judge from Arthur's accounts, that a good many female exceptions were
+admitted, no doubt by way of proving the rule. And during July, Meadows
+lunched in town--in the lofty regions of St. James's or Mayfair--with
+other enthusiastic women admirers, most of them endowed with long purses
+and long pedigrees, at least three or four times a week. Doris was
+occasionally asked and sometimes went. But she was suffering all the
+time from an initial discouragement and depression, which took away
+self-reliance, and left her awkwardly conscious. She struggled, but in
+vain. The world into which Arthur was being so suddenly swept was
+strange to her, and in many ways antipathetic; but had she been happy
+and in spirits she could have grappled with it, or rather she could have
+lost herself in Arthur's success. Had she not always been his slave?
+But she was not happy! In their obscure days she had been Arthur's best
+friend, as well as his wife. And it was the old comradeship which was
+failing her; encroached upon, filched from her, by other women; and
+especially by this exacting, absorbing woman, whose craze for Arthur
+Meadows's society was rapidly becoming an amusement and a scandal even
+to those well acquainted with her previous records of the same sort.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The end of July arrived. The Dunstables left town. At a concert, for
+which she had herself sent them tickets, Lady Dunstable met Doris and
+her husband, the night before she departed.
+
+"In ten days we shall expect you at Pitlochry," she said, smiling, to
+Arthur Meadows, as she swept past them in the corridor. Then, pausing,
+she held out a perfunctory hand to Doris.
+
+"And we really can't persuade you to come too?"
+
+The tone was careless and patronising. It brought the sudden red to
+Doris's cheek. For one moment she was tempted to say--"Thank you--since
+you are so kind--after all, why not?"--just that she might see the
+change in those large, malicious eyes--might catch their owner unawares,
+for once. But, as usual, nerve failed her. She merely said that her
+drawing would keep her all August in town; and that London, empty, was
+the best possible place for work. Lady Dunstable nodded and passed on.
+
+The ten days flew. Meadows, kept to it by Doris, was very busy preparing
+another lecture for publication in an English review. Doris, meanwhile,
+got his clothes ready, and affected a uniformly cheerful and indifferent
+demeanour. On Arthur's last evening at home, however, he came suddenly
+into the sitting-room, where Doris was sewing on some final buttons, and
+after fidgeting about a little, with occasional glances at his wife, he
+said abruptly:
+
+"I say, Doris, I won't go if you're going to take it like this."
+
+She turned upon him.
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"Oh, don't pretend!" was the impatient reply. "You know very well that
+you hate my going to Scotland!"
+
+Doris, all on edge, and smarting under the too Jovian look and frown
+with which he surveyed her from the hearthrug, declared that, as it was
+not a case of her going to Scotland, but of his, she was entirely
+indifferent. If he enjoyed it, he was quite right to go. _She_ was going
+to enjoy her work in Uncle Charles's studio.
+
+Meadows broke out into an angry attack on her folly and unkindness. But
+the more he lost his temper, the more provokingly Doris kept hers. She
+sat there, surrounded by his socks and shirts, a trim, determined little
+figure--declining to admit that she was angry, or jealous, or offended,
+or anything of the kind. Would he please come upstairs and give her his
+last directions about his packing? She thought she had put everything
+ready; but there were just a few things she was doubtful about.
+
+And all the time she seemed to be watching another Doris--a creature
+quite different from her real self. What had come over her? If anybody
+had told her beforehand that she could ever let slip her power over her
+own will like this, ever become possessed with this silent, obstinate
+demon of wounded love and pride, never would she have believed them! She
+moved under its grip like an automaton. She would not quarrel with
+Arthur. But as no soft confession was possible, and no mending or
+undoing of what had happened, to laugh her way through the difficult
+hours was all that remained. So that whenever Meadows renewed the
+attempt to "have it out," he was met by renewed evasion and "chaff" on
+Doris's side, till he could only retreat with as much offended dignity
+as she allowed him.
+
+It was after midnight before she had finished his packing. Then, bidding
+him a smiling good night, she fell asleep--apparently--as soon as her
+head touched the pillow.
+
+The next morning, early, she stood on the steps waving farewell to
+Arthur, without a trace of ill-humour. And he, though vaguely
+uncomfortable, had submitted at last to what he felt was her fixed
+purpose of avoiding a scene. Moreover, the "eternal child" in him, which
+made both his charm and his weakness, had already scattered his
+compunctions of the preceding day, and was now aglow with the sheer joy
+of holiday and change. He had worked very hard, he had had a great
+success, and now he was going to live for three weeks in the lap of
+luxury; intellectual luxury first and foremost--good talk, good company,
+an abundance of books for rainy days; but with the addition of a supreme
+_chef_, Lord Dunstable's champagne, and all the amenities of one of the
+best moors in Scotland.
+
+Doris went back into the house, and, Arthur being no longer in the
+neighbourhood, allowed herself a few tears. She had never felt so lonely
+in her life, nor so humiliated. "My moral character is gone," she said
+to herself. "I have no moral character. I thought I was a sensible,
+educated woman; and I am just an ''Arriet,' in a temper with her
+''Arry.' Well--courage! Three weeks isn't long. Who can say that Arthur
+mayn't come back disillusioned? Rachel Dunstable is a born tyrant. If,
+instead of flattering him, she begins to bully him, strange things may
+happen!"
+
+The first week of solitude she spent in household drudgery. Bills had to
+be paid, and there was now mercifully a little money to pay them with.
+Though it was August, the house was to be "spring-cleaned," and Doris
+had made a compact with her sulky maids that when it began she would do
+no more than sleep and breakfast at home. She would spend her days in
+the Campden Hill studio, and sup on a tray--anywhere. On these terms,
+they grudgingly allowed her to occupy her own house.
+
+The studio in which she worked was on the top of Campden Hill, and
+opened into one of the pleasant gardens of that neighbourhood. Her
+uncle, Charles Bentley, an elderly Academician, with an ugly, humorous
+face, red hair, red eyebrows, a black skull-cap, and a general weakness
+for the female sex, was very fond of his niece Doris, and inclined to
+think her a neglected and underrated wife. He was too fond of his own
+comfort, however, to let Meadows perceive this opinion of his; still
+less did he dare express it to Doris. All he could do was to befriend
+her and make her welcome at the studio, to advise her about her
+illustrations, and correct her drawing when it needed it. He himself was
+an old-fashioned artist, quite content to be "mid" or even "early"
+Victorian. He still cultivated the art of historical painting, and was
+still as anxious as any contemporary of Frith to tell a story. And as
+his manner was no less behind the age than his material, his pictures
+remained on his hands, while the "vicious horrors," as they seemed to
+him, of the younger school held the field and captured the newspapers.
+But as he had some private means, and no kith or kin but his niece, the
+indifference of the public to his work caused him little disturbance.
+He pleased his own taste, allowing himself a good-natured contempt for
+the work which supplanted him, coupled with an ever-generous hand for
+any post-Impressionist in difficulties.
+
+On the August afternoon when Doris, escaping at last from her maids and
+her accounts, made her way up to the studio, for some hours' work on the
+last three or four illustrations wanted for a Christmas book, Uncle
+Charles welcomed her with effusion.
+
+"Where have you been, child, all this time? I thought you must have
+flitted entirely."
+
+Doris explained--while she set up her easel--that for the first time in
+their lives she and Arthur had been seeing something of the great world,
+and--mildly--"doing" the season. Arthur was now continuing the season in
+Scotland, while she had stayed at home to work and rest. Throughout her
+talk, she avoided mentioning the Dunstables.
+
+"H'm!" said Uncle Charles, "so you've been junketing!"
+
+Doris admitted it.
+
+"Did you like it?"
+
+Doris put on her candid look.
+
+"I daresay I should have liked it, if I'd made a success of it. Of
+course Arthur did."
+
+"Too much trouble!" said the old painter, shaking his head. "I was in
+the swim, as they call it, for a year or two. I might have stayed there,
+I suppose, for I could always tell a story, and I wasn't afraid of the
+big-wigs. But I couldn't stand it. Dress-clothes are the deuce! And
+besides, talk now is not what it used to be. The clever men who can say
+smart things are too clever to say them. Nobody wants 'em! So let's
+'cultivate our garden,' my dear, and be thankful. I'm beginning a new
+picture--and I've found a topping new model. What can a man want more?
+Very nice of you to let Arthur go, and have his head. Where is
+it?--some smart moor? He'll soon be tired of it."
+
+Doris laughed, let the question as to the "smart moor" pass, and came
+round to look at the new subject that Uncle Charles was laying in. He
+explained it to her, well knowing that he spoke to unsympathetic ears,
+for whatever Doris might draw for her publishers, she was a passionate
+and humble follower of those modern experimentalists who have made the
+Slade School famous. The subject was, it seemed, to be a visit paid to
+Joanna the mad and widowed mother of Charles V., at Tordesillas, by the
+envoys of Henry VII., who were thus allowed by Ferdinand, the Queen's
+father, to convince themselves that the Queen's profound melancholia
+formed an insuperable barrier to the marriage proposals of the English
+King. The figure of the distracted Queen, crouching in white beside a
+window from which she could see the tomb of her dead and adored
+husband, the Archduke Philip, and some of the splendid figures of the
+English embassy, were already sketched.
+
+"I have been fit to hang myself over her!" said Bentley, pointing to the
+Queen. "I tried model after model. At last I've got the very thing! She
+comes to-day for the first time. You'll see her! Before she comes, I
+must scrape out Joanna, so as to look at the thing quite fresh. But I
+daresay I shall only make a few sketches of the lady to-day."
+
+"Who is she, and where did you get her!"
+
+Bentley laughed. "You won't like her, my dear! Never mind. Her
+appearance is magnificent--whatever her mind and morals may be."
+
+And he described how he had heard of the lady from an artist friend who
+had originally seen her at a music-hall, and had persuaded her to come
+and sit to him. The comic haste and relief with which he had now
+transferred her to Bentley lost nothing in Bentley's telling. Of course
+she had "a fiend of a temper." "Wish you joy of her! Oh, don't ask me
+about her! You'll find out for yourself." "I can manage her," said Uncle
+Charles tranquilly. "I've had so many of 'em."
+
+"She is Spanish?"
+
+"Not at all. She is Italian. That is to say, her mother was a
+Neapolitan, the daughter of a jeweller in Hatton Garden, and her father
+an English bank clerk. The Neapolitans have a lot of Spanish blood in
+them--hence, no doubt, the physique."
+
+"And she is a professional model!"
+
+"Nothing of the sort!--though she will probably become one. She is a
+writer--Heaven save the mark!--and I have to pay her vast sums to get
+her. It is the greatest favour."
+
+"A _writer_?"
+
+"Poetess!--and journalist!" said Uncle Charles, enjoying Doris's
+puzzled look. "She sent me her poems yesterday. As to journalism"--his
+eyes twinkled--"I say nothing--but this. Watch her _hats_! She has the
+reputation--in certain circles--of being the best-hatted woman in
+London. All this I get from the man who handed her on to me. As I said
+to him, it depends on what 'London' you mean."
+
+"Married?"
+
+"Oh dear no, though of course she calls herself 'Madame' like the rest
+of them--Madame Vavasour. I have reason, however, to believe that her
+real name is Flink--Elena Flink. And I should say--very much on the
+look-out for a husband; and meanwhile very much courted by boys--who go
+to what she calls her 'evenings.' It is odd, the taste that some youths
+have for these elderly Circes."
+
+"Elderly?" said Doris, busy the while with her own preparations. "I was
+hoping for something young and beautiful!"
+
+"Young?--no!--an unmistakable thirty-five. Beautiful? Well, wait till
+you see her ... H'm--that shoulder won't do!"--Doris had just placed a
+preliminary sketch of one of her "subjects" under his eyes--"and that
+bit of perspective in the corner wants a lot of seeing to. Look here!"
+The old Academician, brought up in the spirit of Ingres--"le dessin,
+c'est la probité!--le dessin, c'est l'honneur!"--fell eagerly to work on
+the sketch, and Doris watched.
+
+They were both absorbed, when there was a knock at the door. Doris
+turned hastily, expecting to see the model. Instead of which there
+entered, in response to Bentley's "Come in!" a girl of four or five and
+twenty, in a blue linen dress and a shady hat, who nodded a quiet "Good
+afternoon" to the artist, and proceeded at once with an air of business
+to a writing-table at the further end of the studio, covered with
+papers.
+
+"Miss Wigram," said the artist, raising his voice, "let me introduce you
+to my niece, Mrs. Meadows."
+
+The girl rose from her chair again and bowed. Then Doris saw that she
+had a charming tired face, beautiful eyes on which she had just placed
+spectacles, and soft brown hair framing her thin cheeks.
+
+"A novelty since you were here," whispered Bentley in Doris's ear.
+"She's an accountant--capital girl! Since these Liberal budgets came
+along, I can't keep my own accounts, or send in my own income-tax
+returns--dash them! So she does the whole business for me--pays
+everything--sees to everything--comes once a week. We shall all be run
+by the women soon!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The studio had grown very quiet. Through some glass doors open to the
+garden came in little wandering winds which played with some loose
+papers on the floor, and blew Doris's hair about her eyes as she stooped
+over her easel, absorbed in her drawing. Apparently absorbed: her
+subliminal mind, at least, was far away, wandering on a craggy Scotch
+moor. A lady on a Scotch pony--she understood that Lady Dunstable often
+rode with the shooters--and a tall man walking beside her, carrying, not
+a gun, but a walking stick:--that was the vision in the crystal. Arthur
+was too bad a shot to be tolerated in the Dunstable circle; had indeed
+wisely announced from the beginning that he was not to be included among
+the guns. All the more time for conversation, the give and take of wits,
+the pleasures of the intellectual tilting-ground; the whole watered by
+good wine, seasoned with the best of cooking, and lapped in the general
+ease of a house where nobody ever thought of such a vulgar thing as
+money except to spend it.
+
+Doris had in general a severe mind as to the rich and aristocratic
+classes. Her own hard and thrifty life had disposed her to see them _en
+noir_. But the sudden rush of a certain section of them to crowd
+Arthur's lectures had been certainly mollifying. If it had not been for
+the Vampire, Doris was well aware that her standards might have given
+way.
+
+As it was, Lady Dunstable's exacting ways, her swoop, straight and
+fierce, on the social morsel she desired, like that of an eagle on the
+sheepfold, had made her, in Doris's sore consciousness, the
+representative of thousands more; all greedy, able, domineering,
+inevitably getting what they wanted, and more than they deserved;
+against whom the starved and virtuous intellectuals of the professional
+classes were bound to contend to the death. The story of that poor girl,
+that clergyman's daughter, for instance--could anything have been more
+insolent--more cruel? Doris burned to avenge her.
+
+Suddenly--a great clatter and noise in the passage leading from the
+small house behind to the studio and garden.
+
+"Here she is!"
+
+Uncle Charles sprang up, and reached the studio door just as a shower of
+knocks descended upon it from outside. He opened it, and on the
+threshold there stood two persons; a stout lady in white, surmounted by
+a huge black hat with a hearse-like array of plumes; and, behind her, a
+tall and willowy youth, with--so far as could be seen through the chinks
+of the hat--a large nose, fair hair, pale blue eyes, and a singular
+deficiency of chin. He carried in his arms a tiny black Spitz with a
+pink ribbon round its neck.
+
+The lady looked, frowning, into the interior of the studio. She held in
+her hand a very large fan, with the handle of which she had been rapping
+the door; and the black feathers with which she was canopied seemed to
+be nodding in her eyes.
+
+"Maestro, you are not alone!" she said in a deep, reproachful voice.
+
+"My niece, Mrs. Meadows--Madame Vavasour," said Bentley, ushering in the
+new-comer.
+
+Doris turned from her easel and bowed, only to receive a rather scowling
+response.
+
+"And your friend?" As he spoke the artist looked blandly at the young
+man.
+
+"I brought him to amuse me, Maestro. When I am dull my countenance
+changes, and you cannot do it justice. He will talk to me--I shall be
+animated--and you will profit."
+
+"Ah, no doubt!" said Bentley, smiling. "And your friend's name?"
+
+"Herbert Dunstable--Honourable Herbert Dunstable!--Signor Bentley," said
+Madame Vavasour, advancing with a stately step into the room, and waving
+peremptorily to the young man to follow.
+
+Doris sat transfixed and staring. Bentley turned to look at his niece,
+and their eyes met--his full of suppressed mirth. The son!--the
+unsatisfactory son! Doris remembered that his name was Herbert. In the
+train of this third-rate sorceress!
+
+Her thoughts ran excitedly to the distant moors, and that magnificent
+lady, with her circle of distinguished persons, holiday-making
+statesmen, peers, diplomats, writers, and the like. Here was a humbler
+scene! But Doris's fancy at once divined a score of links between it and
+the high comedy yonder.
+
+Meanwhile, at the name of Dunstable, the girl accountant in the distance
+had also moved sharply, so as to look at the young man. But in the
+bustle of Madame Vavasour's entrance, and her passage to the sitter's
+chair, the girl's gesture passed unnoticed.
+
+"I'm just worn out, Maestro!" said the model languidly, uplifting a
+pair of tragic eyes to the artist. "I sat up half the night writing. I
+had a subject which tormented me. But I have done something _splendid_!
+Isn't it splendid, Herbert?"
+
+"Ripping!" said the young man, grinning widely.
+
+"Sit down!" said Madame, with a change of tone. And the youth sat down,
+on the very low chair to which she pointed him, doing his best to
+dispose of his long legs.
+
+"Give me the dog!" she commanded. "You have no idea how to hold
+him--poor lamb!"
+
+The dog was handed to her; she took off her enormous hat with many sighs
+of fatigue, and then, with the dog on her lap, asked how she was to sit.
+Bentley explained that he wished to make a few preliminary sketches of
+her head and bust, and proceeded to pose her. She accepted his
+directions with a curious pettishness, as though they annoyed her; and
+presently complained loudly that the chair was uncomfortable, and the
+pose irksome. He handled her, however, with a good-humoured mixture of
+flattery and persuasion, and at last, stepping back, surveyed the
+result--well content.
+
+There was no doubt whatever that she was a very handsome woman, and that
+her physical type--that of the more lethargic and heavily built
+Neapolitan--suggested very happily the mad and melancholy Queen. She had
+superb black hair, eyes profoundly dark, a low and beautiful brow, lips
+classically fine, a powerful head and neck, and a complexion which, but
+for the treatment given it, would have been of a clear and beautiful
+olive. She wore a draggled dress of cream-coloured muslin, very
+transparent over the shoulders, somewhat scandalously wanting at the
+throat and breast, and very frayed and dirty round the skirt. Her feet,
+which were large and plump, were cased in extremely pointed shoes with
+large paste buckles; and as she crossed them on the stool provided for
+them she showed a considerable amount of rather clumsy ankle. The hands
+too were large, common, and ill-kept, and the wrists laden with
+bracelets. She was adorned indeed with a great deal of jewellery,
+including some startling earrings of a bright green stone. The hat,
+which she had carefully placed on a chair beside her, was truly a
+monstrosity!--but, as Doris guessed, an expensive monstrosity, such as
+the Rue de la Paix provides, at anything from a hundred and fifty to two
+hundred and fifty francs, for those of its cosmopolitan customers whom
+it pillages and despises. How did the lady afford it? The rest of her
+dress suggested a struggle with small means, waged by one who was greedy
+for effect, obtained at a minimum of trouble. That she was rouged and
+powdered goes without saying.
+
+And the young man? Doris perceived at once his likeness to his father--a
+feeble likeness. But he was evidently simple and good-natured, and to
+all appearance completely in the power of the enchantress. He fanned her
+assiduously. He picked up all the various belongings--gloves,
+handkerchiefs, handbag--which she perpetually let fall. He ran after the
+dog whenever it escaped from the lady's lap and threatened mischief in
+the studio; and by way of amusing her--the purpose for which he had been
+imported--he kept up a stream of small cryptic gossip about various
+common acquaintances, most of whom seemed to belong to the music-hall
+profession, and to be either "stars" or the satellites of "stars."
+Madame listened to him with avidity, and occasionally broke into a
+giggling laugh. She had, however, two manners, and two kinds of
+conversation, which she adopted with the young man and the Academician
+respectively. Her talk with the youth suggested the jealous ascendency
+of a coarse-minded woman. She occasionally flattered him, but more
+generally she teased or "ragged" him. She seemed indeed to feel him
+securely in her grip; so that there was no need to pose for him,
+as--figuratively as well as physically--she posed for Bentley. To the
+artist she gave her opinions on pictures or books--on the novels of Mr.
+Wells, or the plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw--in the languid or drawling tone
+of accepted authority; dropping every now and then into a broad cockney
+accent, which produced a startling effect, like that of unexpected
+garlic in cookery. Bentley's gravity was often severely tried, and Doris
+altered the position of her own easel so that he and she could not see
+each other. Meanwhile Madame took not the smallest notice of Mr.
+Bentley's niece, and Doris made no advances to the young man, to whom
+her name was clearly quite unknown. Had Circe really got him in her
+toils? Doris judged him soft-headed and soft-hearted; no match at all
+for the lady. The thought of her walking the lawns or the drawing-rooms
+of Crosby Ledgers as the betrothed of the heir stirred in Arthur
+Meadows's wife a silent, and--be it confessed!--a malicious convulsion.
+Such mothers, so self-centred, so set on their own triumphs, with their
+intellectual noses so very much in the clouds, deserved such sons! She
+promised herself to keep her own counsel, and watch the play.
+
+The sitting lasted for two hours. When it was over, Uncle Charles, all
+smiles and satisfaction, went with his visitors to the front door.
+
+He was away some little time, and returned, bubbling, to the studio.
+
+"She's been cross-examining me about her poems! I had to confess I
+hadn't read a word of them. And now she's offered to recite next time
+she comes! Good Heavens--how can I get out of it? I believe, Doris,
+she's hooked that young idiot! She told me she was engaged to him. Do
+you know anything of his people?"
+
+The girl accountant suddenly came forward. She looked flushed and
+distressed.
+
+"I do!" she said, with energy. "Can't somebody stop that? It will break
+their hearts!"
+
+Doris and Uncle Charles looked at her in amazement.
+
+"Whose hearts?" said the painter.
+
+"Lord and Lady Dunstable's."
+
+"You know them?" exclaimed Doris.
+
+"I used to know them--quite well," said the girl, quietly. "My father
+had one of Lord Dunstable's livings. He died last year. He didn't like
+Lady Dunstable. He quarrelled with her, because--because she once did a
+very rude thing to me. But this would be _too_ awful! And poor Lord
+Dunstable! Everybody likes him. Oh--it must be stopped!--it _must_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+When Doris reached home that evening, the little Kensington house, with
+half its carpets up and all but two of its rooms under dust-sheets,
+looked particularly lonely and unattractive. Arthur's study was
+unrecognisable. No cheerful litter anywhere. No smell of tobacco, no
+sign of a male presence! Doris, walking restlessly from room to room,
+had never felt so forsaken, so dismally certain that the best of life
+was done. Moreover, she had fully expected to find a letter from Arthur
+waiting for her; and there was nothing.
+
+It was positively comic that under such circumstances anybody should
+expect her--Doris Meadows--to trouble her head about Lady Dunstable's
+affairs. Of course she would feel it if her son made a ridiculous and
+degrading marriage. But why not?--why shouldn't he come to grief like
+anybody else's son? Why should heaven and earth be moved in order to
+prevent it?--especially by the woman to whose possible jealousy and pain
+Lady Dunstable had certainly never given the most passing thought.
+
+All the same, the distress shown by that odd girl, Miss Wigram, and her
+appeal both to the painter and his niece to intervene and save the
+foolish youth, kept echoing in Doris's memory, although neither she nor
+Bentley had received it with any cordiality. Doris had soon made out
+that this girl, Alice Wigram, was indeed the clergyman's daughter whom
+Lady Dunstable had snubbed so unkindly some twelve months before. She
+was evidently a sweet-natured, susceptible creature, to whom Lord
+Dunstable had taken a fancy, in his fatherly way, during occasional
+visits to her father's rectory, and of whom he had spoken to his wife.
+That Lady Dunstable should have unkindly slighted this motherless girl,
+who had evidently plenty of natural capacity under her shyness, was just
+like her, and Doris's feelings of antagonism to the tyrant were only
+sharpened by her acquaintance with the victim. Why should Miss Wigram
+worry her self? Lord Dunstable? Well, but after all, capable men should
+keep such wives in order. If Lord Dunstable had not been scandalously
+weak, Lady Dunstable would not have become a terror to her sex.
+
+As for Uncle Charles, he had simply declined all responsibility in the
+matter. He had never seen the Dunstables, wouldn't know them from Adam,
+and had no concern whatever in what happened to their son. The situation
+merely excited in him one man's natural amusement at the folly of
+another. The boy was more than of age. Really he and his mother must
+look after themselves. To meddle with the young man's love affairs,
+simply because he happened to visit your studio in the company of a
+lady, would be outrageous. So the painter laughed, shook his head, and
+went back to his picture. Then Miss Wigram, looking despondently from
+the silent Doris to the artist at work, had said with sudden energy, "I
+must find out about her! I'm--I'm sure she's a horrid woman! Can you
+tell me, sir"--she addressed Bentley--"the name of the gentleman who was
+painting her before she came here?"
+
+Bentley had hummed and hawed a little, twisting his red moustache, and
+finally had given the name and address; whereupon Miss Wigram had
+gathered up her papers, some of which had drifted to the floor between
+her table and Doris's easel, and had taken an immediate departure, a
+couple of hours before her usual time, throwing, as she left the
+studio, a wistful and rather puzzled look at Mrs. Meadows.
+
+Doris congratulated herself that she had kept her own counsel on the
+subject of the Dunstables, both with Uncle Charles and Miss Wigram.
+Neither of them had guessed that she had any personal acquaintance with
+them. She tried now to put the matter out of her thoughts. Jane brought
+in a tray for her mistress, and Doris supped meagrely in Arthur's
+deserted study, thinking, as the sunset light came in across the dusty
+street, of that flame and splendour which such weather must be kindling
+on the moors, of the blue and purple distances, the glens of rocky
+mountains hung in air, "the gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme"!
+She remembered how on their September honeymoon they had wandered in
+Ross-shire, how the whole land was dyed crimson by the heather, and how
+impossible it was to persuade Arthur to walk discreetly rather than,
+like any cockney tripper, with his arm round his sweetheart. Scotland
+had not been far behind the Garden of Eden under those circumstances.
+But Arthur was now pursuing the higher, the intellectual joys.
+
+She finished her supper, and then sat down to write to her husband. Was
+she going to tell him anything about the incident of the afternoon? Why
+should she? Why should she give him the chance of becoming more than
+ever Lady Dunstable's friend--pegging out an eternal claim upon her
+gratitude?
+
+Doris wrote her letter. She described the progress of the spring
+cleaning; she reported that her sixth illustration was well forward, and
+that Uncle Charles was wrestling with another historical picture, a
+_machine_ neither better nor worse than all the others. She thought that
+after all Jane would soon give warning; and she, Doris, had spent three
+pounds in petty cash since he went away; how, she could not remember,
+but it was all in her account book.
+
+And she concluded:
+
+    I understand then that we meet at Crewe on Friday fortnight? I have
+    heard of a lodging near Capel Curig which sounds delightful. We
+    might do a week's climbing and then go on to the sea. I really
+    _shall_ want a holiday. Has there not been ten minutes even--since
+    you arrived--to write a letter in?--or a postcard? Shall I send you
+    a few addressed?
+
+Having thus finished what seemed to her the dullest letter she had ever
+written in her life, she looked at it a while, irresolutely, then put it
+in an envelope hastily, addressed, stamped it, and rang the bell for
+Jane to run across the street with it and post it. After which, she sat
+idle a little while with flushed cheeks, while the twilight gathered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gate of the trim front garden swung on its hinges. Doris turned to
+look. She saw, to her astonishment, that the girl-accountant of the
+morning, Miss Wigram, was coming up the flagged path to the house. What
+could she want?
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Meadows--I'm so sorry to disturb you--" said the visitor, in
+some agitation, as Doris, summoned by Jane, entered the dust-sheeted
+drawing-room. "But you dropped an envelope with an address this
+afternoon. I picked it up with some of my papers and never discovered it
+till I got home."
+
+She held out the envelope. Doris took it, and flushed vividly. It was
+the envelope with his Scotch address which Arthur had written out for
+her before leaving home--"care of the Lord Dunstable, Franick Castle,
+Pitlochry, Perthshire, N.B." She had put it in her portfolio, out of
+which it had no doubt slipped while she was at work.
+
+She and Miss Wigram eyed each other. The girl was evidently agitated.
+But she seemed not to know how to begin what she had to say.
+
+Doris broke the silence.
+
+"You were astonished to find that I know the Dunstables?"
+
+"Oh, no!--I didn't think--" stammered her visitor--"I supposed some
+friend of yours might be staying there."
+
+"My husband is staying there," said Doris, quietly. Really it was too
+much trouble to tell a falsehood. Her pride refused.
+
+"Oh, I see!" cried Miss Wigram, though in fact she was more bewildered
+than before. Why should this extraordinary little lady have behaved at
+the studio as if she had never heard of the Dunstables, and be now
+confessing that her husband was actually staying in their house?
+
+Doris smiled--with perfect self-possession.
+
+"Please sit down. You think it odd, of course, that I didn't tell you I
+knew the Dunstables, while we were talking about them. The fact is I
+didn't want to be mixed up with the affair at all. We have only lately
+made acquaintance with the Dunstables. Lady Dunstable is my husband's
+friend. I don't like her very much. But neither of us knows her well
+enough to go and tell her tales about her son."
+
+Miss Wigram considered--her gentle, troubled eyes bent upon Doris. "Of
+course--I know--how many people dislike Lady Dunstable. She did
+a--rather cruel thing to me once. The thought of it humiliated and
+discouraged me for a long time. It made me almost glad to leave home.
+And of course she hasn't won Mr. Herbert's confidence at all. She has
+always snubbed and disapproved of him. Oh, I knew him very little. I
+have hardly ever spoken to him. You saw he didn't recognise me this
+afternoon. But my father used to go over to Crosby Ledgers to coach him
+in the holidays, and he often told me that as a boy he was _terrified_
+of his mother. She either took no notice of him at all, or she was
+always sneering at him, and scolding him. As soon as ever he came of age
+and got a little money of his own, he declared he wouldn't live at home.
+His father wanted him to go into Parliament or the army, but he said he
+hated the army, and if he was such a dolt as his mother thought him it
+would be ridiculous to attempt politics. And so he just drifted up to
+town and looked out for people that would make much of him, and wouldn't
+snub him. And that, of course, was how he got into the toils of a woman
+like that!"
+
+The girl threw up her hands tragically.
+
+Doris sat up, with energy.
+
+"But what on earth," she said, "does it matter to you or to me?"
+
+"Oh, can't you see?" said the other, flushing deeply, and with the tears
+in her eyes. "My father had one of Lord Dunstable's livings. We lived on
+that estate for years. Everybody loved Lord Dunstable. And though Lady
+Dunstable makes enemies, there's a great respect for the _family_.
+They've been there since Queen Elizabeth's time. And it's _dreadful_ to
+think of a woman like--well, like that!--reigning at Crosby Ledgers. I
+think of the poor people. Lady Dunstable's good to them; though of
+course you wouldn't hear anything about it, unless you lived there. She
+tries to do her duty to them--she really does--in her own way. And, of
+course, they _respect_ her. No Dunstable has ever done anything
+disgraceful! Isn't there something in '_Noblesse oblige'? Think_ of this
+woman at the head of that estate!"
+
+"Well, upon my word," said Doris, after a pause, "you _are_ feudal.
+Don't you feel yourself that you are old-fashioned?"
+
+Mrs. Meadows's half-sarcastic look at first intimidated her visitor, and
+then spurred her into further attempts to explain herself.
+
+"I daresay it's old-fashioned," she said slowly, "but I'm sure it's
+what father would have felt. Anyway, I went off to try and find out what
+I could. I went first to a little club I belong to--for professional
+women--near the Strand, and I asked one or two women I found there--who
+know artists--and models--and write for papers. And very soon I found
+out a great deal. I didn't have to go to the man whose address Mr.
+Bentley gave me. Madame Vavasour _is_ a horrid woman! This is not the
+first young man she's fleeced--by a long way. There was a man--younger
+than Mr. Dunstable, a boy of nineteen--three years ago. She got him to
+promise to marry her; and the parents came down, and paid her enormously
+to let him go. Now she's got through all that money, and she boasts
+she's going to marry young Dunstable before his parents know anything
+about it. She's going to make sure of a peerage this time. Oh, she's
+odious! She's greedy, she's vulgar, she's false! And of course"--the
+girl's eyes grew wide and scared--"there may be other things much worse.
+How do we know?"
+
+"How do we know indeed!" said Doris, with a shrug. "Well!"--she turned
+her eyes full upon her guest--"and what are you going to do?"
+
+An eager look met hers.
+
+"Couldn't you--couldn't you write to Mr. Meadows, and ask him to warn
+Lady Dunstable?"
+
+Doris shook her head.
+
+"Why don't you do it yourself?"
+
+The girl flushed uncomfortably. "You see, father quarrelled with her
+about that unkind thing she did to me--oh, it isn't worth telling!--but
+he wrote her an angry letter, and they never spoke afterwards. Lady
+Dunstable never forgives that kind of thing. If people find fault with
+her, she just drops them. I don't believe she'd read a letter from me!"
+
+"_Les offensés_, etc.," said Doris, meditating. "But what are the facts?
+Has the boy actually promised to marry her? She may have been telling
+lies to my uncle."
+
+"She tells everybody so. I saw a girl who knows her quite well. They
+write for the same paper--it's a fashion paper. You saw that hat, by the
+way, she had on? She gets them as perquisites from the smart shops she
+writes about. She has a whole cupboard of them at home, and when she
+wants money she sells them for what she can get. Well, she told me that
+Madame--they all call her Madame, though they all know quite well that
+she's not married, and that her name is Flink--boasts perpetually of her
+engagement. It seems that he was ill in the winter--in his lodgings. His
+mother knew nothing about it--he wouldn't tell her, and Madame nursed
+him, and made a fuss of him. And Mr. Dunstable thought he owed her a
+great deal--and she made scenes and told him she had compromised herself
+by coming to nurse him--and all that kind of nonsense. And at last he
+promised to marry her--in writing. And now she's so sure of him that she
+just bullies him--you saw how she ordered him about to-day."
+
+"Well, why doesn't he marry her, if he's such a fool--why hasn't he
+married her long ago?" cried Doris.
+
+Miss Wigram looked distressed.
+
+"I don't know. My friend thinks it's his father. She believes, at least,
+that he doesn't want to get married without telling Lord Dunstable; and
+that, of course, means telling his mother. And he hates the thought of
+the letters and the scenes. So he keeps it hanging on; and lately Madame
+has been furious with him, and is always teasing and sniffing at him.
+He's dreadfully weak, and my friend's afraid that before he's made up
+his own mind what to do that woman will have carried him off to a
+registry office--and got the horrid thing done for good and all."
+
+There was silence a moment. After which Doris said, with a cold
+decision:
+
+"You can't imagine how absurd it seems to me that you should come and
+ask me to help Lady Dunstable with her son. There is nobody in the world
+less helpless than Lady Dunstable, and nobody who would be less grateful
+for being helped. I really cannot meddle with it."
+
+She rose as she spoke, and Miss Wigram rose too.
+
+"Couldn't you--couldn't you--" said the girl pleadingly--"just ask Mr.
+Meadows to warn Lord Dunstable? I'm thinking of the villagers, and the
+farmers, and the schools--all the people we used to love. Father was
+there twenty years! To think of the dear place given over--some day--to
+that creature!"
+
+Her charming eyes actually filled with tears. Doris was touched, but at
+the same time set on edge. This loyalty that people born and bred in the
+country feel to our English country system--what an absurd and unreal
+frame of mind! And when our country system produces Lady Dunstables!
+
+"They have such a pull!"--she thought angrily--"such a hideously unfair
+pull, over other people! The way everybody rushes to help them when they
+get into a mess--to pick up the pieces--and sweep it all up! It's
+irrational--it's sickening! Let them look after themselves--and pay for
+their own misdeeds like the rest of us."
+
+"I can't interfere--I really can't!" she said, straightening her slim
+shoulders. "It is not as though we were old friends of Lord and Lady
+Dunstable. Don't you see how very awkward it would be? Let me advise
+you just to watch the thing a little, and then to apply to somebody in
+the Crosby Ledgers neighbourhood. You must have some friends or
+acquaintances there, who at any rate could do more than we could. And
+perhaps after all it's a mare's nest, and the young man doesn't mean to
+marry her at all!"
+
+The girl's anxious eyes scanned Doris's unyielding countenance; then
+with a sigh she gave up her attempt, and said "Good-bye." Doris went
+with her to the door.
+
+"We shall meet to-morrow, shan't we?" she said, feeling a vague
+compunction. "And I suppose this woman will be there again. You can keep
+an eye on her. Are you living alone--or are you with friends?"
+
+"Oh, I'm in a boarding-house," said Miss Wigram, hastily. Then as though
+she recognised the new softness in Doris's look, she added, "I'm quite
+comfortable there--and I've a great deal of work. Good night."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"All alone!--with that gentle face--and that terrible amount of
+conscience--hard lines!" thought Doris, as she reflected on her visitor.
+"I felt a black imp beside her!"
+
+All the same, the letter which Mrs. Meadows received by the following
+morning's post was not at all calculated to melt the "black imp"
+further. Arthur wrote in a great hurry to beg that she would not go on
+with their Welsh plans--for the moment.
+
+    Lady D---- has insisted on my going on a short yachting cruise with
+    her and Miss Field, the week after next. She wants to show me the
+    West Coast, and they have a small cottage in the Shetlands where we
+    should stay a night or two and watch the sea-birds. It _may_ keep me
+    away another week or fortnight, but you won't mind, dear, will you?
+    I am getting famously rested, and really the house is very
+    agreeable. In these surroundings Lady Dunstable is less of the
+    _bas-bleu_, and more of the woman. You _must_ make up your mind to
+    come another year! You would soon get over your prejudice and make
+    friends with her. She looks after us all--she talks brilliantly--and
+    I haven't seen her rude to anybody since I arrived. There are some
+    very nice people here, and altogether I am enjoying it. Don't you
+    work too hard--and don't let the servants harry you. Post just
+    going. Good night!
+
+Another week or fortnight!--five weeks, or nearly, altogether. Doris was
+sorely wounded. She went to look at herself in the mirror over the
+chimney-piece. Was she not thin and haggard for want of rest and
+holiday? Would not the summer weather be all done by the time Arthur
+graciously condescended to come back to her? Were there not dark lines
+under her eyes, and was she not feeling a limp and wretched creature,
+unfit for any exertion? What was wrong with her? She hated her
+drawing--she hated everything. And there was Arthur, proposing to go
+yachting with Lady Dunstable!--while she might toil and moil--all
+alone--in this August London! The tears rushed into her eyes. Her pride
+only just saved her from a childish fit of crying.
+
+But in the end resentment came to her aid, together with an angry and
+redoubled curiosity as to what might be happening to Lady Dunstable's
+precious son while Lady Dunstable was thus absorbed in robbing other
+women of their husbands. Doris hurried her small household affairs, that
+she might get off early to the studio; and as she put on her hat, her
+fancy drew vindictive pictures of the scene which any day might
+realise--the scene at Franick Castle, when Lady Dunstable, unsuspecting,
+should open the letter which announced to her the advent of her
+daughter-in-law, Elena, _née_ Flink--or should gather the same unlovely
+fact from a casual newspaper paragraph. As for interfering between her
+and her rich deserts, Doris vowed to herself she would not lift a
+finger. That incredibly forgiving young woman, Miss Wigram, might do as
+she pleased. But when a mother pursues her own selfish ends so as to
+make her only son dislike and shun her, let her take what comes. It was
+in the mood of an Erinnys that Doris made her way northwards to Campden
+Hill, and nobody perceiving the slight erect figure in the corner of the
+omnibus could possibly have guessed at the storm within.
+
+The August day was hot and lifeless. Heat mist lay over the park, and
+over the gardens on the slopes of Campden Hill. Doris could hardly drag
+her weary feet along, as she walked from where the omnibus had set her
+down to her uncle's studio. But it was soon evident that within the
+studio itself there was animation enough. From the long passage
+approaching it Doris heard someone shouting--declaiming--what appeared
+to be verse. Madame, of course, reciting her own poems--poor Uncle
+Charles! Doris stopped outside the door, which was slightly open, to
+listen, and heard these astonishing lines--delivered very slowly and
+pompously, in a thick, strained voice:
+
+     "My heart is adamant! The tear-drops drip and drip--
+     Force their slow path, and tear their desperate way.
+     The vulture Pain sits close, to snip--and snip--and snip
+     My sad, sweet life to ruin--well-a-day!
+     I am deceived--a bleating lamb bereft!--who goes
+     Baa-baaing to the moon o'er lonely lands.
+     Through all my shivering veins a tender fervour flows;
+     I cry to Love--'Reach out, my Lord, thy hands!
+     And save me from these ugly beasts who ramp and rage
+     Around me all day long--beasts fell and sore--
+     Envy, and Hate, and Calumny!--do thou assuage
+     Their impious mouths, O splendid Love, and floor
+     Their hideous tactics, and their noisome spleen,
+     Withering to dust the awful "Might-Have-Been!"'"
+
+"Goodness! 'Howls the Sublime' indeed!" thought Doris, gurgling with
+laughter in the passage. As soon as she had steadied her face she opened
+the studio door, and perceived Lady Dunstable's prospective
+daughter-in-law standing in the middle of the studio, head thrown back
+and hands outstretched, invoking the Cyprian. The shriek of the first
+lines had died away in a stage whisper; the reciter was glaring fiercely
+into vacancy.
+
+Doris's merry eyes devoured the scene. On the chair from which the model
+had risen she had deposited yet another hat, so large, so audacious and
+beplumed that it seemed to have a positive personality, a positive
+swagger of its own, and to be winking roguishly at the audience.
+Meanwhile Madame's muslin dress of the day before had been exchanged for
+something more appropriate to the warmth of her poetry--a tawdry
+flame-coloured satin, in which her "too, too solid" frame was tightly
+sheathed. Her coal-black hair, tragically wild, looked as though no comb
+had been near it for a month, and the gloves drawn half-way up the bare
+arms hardly remembered they had ever been white.
+
+A slovenly, dishevelled, vulgar woman, reciting bombastic nonsense! And
+yet!--a touch of Southern magnificence, even of Southern grace, amid the
+cockney squalor and finery. Doris coolly recognised it, as she stood,
+herself invisible, behind her uncle's large easel. Thence she perceived
+also the other persons in the studio:--Bentley sitting in front of the
+poetess, hiding his eyes with one hand, and nervously tapping the arm of
+his chair with the other; to the right of him--seen sideways--the lanky
+form, flushed face, and open mouth of young Dunstable; and in the far
+distance, Miss Wigram.
+
+Then--a surprising thing! The awkward pause following the recitation was
+suddenly broken by a loud and uncontrollable laugh. Doris, startled,
+turned to look at young Dunstable. For it was he who had laughed. Madame
+also shook off her stage trance to look--a thunderous frown upon her
+handsome face. The young man laughed on--laughed hysterically--burying
+his face in his hands. Madame Vavasour--all attitudes thrown aside--ran
+up to him in a fury.
+
+"Why are you laughing? You insult me!--you have done it before. And now
+before strangers--it is too much! I insist that you explain!"
+
+She stood over him, her eyes blazing. The youth, still convulsed, did
+his best to quiet the paroxysm which had seized him, and at last said,
+gasping:
+
+"I was--I was thinking--of your reciting that at Crosby Ledgers--to my
+mother--and--and what she would say."
+
+Even under her rouge it could be seen that the poetess turned a grey
+white.
+
+"And pray--what would she say?"
+
+The question was delivered with apparent calm. But Madame's eyes were
+dangerous. Doris stepped forward. Her uncle stayed her with a gesture.
+He himself rose, but Madame fiercely waved him aside. Miss Wigram, in
+the distance, had also moved forward--and paused.
+
+"What would she say?" demanded Madame, again--at the sword's point.
+
+"I--I don't know--" said young Dunstable, helplessly, still shaking.
+"I--I think--she'd laugh."
+
+And he went off again, hysterically, trying in vain to stop the fit.
+Madame bit her lip. Then came a torrent of Italian--evidently a torrent
+of abuse; and then she lifted a gloved hand and struck the young man
+violently on the cheek.
+
+"Take that!--you insolent--you--you barbarian! You are my _fiancé_,--my
+promised husband--and you mock at me; you will encourage your stuck-up
+mother to mock at me--I know you will! But I tell you--"
+
+The speaker, however, had stopped abruptly, and instead of saying
+anything more she fell back panting, her eyes on the young man. For
+Herbert Dunstable had risen. At the blow, an amazing change had passed
+over his weak countenance and weedy frame. He put his hand to his
+forehead a moment, as though trying to collect his thoughts, and then he
+turned--quietly--to look for his hat and stick.
+
+"Where are you going, Herbert?" stammered Madame. "I--I was carried
+away--I forgot myself!"
+
+"I think not," said the young man, who was extremely pale. "This is not
+the first time. I bid you good morning, Madame--and good-bye!"
+
+He stood looking at the now frightened woman, with a strange, surprised
+look, like one just emerging from a semi-conscious state; and in that
+moment, as Doris seemed to perceive, the traditions of his birth and
+breeding had returned upon him; something instinctive and inherited had
+reappeared; and the gentlemanly, easy-going father, who yet, as Doris
+remembered, when matters were serious "always got his way," was
+there--strangely there--in the degenerate son.
+
+"Where are you going?" repeated Madame, eyeing him. "You promised to
+give me lunch."
+
+"I regret--I have an engagement. Mr. Bentley--when the sitting is
+over--will you kindly see--Miss Flink--into a taxi? I thank you very
+much for allowing me to come and watch your work. I trust the picture
+will be a success. Good-bye!"
+
+He held out his hand to Bentley, and bowed to Doris. Madame made a rush
+at him. But Bentley held her back. He seized her arms, indeed, quietly
+but irresistibly, while the young man made his retreat. Then, with a
+shriek, Madame fell back on her chair, pretending to faint, and Bentley,
+in no hurry, went to her assistance, while Doris slipped out after young
+Dunstable. She overtook him on the door-step.
+
+"Mr. Dunstable, may I speak to you?"
+
+He turned in astonishment, showing a grim pallor which touched her pity.
+
+"I know your mother and father," said Doris hurriedly; "at least my
+husband and I were staying at Crosby Ledges some weeks ago, and my
+husband is now in Scotland with your people. His name is Arthur Meadows.
+I am Mrs. Meadows. I--I don't know whether I could help you. You
+seem"--her smile flashed out--"to be in a horrid mess!"
+
+The young man looked in perplexity at the small, trim lady before him,
+as though realising her existence for the first time. Her honest eyes
+were bent upon him with the same expression she had often worn when
+Arthur had come to her with some confession of folly--the expression
+which belongs to the maternal side of women, and is at once mocking and
+sweet. It said--"Of course you are a great fool!--most men are. But
+that's the _raison d'être_ of women! Suppose we go into the business!"
+
+"You're very kind--" he groaned--"awfully kind. I'm ashamed you should
+have seen--such a thing. Nobody can help me--thank you very much. I am
+engaged to that lady--I've promised to marry her. Oh, she's got any
+amount of evidence. I've been an ass--and worse. But I can't get out of
+it. I don't mean to try to get out of it. I promised of my own free
+will. Only I've found out now I can never live with her. Her temper is
+fiendish. It degrades her--and me. But you saw! She has made my life a
+burden to me lately, because I wouldn't name a day for us to be married.
+I wanted to see my father quietly first--without my mother knowing--and
+I have been thinking how to manage it--and funking it of course--I
+always do funk things. But what she did just now has settled it--it has
+been blowing up for a long time. I shall marry her--at a registry
+office--as soon as possible. Then I shall separate from her, and--I
+hope--never see her again. The lawyers will arrange that--and money!
+Thank you--it's awfully good of you to want to help me--but you
+can't--nobody can."
+
+Doris had drawn her companion into her uncle's small dining-room and
+closed the door. She listened to his burst of confidence with a puzzled
+concern.
+
+"Why must you marry her?" she said abruptly, when he paused. "Break it
+off! It would be far best."
+
+"No. I promised. I--" he stammered a little--"I seem to have done her
+harm--her reputation, I mean. There is only one thing could let me off.
+She swore to me that--well!--that she was a good woman--that there was
+nothing in her past--you understand--"
+
+"And you know of nothing?" said Doris, gravely.
+
+"Nothing. And you don't think I'm going to try and ferret out things
+against her!" cried the youth, flushing. "No--I must just bear it."
+
+"It's your parents that will have to bear it!"
+
+His face hardened.
+
+"My mother might have prevented it," he said bitterly. "However, I won't
+go into that. My father will see I couldn't do anything else. I'd better
+get it over. I'm going to my lawyers now. They'll take a few days over
+what I want."
+
+"You'll tell your father?"
+
+"I--I don't know," he said, irresolutely. She noticed that he did not
+try to pledge her not to give him away. And she, on her side, did not
+threaten to do so. She argued with him a little more, trying to get at
+his real thoughts, and to straighten them out for him. But it was
+evident he had made up such mind as he had, and that his sudden
+resolution--even the ugly scene which had made him take it--had been a
+relief. He knew at last where he stood.
+
+So presently Doris let him go. They parted, liking each other decidedly.
+He thanked her warmly--though drearily--for taking an interest in him,
+and he said to her on the threshold:
+
+"Some day, I hope, you'll come to Crosby Ledgers again, Mrs.
+Meadows--and I'll be there--for once! Then I'll tell you--if you
+care--more about it. Thanks awfully! Good-bye."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later on, when "Miss Flink," in a state of sulky collapse, had been sent
+home in her taxi, Doris, Bentley, and Miss Wigram held a conference. But
+it came to little. Bentley, the hater of "rows," simply could not be
+moved to take the thing up. "I kept her from scalping him!--" he
+laughed--"and I'm not due for any more!" Doris said little. A whirl of
+arguments and projects were in her mind. But she kept her own counsel
+about them. As to the possibility of inducing the man to break it off,
+she repeated the only condition on which it could be done; at which
+Uncle Charles laughed, and Alice Wigram fell into a long and thoughtful
+silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doris arrived at home rather early. What with the emotions of the day,
+the heat, and her work, she was strangely tired and over-done. After tea
+she strolled out into Kensington Gardens, and sat under the shade of
+trees already autumnal, watching the multitude of children--children of
+the people--enjoying the nation's park all to themselves, in the
+complete absence of their social betters. What ducks they were, some of
+them--the little, grimy, round-faced things--rolling on the grass, or
+toddling after their sisters and brothers. They turned large,
+inquisitive eyes upon her, which seemed to tease her heart-strings.
+
+And suddenly,--it was in Kensington Gardens that out of the heart of a
+long and vague reverie there came a flash--an illumination--which wholly
+changed the life and future of Doris Meadows. After the thought in which
+it took shape had seized upon her, she sat for some time motionless;
+then rising to her feet, tottering a little, like one in bewilderment,
+she turned northwards, and made her way hurriedly towards Lancaster
+Gate. In a house there, lived a lady, a widowed lady, who was Doris's
+godmother, and to whom Doris--who had lost her own mother in her
+childhood--had turned for counsel before now. How long it was since she
+had seen "Cousin Julia"!--nearly two months. And here she was, hastening
+to her, and not able to bear the thought that in all human probability
+Cousin Julia was not in town.
+
+But, by good luck, Doris found her godmother, perching in London between
+a Devonshire visit and a Scotch one. They talked long, and Doris walked
+slowly home across the park. A glory of spreading sun lay over the
+grassy glades; the Serpentine held reflections of a sky barred with
+rose; London, transfigured, seemed a city of pearl and fire. And in
+Doris's heart there was a glory like that of the evening,--and, like the
+burning sky, bearing with it a promise of fair days to come. The glory
+and the promise stole through all her thoughts, softening and
+transmuting everything.
+
+"When _he_ grows up--if he were to marry such a woman--and I didn't
+know--if all _his_ life--and mine--were spoilt--and nobody said a word!"
+
+Her eyes filled with tears. She seemed to be walking with Arthur through
+a world of beauty, hand in hand.
+
+How many hours to Pitlochry? She ran into the Kensington house, asking
+for railway guides, and peremptorily telling Jane to get down the small
+suitcase from the box-room at once.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"'Barbarians, Philistines, Populace!'"
+
+The young golden-haired man of letters who was lounging on the grass
+beside Arthur Meadows repeated the words to himself in an absent voice,
+turning over the pages meanwhile of a book lying before him, as though
+in search of a passage he had noticed and lost. He presently found it
+again, and turned laughing towards Meadows, who was trifling with a
+French novel.
+
+"Do you remember this passage in _Culture and Anarchy_--'I often,
+therefore, when I want to distinguish clearly the aristocratic class
+from the Philistines proper, or middle class, name the former, in my own
+mind, _the Barbarians_. And when I go through the country, and see this
+or that beautiful and imposing seat of theirs crowning the landscape,
+"There," I say to myself, "is a great fortified post of the
+Barbarians!"'"
+
+The youth pointed smiling to the fine Scotch house seen sideways on the
+other side of the lawn. Its turreted and battlemented front rose high
+above the low and spreading buildings which made the bulk of the house,
+so that it was a feudal castle--by no means, however, so old as it
+looked--on a front view, and a large and roomy villa from the rear.
+Meadows, looking at it, appreciated the fitness of the quotation, and
+laughed in response.
+
+"Ungrateful wretch," he said--"after that dinner last night!"
+
+"All the same, Matthew Arnold had that dinner in mind--_chef_ and all!
+Listen! 'The graver self of the Barbarian likes honours and
+consideration; his more relaxed self, field-sports and pleasures.'
+Isn't it exact? Grouse-driving in the morning--bridge, politics,
+Cabinet-making, and the best of food in the evening. And I should put
+our hostess very high--wouldn't you?--among the chatelaines of the
+'great fortified posts'?"
+
+Meadows assented, but rather languidly. The day was extremely hot; he
+was tired, moreover, by a long walk with the guns the day before, and by
+conversation after dinner, led by Lady Dunstable, which had lasted up to
+nearly one o'clock in the morning. The talk had been brilliant, no
+doubt. Meadows, however, did not feel that he had come off very well in
+it. His hostess had deliberately pitted him against two of the ablest
+men in England, and he was well aware that he had disappointed her. Lady
+Dunstable had a way of behaving to her favourite author or artist of the
+moment as though she were the fancier and he the cock. She fought him
+against the other people's cocks with astonishing zeal and passion; and
+whenever he failed to kill, or lost too many feathers in the process,
+her annoyance was evident.
+
+Meadows was in truth becoming a little tired of her dictation, although
+it was only ten days since he had arrived under her roof. There was a
+large amount of lethargy combined with his ability; and he hated to be
+obliged to live at any pace but his own. But Rachel Dunstable was an
+imperious friend, never tired herself, apparently, either in mind or
+body; and those who could not walk, eat, and talk to please her were apt
+to know it. Her opinions too, both political and literary, were in some
+directions extremely violent; and though, in general, argument and
+contradiction gave her pleasure, she had her days and moods, and Meadows
+had already suffered occasional sets-down, of a kind to which he was not
+accustomed.
+
+But if he was--just a little--out of love with his new friend, in all
+other respects he was enjoying himself enormously. The long days on the
+moors, the luxurious life indoors, the changing and generally agreeable
+company, all the thousand easements and pleasures that wealth brings
+with it, the skilled service, the motors, the costly cigars, the
+wines--there was a Sybarite in Meadows which revelled in them all. He
+had done without them; he would do without them again; but there they
+were exceedingly good creatures of God, while they lasted; and only the
+hypocrites pretended otherwise. His sympathy, in the old
+poverty-stricken days, would have been all with the plaintive
+American--"There's d-----d good times in the world, and I ain't in
+'em."
+
+All the same, the fleshpots of Pitlochry had by no means put his wife
+out of his mind. His incurable laziness and procrastination in small
+things had led him to let slip post after post; but that very morning,
+at any rate, he had really written her a decent letter. And he was
+beginning to be anxious to hear from her about the yachting plan. If
+Lady Dunstable had asked him a few days later, he was not sure he would
+have accepted so readily. After all, the voyage might be stormy, and the
+lady--difficult. Doris must be dull in London,--"poor little cat!"
+
+But then a very natural wrath returned upon him. Why on earth had she
+stayed behind? No doubt Lady Dunstable was formidable, but so was Doris
+in her own way. "She'd soon have held her own. Lady D. would have had to
+come to terms!" However, he remembered with some compunction that Doris
+did seem to have been a good deal neglected at Crosby Ledgers, and that
+he had not done much to help her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was an "off" day for the shooters, and Lady Dunstable's guests were
+lounging about the garden, writing letters or playing a little leisurely
+golf on the lower reaches of the moor. Some of the ladies, indeed, had
+not yet appeared downstairs; a sleepy heat reigned over the valley with
+its winding stream, and veiled the distant hills. Meadows's companion,
+Ralph Barrow, a young novelist of promise, had gone fast asleep on the
+grass; Meadows was drowsing over his book; the dogs slept on the terrace
+steps; and in the summer silence the murmur of the river far below stole
+up the hill on which the house stood, and its soft song held the air.
+
+Suddenly there was a disturbance. The dogs sprang up and barked. There
+was a firm step on the gravel. Lady Dunstable, stick in hand, her short
+leather-bound skirt showing boots and gaiters of the most business-like
+description, came quickly towards the seat on which Meadows sat.
+
+"Mr. Meadows, I summon you for a walk! Sir Luke and Mr. Frome are
+coming. We propose to get to the tarn and back before lunch."
+
+The tarn was at least two miles away, a stiff climb over difficult moor.
+Meadows, startled from something very near sleep, looked up, and a
+spirit of revolt seized upon him, provoked by the masterful tone and
+eyes of the lady.
+
+"Very sorry, Lady Dunstable!--but I must write some letters before
+luncheon."
+
+"Oh no!--put them off! I have been thinking of what you told me
+yesterday of your scheme for your new set of lectures. I have a great
+deal to say to you about it."
+
+"I really shouldn't be worth talking to now," laughed Meadows; "this
+heat has made me so sleepy. To-night--or after tea--by all means!"
+
+Lady Dunstable looked annoyed.
+
+"I am expecting the Duke's party at tea," she said peremptorily. "This
+will be my only chance to-day."
+
+"Then let's put it off--till to-morrow!" said Meadows, as he rose, still
+smiling. "It is most kind of you, but I really must write my letters,
+and my brains are pulp. But I will escort you through the garden, if I
+may."
+
+His hostess turned sharply, and walked back towards the front of the
+house where Sir Luke and Mr. Frome, a young and rising Under-Secretary,
+were waiting for her. Meadows accompanied her, but found her exceedingly
+ungracious. She did, however, inform him, as they followed the other two
+towards the exit from the garden, that she had come to the conclusion
+that the subject he was proposing for his second series of lectures, to
+be given at Dunstable House during the winter, "would never do."
+
+"Famous Controversies of the Nineteenth Century--political and
+religious." The very sound of it was enough to keep people away! "What
+people expect from you is talk about _persons_--not ideas. Ideas are not
+your line!"
+
+Meadows flushed a little. What his "line" might be, he said, he had not
+yet discovered. But he liked his subject, and meant to stick to it.
+
+Lady Dunstable turned on him a pair of sarcastic eyes.
+
+"That's so like you clever people. You would die rather than take
+advice."
+
+"Advice!--yes. As much as you like, dear lady. But--"
+
+"But what--" she asked, imperatively, nettled in her turn.
+
+"Well--you must put it prettily!" said Meadows, smiling. "We want a
+great deal of jam with the powder."
+
+"You want to be flattered? I never flatter! It is the most despicable of
+arts."
+
+"On the contrary--one of the most skilled. And I have heard you do it to
+perfection."
+
+His daring half irritated, half amused her. It was her turn to flush.
+Her thin, sallow face and dark eyes lit up vindictively.
+
+"One should never remind one's friends of their vices," she said with
+animation.
+
+"Ah--if they _are_ vices! But flattery is merely a virtue out of
+place--kindness gone wrong. From the point of view of the moralist, that
+is. From the point of view of the ordinary mortal, it is what no
+men--and few women--can do without!"
+
+She smiled grimly, enjoying the spar. They carried it on a little while,
+Meadows, now fairly on his mettle, administering a little deft though
+veiled castigation here and there, in requital for various acts of
+rudeness of which she had been guilty towards him and others during the
+preceding days. She grew restive occasionally, but on the whole she bore
+it well. Her arrogance was not of the small-minded sort; and the best
+chance with her was to defy her.
+
+At the gate leading on to the moor, Meadows resolutely came to a stop.
+
+"Your letters are the merest excuse!" said Lady Dunstable. "I don't
+believe you will write one of them! I notice you always put off
+unpleasant duties."
+
+"Give me credit at least for the intention."
+
+Smiling, he held the gate open for her, and she passed through,
+discomfited, to join Sir Luke on the other side. Mr. Frome, the
+Under-Secretary, a young man of Jewish family and amazing talents, who
+had been listening with amusement to the conversation behind him, turned
+back to say to Meadows, at a safe distance--"Keep it up!--Keep it up!
+You avenge us all!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently, as she and her two companions wound slowly up the moor, Sir
+Luke Malford, who had only arrived the night before, inquired gaily of
+his hostess:
+
+"So she wouldn't come?--the little wife?"
+
+"I gave her every chance. She scorned us."
+
+"You mean--'she funked us.' Have you any idea, I wonder, how alarming
+you are?"
+
+Lady Dunstable exclaimed impatiently:
+
+"People represent me as a kind of ogre. I am nothing of the kind. I only
+expect everybody to play up."
+
+"Ah, but you make the rules!" laughed Sir Luke. "I thought that young
+woman might have been a decided acquisition."
+
+"She hadn't the very beginnings of a social gift," declared his
+companion. "A stubborn and rather stupid little person. I am much afraid
+she will stand in her husband's way."
+
+"But suppose you blow up a happy home, by encouraging him to come
+without her? I bet anything she is feeling jealous and ill-used. You
+ought--I am sure you ought--to have a guilty conscience; but you look
+perfectly brazen!"
+
+Sir Luke's banter was generally accepted with indifference, but on this
+occasion it provoked Lady Dunstable. She protested with vehemence that
+she had given Mrs. Meadows every chance, and that a young woman who was
+both trivial and conceited could not expect to get on in society. Sir
+Luke gathered from her tone that she and Mrs. Meadows had somewhat
+crossed swords, and that the wife might look out for consequences. He
+had been a witness of this kind of thing before in Lady Dunstable's
+circle; and he was conscious of a passing sympathy with the
+pleasant-faced little woman he remembered at Crosby Ledgers. At the same
+time he had been Rachel Dunstable's friend for twenty years; originally,
+her suitor. He spent a great part of his life in her company, and her
+ways seemed to him part of the order of things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile Meadows walked back to the house. He had been a good deal
+nettled by Lady Dunstable's last remark to him. But he had taken pains
+not to show it. Doris might say such things to him--but no one else.
+They were, of course, horribly true! Well--quarrelling with Lady
+Dunstable was amusing enough--when there was room to escape her. But how
+would it be in the close quarters of a yacht?
+
+On his way through the garden he fell in with Miss Field--Mattie Field,
+the plump and smiling cousin of the house, who was apparently as
+necessary to the Dunstables in the Highlands, as in London, or at Crosby
+Ledgers. Her rôle in the Dunstable household seemed to Meadows to be
+that of "shock absorber." She took all the small rubs and jars on her
+own shoulders, so that Lady Dunstable might escape them. If the fish did
+not arrive from Edinburgh, if the motor broke down, if a gun failed, or
+a guest set up influenza, it was always Miss Field who came to the
+rescue. She had devices for every emergency. It was generally supposed
+that she had no money, and that the Dunstables made her residence with
+them worth while. But if so, she had none of the ways of the poor
+relation. On the contrary, her independence was plain; she had a very
+free and merry tongue; and Lady Dunstable, who snubbed everybody, never
+snubbed Mattie Field. Lord Dunstable was clearly devoted to her.
+
+She greeted Meadows rather absently.
+
+"Rachel didn't carry you off? Oh, then--I wonder if I may ask you
+something?"
+
+Meadows assured her she might ask him anything.
+
+"I wonder if you will save yourself for a walk with Lord Dunstable.
+Will you ask him? He's very low, and you would cheer him up."
+
+Meadows looked at her interrogatively. He too had noticed that Lord
+Dunstable had seemed for some days to be out of spirits.
+
+"Why do people have sons!" said Miss Field, briskly.
+
+Meadows understood the reference. It was common knowledge among the
+Dunstables' friends that their son was anything but a comfort to them.
+
+"Anything particularly wrong?" he asked her in a lowered voice, as they
+neared the house. At the same time, he could not help wondering whether,
+under all circumstances--if her nearest and dearest were made mincemeat
+in a railway accident, or crushed by an earth-quake--this fair-haired,
+rosy-cheeked lady would still keep her perennial smile. He had never yet
+seen her without it.
+
+Miss Field replied in a joking tone that Lord Dunstable was depressed
+because the graceless Herbert had promised his parents a visit--a whole
+week--in August, and had now cried off on some excuse or other. Meadows
+inquired if Lady Dunstable minded as much as her husband.
+
+"Quite!" laughed Miss Field. "It is not so much that she wants to see
+Herbert as that she's found someone to marry him to. You'll see the lady
+this afternoon. She comes with the Duke's party, to be looked at."
+
+"But I understand that the young man is by no means manageable?"
+
+Miss Field's amusement increased.
+
+"That's Rachel's delusion. She knows very well that she hasn't been able
+to manage him so far; but she's always full of fresh schemes for
+managing him. She thinks, if she could once marry him to the right wife,
+she and the wife between them could get the whip hand of him."
+
+"Does she care for him?" said Meadows, bluntly.
+
+Miss Field considered the question, and for the first time Meadows
+perceived a grain of seriousness in her expression. But she emerged from
+her meditations, smiling as usual.
+
+"She'd be hard hit if anything very bad happened!"
+
+"What could happen?"
+
+"Well, of course they never know whether he won't marry to please
+himself--produce somebody impossible!"
+
+"And Lady Dunstable would suffer?"
+
+Miss Field chuckled.
+
+"I really believe you think her a kind of griffin--a stony creature with
+a hole where her heart ought to be. Most of her friends do. Rachel, of
+course, goes through life assuming that none of the disagreeable things
+that happen to other people will ever happen to her. But if they ever
+did happen--"
+
+"The very stones would cry out? But hasn't she lost all influence with
+the youth?"
+
+"She won't believe it. She's always scheming for him. And when he's not
+here she feels so affectionate and so good! And directly he comes--"
+
+"I see! A tragedy--and a common one! Well, in half an hour I shall be
+ready for his lordship. Will you arrange it? I must write a letter
+first."
+
+Miss Field nodded and departed. Meadows honestly meant to follow her
+into the house and write some pressing business letters. But the
+sunshine was so delightful, the sight of the empty bench and the
+abandoned novel on the other side of the lawn so beguiling, that after
+all he turned his lazy steps thither-ward, half ashamed, half amused to
+think how well Lady Dunstable had read his character.
+
+The guests had all disappeared. Meadows had the garden to himself, and
+all its summer prospect of moor and stream. It was close on noon--a hot
+and heavenly day! And again he thought of Doris cooped up in London.
+Perhaps, after all, he would get out of that cruise!
+
+Ah! there was the morning train--the midnight express from King's Cross
+just arriving in the busy little town lying in the valley at his feet.
+He watched it gliding along the valley, and heard the noise of the
+brakes. Were any new guests expected by it? he wondered. Hardly! The
+Lodge seemed quite full.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Twenty minutes later he threw away the novel impatiently. Midway, the
+story had gone to pieces. He rose from his feet, intending this time to
+tackle his neglected duties in earnest. As he did so, he heard a motor
+climbing the steep drive, and in front of it a lady, walking.
+
+He stood arrested--in a stupor of astonishment.
+
+Doris!--by all the gods!--_Doris_!
+
+It was indeed Doris. She came wearily, looking from side to side, like
+one uncertain of her way. Then she too perceived Meadows, and stopped.
+
+Meadows was conscious of two mixed feelings--first, a very lively
+pleasure at the sight of her, and then annoyance. What on earth had she
+come for? To recover him?--to protest against his not writing?--to make
+a scene, in short? His guilty imagination in a flash showed her to him
+throwing herself into his arms--weeping--on this wide lawn--for all the
+world to see.
+
+But she did nothing of the kind. She directed the motor, which was
+really a taxi from the station, to stop without approaching the front
+door, and then she herself walked quickly towards her husband.
+
+"Arthur!--you got my letter? I could only write yesterday."
+
+She had reached him, and they had joined hands mechanically.
+
+"Letter?--I got no letter! If you posted one, it has probably arrived
+by your train. What on earth, Doris, is the meaning of this? Is there
+anything wrong?"
+
+His expression was half angry, half concerned, for he saw plainly that
+she was tired and jaded. Of course! Long journeys always knocked her up.
+She meanwhile stood looking at him as though trying to read the
+impression produced on him by her escapade. Something evidently in his
+manner hurt her, for she withdrew her hand, and her face stiffened.
+
+"There is nothing wrong with me, thank you! Of course I did not come
+without good reason."
+
+"But, my dear, are you come to stay?" cried Meadows, looking helplessly
+at the taxi. "And you never wrote to Lady Dunstable?"
+
+For he could only imagine that Doris had reconsidered her refusal of the
+invitation which had originally included them both, and--either tired
+of being left alone, or angry with him for not writing--had devised this
+_coup de main_, this violent shake to the kaleidoscope. But what an
+extraordinary step! It could only cover them both with ridicule. His
+cheeks were already burning.
+
+Doris surveyed him very quietly.
+
+"No--I didn't write to Lady Dunstable--I wrote to _you_--and sent her a
+message. I suppose--I shall have to stay the night."
+
+"But what on earth are we to say to her?" cried Meadows in desperation.
+"They're out walking now--but she'll be back directly. There isn't a
+corner in the house! I've got a little bachelor room in the attics.
+Really, Doris, if you were going to do this, you should have given both
+her and me notice! There is a crowd of people here!"
+
+Frown and voice were Jovian indeed. Doris, however, showed no tremors.
+
+"Lady Dunstable will find somewhere to put me up," she said, half
+scornfully. "Is there a telegram for me?"
+
+"A telegram? Why should there be a telegram? What is the meaning of all
+this? For heaven's sake, explain!"
+
+Doris, however, did not attempt to explain. Her mood had been very soft
+on the journey. But Arthur's reception of her had suddenly stirred the
+root of bitterness again; and it was shooting fast and high. Whatever
+she had done or left undone, he ought _not_ to have been able to conceal
+that he was glad to see her--he ought _not_ to have been able to think
+of Lady Dunstable first! She began to take a pleasure in mystifying him.
+
+"I expected a telegram. I daresay it will come soon. You see I've asked
+someone else to come this afternoon--and she'll have to be put up too."
+
+"Asked someone else!--to Lady Dunstable's house!" Meadows stood
+bewildered. "Really, Doris, have you taken leave of your senses?"
+
+She stood with shining eyes, apparently enjoying his astonishment. Then
+she suddenly bethought herself.
+
+"I must go and pay the taxi." Turning round, she coolly surveyed the
+"fortified post." "It looks big enough to take me in. Arthur!--I think
+you may pay the man. Just take out my bag, and tell the footman to put
+it in your room. That will do for the present. I shall sit down here and
+wait for Lady Dunstable. I'm pretty tired."
+
+The thought of what the magnificent gentleman presiding over Lady
+Dunstable's hall would say to the unexpected irruption of Mrs. Meadows,
+and Mrs. Meadows's bag, upon the "fortified post" he controlled, was
+simply beyond expressing. Meadows tried to face his wife with dignity.
+
+"I think we'd better keep the taxi, Doris. Then you and I can go back to
+the hotel together. We can't force ourselves upon Lady Dunstable like
+this, my dear. I'd better go and tell someone to pack my things. But we
+must, of course, wait and see Lady Dunstable--though how you will
+explain your coming, and get yourself--and me--out of this absurd
+predicament, I cannot even pretend to imagine!"
+
+Doris sat down--wearily.
+
+"Don't keep the taxi, Arthur. I assure you Lady Dunstable will be very
+glad to keep both me--and my bag. Or if she won't--Lord Dunstable will."
+
+Meadows came nearer--bent down to study her tired face.
+
+"There's some mystery, of course, Doris, in all this! Aren't you going
+to tell me what it means?"
+
+His wife's pale cheeks flushed.
+
+"I would have told you--if you'd been the least bit glad to see me!
+But--if you don't pay the taxi, Arthur, it will run up like anything!"
+
+She pointed peremptorily to the ticking vehicle and the impatient
+driver. Meadows went mechanically, paid the driver, shouldered the bag,
+and carried it into the hall of the Lodge. He then perceived that two
+grinning and evidently inquisitive footmen, waiting in the hall for
+anything that might turn up for them to do, had been watching the whole
+scene--the arrival of the taxi, and the meeting between the unknown lady
+and himself, through a side window.
+
+Burning to box someone's ears, Meadows loftily gave the bag to one of
+them with instructions that it should be taken to his room, and then
+turned to rejoin his wife.
+
+As he crossed the gravel in front of the house, his mind ran through all
+possible hypotheses. But he was entirely without a clue--except the clue
+of jealousy. He could not hide from himself that Doris had been jealous
+of Lady Dunstable, and had perhaps been hurt by his rather too numerous
+incursions into the great world without her, his apparent readiness to
+desert her for cleverer women. "Little goose!--as if I ever cared
+twopence for any of them!"--he thought angrily. "And now she makes us
+both laughing-stocks!"
+
+And yet, Doris being Doris--a proud, self-contained, well-bred little
+person, particularly sensitive to ridicule--the whole proceeding became
+the more incredible the more he faced it.
+
+One o'clock!--striking from the church tower in the valley! He hurried
+towards the slight figure on the distant seat. Lady Dunstable might
+return at any moment. He foresaw the encounter--the great lady's
+insolence--Doris's humiliation--and his own. Well, at least let him
+agree with Doris on a common story, before his hostess arrived.
+
+He sped across the grass, very conscious, as he approached the seat, of
+Doris's drooping look and attitude. Travelling all those hours!--and no
+doubt without any proper breakfast! However Lady Dunstable might
+behave, he would carry Doris into the Lodge directly, and have her
+properly looked after. Miss Field and he would see to that.
+
+Suddenly--a sound of talk and laughter, from the shrubbery which divided
+the flower garden from the woods and the moor. Lady Dunstable emerged,
+with her two companions on either hand. Her vivid, masculine face was
+flushed with exercise and discussion. She seemed to be attacking the
+Under-Secretary, who, however, was clearly enjoying himself; while Sir
+Luke, walking a little apart, threw in an occasional gibe.
+
+"I tell you your land policy here in Scotland will gain you nothing; and
+in England it will lose you everything.--Hullo!"
+
+Lady Dunstable's exclamation, as she came to a stop and put up a
+tortoise-shell eyeglass, was clearly audible.
+
+"Doris!" cried Meadows excitedly in his wife's ear--"Look here!--what
+are you going to say!--what am I to say! that you got tired of London,
+and wanted some Scotch air?--that we intend to go off together?--For
+goodness' sake, what is it to be?"
+
+Doris rose, her lips breaking irrepressibly into smiles.
+
+"Never mind, Arthur; I'll get through somehow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The two ladies advanced towards each other across the lawn, while
+Meadows followed his wife in speechless confusion and annoyance, utterly
+at a loss how to extricate either himself or Doris; compelled, indeed,
+to leave it all to her. Sir Luke and the Under-Secretary had paused in
+the drive. Their looks as they watched Lady Dunstable's progress showed
+that they guessed at something dramatic in the little scene.
+
+Nothing could apparently have been more unequal than the two chief
+actors in it. Lady Dunstable, with the battlements of "the great
+fortified post" rising behind her, tall and wiry of figure, her black
+hawk's eyes fixed upon her visitor, might have stood for all her class;
+for those too powerful and prosperous Barbarians who have ruled and
+enjoyed England so long. Doris, small and slight, in a blue cotton coat
+and skirt, dusty from long travelling, and a childish garden hat, came
+hesitatingly over the grass, with colour which came and went.
+
+"How do you do, Mrs. Meadows! This is indeed an unexpected pleasure! I
+must quarrel with your husband for not giving us warning."
+
+Doris's complexion had settled into a bright pink as she shook hands
+with Lady Dunstable. But she spoke quite composedly.
+
+"My husband knew nothing about it, Lady Dunstable. My letter does not
+seem to have reached him."
+
+"Ah? Our posts are very bad, no doubt; though generally, I must say,
+they arrive very punctually. Well, so you were tired of London?--you
+wanted to see how we were looking after your husband?"
+
+Lady Dunstable threw a sarcastic glance at Meadows standing tongue-tied
+in the background.
+
+"I wanted to see you," said Doris quietly, with a slight accent on the
+"you."
+
+Lady Dunstable looked amused.
+
+"Did you? How very nice of you! And you've--you've brought your
+luggage?" Lady Dunstable looked round her as though expecting to see it
+at the front door.
+
+"I brought a bag. Arthur took it in for me."
+
+"I'm so sorry! I assure you, if I had only known--But we haven't a
+corner! Mr. Meadows will bear me out--it's absurd, but true. These
+Scotch lodges have really no room in them at all!"
+
+Lady Dunstable pointed with airy insolence to the spreading pile behind
+her. Doris--for all the agitation of her hidden purpose--could have
+laughed outright. But Meadows, rather roughly, intervened.
+
+"We shall, of course, go to the hotel, Lady Dunstable. My wife's letter
+seems somehow to have missed me, but naturally we never dreamed of
+putting you out. Perhaps you will give us some lunch--my wife seems
+rather tired--and then we will take our departure."
+
+Doris turned--put a hand on his arm--but addressed Lady Dunstable.
+
+"Can I see you--alone--for a few minutes--before lunch?"
+
+"_Before_ lunch? We are all very hungry, I'm afraid," said Lady
+Dunstable, with a smile. Meadows was conscious of a rising fury. His
+quick sense perceived something delicately offensive in every word and
+look of the great lady. Doris, of course, had done an incredibly foolish
+thing. What she had come to say to Lady Dunstable he could not conceive;
+for the first explanation--that of a silly jealousy--had by now entirely
+failed him. But it was evident to him that Lady Dunstable assumed it--or
+chose to assume it. And for the first time he thought her odious!
+
+Doris seemed to guess it, for she pressed his arm as though to keep him
+quiet.
+
+"Before lunch, please," she repeated. "I think--you will soon
+understand." With an odd, and--for the first time--slightly puzzled look
+at her visitor, Lady Dunstable said with patronising politeness--
+
+"By all means. Shall we come to my sitting-room?"
+
+She led the way to the house. Meadows followed, till a sign from Doris
+waved him back. On the way Doris found herself greeted by Sir Luke
+Malford, bowed to by various unknown gentlemen, and her hand grasped by
+Miss Field.
+
+"You do look done! Have you come straight from London? What--is Rachel
+carrying you off? I shall send you in a glass of wine and a biscuit
+directly!"
+
+Doris said nothing. She got somehow through all the curious eyes turned
+upon her; she followed Lady Dunstable through the spacious passages of
+the Lodge, adorned with the usual sportsman's trophies, till she was
+ushered into a small sitting-room, Lady Dunstable's particular den,
+crowded with photographs of half the celebrities of the day--the poets,
+_savants_, and artists, of England, Europe, and America. On an easel
+stood a masterly small portrait of Lord Dunstable as a young man, by
+Bastien Lepage; and not far from it--rather pushed into a corner--a
+sketch by Millais of a fair-haired boy, leaning against a pony.
+
+By this time Doris was quivering both with excitement and fatigue. She
+sank into a chair, and turned eagerly to the wine and biscuits with
+which Miss Field pursued her. While she ate and drank, Lady Dunstable
+sat in a high chair observing her, one long and pointed foot crossed
+over the other, her black eyes alive with satiric interrogation, to
+which, however, she gave no words.
+
+The wine was reviving. Doris found her voice. As the door closed on Miss
+Field, she bent forward:--
+
+"Lady Dunstable, I didn't come here on my own account, and had there
+been time of course I should have given you notice. I came entirely on
+your account, because something was happening to you--and Lord
+Dunstable--which you didn't know, and which made me--very sorry for
+you!"
+
+Lady Dunstable started slightly.
+
+"Happening to me?--and Lord Dunstable?"
+
+"I have been seeing your son, Lady Dunstable."
+
+An instant change passed over the countenance of that lady. It darkened,
+and the eyes became cold and wary.
+
+"Indeed? I didn't know you were acquainted with him."
+
+"I never saw him till a few days ago. Then I saw him--in my uncle's
+studio--with a woman--a woman to whom he is engaged."
+
+Lady Dunstable started again.
+
+"I think you must be mistaken," she said quickly, with a slight but
+haughty straightening of her shoulders.
+
+Doris shook her head.
+
+"No, I am not mistaken. I will tell you--if you don't mind--exactly what
+I have heard and seen."
+
+And with a puckered brow and visible effort she entered on the story of
+the happenings of which she had been a witness in Bentley's studio. She
+was perfectly conscious--for a time--that she was telling it against a
+dead weight of half scornful, half angry incredulity on Lady Dunstable's
+part. Rachel Dunstable listened, indeed, attentively. But it was clear
+that she resented the story, which she did not believe; resented the
+telling of it, on her own ground, by this young woman whom she
+disliked; and resented above all the compulsory discussion which it
+involved, of her most intimate affairs, with a stranger and her social
+inferior. All sorts of suspicions, indeed, ran through her mind as to
+the motives that could have prompted Mrs. Meadows to hurry up to
+Scotland, without taking even the decently polite trouble to announce
+herself, bringing this unlikely and trumped-up tale. Most probably, a
+mean jealousy of her husband, and his greater social success!--a
+determination to force herself on people who had not paid the same
+attention to herself as to him, to _make_ them pay attention,
+willy-nilly. Of course Herbert had undesirable acquaintances, and was
+content to go about with people entirely beneath him, in birth and
+education. Everybody knew it, alack! But he was really not such a
+fool--such a heartless fool--as this story implied! Mrs. Meadows had
+been taken in--willingly taken in--had exaggerated everything she said
+for her own purposes. The mother's wrath indeed was rapidly rising to
+the smiting point, when a change in the narrative arrested her.
+
+"And then--I couldn't help it!"--there was a new note of agitation in
+Doris's voice--"but what had happened was so _horrid_--it was so like
+seeing a man going to ruin under one's eyes, for, of course, one knew
+that she would get hold of him again--that I ran out after your son and
+begged him to break with her, not to see her again, to take the
+opportunity, and be done with her! And then he told me quite calmly that
+he _must_ marry her, that he could not help himself, but he would never
+live with her. He would marry her at a registry office, provide for her,
+and leave her. And then he said he would do it _at once_--that he was
+going to his lawyers to arrange everything as to money and so on--on
+condition that she never troubled him again. He was eager to get it
+done--that he might be delivered from her--from her company--which one
+could see had become dreadful to him. I implored him not to do such a
+thing--to pay any money rather than do it--but not to marry her! I
+begged him to think of you--and his father. But he said he was bound to
+her--he had compromised her, or some such thing; and he had given his
+word in writing. There was only one thing which could stop it--if she
+had told him lies about her former life. But he had no reason to think
+she had; and he was not going to try and find out. So then--I saw a ray
+of daylight--"
+
+She stopped abruptly, looking full at the woman opposite, who was now
+following her every word--but like one seized against her will.
+
+"Do you remember a Miss Wigram, Lady Dunstable--whose father had a
+living near Crosby Ledgers?"
+
+Lady Dunstable moved involuntarily--her eyelids flickered a little.
+
+"Certainly. Why do you ask?"
+
+"_She_ saw Mr. Dunstable--and Miss Flink--in my uncle's studio, and she
+was so distressed to think what--what Lord Dunstable"--there was a
+perceptible pause before the name--"would feel, if his son married her,
+that she determined to find out the truth about her. She told me she had
+one or two clues, and I sent her to a cousin of mine--a very clever
+solicitor--to be advised. That was yesterday morning. Then I got my
+uncle to find out your son--and bring him to me yesterday afternoon
+before I started. He came to our house in Kensington, and I told him I
+had come across some very doubtful stories about Miss Flink. He was very
+unwilling to hear anything. After all, he said, he was not going to live
+with her. And she had nursed him--"
+
+"Nursed him!" said Lady Dunstable, quickly. She had risen, and was
+leaning against the mantelpiece, looking sharply down upon her visitor.
+
+"That was the beginning of it all. He was ill in the winter--in his
+lodgings."
+
+"I never heard of it!" For the first time, there was a touch of
+something natural and passionate in the voice.
+
+Doris looked a little embarrassed.
+
+"Your son told me it was pneumonia."
+
+"I never heard a word of it! And this--this creature nursed him?" The
+tone of the robbed lioness at last!--singularly inappropriate under all
+the circumstances. Doris struggled on.
+
+"An actor friend of your son brought her to see him. And she really
+devoted herself to him. He declared to me he owed her a great deal--"
+
+"He need have owed her nothing," said Lady Dunstable, sternly. "He had
+only to send a postcard--a wire--to his own people."
+
+"He thought--you were so busy," said Doris, dropping her eyes to the
+carpet.
+
+A sound of contemptuous anger showed that her shaft--her mild shaft--had
+gone home. She hurried on--"But at last I got him to promise me to wait
+a week. That was yesterday at five o'clock. He wouldn't promise me to
+write to you--or his father. He seemed so desperately anxious to settle
+it all--in his own way. But I said a good deal about your name--and the
+family--and the horrible pain he would be giving--any way. Was it
+kind--was it right towards you, not only to give you _no_ opportunity of
+helping or advising him--but also to take no steps to find out whether
+the woman he was going to marry was--not only unsuitable, wholly
+unsuitable--that, of course, he knows--but _a disgrace_? I argued with
+him that he must have some suspicion of the stories she has told him at
+different times, or he wouldn't have tried to protect himself in this
+particular way. He didn't deny it; but he said she had looked after him,
+and been kind to him, when nobody else was, and he should feel a beast
+if he pressed her too hardly."
+
+"'When nobody else was'!" repeated Lady Dunstable, scornfully, her voice
+trembling with bitterness. "Really, Mrs. Meadows, it is very difficult
+for me to believe that my son ever used such words!"
+
+Doris hesitated, then she raised her eyes, and with the happy feeling of
+one applying the scourge, in the name of Justice, she said with careful
+mildness:--
+
+"I hope you will forgive me for telling you--but I feel as if I oughtn't
+to keep back anything--Mr. Dunstable said to me: 'My mother might have
+prevented it--but--she was never interested in me.'"
+
+Another indignant exclamation from Lady Dunstable. Doris hurried on.
+"Only this is the important point! At last I got his promise, and I got
+it in writing. I have it here."
+
+Dead silence. Doris opened her little handbag, took out a letter, in an
+open envelope, and handed it to Lady Dunstable, who at first seemed as
+if she were going to refuse it. However, after a moment's hesitation,
+she lifted her long-handled eyeglass and read it. It ran as follows:
+
+    DEAR MRS. MEADOWS,--I do not know whether I ought to do what you ask
+    me. But you have asked me very kindly--you have really been awfully
+    good to me, in taking so much trouble. I know I'm a stupid
+    fool--they always told me so at home. But I don't want to do
+    anything mean, or to go back on a woman who once did me a good turn;
+    with whom also once--for I may as well be quite honest about it--I
+    thought I was in love. However, I see there is something in what you
+    say, and I will wait a week before marrying Miss Flink. But if you
+    tell my people--I suppose you will--don't let them imagine they can
+    break it off--except for that one reason. And _I_ shan't lift a
+    finger to break it off. I shall make no inquiries--I shall go on
+    with the lawyers, and all that. My present intention is to marry
+    Miss Flink--on the terms I have stated--in a week's time. If you do
+    see my people--especially my father--tell them I'm awfully sorry to
+    be such a nuisance to them. I got myself into the mess without
+    meaning it, and now there's really only one way out. Thank you
+    again.
+                              Yours gratefully,
+                                   HERBERT DUNSTABLE.
+
+
+Lady Dunstable crushed the letter in her hand. All pretence of
+incredulity was gone. She began to walk stormily up and down. Doris sank
+back in her chair, watching her, conscious of the most strangely mingled
+feelings, a touch of womanish triumph indeed, a pleasing sense of
+retribution, but, welling up through it, something profound and tender.
+If _he_ should ever write such a letter to a stranger, while his mother
+was alive!
+
+Lady Dunstable stopped.
+
+"What chance is there of saving my son?" she said, peremptorily. "You
+will, of course, tell us all you know. Lord Dunstable must go to town at
+once." She touched an electric bell beside her.
+
+"Oh no!" cried Doris, springing up. "He mustn't go, please, until we
+have some more information. Miss Wigram is coming--this afternoon."
+
+Rachel Dunstable stood stupefied--with her hand on the bell.
+
+"Miss Wigram--coming."
+
+"Don't you see?" cried Doris. "She was to spend all yesterday afternoon
+and evening in seeing two or three people--people who know. There is a
+friend of my uncle's--an artist--who saw a great deal of Miss Flink, and
+got to know a lot about her. Of course he may not have been willing to
+say anything, but I think he probably would--he was so mad with her for
+a trick she played him in the middle of a big piece of work. And if he
+was able to put us on any useful track, then Miss Wigram was to come up
+here straight, and tell you everything she could. But I thought there
+would have been a telegram--from her--" Her voice dropped on a note of
+disappointment.
+
+There was a knock at the door. The butler entered, and at the same
+moment the luncheon gong echoed through the house.
+
+"Tell Miss Field not to wait luncheon for me," said Lady Dunstable
+sharply. "And, Ferris, I want his lordship's things packed at once, for
+London. Don't say anything to him at present, but in ten minutes' time
+just manage to tell him quietly that I should like to see him here. You
+understand--I don't want any fuss made. Tell Miss Field that Mrs.
+Meadows is too tired to come in to luncheon, and that I will come in
+presently."
+
+The butler, who had the aspect of a don or a bishop, said "Yes, my
+lady," in that dry tone which implied that for twenty years the house of
+Dunstable had been built upon himself, as its rock, and he was not going
+to fail it now. He vanished, with just one lightning turn of the eyes
+towards the little lady in the blue linen dress; and Lady Dunstable
+resumed her walk, sunk in flushed meditation. She seemed to have
+forgotten Doris, when she heard an exclamation:--
+
+"Ah, there _is_ the telegram!"
+
+And Doris, running to the window, waved to a diminutive telegraph boy,
+who, being new to his job, had come up to the front entrance of the
+Lodge instead of the back, and was now--recognising his
+misdeed--retreating in alarm from the mere aspect of "the great
+fortified post." He saw the lady at the window, however, and checked his
+course.
+
+"For me!" cried Doris, triumphantly--and she tore it open.
+
+    Can't arrive till between eight and nine. Think I have got all we
+    want. Please take a room for me at hotel.--ALICE WIGRAM.
+
+Doris turned back into the room, and handed the telegram to Lady
+Dunstable, who read it slowly.
+
+"Did you say this was the Alice Wigram I knew?"
+
+"Her father had one of your livings," repeated Doris. "He died last
+year."
+
+"I know. I quarrelled with him. I cannot conceive why Alice Wigram
+should do me a good turn!" Lady Dunstable threw back her head, her
+challenging look fixed upon her visitor. Doris was certain she had it in
+her mind to add--"or you either!"--but refrained.
+
+"Lord Dunstable was always a friend to her father," said Doris, with the
+same slight emphasis on the "Lord" as before. "And she felt for the
+estate--the poor people--the tenants."
+
+Rachel Dunstable shook her head impatiently.
+
+"I daresay. But I got into a scrape with the Wigrams. I expect that you
+would think, Mrs. Meadows--perhaps most people would think, as of course
+her father did--that I once treated Miss Wigram unkindly!"
+
+"Oh, what does it matter?" cried Doris, hastily,--"what _does_ it
+matter? She wants to help--she's sorry for you. You should _see_ that
+woman! It would be too awful if your son was tied to her for life!"
+
+She sat up straight, all her soul in her eyes and in her pleasant face.
+
+There was a pause. Then Lady Dunstable, whose expression had changed,
+came a little nearer to her.
+
+"And you--I wonder why you took all this trouble?"
+
+Doris said nothing. She fell back slowly in her chair, looking
+at the tall woman standing over her. Tears came into her
+eyes--brimmed--overflowed--in silence. Her lips smiled. Rachel Dunstable
+bent over her in bewilderment.
+
+"To have a son," murmured Doris under her breath, "and then to see him
+ruined like this! No love for him!--no children--no grandchildren for
+oneself, when one is old--"
+
+Her voice died away.
+
+"'To have a son'?" repeated Lady Dunstable, wondering--"but you have
+none!"
+
+Doris said nothing. Only she put up her hand feebly, and wiped away the
+tears--still smiling. After which she shut her eyes.
+
+Lady Dunstable gasped. Then the long, sallow face flushed deeply. She
+walked over to a sofa on the other side of the room, arranged the
+pillows on it, and came back to Doris.
+
+"Will you, please, let me put you on that sofa? You oughtn't to have had
+this long journey. Of course you will stay here--and Miss Wigram too. It
+seems--I shall owe you a great deal--and I could not have expected
+you--to think about me--at all. I can do rude things. But I can also--be
+sorry for my sins!"
+
+Doris heard an awkward and rather tremulous laugh. Upon which she
+opened her eyes, no less embarrassed than her hostess, and did as she
+was told. Lady Dunstable made her as comfortable as a hand so little
+used to the feminine arts could manage.
+
+"Now I will send you in some luncheon, and go and talk to Lord
+Dunstable. Please rest till I come back."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doris lay still. She wanted very much to see Arthur, and she wondered,
+till her head ached, whether he would think her a great fool for her
+pains. Surely he would come and find her soon. Oh, the time people spent
+on lunching in these big houses!
+
+The vibration of the train seemed to be still running through her limbs.
+She was indeed wearied out, and in a few minutes, what with the sudden
+quiet and the softness of the cushions which had been spread for her,
+she fell unexpectedly asleep.
+
+When she woke, she saw her husband sitting beside her--patiently--with
+a tray on his knee.
+
+"Oh, Arthur!--what time is it? Have I been asleep long?"
+
+"Nearly an hour. I looked in before, but Lady Dunstable wouldn't let me
+wake you. She--and he--and I--have been talking. Upon my word, Doris,
+you've been and gone and done it! But don't say anything! You've got to
+eat this chicken first."
+
+He fed her with it, looking at her the while with affectionate and
+admiring eyes. Somehow, Doris became dimly aware that she was going to
+be a heroine.
+
+"Have they told you, Arthur?"
+
+"Everything that you've told her. (No--not everything!--thought Doris.)
+You _are_ a brick, Doris! And the way you've done it! That's what
+impresses her ladyship! She knows very well that she would have muffed
+it. You're the practical woman! Well, you can rest on your laurels,
+darling! You'll have the whole place at your feet--beginning with your
+husband--who's been dreadfully bored without you. There!"
+
+He put down his Jovian head, and rubbed his cheek tenderly against hers,
+till she turned round, and gave him the lightest of kisses.
+
+"Was he an abominable correspondent?" he said, repentantly.
+
+"Abominable!"
+
+"Did you hate him!"
+
+"Whenever I had time. When do you start on your cruise, Arthur!"
+
+"Any time--some time--never!" he said, gaily. "Give me that Capel Curig
+address, and I'll wire for the rooms this afternoon. I came to the
+conclusion this morning that the same yacht couldn't hold her ladyship
+and me."
+
+"Oh!--so she's been chastening _you_?" said Doris, well pleased.
+
+Meadows nodded.
+
+"The rod has not been spared--since Sunday. It was then she got tired of
+me. I mark the day, you see, almost the hour. My goodness!--if you're
+not always up to your form--epigrams, quotations--all pat--"
+
+"She plucks you--without mercy. Down you slither into the second class!"
+Doris's look sparkled.
+
+"There you go--rejoicing in my humiliations!" said Meadows, putting an
+arm round the scoffer. "I tell you, she proposes to write my next set of
+lectures for me. She gave me an outline of them this morning."
+
+Then they both laughed together like children. And Doris, with her head
+on a strong man's shoulder, and a rough coat scrubbing her cheek,
+suddenly bethought her of the line--"Journeys end in lovers' meeting--"
+and was smitten with a secret wonder as to how much of her impulse to
+come north had been due to an altruistic concern for the Dunstable
+affairs, and how much to a firm determination to recapture Arthur from
+his Gloriana. But that doubt she would never reveal. It would be so bad
+for Arthur!
+
+She rose to her feet.
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"Lord and Lady Dunstable? Gone off to Dunkeld to find their solicitor
+and bring him back to meet Miss Wigram. They'll be home by tea. I'm to
+look after you."
+
+"Are we going to an hotel?"
+
+Meadows laughed immoderately.
+
+"Come and look at your apartment, my dear. One of her ladyship's maids
+has been told off to look after you. As I expect you have arrived with
+little more than a comb-and-brush bag, there will be a good deal to do."
+
+Doris caught him by the coat-fronts.
+
+"You don't mean to say that I shall be expected to dine to-night! I have
+_not_ brought an evening dress."
+
+"What does that matter? I met Miss Field in the passage, as I was coming
+in to you, and she said: 'I see Mrs. Meadows has not brought much
+luggage. We can lend her anything she wants. I will send her a few of
+Rachel's tea-gowns to choose from.'"
+
+Doris's laugh was hysterical; then she sobered down.
+
+"What time is it? Four o'clock. Oh, I wish Miss Wigram was here! You
+know, Lord Dunstable must go to town to-night! And Miss Wigram can't
+arrive till after the last train from here."
+
+"They know. They've ordered a special, to take Lord Dunstable and the
+solicitor to Edinburgh, to catch the midnight mail."
+
+"Oh, well--if you can bully the fates like that!--" said Doris, with a
+shrug. "How did he take it?"
+
+Meadows's tone changed.
+
+"It was a great blow. I thought it aged him."
+
+"Was she nice to him?" asked Doris, anxiously.
+
+"Nicer than I thought she could be," said Meadows, quietly. "I heard
+her say to him--'I'm afraid it's been my fault, Harry.' And he took her
+hand, without a word."
+
+"I will _not_ cry!" said Doris, pressing her hands on her eyes. "If it
+comes right, it will do them such a world of good! Now show me my room."
+
+But in the hall, waiting to waylay them, they found Miss Field, beaming
+as usual.
+
+"Everything is ready for you, dear Mrs. Meadows, and if you want
+anything you have only to ring. This way--"
+
+"The ground-floor?" said Doris, rather mystified, as they followed.
+
+"We have put you in what we call--for fun--our state-rooms. Various
+Royalties had them last year. They're in a special wing. We keep them
+for emergencies. And the fact is we haven't got another corner."
+
+Doris, in dismay, took the smiling lady by the arm.
+
+"I can't live up to it! Please let us go to the inn."
+
+But Meadows and Miss Field mocked at her; and she was soon ushered into
+a vast bedroom, in the midst of which, on a Persian carpet, sat her
+diminutive bag, now empty. Various elegant "confections" in the shape of
+tea-gowns and dressing-gowns littered the bed and the chairs. The
+toilet-table showed an array of coroneted brushes. As for the superb
+Empire bed, which had belonged to Queen Hortense, and was still hung
+with the original blue velvet sprinkled with golden bees, Doris eyed it
+with a firm hostility.
+
+"We needn't sleep in it," she whispered in Meadows's ear. "There are two
+sofas."
+
+Meanwhile Miss Field and others flitted about, adding all the luxuries
+of daily use to the splendour of the rooms. Gardeners appeared bringing
+in flowers, and an anxious maid, on behalf of her ladyship, begged that
+Mrs. Meadows would change her travelling dress for a comfortable white
+tea-gown, before tea-time, suggesting another "creation" in black and
+silver for dinner. Doris, frowning and reluctant, would have refused;
+but Miss Field said softly "Won't you? Rachel will be so distressed if
+she mayn't do these little things for you. Of course she doesn't deserve
+it; but--"
+
+"Oh yes--I'll put them on--if she likes," said Doris, hurriedly. "It
+doesn't matter."
+
+Miss Field laughed. "I don't know where all these things come from," she
+said, looking at the array. "Rachel buys half of them for her maids, I
+should think--she never wears them. Well, now I shall leave you till
+tea-time. Tea will be on the lawn--Mr. Meadows knows where. By the
+way--" she looked, smiling, at Meadows--"they've put off the Duke. If
+you only knew what that means."
+
+She named a great Scotch name, the chief of the ancient house to which
+Lady Dunstable belonged. Miss Field described how this prince of Dukes
+paid a solemn visit every year to Franick Castle, and the eager
+solicitude--almost agitation--with which the visit was awaited, by Lady
+Dunstable in particular.
+
+"You don't mean," cried Doris, "that there is anybody in the whole world
+who frightens Lady Dunstable?"
+
+"As she frightens us? Yes!--on this one day of the year we are all
+avenged. Rachel, metaphorically, sits on a stool and tries to please. To
+put off 'the Duke' by telephone!--what a horrid indignity! But I've just
+inflicted it."
+
+Mattie Field smiled, and was just going away when she was arrested by a
+timid question from Doris.
+
+"Please--shall Arthur go down to Pitlochry and engage a room for Miss
+Wigram?"
+
+Miss Field turned in amusement.
+
+"A room! Why, it's all ready! She is your lady-in-waiting."
+
+And taking Doris by the arm she led her to inspect a spacious apartment
+on the other side of a passage, where the Lady Alice or Lady Mary
+without whom Royal Highnesses do not move about the world was generally
+put up.
+
+"I feel like Christopher Sly," said Doris, surveying the scene, with her
+hands in her jacket pockets. "So will she. But never mind!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Events flowed on. Lord and Lady Dunstable came back by tea-time,
+bringing with them the solicitor, who was also the chief factor of their
+Scotch estate. Lord Dunstable looked old and wearied. He came to find
+Doris on the lawn, pressing her hand with murmured words of thanks.
+
+"If that child Alice Wigram--of course I remember her well!--brings us
+information we can go upon, we shall be all right. At least there's
+hope. My poor boy! Anyway, we can never be grateful enough to you."
+
+As for Lady Dunstable, the large circle which gathered for tea under a
+group of Scotch firs talked indeed, since Franick Castle existed for
+that purpose, but they talked without a leader. Their hostess sat silent
+and sombre, with thoughts evidently far away. She took no notice of
+Meadows whatever, and his attempts to draw her fell flat. A neighbour
+had walked over, bringing with him--maliciously--a Radical M.P. whose
+views on the Scotch land question would normally have struck fire and
+fury from Lady Dunstable. She scarcely recognised his name, and he and
+the Under-Secretary launched into the most despicable land heresies
+under her very nose--unrebuked. She had not an epigram to throw at
+anyone. But her eyes never failed to know where Doris Meadows was, and
+indeed, though no one but the two or three initiated knew why, Doris was
+in some mysterious but accepted way the centre of the party. Everybody
+spoiled her; everybody smiled upon her. The white tea-gown which she
+wore--miracle of delicate embroidery--had never suited Lady Dunstable;
+it suited Doris to perfection. Under her own simple hat, her eyes--and
+they were very fine eyes--shone with a soft and dancing humour. It was
+all absurd--her being there--her dress--this tongue-tied hostess--and
+these agreeable men who made much of her! She must get Arthur out of it
+as soon as possible, and they would look back upon it and laugh. But for
+the moment it was pleasant, it was stimulating! She found herself
+arguing about the new novels, and standing at bay against a whole group
+of clever folk who were tearing Mr. Augustus John and other gods of her
+idolatry to pieces. She was not shy; she never really had been; and to
+find that she could talk as well as other people--or most other
+people--even in these critical circles, excited her. The circle round
+her grew; and Meadows, standing on the edge of it, watched her with
+astonished eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The northern evening sank into a long and glowing twilight. The hills
+stood in purple against a tawny west, and the smoke from the little town
+in the valley rose clear and blue into air already autumnal. The guests
+of Franick had scattered in twos and threes over the gardens and the
+moor, while Doris, her host and hostess, and the solicitor, sat and
+waited for Alice Wigram. She came with the evening train, tired, dusty,
+and triumphant; and the information she brought with her was more than
+enough to go upon. The past of Elena Flink--poor lady!--shone luridly
+out; and even the countenance of the solicitor cleared. As for Lord
+Dunstable, he grasped the girl by both hands.
+
+"My dear child, what you have done for us! Ah, if your father were
+here!"
+
+And bending over her, with the courtly grace of an old man, he kissed
+her on the brow. Alice Wigram flushed, turning involuntarily towards
+Lady Dunstable.
+
+"Rachel!--don't we owe her everything," said Lord Dunstable with
+emotion--"her and Mrs. Meadows? But for them, our boy might have wrecked
+his life."
+
+"He appears to have been a most extraordinary fool!" said Lady Dunstable
+with energy:--a recrudescence of the natural woman, which was positively
+welcome to everybody. And it did not prevent the passage of some
+embarrassed but satisfactory words between Herbert Dunstable's mother
+and Alice Wigram, after Lady Dunstable had taken her latest guest to
+"Lady Mary's" room, bidding her go straight to bed, and be waited on.
+
+Lord Dunstable and the lawyer departed after dinner to meet their
+special train at Perth. Lady Dunstable, with variable spirits, kept the
+evening going, sometimes in a brown study, sometimes as brilliant and
+pugnacious as ever. Doris slipped out of the drawing-room once or twice
+to go and gossip with Alice Wigram, who was lying under silken
+coverings, inclined to gentle moralising on the splendours of the great,
+and much petted by Miss Field and the house-keeper.
+
+"How nice you look!" said the girl shyly, on one occasion, as Doris came
+stealing in to her. "I never saw such a pretty gown!"
+
+"Not bad!" said Doris complacently, throwing a glance at the large
+mirror near. It was still the white tea-gown, for she had firmly
+declined to sample anything else, in truth well aware that Arthur's
+eyes approved both it and her in it.
+
+"Lord Dunstable has been so kind," whispered Miss Wigram. "He said I
+must always henceforth look upon him as a kind of guardian. Of course I
+should never let him give me a farthing!"
+
+"Why no, that's the kind of thing one couldn't do!" said Doris with
+decision. "But there are plenty of other ways of being nice. Well--here
+we all are, as happy as larks; and what we've really done, I suppose, is
+to take a woman's character away, and give her another push to
+perdition."
+
+"She hadn't any character!" cried Alice Wigram indignantly. "And she
+would have gone to perdition without us, and taken that poor youth with
+her. Oh, I know, I know! But morals are a great puzzle to me. However, I
+firmly remind myself of that 'one in the eye,' and then all my doubts
+depart. Good-night. Sleep well! You know very well that I should have
+shirked it if it hadn't been for you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A little later the Meadowses stood together at the open window of their
+room, which led by a short flight of steps to a flowering garden below.
+All Franick had gone to bed, and this wing in which the "state-rooms"
+were, seemed to be remote from the rest of the house. They were alone;
+the night was balmy; and there was a flood of secret joy in Doris's
+veins which gave her a charm, a beguilement Arthur had never seen in her
+before. She was more woman, and therefore more divine! He could hardly
+recall her as the careful housewife, harassed by lack of pence, knitting
+her brows over her butcher's books, mending endless socks, and trying to
+keep the nose of a lazy husband to the grindstone. All that seemed to
+have vanished. This white sylph was pure romance--pure joy. He saw her
+anew; he loved her anew.
+
+"Why did you look so pretty to-night? You little witch!" he murmured in
+her ear, as he held her close to him.
+
+"Arthur!"--she drew herself away from him. "_Did_ I look pretty? Honour
+bright!"
+
+"Delicious! How often am I to say it?"
+
+"You'd better not. Don't wake the devil in me, Arthur! It's all this
+tea-gown. If you go on like this, I shall have to buy one like it."
+
+"Buy a dozen!" he said joyously. "Look there, Doris--you see that path?
+Let's go on to the moor a little."
+
+Out they crept, like truant children, through the wood-path and out upon
+the moor. Meadows had brought a shawl, and spread it on a rock, full
+under the moonlight. There they sat, close together, feeling all the
+goodness and glory of the night, drinking in the scents of heather and
+fern, the sounds of plashing water and gently moving winds. Above them,
+the vault of heaven and the friendly stars; below them, the great hollow
+of the valley, the scattered lights, the sounds of distant trains.
+
+"She didn't kiss me when she said good-night!" said Doris suddenly. "She
+wasn't the least sentimental--or ashamed--or grateful! Having said what
+was necessary, she let it alone. She's a real lady--though rather a
+savage. I like her!"
+
+"Who are you talking of? Lady Dunstable? I had forgotten all about her.
+All the same, darling, I should like to know what made you do all this
+for a woman you _said_ you detested!"
+
+"I did detest her. I shall probably detest her again. Leopards don't
+change their spots, do they? But I shan't--fear her any more!"
+
+Something in her tone arrested Meadows's attention.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, what I say!" cried Doris, drawing herself a little from him, with
+a hand on his shoulder. "I shall never fear her, or anyone, any more.
+I'm safe! Why did I do it? Do you really want to know? I did
+it--because--I was so sorry for her--poor silly woman,--who can't get on
+with her own son! Arthur!--if our son doesn't love me better than hers
+loves her--you may kill me, dear, and welcome!"
+
+"Doris! There is something in your voice--! What are you hiding from
+me?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But as to the rest of that conversation under the moon, let those
+imagine it who may have followed this story with sympathy.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Great Success, by Mrs Humphry Ward
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13288 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #13288 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13288)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Great Success, by Mrs Humphry Ward
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Great Success
+
+Author: Mrs Humphry Ward
+
+Release Date: August 25, 2004 [EBook #13288]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GREAT SUCCESS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Maria Khomenko and
+PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Look there, Doris--you see that path? Let's go on to
+the moor a little."]
+
+A Great Success
+
+By
+
+Mrs. Humphry Ward
+Author of "Eltham House," "Delia Blanchflower," etc.
+
+New York
+Hearst's International Library Co.
+1916
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"Arthur,--what did you give the man?"
+
+"Half a crown, my dear! Now don't make a fuss. I know exactly what
+you're going to say!"
+
+"_Half a crown!_" said Doris Meadows, in consternation. "The fare was
+one and twopence. Of course he thought you mad. But I'll get it back!"
+
+And she ran to the open window, crying "Hi!" to the driver of a
+taxi-cab, who, having put down his fares, was just on the point of
+starting from the door of the small semi-detached house in a South
+Kensington street, which owned Arthur and Doris Meadows for its master
+and mistress.
+
+The driver turned at her call.
+
+"Hi!--Stop! You've been over-paid!"
+
+The man grinned all over, made her a low bow, and made off as fast as he
+could.
+
+Arthur Meadows, behind her, went into a fit of laughter, and as his
+wife, discomfited, turned back into the room he threw a triumphant arm
+around her.
+
+"I had to give him half a crown, dear, or burst. Just look at these
+letters--and you know what a post we had this morning! Now don't bother
+about the taxi! What does it matter? Come and open the post."
+
+Whereupon Doris Meadows felt herself forcibly drawn down to a seat on
+the sofa beside her husband, who threw a bundle of letters upon his
+wife's lap, and then turned eagerly to open others with which his own
+hands were full.
+
+"H'm!--Two more publishers' letters, asking for the book--don't they
+wish they may get it! But I could have made a far better bargain if I'd
+only waited a fortnight. Just my luck! One--two--four--autograph fiends!
+The last--a lady, of course!--wants a page of the first lecture. Calm!
+Invitations from the Scottish Athenaeum--the Newcastle Academy--the
+Birmingham Literary Guild--the Glasgow Poetic Society--the 'British
+Philosophers'--the Dublin Dilettanti!--Heavens!--how many more! None of
+them offering cash, as far as I can see--only fame--pure and undefiled!
+Hullo!--that's a compliment!--the Parnassians have put me on their
+Council. And last year, I was told, I couldn't even get in as an
+ordinary member. Dash their impudence!... This is really astounding!
+What are yours, darling?"
+
+And tumbling all his opened letters on the sofa, Arthur Meadows rose--in
+sheer excitement--and confronted his wife, with a flushed countenance.
+He was a tall, broadly built, loose-limbed fellow, with a fine shaggy
+head, whereof various black locks were apt to fall forward over his
+eyes, needing to be constantly thrown back by a picturesque action of
+the hand. The features were large and regular, the complexion dark, the
+eyes a pale blue, under bushy brows. The whole aspect of the man,
+indeed, was not unworthy of the adjective "Olympian," already freely
+applied to it by some of the enthusiastic women students attending his
+now famous lectures. One girl artist learned in classical archaeology,
+and a haunter of the British Museum, had made a charcoal study of a
+well-known archaistic "Diespiter" of the Augustan period, on the same
+sheet with a rapid sketch of Meadows when lecturing; a performance which
+had been much handed about in the lecture-room, though always just
+avoiding--strangely enough--the eyes of the lecturer.... The expression
+of slumbrous power, the mingling of dream and energy in the Olympian
+countenance, had been, in the opinion of the majority, extremely well
+caught. Only Doris Meadows, the lecturer's wife, herself an artist, and
+a much better one than the author of the drawing, had smiled a little
+queerly on being allowed a sight of it.
+
+However, she was no less excited by the batch of letters her husband had
+allowed her to open than he by his. Her bundle included, so it appeared,
+letters from several leading politicians: one, discussing in a most
+animated and friendly tone the lecture of the week before, on "Lord
+George Bentinck"; and two others dealing with the first lecture of the
+series, the brilliant pen-portrait of Disraeli, which--partly owing to
+feminine influence behind the scenes--had been given _verbatim_ and with
+much preliminary trumpeting in two or three Tory newspapers, and had
+produced a real sensation, of that mild sort which alone the British
+public--that does not love lectures--is capable of receiving from the
+report of one. Persons in the political world had relished its plain
+speaking; dames and counsellors of the Primrose League had read the
+praise with avidity, and skipped the criticism; while the mere men and
+women of letters had appreciated a style crisp, unhackneyed, and alive.
+The second lecture on "Lord George Bentinck" had been crowded, and the
+crowd had included several Cabinet Ministers, and those great ladies of
+the moment who gather like vultures to the feast on any similar
+occasion. The third lecture, on "Palmerston and Lord John"--had been not
+only crowded, but crowded out, and London was by now fully aware that it
+possessed in Arthur Meadows a person capable of painting a series of La
+Bruyère-like portraits of modern men, as vivid, biting, and
+"topical"--_mutatis mutandis_--as the great French series were in their
+day.
+
+Applications for the coming lecture on "Lord Randolph" were arriving by
+every post, and those to follow after--on men just dead, and others
+still alive--would probably have to be given in a much larger hall than
+that at present engaged, so certain was intelligent London that in going
+to hear Arthur Meadows on the most admired--or the most
+detested--personalities of the day, they at least ran no risk of
+wishy-washy panegyric, or a dull caution. Meadows had proved himself
+daring both in compliment and attack; nothing could be sharper than his
+thrusts, or more Olympian than his homage. There were those indeed who
+talked of "airs" and "mannerisms," but their faint voices were lost in
+the general shouting.
+
+"Wonderful!" said Doris, at last, looking up from the last of these
+epistles. "I really didn't know, Arthur, you were such a great man."
+
+Her eyes rested on him with a fond but rather puzzled expression.
+
+"Well, of course, dear, you've always seen the seamy side of me," said
+Meadows, with the slightest change of tone and a laugh. "Perhaps now
+you'll believe me when I say that I'm not always lazy when I seem
+so--that a man must have time to think, and smoke, and dawdle, if he's
+to write anything decent, and can't always rush at the first job that
+offers. When you thought I was idling--I wasn't! I was gathering up
+impressions. Then came an attractive piece of work--one that suited
+me--and I rose to it. There, you see!"
+
+He threw back his Jovian head, with a look at his wife, half combative,
+half merry.
+
+Doris's forehead puckered a little.
+
+"Well, thank Heaven that it _has_ turned out well!" she said, with a
+deep breath. "Where we should have been if it hadn't I'm sure I don't
+know! And, as it is--By the way, Arthur, have you got that packet ready
+for New York?" Her tone was quick and anxious.
+
+"What, the proofs of 'Dizzy'? Oh, goodness, that'll do any time. Don't
+bother, Doris. I'm really rather done--and this post is--well, upon my
+word, it's overwhelming!" And, gathering up the letters, he threw
+himself with an air of fatigue into a long chair, his hands behind his
+head. "Perhaps after tea and a cigarette I shall feel more fit."
+
+"Arthur!--you know to-morrow is the last day for catching the New York
+mail."
+
+"Well, hang it, if I don't catch it, they must wait, that's all!" said
+Meadows peevishly. "If they won't take it, somebody else will."
+
+"They" represented the editor and publisher of a famous New York
+magazine, who had agreed by cable to give a large sum for the "Dizzy"
+lecture, provided it reached them by a certain date.
+
+Doris twisted her lip.
+
+"Arthur, _do_ think of the bills!"
+
+"Darling, don't be a nuisance! If I succeed I shall make money. And if
+this isn't a success I don't know what is." He pointed to the letters on
+his lap, an impatient gesture which dislodged a certain number of them,
+so that they came rustling to the floor.
+
+"Hullo!--here's one you haven't opened. Another coronet! Gracious! I
+believe it's the woman who asked us to dinner a fortnight ago, and we
+couldn't go."
+
+Meadows sat up with a jerk, all languor dispelled, and held out his hand
+for the letter.
+
+"Lady Dunstable! By George! I thought she'd ask us,--though you don't
+deserve it, Doris, for you didn't take any trouble at all about her
+first invitation--"
+
+"We were _engaged_!" cried Doris, interrupting him, her eyebrows
+mounting.
+
+"We could have got out of it perfectly. But now, listen to this:
+
+    "Dear Mr. Meadows,--I hope your wife will excuse my writing to you
+    instead of to her, as you and I are already acquainted. Can I induce
+    you both to come to Crosby Ledgers for a week-end, on July 16? We
+    hope to have a pleasant party, a diplomat or two, the Home
+    Secretary, and General Hichen--perhaps some others. You would, I am
+    sure, admire our hill country, and I should like to show you some of
+    the precious autographs we have inherited.
+
+                              "Yours sincerely,
+                                   "RACHEL DUNSTABLE.
+
+    "If your wife brings a maid, perhaps she will kindly let me know."
+
+Doris laughed, and the amused scorn of her laugh annoyed her husband.
+However, at that moment their small house-parlourmaid entered with the
+tea-tray, and Doris rose to make a place for it. The parlourmaid put it
+down with much unnecessary noise, and Doris, looking at her in alarm,
+saw that her expression was sulky and her eyes red. When the girl had
+departed, Mrs. Meadows said with resignation--
+
+"There! that one will give me notice to-morrow!"
+
+"Well, I'm sure you could easily get a better!" said her husband
+sharply.
+
+Doris shook her head.
+
+"The fourth in six months!" she said, sighing. "And she really is a good
+girl."
+
+"I suppose, as usual, she complains of me!" The voice was that of an
+injured man.
+
+"Yes, dear, she does! They all do. You give them a lot of extra work
+already, and all these things you have been buying lately--oh, Arthur,
+if you _wouldn't_ buy things!--mean more work. You know that copper
+coal-scuttle you sent in yesterday?"
+
+"Well, isn't it a beauty?--a real Georgian piece!" cried Meadows,
+indignantly.
+
+"I dare say it is. But it has to be cleaned. When it arrived Jane came
+to see me in this room, shut the door, and put her back against it
+'There's another of them beastly copper coal-scuttles come!' You should
+have seen her eyes blazing. 'And I should like to know, ma'am, who's
+going to clean it--'cos I can't.' And I just had to promise her it might
+go dirty."
+
+"Lazy minx!" said Meadows, good-humouredly, with his mouth full of
+tea-cake. "At last I have something good to look at in this room." He
+turned his eyes caressingly towards the new coal-scuttle. "I suppose I
+shall have to clean it myself!"
+
+Doris laughed again--this time almost hysterically--but was checked by a
+fresh entrance of Jane, who, with an air of defiance, deposited a heavy
+parcel on a chair beside her mistress, and flounced out again.
+
+"What is this?" said Doris in consternation. "_Books_? More books?
+Heavens, Arthur, what have you been ordering now! I couldn't sleep last
+night for thinking of the book-bills."
+
+"You little goose! Of course, I must buy books! Aren't they my tools, my
+stock-in-trade? Haven't these lectures justified the book-bills a dozen
+times over?"
+
+This time Arthur Meadows surveyed his wife in real irritation and
+disgust.
+
+"But, Arthur!--you could get them _all_ at the London Library--you know
+you could!"
+
+"And pray how much time do I waste in going backwards and forwards after
+books? Any man of letters worth his salt wants a library of his
+own--within reach of his hand."
+
+"Yes, if he can pay for it!" said Doris, with plaintive emphasis, as she
+ruefully turned over the costly volumes which the parcel contained.
+
+"Don't fash yourself, my dear child! Why, what I'm getting for the Dizzy
+lecture is alone nearly enough to pay all the book bills."
+
+"It isn't! And just think of all the others! Well--never mind!"
+
+Doris's protesting mood suddenly collapsed. She sat down on a stool
+beside her husband, rested her elbow on his knee, and, chin in hand,
+surveyed him with a softened countenance. Doris Meadows was not a
+beauty; only pleasant-faced, with good eyes, and a strong, expressive
+mouth. Her brown hair was perhaps her chief point, and she wore it
+rippled and coiled so as to set off a shapely head and neck. It was
+always a secret grievance with her that she had so little positive
+beauty. And her husband had never flattered her on the subject. In the
+early days of their marriage she had timidly asked him, after
+one of their bridal dinner-parties in which she had worn her
+wedding-dress--"Did I look nice to-night? Do you--do you ever think I
+look pretty, Arthur?" And he had looked her over, with an odd change of
+expression--careless affection passing into something critical and
+cool:--"I'm never ashamed of you, Doris, in any company. Won't you be
+satisfied with that?" She had been far from satisfied; the phrase had
+burnt in her memory from then till now. But she knew Arthur had not
+meant to hurt her, and she bore him no grudge. And, by now, she was too
+well acquainted with the rubs and prose of life, too much occupied with
+house-books, and rough servants, and the terror of an overdrawn account,
+to have any time or thought to spare to her own looks. Fortunately she
+had an instinctive love for neatness and delicacy; so that her little
+figure, besides being agile and vigorous--capable of much dignity too on
+occasion--was of a singular trimness and grace in all its simple
+appointments. Her trousseau was long since exhausted, and she rarely had
+a new dress. But slovenly she could not be.
+
+It was the matter of a new dress which was now indeed running in her
+mind. She took up Lady Dunstable's letter, and read it pensively through
+again.
+
+"You can accept for yourself, Arthur, of course," she said, looking up.
+"But I can't possibly go."
+
+Meadows protested loudly.
+
+"You have no excuse at all!" he declared hotly. "Lady Dunstable has
+given us a month's notice. You _can't_ get out of it. Do you want me to
+be known as a man who accepts smart invitations without his wife? There
+is no more caddish creature in the world."
+
+Doris could not help smiling upon him. But her mouth was none the less
+determined.
+
+"I haven't got a single frock that's fit for Crosby Ledgers. And I'm not
+going on tick for a new one!"
+
+"I never heard anything so absurd! Shan't we have more money in a few
+weeks than we've had for years?"
+
+"I dare say. It's all wanted. Besides, I have my work to finish."
+
+"My dear Doris!"
+
+A slight red mounted in Doris's cheeks.
+
+"Oh, you may be as scornful as you like! But ten pounds is ten pounds,
+and I like keeping engagements."
+
+The "work" in question meant illustrations for a children's book. Doris
+had accepted the commission with eagerness, and had been going regularly
+to the Campden Hill studio of an Academician--her mother's brother--who
+was glad to supply her with some of the "properties" she wanted for her
+drawings.
+
+"I shall soon not allow you to do anything of the kind," said Meadows
+with decision.
+
+"On the contrary! I shall always take paid work when I can get it," was
+the firm reply--"unless--"
+
+"Unless what?"
+
+"You know," she said quietly. Meadows was silent a moment, then reached
+out for her hand, which she gave him. They had no children; and, as he
+well knew, Doris pined for them. The look in her eyes when she nursed
+her friends' babies had often hurt him. But after all, why despair? It
+was only four years from their wedding day.
+
+But he was not going to be beaten in the matter of Crosby Ledgers. They
+had a long and heated discussion, at the end of which Doris surrendered.
+
+"Very well! I shall have to spend a week in doing up my old black gown,
+and it will be a botch at the end of it. But--_nothing--will induce
+me_--to get a new one!"
+
+She delivered this ultimatum with her hands behind her, a defeated, but
+still resolute young person. Meadows, having won the main battle, left
+the rest to Providence, and went off to his "den" to read all his
+letters through once more--agreeable task!--and to write a note of
+acceptance to the Home Secretary, who had asked him to luncheon. Doris
+was not included in the invitation. "But anybody may ask a husband--or a
+wife--to lunch, separately. That's understood. I shan't do it often,
+however--that I can tell them!" And justified by this Spartan temper as
+to the future, he wrote a charming note, accepting the delights of the
+present, so full of epigram that the Cabinet Minister to whom it was
+addressed had no sooner read it than he consigned it instanter to his
+wife's collection of autographs.
+
+Meanwhile Doris was occupied partly in soothing the injured feelings of
+Jane, and partly in smoothing out and inspecting her one evening frock.
+She decided that it would take her a week to "do it up," and that she
+would do it herself. "A week wasted!" she thought--"and all for nothing.
+What do we want with Lady Dunstable! She'll flatter Arthur, and make him
+lazy. They all do! And I've no use for her at all. _Maid_ indeed! Does
+she think nobody can exist without that appendage? How I should like to
+make her live on four hundred a year, with a husband that will spend
+seven!"
+
+She stood, half amused, half frowning, beside the bed on which lay her
+one evening frock. But the frown passed away, effaced by an expression
+much softer and tenderer than anything she had allowed Arthur to see of
+late. Of course she delighted in Arthur's success; she was proud,
+indeed, through and through. Hadn't she always known that he had this
+gift, this quick, vivacious power of narrative, this genius--for it was
+something like it--for literary portraiture? And now at last the
+stimulus had come--and the opportunity with it. Could she ever forget
+the anxiety of the first lecture--the difficulty she had had in making
+him finish it--his careless, unbusiness-like management of the whole
+affair? But then had come the burst of praise and popularity; and
+Arthur was a new man. No difficulty--or scarcely--in getting him to work
+since then! Applause, so new and intoxicating, had lured him on, as she
+had been wont to lure the black pony of her childhood with a handful of
+sugar. Yes, her Arthur was a genius; she had always known it. And
+something of a child too--lazy, wilful, and sensuous--that, too, she had
+known for some time. And she loved him with all her heart.
+
+"But I won't have him spoilt by those fine ladies!" she said to herself,
+with frowning clear-sightedness. "They make a perfect fool of him. Now,
+then, I'd better write to Lady Dunstable. Of course she ought to have
+written to me!"
+
+So she sat down and wrote:
+
+    Dear Lady Dunstable,--We have much pleasure in accepting your kind
+    invitation, and I will let you know our train later. I have no maid,
+    so--
+
+But at this point Mrs. Meadows, struck by a sudden idea, threw down her
+pen.
+
+"Heavens!--suppose I took Jane? Somebody told me the other day that
+nobody got any attention at Crosby Ledgers without a maid. And it might
+bribe Jane into staying. I should feel a horrid snob--but it would be
+rather fun--especially as Lady Dunstable will certainly be immensely
+surprised. The fare would be only about five shillings--Jane would get
+her food for two days at the Dunstables' expense--and I should have a
+friend. I'll do it."
+
+So, with her eyes dancing, Doris tore up her note, and began again:
+
+    Dear Lady Dunstable,--We have much pleasure in accepting your kind
+    invitation, and I will let you know our train later. As you kindly
+    permit me, I will bring a maid.
+
+                              Yours sincerely,
+                                   DORIS MEADOWS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The month which elapsed between Lady Dunstable's invitation and the
+Crosby Ledgers party was spent by Doris first in "doing up" her frock,
+and then in taking the bloom off it at various dinner-parties to which
+they were already invited as the "celebrities" of the moment; in making
+Arthur's wardrobe presentable; in watching over the tickets and receipts
+of the weekly lectures; in collecting the press cuttings about them; in
+finishing her illustrations; and in instructing the awe-struck Jane, now
+perfectly amenable, in the mysteries that would be expected of her.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Meadows heard various accounts from artistic and literary
+friends of the parties at Crosby Ledgers. These accounts were generally
+prefaced by the laughing remark, "But anything _I_ can say is ancient
+history. Lady Dunstable dropped us long ago!"
+
+Anyway, it appeared that the mistress of Crosby Ledgers could be
+charming, and could also be exactly the reverse. She was a creature of
+whims and did precisely as she pleased. Everything she did apparently
+was acceptable to Lord Dunstable, who admired her blindly. But in one
+point at least she was a disappointed woman. Her son, an unsatisfactory
+youth of two-and-twenty, was seldom to be seen under his parents' roof,
+and it was rumoured that he had already given them a great deal of
+trouble.
+
+"The dreadful thing, my dear, is the _games_ they play!" said the wife
+of a dramatist, whose one successful piece had been followed by years of
+ill-fortune.
+
+"_Games?_" said Doris. "Do you mean cards--for money?"
+
+"Oh, dear no! Intellectual games. _Bouts-rimés;_ translations--Lady
+Dunstable looks out the bits and some people think the
+words--beforehand; paragraphs on a subject--in a particular
+style--Pater's, or Ruskin's, or Carlyle's. Each person throws two slips
+into a hat. On one you write the subject, on another the name of the
+author whose style is to be imitated. Then you draw. Of course Lady
+Dunstable carries off all the honours. But then everybody believes she
+spends all the mornings preparing these things. She never comes down
+till nearly lunch."
+
+"This is really appalling!" said Doris, with round eyes. "I have
+forgotten everything I ever knew."
+
+As for her own impressions of the great lady, she had only seen her once
+in the semi-darkness of the lecture-room, and could only remember a
+long, sallow face, with striking black eyes and a pointed chin, a
+general look of distinction and an air of one accustomed to the "chief
+seat" at any board--whether the feasts of reason or those of a more
+ordinary kind.
+
+As the days went on, Doris, for all her sturdy self-reliance, began to
+feel a little nervous inwardly. She had been quite well-educated, first
+at a good High School, and then in the class-rooms of a provincial
+University; and, as the clever daughter of a clever doctor in large
+practice, she had always been in touch with the intellectual world,
+especially on its scientific side. And for nearly two years before her
+marriage she had been a student at the Slade School. But since her
+imprudent love-match with a literary man had plunged her into the
+practical work of a small household, run on a scanty and precarious
+income, she had been obliged, one after another, to let the old
+interests go. Except the drawing. That was good enough to bring her a
+little money, as an illustrator, designer of Christmas cards, etc.; and
+she filled most of her spare time with it.
+
+But now she feverishly looked out some of her old books--Pater's
+"Studies," a volume of Huxley's Essays, "Shelley" and "Keats" in the
+"Men of Letters" series. She borrowed two or three of the political
+biographies with which Arthur's shelves were crowded, having all the
+while, however, the dispiriting conviction that Lady Dunstable had been
+dandled on the knees of every English Prime Minister since her birth,
+and had been the blood relation of all of them, except perhaps Mr. G.,
+whose blood no doubt had not been blue enough to entitle him to the
+privilege.
+
+However, she must do her best. She kept these feelings and preparations
+entirely secret from Arthur, and she saw the day of the visit dawn in a
+mood of mingled expectation and revolt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+It was a perfect June evening: Doris was seated on one of the spreading
+lawns of Crosby Ledgers,--a low Georgian house, much added to at various
+times, and now a pleasant medley of pillared verandahs, tiled roofs,
+cupolas, and dormer windows, apparently unpretending, but, as many
+people knew, one of the most luxurious of English country houses.
+
+Lady Dunstable, in a flowing dress of lilac crêpe and a large black hat,
+had just given Mrs. Meadows a second cup of tea, and was clearly doing
+her duty--and showing it--to a guest whose entertainment could not be
+trusted to go of itself. The only other persons at the tea-table--the
+Meadowses having arrived late--were an elderly man with long Dundreary
+whiskers, in a Panama hat and a white waistcoat, and a lady of uncertain
+age, plump, kind-eyed, and merry-mouthed, in whom Doris had at once
+divined a possible harbour of refuge from the terrors of the situation.
+Arthur was strolling up and down the lawn with the Home Secretary,
+smoking and chatting--talking indeed nineteen to the dozen, and entirely
+at his ease. A few other groups were scattered over the grass; while
+girls in white dresses and young men in flannels were playing tennis in
+the distance. A lake at the bottom of the sloping garden made light and
+space in a landscape otherwise too heavily walled in by thick woodland.
+White swans floated on the lake, and the June trees beyond were in their
+freshest and proudest leaf. A church tower rose appropriately in a
+corner of the park, and on the other side of the deer-fence beyond the
+lake a herd of red deer were feeding. Doris could not help feeling as
+though the whole scene had been lately painted for a new "high life"
+play at the St. James's Theatre, and she half expected to see Sir George
+Alexander walk out of the bushes.
+
+"I suppose, Mrs. Meadows, you have been helping your husband with his
+lectures?" said Lady Dunstable, a little languidly, as though the heat
+oppressed her. She was making play with a cigarette and her half-shut
+eyes were fixed on the "lion's" wife. The eyes fascinated Doris. Surely
+they were artificially blackened, above and below? And the lips--had art
+been delicately invoked, or was Nature alone responsible?
+
+"I copy things for Arthur," said Doris. "Unfortunately, I can't type."
+
+At the sound of the young and musical voice, the gentleman with the
+Dundreary whiskers--Sir Luke Malford--who had seemed half asleep, turned
+sharply to look at the speaker. Doris too was in a white dress, of the
+simplest stuff and make; but it became her. So did the straw hat, with
+its wreath of wild roses, which she had trimmed herself that morning.
+There was not the slightest visible sign of tremor in the young woman;
+and Sir Luke's inner mind applauded her.
+
+"No fool!--and a lady," he thought. "Let's see what Rachel will make of
+her."
+
+"Then you don't help him in the writing?" said Lady Dunstable, still
+with the same detached air. Doris laughed.
+
+"I don't know what Arthur would say if I proposed it. He never lets
+anybody go near him when he's writing."
+
+"I see; like all geniuses, he's dangerous on the loose." Was Lady
+Dunstable's smile just touched with sarcasm? "Well!--has the success of
+the lectures surprised you?"
+
+Doris pondered.
+
+"No," she said at last, "not really. I always thought Arthur had it in
+him."
+
+"But you hardly expected such a run--such an excitement!"
+
+"I don't know," said Doris, coolly. "I think I did--sometimes. The
+question is how long it will last."
+
+She looked, smiling, at her interrogator.
+
+The gentleman with the whiskers stooped across the table.
+
+"Oh, nothing lasts in this world. But that of course is what makes a
+good time so good."
+
+Doris turned towards him--demurring--for the sake of conversation. "I
+never could understand how Cinderella enjoyed the ball."
+
+"For thinking of the clock?" laughed Sir Luke. "No, no!--you can't mean
+that. It's the expectation of the clock that doubles the pleasure. Of
+course you agree, Rachel!"--he turned to her--"else why did you read me
+that very doleful poem yesterday, on this very theme?--that it's only
+the certainty of death that makes life agreeable? By the way, George
+Eliot had said it before!"
+
+"The poem was by a friend of mine," said Lady Dunstable, coldly. "I read
+it to you to see how it sounded. But I thought it poor stuff."
+
+"How unkind of you! The man who wrote it says he lives upon your
+friendship."
+
+"That, perhaps, is why he's so thin."
+
+Sir Luke laughed again.
+
+"To be sure, I saw the poor man--after you had talked to him the other
+night--going to Dunstable to be consoled. Poor George! he's always
+healing the wounds you make."
+
+"Of course. That's why I married him. George says all the civil things.
+That sets me free to do the rude ones."
+
+"Rachel!" The exclamation came from the plump lady opposite, who was
+smiling broadly, and showing some very white teeth. A signal passed from
+her eyes to those of Doris, as though to say "Don't be alarmed!"
+
+But Doris was not at all alarmed. She was eagerly watching Lady
+Dunstable, as one watches for the mannerisms of some well-known
+performer. Sir Luke perceived it, and immediately began to show off his
+hostess by one of the sparring matches that were apparently frequent
+between them. They fell to discussing a party of guests--landowners from
+a neighbouring estate--who seemed to have paid a visit to Crosby Ledgers
+the day before. Lady Dunstable had not enjoyed them, and her tongue on
+the subject was sharpness itself, restrained by none of the ordinary
+compunctions. "Is this how she talks about all her guests--on Monday
+morning?" thought Doris, with quickened pulse as the biting sentences
+flew about.
+
+... "Mr. Worthing? Why did he marry her? Oh, because he wanted a stuffed
+goose to sit by the fire while he went out and amused himself.... Why
+did she marry him? Ah, that's more difficult to answer. Is one obliged
+to credit Mrs. Worthing with any reasons--on any subject? However, I
+like Mr. Worthing--he's what men ought to be."
+
+"And that is--?" Doris ventured to put in.
+
+"Just--men," said Lady Dunstable, shortly.
+
+Sir Luke laughed over his cigarette.
+
+"That you may fool them? Well, Rachel, all the same, you would die of
+Worthing's company in a month."
+
+"I shouldn't die," said Lady Dunstable, quietly. "I should murder."
+
+"Hullo, what's my wife talking about?" said a bluff and friendly voice.
+Doris looked up to see a handsome man with grizzled hair approaching.
+
+"Mrs. Meadows? How do you do? What a beautiful evening you've brought!
+Your husband and I have been having a jolly talk. My word!--he's a
+clever chap. Let me congratulate you on the lectures. Biggest success
+known in recent days!"
+
+Doris beamed upon her host, well pleased, and he settled down beside
+her, doing his kind best to entertain her. In him, all those protective
+feelings towards a stranger, in which his wife appeared to be
+conspicuously lacking, were to be discerned on first acquaintance. Doris
+was practically sure that his inner mind was thinking--"Poor little
+thing!--knows nobody here. Rachel's been scaring her. Must look after
+her!"
+
+And look after her he did. He was by no means an amusing companion.
+Lazy, gentle, and ineffective, Doris quickly perceived that he was
+entirely eclipsed by his wife, who, now that she was relieved of Mrs.
+Meadows, was soon surrounded by a congenial company--the Home Secretary,
+one or two other politicians, the old General, a literary Dean, Lord
+Staines, a great racing man, Arthur Meadows, and one or two more. The
+talk became almost entirely political--with a dash of literature. Doris
+saw at once that Lady Dunstable was the centre of it, and she was not
+long in guessing that it was for this kind of talk that people came to
+Crosby Ledgers. Lady Dunstable, it seemed, was capable of talking like a
+man with men, and like a man of affairs with the men of affairs. Her
+political knowledge was astonishing; so, evidently, was her background
+of family and tradition, interwoven throughout with English political
+history. English statesmen had not only dandled her, they had taught
+her, walked with her, written to her, and--no doubt--flirted with her.
+Doris, as she listened to her, disliked her heartily, and at the same
+time could not help being thrilled by so much knowledge, so much contact
+with history in the making, and by such a masterful way, in a woman,
+with the great ones of the earth. "What a worm she must think me!"
+thought Doris--"what a worm she _does_ think me--and the likes of me!"
+
+At the same time, the spectator must needs admit there was something
+else in Lady Dunstable's talk than mere intelligence or mere
+mannishness. There was undoubtedly something of "the good fellow," and,
+through all her hard hitting, a curious absence--in conversation--of the
+personal egotism she was quite ready to show in all the trifles of life.
+On the present occasion her main object clearly was to bring out Arthur
+Meadows--the new captive of her bow and spear; to find out what was in
+him; to see if he was worthy of her inner circle. Throwing all
+compliment aside, she attacked him hotly on certain statements--certain
+estimates--in his lectures. Her knowledge was personal; the knowledge of
+one whose father had sat in Dizzy's latest Cabinet, while, through the
+endless cousinship of the English landed families, she was as much
+related to the Whig as to the Tory leaders of the past. She talked
+familiarly of "Uncle This" or "Cousin That," who had been apparently the
+idols of her nursery before they had become the heroes of England; and
+Meadows had much ado to defend himself against her store of anecdote and
+reminiscence. "Unfair!" thought Doris, breathlessly watching the contest
+of wits. "Oh, if she weren't a woman, Arthur could easily beat her!"
+
+But she was a woman, and not at all unwilling, when hard pressed, to
+take advantage of that fact.
+
+All the same, Meadows was stirred to most unwonted efforts. He proved to
+be an antagonist worth her steel; and Doris's heart swelled with secret
+pride as she saw how all the other voices died down, how more and more
+people came up to listen, even the young men and maidens,--throwing
+themselves on the grass, around the two disputants. Finally Lady
+Dunstable carried off the honours. Had she not seen Lord Beaconsfield
+twice during the fatal week of his last general election, when England
+turned against him, when his great rival triumphed, and all was lost?
+Had he not talked to her, as great men will talk to the young and
+charming women whose flatteries soften their defeats; so that, from the
+wings, she had seen almost the last of that well-graced actor, caught
+his last gestures and some of his last words?
+
+"Brava, brava!" said Meadows, when the story ceased, although it had
+been intended to upset one of his own most brilliant generalisations;
+and a sound of clapping hands went round the circle. Lady Dunstable, a
+little flushed and panting, smiled and was silent. Meadows, meanwhile,
+was thinking--"How often has she told that tale? She has it by heart.
+Every touch in it has been sharpened a dozen times. All the same--a
+wonderful performance!"
+
+Lord Dunstable, meanwhile, sat absolutely silent, his hat on the back
+of his head, his attention fixed on his wife. As the group broke up, and
+the chairs were pushed back, he said in Doris's ear--"Isn't she an
+awfully clever woman, my wife?"
+
+Before Doris could answer, she heard Lady Dunstable carelessly--but none
+the less peremptorily--inviting her women guests to see their rooms.
+Doris walked by her hostess's side towards the house. Every trace of
+animation and charm had now vanished from that lady's manner. She was as
+languid and monosyllabic as before, and Doris could only feel once again
+that while her clever husband was an eagerly welcomed guest, she herself
+could only expect to reckon as his appendage--a piece of family luggage.
+
+Lady Dunstable threw open the door of a spacious bedroom. "No doubt you
+will wish to rest till dinner," she said, severely. "And of course your
+maid will ask for what she wants." At the word "maid," did Doris dream
+it, or was there a satiric gleam in the hard black eyes? "Pretender," it
+seemed to say--and Doris's conscience admitted the charge.
+
+And indeed the door had no sooner closed on Lady Dunstable before an
+agitated knock announced Jane--in tears.
+
+She stood opposite her mistress in desperation.
+
+"Please, ma'am--I'll have to have an evening dress--or I can't go in to
+supper!"
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" said Doris, staring at her.
+
+"Every maid in this 'ouse, ma'am, 'as got to dress for supper. The maids
+go in the 'ousekeeper's room, an' they've all on 'em got dresses
+V-shaped, or cut square, or something. This black dress, ma'am, won't do
+at all. So I can't have no supper. I couldn't dream, ma'am, of goin' in
+different to the others!"
+
+"You silly creature!" said Doris, springing up. "Look here--I'll lend
+you my spare blouse. You can turn it in at the neck, and wear my white
+scarf. You'll be as smart as any of them!"
+
+And half laughing, half compassionate, she pulled her blouse out of the
+box, adjusted the white scarf to it herself, and sent the bewildered
+Jane about her business, after having shown her first how to unpack her
+mistress's modest belongings, and strictly charged her to return half an
+hour before dinner. "Of course I shall dress myself,--but you may as
+well have a lesson."
+
+The girl went, and Doris was left stormily wondering why she had been
+such a fool as to bring her. Then her sense of humour conquered, and her
+brow cleared. She went to the open window and stood looking over the
+park beyond. Sunset lay broad and rich over the wide stretches of grass,
+and on the splendid oaks lifting their dazzling leaf to the purest of
+skies. The roses in the garden sent up their scent, there was a plashing
+of water from an invisible fountain, and the deer beyond the fence
+wandered in and out of the broad bands of shadow drawn across the park.
+Doris's young feet fidgeted under her. She longed to be out exploring
+the woods and the lake. Why was she immured in this stupid room, to
+which Lady Dunstable had conducted her with a chill politeness which had
+said plainly enough "Here you are--and here you stay!--till dinner!"
+
+"If I could only find a back-staircase," she thought, "I would soon be
+enjoying myself! Arthur, lucky wretch, said something about playing
+golf. No!--there he is!"
+
+And sure enough, on the farthest edge of the lawn going towards the
+park, she saw two figures walking--Lady Dunstable and Arthur! "Deep in
+talk of course--having the best of times--while I am shut up
+here--half-past six!--on a glorious evening!" The reflection, however,
+was, on the whole, good-humoured. She did not feel, as yet, either
+jealous or tragic. Some day, she supposed, if it was to be her lot to
+visit country houses, she would get used to their ways. For Arthur, of
+course, it was useful--perhaps necessary--to be put through his paces by
+a woman like Lady Dunstable. "And he can hold his own. But for me? I
+contribute nothing. I don't belong to them--they don't want me--and what
+use have I for them?"
+
+Her meditations, however, were here interrupted by a knock. On her
+saying "Come in"--the door opened cautiously to admit the face of the
+substantial lady, Miss Field, to whom Doris had been introduced at the
+tea-table.
+
+"Are you resting?" said Miss Field, "or only 'interned'?"
+
+"Oh, please come in!" cried Doris. "I never was less tired in my life."
+
+Miss Field entered, and took the armchair that Doris offered her,
+fronting the open window and the summer scene. Her face would have
+suited the Muse of Mirth, if any Muse is ever forty years of age. The
+small, up-turned nose and full red lips were always smiling; so were the
+eyes; and the fair skin and still golden hair, the plump figure and gay
+dress of flower-sprigged muslin, were all in keeping with the part.
+
+"You have never seen my cousin before?" she inquired.
+
+"Lady Dunstable? Is she your cousin?"
+
+Miss Field nodded. "My first cousin. And I spend a great part of the
+year here, helping in different ways. Rachel can't do without me now, so
+I'm able to keep her in order. Don't ever be shy with her! Don't ever
+let her think she frightens you!--those are the two indispensable rules
+here."
+
+"I'm afraid I should break them," said Doris, slowly. "She does
+frighten me--horribly!"
+
+"Ah, well, you didn't show it--that's the chief thing. You know she's a
+much more human creature than she seems."
+
+"Is she?" Doris's eyes pursued the two distant figures in the park.
+
+"You'd think, for instance, that Lord Dunstable was just a cipher? Not
+at all. He's the real authority here, and when he puts his foot down
+Rachel always gives in. But of course she's stood in the way of his
+career."
+
+Doris shrank a little from these indiscretions. But she could not keep
+her curiosity out of her eyes, and Miss Field smilingly answered it.
+
+"She's absorbed him so! You see he watches her all the time. She's like
+an endless play to him. He really doesn't care for anything else--he
+doesn't want anything else. Of course they're very rich. But he might
+have done something in politics, if she hadn't been so much more
+important than he. And then, naturally, she's made enemies--powerful
+enemies. Her friends come here of course--her old cronies--the people
+who can put up with her. They're devoted to her. And the young
+people--the very modern ones--who think nice manners 'early Victorian,'
+and like her rudeness for the sake of her cleverness. But the
+rest!--What do you think she did at one of these parties last year?"
+
+Doris could not help wishing to know.
+
+"She took a fancy to ask a girl near here--the daughter of a clergyman,
+a great friend of Lord Dunstable's, to come over for the Sunday. Lord
+Dunstable had talked of the girl, and Rachel's always on the look-out
+for cleverness; she hunts it like a hound! She met the young woman too
+somewhere, and got the impression--I can't say how--that she would 'go.'
+So on the Saturday morning she went over in her pony-carriage--broke in
+on the little Rectory like a hurricane--of course you know the people
+about here regard her as something semi-divine!--and told the girl she
+had come to take her back to Crosby Ledgers for the Sunday. So the poor
+child packed up, all in a flutter, and they set off together in the
+pony-carriage--six miles. And by the time they had gone four Rachel had
+discovered she had made a mistake--that the girl wasn't clever, and
+would add nothing to the party. So she quietly told her that she was
+afraid, after all, the party wouldn't suit her. And then she turned the
+pony's head, and drove her straight home again!"
+
+"Oh!" cried Doris, her cheeks red, her eyes aflame.
+
+"Brutal, wasn't it?" said the other. "All the same, there are fine
+things in Rachel. And in one point she's the most vulnerable of women!"
+
+"Her son?" Doris ventured.
+
+Miss Field shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"He doesn't drink--he doesn't gamble--he doesn't spend money--he doesn't
+run away with other people's wives. He's just nothing!--just incurably
+empty and idle. He comes here very little. His mother terrifies him. And
+since he was twenty-one he has a little money of his own. He hangs about
+in studios and theatres. His mother doesn't know any of his friends.
+What she suffers--poor Rachel! She'd have given everything in the world
+for a brilliant son. But you can't wonder. She's like some strong plant
+that takes all the nourishment out of the ground, so that the plants
+near it starve. She can't help it. She doesn't mean to be a vampire!"
+
+Doris hardly knew what to say. Somehow she wished the vampire were not
+walking with Arthur! That, however, was not a sentiment easily
+communicable; and she was just turning it into something else when Miss
+Field said--abruptly, like someone coming to the real point--
+
+"Does your husband like her?"
+
+"Why yes, of course!" stammered Doris. "She's been awfully kind to us
+about the lectures, and--he loves arguing with her."
+
+"She loves arguing with _him_!" 'said Miss Field triumphantly. "She
+lives just for such half-hours as that she gave us on the lawn after
+tea--and all owing to him--he was so inspiring, so stimulating. Oh,
+you'll see, she'll take you up tremendously--if you want to be taken
+up!"
+
+The smiling blue eyes looked gaily into Doris's puzzled countenance.
+Evidently the speaker was much amused by the Meadowses' situation--more
+amused than her sense of politeness allowed her to explain. Doris was
+conscious of a vague resentment.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't see what Lady Dunstable will get out of me," she
+said, drily.
+
+Miss Field raised her eyebrows.
+
+"Are you going then to let him come here alone? She'll be always asking
+you! Oh, you needn't be afraid--" and this most candid of cousins
+laughed aloud. "Rachel isn't a flirt--except of the intellectual kind.
+But she takes possession--she sticks like a limpet."
+
+There was a pause. Then Miss Field added:
+
+"You mustn't think it odd that I say these things about Rachel. I have
+to explain her to people. She's not like anybody else."
+
+Doris did not quite see the necessity, but she kept the reflection to
+herself, and Miss Field passed lightly to the other guests--Sir Luke, a
+tame cat of the house, who quarrelled with Lady Dunstable once a month,
+vowed he would never come near her again, and always reappeared; the
+Dean, who in return for a general submission, was allowed to scold her
+occasionally for her soul's health; the politicians whom she could not
+do without, who were therefore handled more gingerly than the rest; the
+military and naval men who loved Dunstable and put up with his wife for
+his sake; and the young people--nephews and nieces and cousins--who
+liked an unconventional hostess without any foolish notions of
+chaperonage, and always enjoyed themselves famously at Crosby Ledgers.
+
+"Now then," said Miss Field, rising at last, "I think you have the
+_carte du pays_--and there they are, coming back." She pointed to
+Meadows and Lady Dunstable, crossing the lawn. "Whatever you do, hold
+your own. If you don't want to play games, don't play them. If you want
+to go to church to-morrow, go to church. Lady Dunstable of course is a
+heathen. And now perhaps, you might _really_ rest."
+
+"Such a jolly walk!" said Meadows, entering his wife's room flushed
+with exercise and pleasure. "The place is divine, and really Lady
+Dunstable is uncommonly good talk. Hope you haven't been dull, dear?"
+
+Doris replied, laughing, that Miss Field had taken pity on what would
+otherwise have been solitary confinement, and that now it was time to
+dress. Meadows kissed her absently, and, with his head evidently still
+full of his walk, went to his dressing-room. When he reappeared, it was
+to find Doris attired in a little black gown, with which he was already
+too familiar. She saw at once the dissatisfaction in his face.
+
+"I can't help it!" she said, with emphasis. "I did my best with it,
+Arthur, but I'm not a genius at dressmaking. Never mind. Nobody will
+take any notice of me."
+
+He quite crossly rebuked her. She really must spend more on her dress.
+It was unseemly--absurd. She looked as nice as anybody when she was
+properly got up.
+
+"Well, don't buy any more copper coal-scuttles!" she said slyly, as she
+straightened his tie, and dropped a kiss on his chin. "Then we'll see."
+
+They went down to dinner, and on the staircase Meadows turned to say to
+his wife in a lowered voice:
+
+"Lady Dunstable wants me to go to them in Scotland--for two or three
+weeks. I dare say I could do some work."
+
+"Oh, does she?" said Doris.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What perversity drove Lady Dunstable during the evening and the Sunday
+that followed to match every attention that was lavished on Arthur
+Meadows by some slight to his wife, will never be known. But the fact
+was patent. Throughout the diversions or occupations of the forty-eight
+hours' visit, Mrs. Meadows was either ignored, snubbed, or
+contradicted. Only Arthur Meadows, indeed, measuring himself with
+delight, for the first time, against some of the keenest brains in the
+country, failed to see it. His blindness allowed Lady Dunstable to run a
+somewhat dangerous course, unchecked. She risked alienating a man whom
+she particularly wished to attract; she excited a passion of antagonism
+in Doris's generally equable breast, and was quite aware of it.
+Notwithstanding, she followed her whim; and by the Sunday evening there
+existed between the great lady and her guest a state of veiled war, in
+which the strokes were by no means always to the advantage of Lady
+Dunstable.
+
+Doris, for instance, with other guests, expressed a wish to attend
+morning service on Sunday at a famous cathedral some three miles away.
+Lady Dunstable immediately announced that everybody who wished to go to
+church would go to the village church within the park, for which alone
+carriages would be provided. Then Doris and Sir Luke combined, and
+walked to the cathedral, three miles there and three miles back--to the
+huge delight of the other and more docile guests. Sunday evening, again,
+was devastated by what were called "games" at Crosby Ledgers. "Gad, if I
+wouldn't sooner go in for the Indian Civil again!" said Sir Luke. Doris,
+with the most ingratiating manner, but quite firmly, begged to be
+excused. Lady Dunstable bit her lip, and presently, _à propos de
+bottes_, launched some observations on the need of co-operation in
+society. It was shirking--refusing to take a hand, to do one's
+best--false shame, indeed!--that ruined English society and English
+talk. Let everybody take a lesson from the French! After which the lists
+were opened, so to speak, and Lady Dunstable, Meadows, the Dean, and
+about half the young people produced elegant pieces of translation,
+astounding copies of impromptu verse, essays in all the leading styles
+of the day, and riddles by the score. The Home Secretary, who had been
+lassoed by his hostess, escaped towards the middle of the ordeal, and
+wandered sadly into a further room where Doris sat chatting with Lord
+Dunstable. He was carrying various slips of paper in his hand, and asked
+her distractedly if she could throw any light on the question--"Why is
+Lord Salisbury like a poker?"
+
+"I can't think of anything to say," he said helplessly, "except 'because
+they are both upright.' And here's another--'Why is the Pope like a
+thermometer?' I did see some light on that!" His countenance cheered a
+little. "Would this do? 'Because both are higher in Italy than in
+England.' Not very good!--but I must think of something."
+
+Doris put her wits to his. Between them they polished the riddle; but by
+the time it was done the Home Secretary had begun to find Meadows's
+little wife, whose existence he had not noticed hitherto, more agreeable
+than Lady Dunstable's table with its racked countenances, and its too
+ample supply of pencils and paper. A deadly crime! When Lady Dunstable,
+on the stroke of midnight, swept through the rooms to gather her guests
+for bed, she cast a withering glance on Doris and her companion.
+
+"So you despised our little amusements?" she said, as she handed Mrs.
+Meadows her candle.
+
+"I wasn't worthy of them," smiled Doris, in reply.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, I call that a delightful visit!" said Meadows as the train next
+morning pulled out of the Crosby Ledgers station for London. "I feel
+freshened up all over."
+
+Doris looked at him with rather mocking eyes, but said nothing. She
+fully recognised, however, that Arthur would have been an ungrateful
+wretch if he had not enjoyed it. Lady Dunstable had been, so to speak,
+at his feet, and all her little court had taken their cue from her. He
+had been flattered, drawn out, and shown off to his heart's content, and
+had been most naturally and humanly happy. "And I," thought Doris with
+sudden repentance, "was just a spiky, horrid little toad! What was wrong
+with me?" She was still searching, when Meadows said reproachfully:
+
+"I thought, darling, you might have taken a little more trouble to make
+friends with Lady Dunstable. However, that'll be all right. I told her,
+of course, we should be delighted to go to Scotland."
+
+"Arthur!" cried Doris, aghast. "Three weeks! I couldn't, Arthur! Don't
+ask me!"
+
+"And, pray, why?" he angrily inquired.
+
+"Because--oh, Arthur, don't you understand? She is a man's woman. She
+took a particular dislike to me, and I just had to be stubborn and
+thorny to get on at all. I'm awfully sorry--but I _couldn't_ stay with
+her, and I'm certain you wouldn't be happy either."
+
+"I should be perfectly happy," said Meadows, with vehemence. "And so
+would you, if you weren't so critical and censorious. Anyway"--his
+Jove-like mouth shut firmly--"I have promised."
+
+"You couldn't promise for me!" cried Doris, holding her head very high.
+
+"Then you'll have to let me go without you?"
+
+"Which, of course, was what you swore not to do!" she said, provokingly.
+"I thought my wife was a reasonable woman! Lady Dunstable rouses all my
+powers; she gives me ideas which may be most valuable. It is to the
+interest of both of us that I should keep up my friendship with her."
+
+"Then keep it up," said Doris, her cheeks aflame. "But you won't want
+me to help you, Arthur."
+
+He cried out that it was only pride and conceit that made her behave so.
+In her heart of hearts, Doris mostly agreed with him. But she wouldn't
+confess it, and it was presently understood between them that Meadows
+would duly accept the Dunstables' invitation for August, and that Doris
+would stay behind.
+
+After which, Doris looked steadily out of the window for the rest of the
+journey, and could not at all conceal from herself that she had never
+felt more miserable in her life. The only person in the trio who
+returned to the Kensington house entirely happy was Jane, who spent the
+greater part of the day in describing to Martha, the cook-general, the
+glories of Crosby Ledgers, and her own genteel appearance in Mrs.
+Meadows's blouse.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+During the weeks that followed the Meadowses' first visit to Crosby
+Ledgers, Doris's conscience was by no means asleep on the subject of
+Lady Dunstable. She felt that her behaviour in that lady's house, and
+the sudden growth in her own mind of a quite unmanageable dislike, were
+not to be defended in one who prided herself on a general temper of
+coolness and common sense, who despised the rancour and whims of other
+women, hated scenes, and had always held jealousy to be the smallest and
+most degrading of passions. Why not laugh at what was odious, show
+oneself superior to personal slights, and enjoy what could be enjoyed?
+And above all, why grudge Arthur a woman friend?
+
+None of these arguments, however, availed at all to reconcile Doris to
+the new intimacy growing under her eyes. The Dunstables came to town,
+and invitations followed. Mr. and Mrs. Meadows were asked to a large
+dinner-party, and Doris held her peace and went. She found herself at
+the end of a long table with an inarticulate schoolboy of seventeen, a
+ward of Lord Dunstable's, on her left, and with an elderly colonel on
+her right, who, after a little cool examination of her through an
+eyeglass, decided to devote himself to the _débutante_ on his other
+side, a Lady Rosamond, who was ready to chatter hunting and horses to
+him through the whole of dinner. The girl was not pretty, but she was
+fresh and gay, and Doris, tired with "much serving," envied her spirits,
+her evident assumption that the world only existed for her to
+laugh and ride in, her childish unspoken claim to the best of
+everything--clothes, food, amusements, lovers. Doris on her side made
+valiant efforts with the schoolboy. She liked boys, and prided herself
+on getting on with them. But this specimen had no conversation--at any
+rate for the female sex--and apparently only an appetite. He ate
+steadily through the dinner, and seemed rather to resent Doris's
+attempts to distract him from the task. So that presently Doris found
+herself reduced to long tracts of silence, when her fan was her only
+companion, and the watching of other people her only amusement.
+
+Lord and Lady Dunstable faced each other at the sides of the table,
+which was purposely narrow, so that talk could pass across it. Lady
+Dunstable sat between an Ambassador and a Cabinet Minister, but Meadows
+was almost directly opposite to her, and it seemed to be her chief
+business to make him the hero of the occasion. It was she who drew him
+into political or literary discussion with the Cabinet Minister, so that
+the neighbours of each stayed their own talk to listen; she who would
+insist on his repeating "that story you told me at Crosby Ledgers;" who
+attacked him abruptly--rudely even, as she had done in the country--so
+that he might defend himself; and when he had slipped into all her traps
+one after the other, would fall back in her chair with a little
+satisfied smile. Doris, silent and forgotten, could not keep her eyes
+for long from the two distant figures--from this new Arthur, and the
+sallow-faced, dark-eyed witch who had waved her wand over him.
+
+_Wasn't_ she glad to see her husband courted--valued as he
+deserved--borne along the growing stream of fame? What matter, if she
+could only watch him from the bank?--and if the impetuous stream were
+carrying him away from her? No! She wasn't glad. Some cold and deadly
+thing seemed to be twining about her heart. Were they leaving the dear,
+poverty-stricken, debt-pestered life behind for ever, in which, after
+all, they had been so happy: she, everything to Arthur, and he, so
+dependent upon her? No doubt she had been driven to despair, often, by
+his careless, shiftless ways; she had thirsted for success and money;
+just money enough, at least, to get along with. And now success had
+come, and money was coming. And here she was, longing for the old, hard,
+struggling past--hating the advent of the new and glittering future. As
+she sat at Lady Dunstable's table, she seemed to see the little room in
+their Kensington house, with the big hole in the carpet, the piles of
+papers and books, the reading-lamp that would smoke, her work-basket,
+the house-books, Arthur pulling contentedly at his pipe, the
+fire crackling between them, his shabby coat, her shabby
+dress--Bliss!--compared to this splendid scene, with the great Vandycks
+looking down on the dinner-table, the crowd of guests and servants, the
+costly food, the dresses, and the diamonds--with, in the distance, _her_
+Arthur, divided, as it seemed, from her by a growing chasm, never
+remembering to throw her a look or a smile, drinking in a tide of
+flattery he would once have been the first to scorn, captured,
+exhibited, befooled by an unscrupulous, egotistical woman, who would
+drop him like a squeezed orange when he had ceased to amuse her. And the
+worst of it was that the woman was not a mere pretender! She had a fine,
+hard brain,--"as good as Arthur's--nearly--and he knows it. It is that
+which attracts him--and excites him. I can mend his socks; I can listen
+while he reads; and he used to like it when I praised. Now, what I say
+will never matter to him any more; that was just sentiment and nonsense;
+now, he only wants to know what _she_ says;--that's business! He writes
+with her in his mind--and when he has finished something he sends it off
+to her, straight. I may see it when all the world may--but she has the
+first-fruits!"
+
+And in poor Doris's troubled mind the whole scene--save the two central
+figures, Lady Dunstable and Arthur--seemed to melt away. She was not the
+first wife, by a long way, into whose quiet breast Lady Dunstable had
+dropped these seeds of discord. She knew it well by report; but it was
+hateful, both to wifely feeling and natural vanity, that _she_ should
+now be the victim of the moment, and should know no more than her
+predecessors how to defend herself. "Why can't I be cool and
+cutting--pay her back when she is rude, and contradict her when she's
+absurd? She _is_ absurd often. But I think of the right things to say
+just five minutes too late. I have no nerve--that's the point!--only
+_l'esprit d'escalier_ to perfection. And she has been trained to this
+sort of campaigning from her babyhood. No good growling! I shall never
+hold my own!"
+
+Then, into this despairing mood there dropped suddenly a fragment of her
+neighbour, the Colonel's, conversation--"Mrs. So-and-so? Impossible
+woman! Oh, one doesn't mind seeing her graze occasionally at the other
+end of one's table--as the price of getting her husband, don't you
+know?--but--"
+
+Doris's sudden laugh at the Colonel's elbow startled that gentleman so
+that he turned round to look at her. But she was absorbed in the menu,
+which she had taken up, and he could only suppose that something in it
+amused her.
+
+A few days later arrived a letter for Meadows, which he handed to his
+wife in silence. There had been no further discussion of Lady Dunstable
+between them; only a general sense of friction, warnings of hidden fire
+on Doris's side, and resentment on his, quite new in their relation to
+each other. Meadows clearly thought that his wife was behaving very
+badly. Lady Dunstable's efforts on his behalf had already done him
+substantial service; she had introduced him to all kinds of people
+likely to help him, intellectually and financially; and to help him was
+to help Doris. Why would she be such a little fool? So unlike her,
+too!--sensible, level-headed creature that she generally was. But he was
+afraid of losing his own temper, if he argued with her. And indeed his
+lazy easy-goingness loathed argument of this domestic sort, loathed
+scenes, loathed doing anything disagreeable that could be put off.
+
+But here was Lady Dunstable's letter:
+
+    Dear Mr. Arthur,--Will your wife forgive me if I ask you to come to
+    a tiny _men's_ dinner-party next Friday at 8.15--to meet the
+    President of the Duma, and another Russian, an intimate friend of
+    Tolstoy's? All males, but myself! So I hope Mrs. Meadows will let
+    you come.
+
+                              Yours sincerely,
+                                   RACHEL DUNSTABLE.
+
+
+"Of course, I won't go if you don't like it, Doris," said Meadows with
+the smile of magnanimity.
+
+"I thought you were angry with me--once--for even suggesting that you
+might!" Doris's tone was light, but not pleasing to a husband's ears.
+She was busy at the moment in packing up the American proofs of the
+Disraeli lecture, which at last with infinite difficulty she had
+persuaded Meadows to correct and return.
+
+"Well--but of course--this is exceptional!" said Meadows, pacing up and
+down irresolutely.
+
+"Everything's exceptional--in that quarter," said Doris, in the same
+tone. "Oh, go, of course!--it would be a thousand pities not to go."
+
+Meadows at once took her at her word. That was the first of a series of
+"male" dinners, to which, however, it seemed to Doris, if one might
+judge from Arthur's accounts, that a good many female exceptions were
+admitted, no doubt by way of proving the rule. And during July, Meadows
+lunched in town--in the lofty regions of St. James's or Mayfair--with
+other enthusiastic women admirers, most of them endowed with long purses
+and long pedigrees, at least three or four times a week. Doris was
+occasionally asked and sometimes went. But she was suffering all the
+time from an initial discouragement and depression, which took away
+self-reliance, and left her awkwardly conscious. She struggled, but in
+vain. The world into which Arthur was being so suddenly swept was
+strange to her, and in many ways antipathetic; but had she been happy
+and in spirits she could have grappled with it, or rather she could have
+lost herself in Arthur's success. Had she not always been his slave?
+But she was not happy! In their obscure days she had been Arthur's best
+friend, as well as his wife. And it was the old comradeship which was
+failing her; encroached upon, filched from her, by other women; and
+especially by this exacting, absorbing woman, whose craze for Arthur
+Meadows's society was rapidly becoming an amusement and a scandal even
+to those well acquainted with her previous records of the same sort.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The end of July arrived. The Dunstables left town. At a concert, for
+which she had herself sent them tickets, Lady Dunstable met Doris and
+her husband, the night before she departed.
+
+"In ten days we shall expect you at Pitlochry," she said, smiling, to
+Arthur Meadows, as she swept past them in the corridor. Then, pausing,
+she held out a perfunctory hand to Doris.
+
+"And we really can't persuade you to come too?"
+
+The tone was careless and patronising. It brought the sudden red to
+Doris's cheek. For one moment she was tempted to say--"Thank you--since
+you are so kind--after all, why not?"--just that she might see the
+change in those large, malicious eyes--might catch their owner unawares,
+for once. But, as usual, nerve failed her. She merely said that her
+drawing would keep her all August in town; and that London, empty, was
+the best possible place for work. Lady Dunstable nodded and passed on.
+
+The ten days flew. Meadows, kept to it by Doris, was very busy preparing
+another lecture for publication in an English review. Doris, meanwhile,
+got his clothes ready, and affected a uniformly cheerful and indifferent
+demeanour. On Arthur's last evening at home, however, he came suddenly
+into the sitting-room, where Doris was sewing on some final buttons, and
+after fidgeting about a little, with occasional glances at his wife, he
+said abruptly:
+
+"I say, Doris, I won't go if you're going to take it like this."
+
+She turned upon him.
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"Oh, don't pretend!" was the impatient reply. "You know very well that
+you hate my going to Scotland!"
+
+Doris, all on edge, and smarting under the too Jovian look and frown
+with which he surveyed her from the hearthrug, declared that, as it was
+not a case of her going to Scotland, but of his, she was entirely
+indifferent. If he enjoyed it, he was quite right to go. _She_ was going
+to enjoy her work in Uncle Charles's studio.
+
+Meadows broke out into an angry attack on her folly and unkindness. But
+the more he lost his temper, the more provokingly Doris kept hers. She
+sat there, surrounded by his socks and shirts, a trim, determined little
+figure--declining to admit that she was angry, or jealous, or offended,
+or anything of the kind. Would he please come upstairs and give her his
+last directions about his packing? She thought she had put everything
+ready; but there were just a few things she was doubtful about.
+
+And all the time she seemed to be watching another Doris--a creature
+quite different from her real self. What had come over her? If anybody
+had told her beforehand that she could ever let slip her power over her
+own will like this, ever become possessed with this silent, obstinate
+demon of wounded love and pride, never would she have believed them! She
+moved under its grip like an automaton. She would not quarrel with
+Arthur. But as no soft confession was possible, and no mending or
+undoing of what had happened, to laugh her way through the difficult
+hours was all that remained. So that whenever Meadows renewed the
+attempt to "have it out," he was met by renewed evasion and "chaff" on
+Doris's side, till he could only retreat with as much offended dignity
+as she allowed him.
+
+It was after midnight before she had finished his packing. Then, bidding
+him a smiling good night, she fell asleep--apparently--as soon as her
+head touched the pillow.
+
+The next morning, early, she stood on the steps waving farewell to
+Arthur, without a trace of ill-humour. And he, though vaguely
+uncomfortable, had submitted at last to what he felt was her fixed
+purpose of avoiding a scene. Moreover, the "eternal child" in him, which
+made both his charm and his weakness, had already scattered his
+compunctions of the preceding day, and was now aglow with the sheer joy
+of holiday and change. He had worked very hard, he had had a great
+success, and now he was going to live for three weeks in the lap of
+luxury; intellectual luxury first and foremost--good talk, good company,
+an abundance of books for rainy days; but with the addition of a supreme
+_chef_, Lord Dunstable's champagne, and all the amenities of one of the
+best moors in Scotland.
+
+Doris went back into the house, and, Arthur being no longer in the
+neighbourhood, allowed herself a few tears. She had never felt so lonely
+in her life, nor so humiliated. "My moral character is gone," she said
+to herself. "I have no moral character. I thought I was a sensible,
+educated woman; and I am just an ''Arriet,' in a temper with her
+''Arry.' Well--courage! Three weeks isn't long. Who can say that Arthur
+mayn't come back disillusioned? Rachel Dunstable is a born tyrant. If,
+instead of flattering him, she begins to bully him, strange things may
+happen!"
+
+The first week of solitude she spent in household drudgery. Bills had to
+be paid, and there was now mercifully a little money to pay them with.
+Though it was August, the house was to be "spring-cleaned," and Doris
+had made a compact with her sulky maids that when it began she would do
+no more than sleep and breakfast at home. She would spend her days in
+the Campden Hill studio, and sup on a tray--anywhere. On these terms,
+they grudgingly allowed her to occupy her own house.
+
+The studio in which she worked was on the top of Campden Hill, and
+opened into one of the pleasant gardens of that neighbourhood. Her
+uncle, Charles Bentley, an elderly Academician, with an ugly, humorous
+face, red hair, red eyebrows, a black skull-cap, and a general weakness
+for the female sex, was very fond of his niece Doris, and inclined to
+think her a neglected and underrated wife. He was too fond of his own
+comfort, however, to let Meadows perceive this opinion of his; still
+less did he dare express it to Doris. All he could do was to befriend
+her and make her welcome at the studio, to advise her about her
+illustrations, and correct her drawing when it needed it. He himself was
+an old-fashioned artist, quite content to be "mid" or even "early"
+Victorian. He still cultivated the art of historical painting, and was
+still as anxious as any contemporary of Frith to tell a story. And as
+his manner was no less behind the age than his material, his pictures
+remained on his hands, while the "vicious horrors," as they seemed to
+him, of the younger school held the field and captured the newspapers.
+But as he had some private means, and no kith or kin but his niece, the
+indifference of the public to his work caused him little disturbance.
+He pleased his own taste, allowing himself a good-natured contempt for
+the work which supplanted him, coupled with an ever-generous hand for
+any post-Impressionist in difficulties.
+
+On the August afternoon when Doris, escaping at last from her maids and
+her accounts, made her way up to the studio, for some hours' work on the
+last three or four illustrations wanted for a Christmas book, Uncle
+Charles welcomed her with effusion.
+
+"Where have you been, child, all this time? I thought you must have
+flitted entirely."
+
+Doris explained--while she set up her easel--that for the first time in
+their lives she and Arthur had been seeing something of the great world,
+and--mildly--"doing" the season. Arthur was now continuing the season in
+Scotland, while she had stayed at home to work and rest. Throughout her
+talk, she avoided mentioning the Dunstables.
+
+"H'm!" said Uncle Charles, "so you've been junketing!"
+
+Doris admitted it.
+
+"Did you like it?"
+
+Doris put on her candid look.
+
+"I daresay I should have liked it, if I'd made a success of it. Of
+course Arthur did."
+
+"Too much trouble!" said the old painter, shaking his head. "I was in
+the swim, as they call it, for a year or two. I might have stayed there,
+I suppose, for I could always tell a story, and I wasn't afraid of the
+big-wigs. But I couldn't stand it. Dress-clothes are the deuce! And
+besides, talk now is not what it used to be. The clever men who can say
+smart things are too clever to say them. Nobody wants 'em! So let's
+'cultivate our garden,' my dear, and be thankful. I'm beginning a new
+picture--and I've found a topping new model. What can a man want more?
+Very nice of you to let Arthur go, and have his head. Where is
+it?--some smart moor? He'll soon be tired of it."
+
+Doris laughed, let the question as to the "smart moor" pass, and came
+round to look at the new subject that Uncle Charles was laying in. He
+explained it to her, well knowing that he spoke to unsympathetic ears,
+for whatever Doris might draw for her publishers, she was a passionate
+and humble follower of those modern experimentalists who have made the
+Slade School famous. The subject was, it seemed, to be a visit paid to
+Joanna the mad and widowed mother of Charles V., at Tordesillas, by the
+envoys of Henry VII., who were thus allowed by Ferdinand, the Queen's
+father, to convince themselves that the Queen's profound melancholia
+formed an insuperable barrier to the marriage proposals of the English
+King. The figure of the distracted Queen, crouching in white beside a
+window from which she could see the tomb of her dead and adored
+husband, the Archduke Philip, and some of the splendid figures of the
+English embassy, were already sketched.
+
+"I have been fit to hang myself over her!" said Bentley, pointing to the
+Queen. "I tried model after model. At last I've got the very thing! She
+comes to-day for the first time. You'll see her! Before she comes, I
+must scrape out Joanna, so as to look at the thing quite fresh. But I
+daresay I shall only make a few sketches of the lady to-day."
+
+"Who is she, and where did you get her!"
+
+Bentley laughed. "You won't like her, my dear! Never mind. Her
+appearance is magnificent--whatever her mind and morals may be."
+
+And he described how he had heard of the lady from an artist friend who
+had originally seen her at a music-hall, and had persuaded her to come
+and sit to him. The comic haste and relief with which he had now
+transferred her to Bentley lost nothing in Bentley's telling. Of course
+she had "a fiend of a temper." "Wish you joy of her! Oh, don't ask me
+about her! You'll find out for yourself." "I can manage her," said Uncle
+Charles tranquilly. "I've had so many of 'em."
+
+"She is Spanish?"
+
+"Not at all. She is Italian. That is to say, her mother was a
+Neapolitan, the daughter of a jeweller in Hatton Garden, and her father
+an English bank clerk. The Neapolitans have a lot of Spanish blood in
+them--hence, no doubt, the physique."
+
+"And she is a professional model!"
+
+"Nothing of the sort!--though she will probably become one. She is a
+writer--Heaven save the mark!--and I have to pay her vast sums to get
+her. It is the greatest favour."
+
+"A _writer_?"
+
+"Poetess!--and journalist!" said Uncle Charles, enjoying Doris's
+puzzled look. "She sent me her poems yesterday. As to journalism"--his
+eyes twinkled--"I say nothing--but this. Watch her _hats_! She has the
+reputation--in certain circles--of being the best-hatted woman in
+London. All this I get from the man who handed her on to me. As I said
+to him, it depends on what 'London' you mean."
+
+"Married?"
+
+"Oh dear no, though of course she calls herself 'Madame' like the rest
+of them--Madame Vavasour. I have reason, however, to believe that her
+real name is Flink--Elena Flink. And I should say--very much on the
+look-out for a husband; and meanwhile very much courted by boys--who go
+to what she calls her 'evenings.' It is odd, the taste that some youths
+have for these elderly Circes."
+
+"Elderly?" said Doris, busy the while with her own preparations. "I was
+hoping for something young and beautiful!"
+
+"Young?--no!--an unmistakable thirty-five. Beautiful? Well, wait till
+you see her ... H'm--that shoulder won't do!"--Doris had just placed a
+preliminary sketch of one of her "subjects" under his eyes--"and that
+bit of perspective in the corner wants a lot of seeing to. Look here!"
+The old Academician, brought up in the spirit of Ingres--"le dessin,
+c'est la probité!--le dessin, c'est l'honneur!"--fell eagerly to work on
+the sketch, and Doris watched.
+
+They were both absorbed, when there was a knock at the door. Doris
+turned hastily, expecting to see the model. Instead of which there
+entered, in response to Bentley's "Come in!" a girl of four or five and
+twenty, in a blue linen dress and a shady hat, who nodded a quiet "Good
+afternoon" to the artist, and proceeded at once with an air of business
+to a writing-table at the further end of the studio, covered with
+papers.
+
+"Miss Wigram," said the artist, raising his voice, "let me introduce you
+to my niece, Mrs. Meadows."
+
+The girl rose from her chair again and bowed. Then Doris saw that she
+had a charming tired face, beautiful eyes on which she had just placed
+spectacles, and soft brown hair framing her thin cheeks.
+
+"A novelty since you were here," whispered Bentley in Doris's ear.
+"She's an accountant--capital girl! Since these Liberal budgets came
+along, I can't keep my own accounts, or send in my own income-tax
+returns--dash them! So she does the whole business for me--pays
+everything--sees to everything--comes once a week. We shall all be run
+by the women soon!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The studio had grown very quiet. Through some glass doors open to the
+garden came in little wandering winds which played with some loose
+papers on the floor, and blew Doris's hair about her eyes as she stooped
+over her easel, absorbed in her drawing. Apparently absorbed: her
+subliminal mind, at least, was far away, wandering on a craggy Scotch
+moor. A lady on a Scotch pony--she understood that Lady Dunstable often
+rode with the shooters--and a tall man walking beside her, carrying, not
+a gun, but a walking stick:--that was the vision in the crystal. Arthur
+was too bad a shot to be tolerated in the Dunstable circle; had indeed
+wisely announced from the beginning that he was not to be included among
+the guns. All the more time for conversation, the give and take of wits,
+the pleasures of the intellectual tilting-ground; the whole watered by
+good wine, seasoned with the best of cooking, and lapped in the general
+ease of a house where nobody ever thought of such a vulgar thing as
+money except to spend it.
+
+Doris had in general a severe mind as to the rich and aristocratic
+classes. Her own hard and thrifty life had disposed her to see them _en
+noir_. But the sudden rush of a certain section of them to crowd
+Arthur's lectures had been certainly mollifying. If it had not been for
+the Vampire, Doris was well aware that her standards might have given
+way.
+
+As it was, Lady Dunstable's exacting ways, her swoop, straight and
+fierce, on the social morsel she desired, like that of an eagle on the
+sheepfold, had made her, in Doris's sore consciousness, the
+representative of thousands more; all greedy, able, domineering,
+inevitably getting what they wanted, and more than they deserved;
+against whom the starved and virtuous intellectuals of the professional
+classes were bound to contend to the death. The story of that poor girl,
+that clergyman's daughter, for instance--could anything have been more
+insolent--more cruel? Doris burned to avenge her.
+
+Suddenly--a great clatter and noise in the passage leading from the
+small house behind to the studio and garden.
+
+"Here she is!"
+
+Uncle Charles sprang up, and reached the studio door just as a shower of
+knocks descended upon it from outside. He opened it, and on the
+threshold there stood two persons; a stout lady in white, surmounted by
+a huge black hat with a hearse-like array of plumes; and, behind her, a
+tall and willowy youth, with--so far as could be seen through the chinks
+of the hat--a large nose, fair hair, pale blue eyes, and a singular
+deficiency of chin. He carried in his arms a tiny black Spitz with a
+pink ribbon round its neck.
+
+The lady looked, frowning, into the interior of the studio. She held in
+her hand a very large fan, with the handle of which she had been rapping
+the door; and the black feathers with which she was canopied seemed to
+be nodding in her eyes.
+
+"Maestro, you are not alone!" she said in a deep, reproachful voice.
+
+"My niece, Mrs. Meadows--Madame Vavasour," said Bentley, ushering in the
+new-comer.
+
+Doris turned from her easel and bowed, only to receive a rather scowling
+response.
+
+"And your friend?" As he spoke the artist looked blandly at the young
+man.
+
+"I brought him to amuse me, Maestro. When I am dull my countenance
+changes, and you cannot do it justice. He will talk to me--I shall be
+animated--and you will profit."
+
+"Ah, no doubt!" said Bentley, smiling. "And your friend's name?"
+
+"Herbert Dunstable--Honourable Herbert Dunstable!--Signor Bentley," said
+Madame Vavasour, advancing with a stately step into the room, and waving
+peremptorily to the young man to follow.
+
+Doris sat transfixed and staring. Bentley turned to look at his niece,
+and their eyes met--his full of suppressed mirth. The son!--the
+unsatisfactory son! Doris remembered that his name was Herbert. In the
+train of this third-rate sorceress!
+
+Her thoughts ran excitedly to the distant moors, and that magnificent
+lady, with her circle of distinguished persons, holiday-making
+statesmen, peers, diplomats, writers, and the like. Here was a humbler
+scene! But Doris's fancy at once divined a score of links between it and
+the high comedy yonder.
+
+Meanwhile, at the name of Dunstable, the girl accountant in the distance
+had also moved sharply, so as to look at the young man. But in the
+bustle of Madame Vavasour's entrance, and her passage to the sitter's
+chair, the girl's gesture passed unnoticed.
+
+"I'm just worn out, Maestro!" said the model languidly, uplifting a
+pair of tragic eyes to the artist. "I sat up half the night writing. I
+had a subject which tormented me. But I have done something _splendid_!
+Isn't it splendid, Herbert?"
+
+"Ripping!" said the young man, grinning widely.
+
+"Sit down!" said Madame, with a change of tone. And the youth sat down,
+on the very low chair to which she pointed him, doing his best to
+dispose of his long legs.
+
+"Give me the dog!" she commanded. "You have no idea how to hold
+him--poor lamb!"
+
+The dog was handed to her; she took off her enormous hat with many sighs
+of fatigue, and then, with the dog on her lap, asked how she was to sit.
+Bentley explained that he wished to make a few preliminary sketches of
+her head and bust, and proceeded to pose her. She accepted his
+directions with a curious pettishness, as though they annoyed her; and
+presently complained loudly that the chair was uncomfortable, and the
+pose irksome. He handled her, however, with a good-humoured mixture of
+flattery and persuasion, and at last, stepping back, surveyed the
+result--well content.
+
+There was no doubt whatever that she was a very handsome woman, and that
+her physical type--that of the more lethargic and heavily built
+Neapolitan--suggested very happily the mad and melancholy Queen. She had
+superb black hair, eyes profoundly dark, a low and beautiful brow, lips
+classically fine, a powerful head and neck, and a complexion which, but
+for the treatment given it, would have been of a clear and beautiful
+olive. She wore a draggled dress of cream-coloured muslin, very
+transparent over the shoulders, somewhat scandalously wanting at the
+throat and breast, and very frayed and dirty round the skirt. Her feet,
+which were large and plump, were cased in extremely pointed shoes with
+large paste buckles; and as she crossed them on the stool provided for
+them she showed a considerable amount of rather clumsy ankle. The hands
+too were large, common, and ill-kept, and the wrists laden with
+bracelets. She was adorned indeed with a great deal of jewellery,
+including some startling earrings of a bright green stone. The hat,
+which she had carefully placed on a chair beside her, was truly a
+monstrosity!--but, as Doris guessed, an expensive monstrosity, such as
+the Rue de la Paix provides, at anything from a hundred and fifty to two
+hundred and fifty francs, for those of its cosmopolitan customers whom
+it pillages and despises. How did the lady afford it? The rest of her
+dress suggested a struggle with small means, waged by one who was greedy
+for effect, obtained at a minimum of trouble. That she was rouged and
+powdered goes without saying.
+
+And the young man? Doris perceived at once his likeness to his father--a
+feeble likeness. But he was evidently simple and good-natured, and to
+all appearance completely in the power of the enchantress. He fanned her
+assiduously. He picked up all the various belongings--gloves,
+handkerchiefs, handbag--which she perpetually let fall. He ran after the
+dog whenever it escaped from the lady's lap and threatened mischief in
+the studio; and by way of amusing her--the purpose for which he had been
+imported--he kept up a stream of small cryptic gossip about various
+common acquaintances, most of whom seemed to belong to the music-hall
+profession, and to be either "stars" or the satellites of "stars."
+Madame listened to him with avidity, and occasionally broke into a
+giggling laugh. She had, however, two manners, and two kinds of
+conversation, which she adopted with the young man and the Academician
+respectively. Her talk with the youth suggested the jealous ascendency
+of a coarse-minded woman. She occasionally flattered him, but more
+generally she teased or "ragged" him. She seemed indeed to feel him
+securely in her grip; so that there was no need to pose for him,
+as--figuratively as well as physically--she posed for Bentley. To the
+artist she gave her opinions on pictures or books--on the novels of Mr.
+Wells, or the plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw--in the languid or drawling tone
+of accepted authority; dropping every now and then into a broad cockney
+accent, which produced a startling effect, like that of unexpected
+garlic in cookery. Bentley's gravity was often severely tried, and Doris
+altered the position of her own easel so that he and she could not see
+each other. Meanwhile Madame took not the smallest notice of Mr.
+Bentley's niece, and Doris made no advances to the young man, to whom
+her name was clearly quite unknown. Had Circe really got him in her
+toils? Doris judged him soft-headed and soft-hearted; no match at all
+for the lady. The thought of her walking the lawns or the drawing-rooms
+of Crosby Ledgers as the betrothed of the heir stirred in Arthur
+Meadows's wife a silent, and--be it confessed!--a malicious convulsion.
+Such mothers, so self-centred, so set on their own triumphs, with their
+intellectual noses so very much in the clouds, deserved such sons! She
+promised herself to keep her own counsel, and watch the play.
+
+The sitting lasted for two hours. When it was over, Uncle Charles, all
+smiles and satisfaction, went with his visitors to the front door.
+
+He was away some little time, and returned, bubbling, to the studio.
+
+"She's been cross-examining me about her poems! I had to confess I
+hadn't read a word of them. And now she's offered to recite next time
+she comes! Good Heavens--how can I get out of it? I believe, Doris,
+she's hooked that young idiot! She told me she was engaged to him. Do
+you know anything of his people?"
+
+The girl accountant suddenly came forward. She looked flushed and
+distressed.
+
+"I do!" she said, with energy. "Can't somebody stop that? It will break
+their hearts!"
+
+Doris and Uncle Charles looked at her in amazement.
+
+"Whose hearts?" said the painter.
+
+"Lord and Lady Dunstable's."
+
+"You know them?" exclaimed Doris.
+
+"I used to know them--quite well," said the girl, quietly. "My father
+had one of Lord Dunstable's livings. He died last year. He didn't like
+Lady Dunstable. He quarrelled with her, because--because she once did a
+very rude thing to me. But this would be _too_ awful! And poor Lord
+Dunstable! Everybody likes him. Oh--it must be stopped!--it _must_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+When Doris reached home that evening, the little Kensington house, with
+half its carpets up and all but two of its rooms under dust-sheets,
+looked particularly lonely and unattractive. Arthur's study was
+unrecognisable. No cheerful litter anywhere. No smell of tobacco, no
+sign of a male presence! Doris, walking restlessly from room to room,
+had never felt so forsaken, so dismally certain that the best of life
+was done. Moreover, she had fully expected to find a letter from Arthur
+waiting for her; and there was nothing.
+
+It was positively comic that under such circumstances anybody should
+expect her--Doris Meadows--to trouble her head about Lady Dunstable's
+affairs. Of course she would feel it if her son made a ridiculous and
+degrading marriage. But why not?--why shouldn't he come to grief like
+anybody else's son? Why should heaven and earth be moved in order to
+prevent it?--especially by the woman to whose possible jealousy and pain
+Lady Dunstable had certainly never given the most passing thought.
+
+All the same, the distress shown by that odd girl, Miss Wigram, and her
+appeal both to the painter and his niece to intervene and save the
+foolish youth, kept echoing in Doris's memory, although neither she nor
+Bentley had received it with any cordiality. Doris had soon made out
+that this girl, Alice Wigram, was indeed the clergyman's daughter whom
+Lady Dunstable had snubbed so unkindly some twelve months before. She
+was evidently a sweet-natured, susceptible creature, to whom Lord
+Dunstable had taken a fancy, in his fatherly way, during occasional
+visits to her father's rectory, and of whom he had spoken to his wife.
+That Lady Dunstable should have unkindly slighted this motherless girl,
+who had evidently plenty of natural capacity under her shyness, was just
+like her, and Doris's feelings of antagonism to the tyrant were only
+sharpened by her acquaintance with the victim. Why should Miss Wigram
+worry her self? Lord Dunstable? Well, but after all, capable men should
+keep such wives in order. If Lord Dunstable had not been scandalously
+weak, Lady Dunstable would not have become a terror to her sex.
+
+As for Uncle Charles, he had simply declined all responsibility in the
+matter. He had never seen the Dunstables, wouldn't know them from Adam,
+and had no concern whatever in what happened to their son. The situation
+merely excited in him one man's natural amusement at the folly of
+another. The boy was more than of age. Really he and his mother must
+look after themselves. To meddle with the young man's love affairs,
+simply because he happened to visit your studio in the company of a
+lady, would be outrageous. So the painter laughed, shook his head, and
+went back to his picture. Then Miss Wigram, looking despondently from
+the silent Doris to the artist at work, had said with sudden energy, "I
+must find out about her! I'm--I'm sure she's a horrid woman! Can you
+tell me, sir"--she addressed Bentley--"the name of the gentleman who was
+painting her before she came here?"
+
+Bentley had hummed and hawed a little, twisting his red moustache, and
+finally had given the name and address; whereupon Miss Wigram had
+gathered up her papers, some of which had drifted to the floor between
+her table and Doris's easel, and had taken an immediate departure, a
+couple of hours before her usual time, throwing, as she left the
+studio, a wistful and rather puzzled look at Mrs. Meadows.
+
+Doris congratulated herself that she had kept her own counsel on the
+subject of the Dunstables, both with Uncle Charles and Miss Wigram.
+Neither of them had guessed that she had any personal acquaintance with
+them. She tried now to put the matter out of her thoughts. Jane brought
+in a tray for her mistress, and Doris supped meagrely in Arthur's
+deserted study, thinking, as the sunset light came in across the dusty
+street, of that flame and splendour which such weather must be kindling
+on the moors, of the blue and purple distances, the glens of rocky
+mountains hung in air, "the gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme"!
+She remembered how on their September honeymoon they had wandered in
+Ross-shire, how the whole land was dyed crimson by the heather, and how
+impossible it was to persuade Arthur to walk discreetly rather than,
+like any cockney tripper, with his arm round his sweetheart. Scotland
+had not been far behind the Garden of Eden under those circumstances.
+But Arthur was now pursuing the higher, the intellectual joys.
+
+She finished her supper, and then sat down to write to her husband. Was
+she going to tell him anything about the incident of the afternoon? Why
+should she? Why should she give him the chance of becoming more than
+ever Lady Dunstable's friend--pegging out an eternal claim upon her
+gratitude?
+
+Doris wrote her letter. She described the progress of the spring
+cleaning; she reported that her sixth illustration was well forward, and
+that Uncle Charles was wrestling with another historical picture, a
+_machine_ neither better nor worse than all the others. She thought that
+after all Jane would soon give warning; and she, Doris, had spent three
+pounds in petty cash since he went away; how, she could not remember,
+but it was all in her account book.
+
+And she concluded:
+
+    I understand then that we meet at Crewe on Friday fortnight? I have
+    heard of a lodging near Capel Curig which sounds delightful. We
+    might do a week's climbing and then go on to the sea. I really
+    _shall_ want a holiday. Has there not been ten minutes even--since
+    you arrived--to write a letter in?--or a postcard? Shall I send you
+    a few addressed?
+
+Having thus finished what seemed to her the dullest letter she had ever
+written in her life, she looked at it a while, irresolutely, then put it
+in an envelope hastily, addressed, stamped it, and rang the bell for
+Jane to run across the street with it and post it. After which, she sat
+idle a little while with flushed cheeks, while the twilight gathered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gate of the trim front garden swung on its hinges. Doris turned to
+look. She saw, to her astonishment, that the girl-accountant of the
+morning, Miss Wigram, was coming up the flagged path to the house. What
+could she want?
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Meadows--I'm so sorry to disturb you--" said the visitor, in
+some agitation, as Doris, summoned by Jane, entered the dust-sheeted
+drawing-room. "But you dropped an envelope with an address this
+afternoon. I picked it up with some of my papers and never discovered it
+till I got home."
+
+She held out the envelope. Doris took it, and flushed vividly. It was
+the envelope with his Scotch address which Arthur had written out for
+her before leaving home--"care of the Lord Dunstable, Franick Castle,
+Pitlochry, Perthshire, N.B." She had put it in her portfolio, out of
+which it had no doubt slipped while she was at work.
+
+She and Miss Wigram eyed each other. The girl was evidently agitated.
+But she seemed not to know how to begin what she had to say.
+
+Doris broke the silence.
+
+"You were astonished to find that I know the Dunstables?"
+
+"Oh, no!--I didn't think--" stammered her visitor--"I supposed some
+friend of yours might be staying there."
+
+"My husband is staying there," said Doris, quietly. Really it was too
+much trouble to tell a falsehood. Her pride refused.
+
+"Oh, I see!" cried Miss Wigram, though in fact she was more bewildered
+than before. Why should this extraordinary little lady have behaved at
+the studio as if she had never heard of the Dunstables, and be now
+confessing that her husband was actually staying in their house?
+
+Doris smiled--with perfect self-possession.
+
+"Please sit down. You think it odd, of course, that I didn't tell you I
+knew the Dunstables, while we were talking about them. The fact is I
+didn't want to be mixed up with the affair at all. We have only lately
+made acquaintance with the Dunstables. Lady Dunstable is my husband's
+friend. I don't like her very much. But neither of us knows her well
+enough to go and tell her tales about her son."
+
+Miss Wigram considered--her gentle, troubled eyes bent upon Doris. "Of
+course--I know--how many people dislike Lady Dunstable. She did
+a--rather cruel thing to me once. The thought of it humiliated and
+discouraged me for a long time. It made me almost glad to leave home.
+And of course she hasn't won Mr. Herbert's confidence at all. She has
+always snubbed and disapproved of him. Oh, I knew him very little. I
+have hardly ever spoken to him. You saw he didn't recognise me this
+afternoon. But my father used to go over to Crosby Ledgers to coach him
+in the holidays, and he often told me that as a boy he was _terrified_
+of his mother. She either took no notice of him at all, or she was
+always sneering at him, and scolding him. As soon as ever he came of age
+and got a little money of his own, he declared he wouldn't live at home.
+His father wanted him to go into Parliament or the army, but he said he
+hated the army, and if he was such a dolt as his mother thought him it
+would be ridiculous to attempt politics. And so he just drifted up to
+town and looked out for people that would make much of him, and wouldn't
+snub him. And that, of course, was how he got into the toils of a woman
+like that!"
+
+The girl threw up her hands tragically.
+
+Doris sat up, with energy.
+
+"But what on earth," she said, "does it matter to you or to me?"
+
+"Oh, can't you see?" said the other, flushing deeply, and with the tears
+in her eyes. "My father had one of Lord Dunstable's livings. We lived on
+that estate for years. Everybody loved Lord Dunstable. And though Lady
+Dunstable makes enemies, there's a great respect for the _family_.
+They've been there since Queen Elizabeth's time. And it's _dreadful_ to
+think of a woman like--well, like that!--reigning at Crosby Ledgers. I
+think of the poor people. Lady Dunstable's good to them; though of
+course you wouldn't hear anything about it, unless you lived there. She
+tries to do her duty to them--she really does--in her own way. And, of
+course, they _respect_ her. No Dunstable has ever done anything
+disgraceful! Isn't there something in '_Noblesse oblige'? Think_ of this
+woman at the head of that estate!"
+
+"Well, upon my word," said Doris, after a pause, "you _are_ feudal.
+Don't you feel yourself that you are old-fashioned?"
+
+Mrs. Meadows's half-sarcastic look at first intimidated her visitor, and
+then spurred her into further attempts to explain herself.
+
+"I daresay it's old-fashioned," she said slowly, "but I'm sure it's
+what father would have felt. Anyway, I went off to try and find out what
+I could. I went first to a little club I belong to--for professional
+women--near the Strand, and I asked one or two women I found there--who
+know artists--and models--and write for papers. And very soon I found
+out a great deal. I didn't have to go to the man whose address Mr.
+Bentley gave me. Madame Vavasour _is_ a horrid woman! This is not the
+first young man she's fleeced--by a long way. There was a man--younger
+than Mr. Dunstable, a boy of nineteen--three years ago. She got him to
+promise to marry her; and the parents came down, and paid her enormously
+to let him go. Now she's got through all that money, and she boasts
+she's going to marry young Dunstable before his parents know anything
+about it. She's going to make sure of a peerage this time. Oh, she's
+odious! She's greedy, she's vulgar, she's false! And of course"--the
+girl's eyes grew wide and scared--"there may be other things much worse.
+How do we know?"
+
+"How do we know indeed!" said Doris, with a shrug. "Well!"--she turned
+her eyes full upon her guest--"and what are you going to do?"
+
+An eager look met hers.
+
+"Couldn't you--couldn't you write to Mr. Meadows, and ask him to warn
+Lady Dunstable?"
+
+Doris shook her head.
+
+"Why don't you do it yourself?"
+
+The girl flushed uncomfortably. "You see, father quarrelled with her
+about that unkind thing she did to me--oh, it isn't worth telling!--but
+he wrote her an angry letter, and they never spoke afterwards. Lady
+Dunstable never forgives that kind of thing. If people find fault with
+her, she just drops them. I don't believe she'd read a letter from me!"
+
+"_Les offensés_, etc.," said Doris, meditating. "But what are the facts?
+Has the boy actually promised to marry her? She may have been telling
+lies to my uncle."
+
+"She tells everybody so. I saw a girl who knows her quite well. They
+write for the same paper--it's a fashion paper. You saw that hat, by the
+way, she had on? She gets them as perquisites from the smart shops she
+writes about. She has a whole cupboard of them at home, and when she
+wants money she sells them for what she can get. Well, she told me that
+Madame--they all call her Madame, though they all know quite well that
+she's not married, and that her name is Flink--boasts perpetually of her
+engagement. It seems that he was ill in the winter--in his lodgings. His
+mother knew nothing about it--he wouldn't tell her, and Madame nursed
+him, and made a fuss of him. And Mr. Dunstable thought he owed her a
+great deal--and she made scenes and told him she had compromised herself
+by coming to nurse him--and all that kind of nonsense. And at last he
+promised to marry her--in writing. And now she's so sure of him that she
+just bullies him--you saw how she ordered him about to-day."
+
+"Well, why doesn't he marry her, if he's such a fool--why hasn't he
+married her long ago?" cried Doris.
+
+Miss Wigram looked distressed.
+
+"I don't know. My friend thinks it's his father. She believes, at least,
+that he doesn't want to get married without telling Lord Dunstable; and
+that, of course, means telling his mother. And he hates the thought of
+the letters and the scenes. So he keeps it hanging on; and lately Madame
+has been furious with him, and is always teasing and sniffing at him.
+He's dreadfully weak, and my friend's afraid that before he's made up
+his own mind what to do that woman will have carried him off to a
+registry office--and got the horrid thing done for good and all."
+
+There was silence a moment. After which Doris said, with a cold
+decision:
+
+"You can't imagine how absurd it seems to me that you should come and
+ask me to help Lady Dunstable with her son. There is nobody in the world
+less helpless than Lady Dunstable, and nobody who would be less grateful
+for being helped. I really cannot meddle with it."
+
+She rose as she spoke, and Miss Wigram rose too.
+
+"Couldn't you--couldn't you--" said the girl pleadingly--"just ask Mr.
+Meadows to warn Lord Dunstable? I'm thinking of the villagers, and the
+farmers, and the schools--all the people we used to love. Father was
+there twenty years! To think of the dear place given over--some day--to
+that creature!"
+
+Her charming eyes actually filled with tears. Doris was touched, but at
+the same time set on edge. This loyalty that people born and bred in the
+country feel to our English country system--what an absurd and unreal
+frame of mind! And when our country system produces Lady Dunstables!
+
+"They have such a pull!"--she thought angrily--"such a hideously unfair
+pull, over other people! The way everybody rushes to help them when they
+get into a mess--to pick up the pieces--and sweep it all up! It's
+irrational--it's sickening! Let them look after themselves--and pay for
+their own misdeeds like the rest of us."
+
+"I can't interfere--I really can't!" she said, straightening her slim
+shoulders. "It is not as though we were old friends of Lord and Lady
+Dunstable. Don't you see how very awkward it would be? Let me advise
+you just to watch the thing a little, and then to apply to somebody in
+the Crosby Ledgers neighbourhood. You must have some friends or
+acquaintances there, who at any rate could do more than we could. And
+perhaps after all it's a mare's nest, and the young man doesn't mean to
+marry her at all!"
+
+The girl's anxious eyes scanned Doris's unyielding countenance; then
+with a sigh she gave up her attempt, and said "Good-bye." Doris went
+with her to the door.
+
+"We shall meet to-morrow, shan't we?" she said, feeling a vague
+compunction. "And I suppose this woman will be there again. You can keep
+an eye on her. Are you living alone--or are you with friends?"
+
+"Oh, I'm in a boarding-house," said Miss Wigram, hastily. Then as though
+she recognised the new softness in Doris's look, she added, "I'm quite
+comfortable there--and I've a great deal of work. Good night."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"All alone!--with that gentle face--and that terrible amount of
+conscience--hard lines!" thought Doris, as she reflected on her visitor.
+"I felt a black imp beside her!"
+
+All the same, the letter which Mrs. Meadows received by the following
+morning's post was not at all calculated to melt the "black imp"
+further. Arthur wrote in a great hurry to beg that she would not go on
+with their Welsh plans--for the moment.
+
+    Lady D---- has insisted on my going on a short yachting cruise with
+    her and Miss Field, the week after next. She wants to show me the
+    West Coast, and they have a small cottage in the Shetlands where we
+    should stay a night or two and watch the sea-birds. It _may_ keep me
+    away another week or fortnight, but you won't mind, dear, will you?
+    I am getting famously rested, and really the house is very
+    agreeable. In these surroundings Lady Dunstable is less of the
+    _bas-bleu_, and more of the woman. You _must_ make up your mind to
+    come another year! You would soon get over your prejudice and make
+    friends with her. She looks after us all--she talks brilliantly--and
+    I haven't seen her rude to anybody since I arrived. There are some
+    very nice people here, and altogether I am enjoying it. Don't you
+    work too hard--and don't let the servants harry you. Post just
+    going. Good night!
+
+Another week or fortnight!--five weeks, or nearly, altogether. Doris was
+sorely wounded. She went to look at herself in the mirror over the
+chimney-piece. Was she not thin and haggard for want of rest and
+holiday? Would not the summer weather be all done by the time Arthur
+graciously condescended to come back to her? Were there not dark lines
+under her eyes, and was she not feeling a limp and wretched creature,
+unfit for any exertion? What was wrong with her? She hated her
+drawing--she hated everything. And there was Arthur, proposing to go
+yachting with Lady Dunstable!--while she might toil and moil--all
+alone--in this August London! The tears rushed into her eyes. Her pride
+only just saved her from a childish fit of crying.
+
+But in the end resentment came to her aid, together with an angry and
+redoubled curiosity as to what might be happening to Lady Dunstable's
+precious son while Lady Dunstable was thus absorbed in robbing other
+women of their husbands. Doris hurried her small household affairs, that
+she might get off early to the studio; and as she put on her hat, her
+fancy drew vindictive pictures of the scene which any day might
+realise--the scene at Franick Castle, when Lady Dunstable, unsuspecting,
+should open the letter which announced to her the advent of her
+daughter-in-law, Elena, _née_ Flink--or should gather the same unlovely
+fact from a casual newspaper paragraph. As for interfering between her
+and her rich deserts, Doris vowed to herself she would not lift a
+finger. That incredibly forgiving young woman, Miss Wigram, might do as
+she pleased. But when a mother pursues her own selfish ends so as to
+make her only son dislike and shun her, let her take what comes. It was
+in the mood of an Erinnys that Doris made her way northwards to Campden
+Hill, and nobody perceiving the slight erect figure in the corner of the
+omnibus could possibly have guessed at the storm within.
+
+The August day was hot and lifeless. Heat mist lay over the park, and
+over the gardens on the slopes of Campden Hill. Doris could hardly drag
+her weary feet along, as she walked from where the omnibus had set her
+down to her uncle's studio. But it was soon evident that within the
+studio itself there was animation enough. From the long passage
+approaching it Doris heard someone shouting--declaiming--what appeared
+to be verse. Madame, of course, reciting her own poems--poor Uncle
+Charles! Doris stopped outside the door, which was slightly open, to
+listen, and heard these astonishing lines--delivered very slowly and
+pompously, in a thick, strained voice:
+
+     "My heart is adamant! The tear-drops drip and drip--
+     Force their slow path, and tear their desperate way.
+     The vulture Pain sits close, to snip--and snip--and snip
+     My sad, sweet life to ruin--well-a-day!
+     I am deceived--a bleating lamb bereft!--who goes
+     Baa-baaing to the moon o'er lonely lands.
+     Through all my shivering veins a tender fervour flows;
+     I cry to Love--'Reach out, my Lord, thy hands!
+     And save me from these ugly beasts who ramp and rage
+     Around me all day long--beasts fell and sore--
+     Envy, and Hate, and Calumny!--do thou assuage
+     Their impious mouths, O splendid Love, and floor
+     Their hideous tactics, and their noisome spleen,
+     Withering to dust the awful "Might-Have-Been!"'"
+
+"Goodness! 'Howls the Sublime' indeed!" thought Doris, gurgling with
+laughter in the passage. As soon as she had steadied her face she opened
+the studio door, and perceived Lady Dunstable's prospective
+daughter-in-law standing in the middle of the studio, head thrown back
+and hands outstretched, invoking the Cyprian. The shriek of the first
+lines had died away in a stage whisper; the reciter was glaring fiercely
+into vacancy.
+
+Doris's merry eyes devoured the scene. On the chair from which the model
+had risen she had deposited yet another hat, so large, so audacious and
+beplumed that it seemed to have a positive personality, a positive
+swagger of its own, and to be winking roguishly at the audience.
+Meanwhile Madame's muslin dress of the day before had been exchanged for
+something more appropriate to the warmth of her poetry--a tawdry
+flame-coloured satin, in which her "too, too solid" frame was tightly
+sheathed. Her coal-black hair, tragically wild, looked as though no comb
+had been near it for a month, and the gloves drawn half-way up the bare
+arms hardly remembered they had ever been white.
+
+A slovenly, dishevelled, vulgar woman, reciting bombastic nonsense! And
+yet!--a touch of Southern magnificence, even of Southern grace, amid the
+cockney squalor and finery. Doris coolly recognised it, as she stood,
+herself invisible, behind her uncle's large easel. Thence she perceived
+also the other persons in the studio:--Bentley sitting in front of the
+poetess, hiding his eyes with one hand, and nervously tapping the arm of
+his chair with the other; to the right of him--seen sideways--the lanky
+form, flushed face, and open mouth of young Dunstable; and in the far
+distance, Miss Wigram.
+
+Then--a surprising thing! The awkward pause following the recitation was
+suddenly broken by a loud and uncontrollable laugh. Doris, startled,
+turned to look at young Dunstable. For it was he who had laughed. Madame
+also shook off her stage trance to look--a thunderous frown upon her
+handsome face. The young man laughed on--laughed hysterically--burying
+his face in his hands. Madame Vavasour--all attitudes thrown aside--ran
+up to him in a fury.
+
+"Why are you laughing? You insult me!--you have done it before. And now
+before strangers--it is too much! I insist that you explain!"
+
+She stood over him, her eyes blazing. The youth, still convulsed, did
+his best to quiet the paroxysm which had seized him, and at last said,
+gasping:
+
+"I was--I was thinking--of your reciting that at Crosby Ledgers--to my
+mother--and--and what she would say."
+
+Even under her rouge it could be seen that the poetess turned a grey
+white.
+
+"And pray--what would she say?"
+
+The question was delivered with apparent calm. But Madame's eyes were
+dangerous. Doris stepped forward. Her uncle stayed her with a gesture.
+He himself rose, but Madame fiercely waved him aside. Miss Wigram, in
+the distance, had also moved forward--and paused.
+
+"What would she say?" demanded Madame, again--at the sword's point.
+
+"I--I don't know--" said young Dunstable, helplessly, still shaking.
+"I--I think--she'd laugh."
+
+And he went off again, hysterically, trying in vain to stop the fit.
+Madame bit her lip. Then came a torrent of Italian--evidently a torrent
+of abuse; and then she lifted a gloved hand and struck the young man
+violently on the cheek.
+
+"Take that!--you insolent--you--you barbarian! You are my _fiancé_,--my
+promised husband--and you mock at me; you will encourage your stuck-up
+mother to mock at me--I know you will! But I tell you--"
+
+The speaker, however, had stopped abruptly, and instead of saying
+anything more she fell back panting, her eyes on the young man. For
+Herbert Dunstable had risen. At the blow, an amazing change had passed
+over his weak countenance and weedy frame. He put his hand to his
+forehead a moment, as though trying to collect his thoughts, and then he
+turned--quietly--to look for his hat and stick.
+
+"Where are you going, Herbert?" stammered Madame. "I--I was carried
+away--I forgot myself!"
+
+"I think not," said the young man, who was extremely pale. "This is not
+the first time. I bid you good morning, Madame--and good-bye!"
+
+He stood looking at the now frightened woman, with a strange, surprised
+look, like one just emerging from a semi-conscious state; and in that
+moment, as Doris seemed to perceive, the traditions of his birth and
+breeding had returned upon him; something instinctive and inherited had
+reappeared; and the gentlemanly, easy-going father, who yet, as Doris
+remembered, when matters were serious "always got his way," was
+there--strangely there--in the degenerate son.
+
+"Where are you going?" repeated Madame, eyeing him. "You promised to
+give me lunch."
+
+"I regret--I have an engagement. Mr. Bentley--when the sitting is
+over--will you kindly see--Miss Flink--into a taxi? I thank you very
+much for allowing me to come and watch your work. I trust the picture
+will be a success. Good-bye!"
+
+He held out his hand to Bentley, and bowed to Doris. Madame made a rush
+at him. But Bentley held her back. He seized her arms, indeed, quietly
+but irresistibly, while the young man made his retreat. Then, with a
+shriek, Madame fell back on her chair, pretending to faint, and Bentley,
+in no hurry, went to her assistance, while Doris slipped out after young
+Dunstable. She overtook him on the door-step.
+
+"Mr. Dunstable, may I speak to you?"
+
+He turned in astonishment, showing a grim pallor which touched her pity.
+
+"I know your mother and father," said Doris hurriedly; "at least my
+husband and I were staying at Crosby Ledges some weeks ago, and my
+husband is now in Scotland with your people. His name is Arthur Meadows.
+I am Mrs. Meadows. I--I don't know whether I could help you. You
+seem"--her smile flashed out--"to be in a horrid mess!"
+
+The young man looked in perplexity at the small, trim lady before him,
+as though realising her existence for the first time. Her honest eyes
+were bent upon him with the same expression she had often worn when
+Arthur had come to her with some confession of folly--the expression
+which belongs to the maternal side of women, and is at once mocking and
+sweet. It said--"Of course you are a great fool!--most men are. But
+that's the _raison d'être_ of women! Suppose we go into the business!"
+
+"You're very kind--" he groaned--"awfully kind. I'm ashamed you should
+have seen--such a thing. Nobody can help me--thank you very much. I am
+engaged to that lady--I've promised to marry her. Oh, she's got any
+amount of evidence. I've been an ass--and worse. But I can't get out of
+it. I don't mean to try to get out of it. I promised of my own free
+will. Only I've found out now I can never live with her. Her temper is
+fiendish. It degrades her--and me. But you saw! She has made my life a
+burden to me lately, because I wouldn't name a day for us to be married.
+I wanted to see my father quietly first--without my mother knowing--and
+I have been thinking how to manage it--and funking it of course--I
+always do funk things. But what she did just now has settled it--it has
+been blowing up for a long time. I shall marry her--at a registry
+office--as soon as possible. Then I shall separate from her, and--I
+hope--never see her again. The lawyers will arrange that--and money!
+Thank you--it's awfully good of you to want to help me--but you
+can't--nobody can."
+
+Doris had drawn her companion into her uncle's small dining-room and
+closed the door. She listened to his burst of confidence with a puzzled
+concern.
+
+"Why must you marry her?" she said abruptly, when he paused. "Break it
+off! It would be far best."
+
+"No. I promised. I--" he stammered a little--"I seem to have done her
+harm--her reputation, I mean. There is only one thing could let me off.
+She swore to me that--well!--that she was a good woman--that there was
+nothing in her past--you understand--"
+
+"And you know of nothing?" said Doris, gravely.
+
+"Nothing. And you don't think I'm going to try and ferret out things
+against her!" cried the youth, flushing. "No--I must just bear it."
+
+"It's your parents that will have to bear it!"
+
+His face hardened.
+
+"My mother might have prevented it," he said bitterly. "However, I won't
+go into that. My father will see I couldn't do anything else. I'd better
+get it over. I'm going to my lawyers now. They'll take a few days over
+what I want."
+
+"You'll tell your father?"
+
+"I--I don't know," he said, irresolutely. She noticed that he did not
+try to pledge her not to give him away. And she, on her side, did not
+threaten to do so. She argued with him a little more, trying to get at
+his real thoughts, and to straighten them out for him. But it was
+evident he had made up such mind as he had, and that his sudden
+resolution--even the ugly scene which had made him take it--had been a
+relief. He knew at last where he stood.
+
+So presently Doris let him go. They parted, liking each other decidedly.
+He thanked her warmly--though drearily--for taking an interest in him,
+and he said to her on the threshold:
+
+"Some day, I hope, you'll come to Crosby Ledgers again, Mrs.
+Meadows--and I'll be there--for once! Then I'll tell you--if you
+care--more about it. Thanks awfully! Good-bye."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later on, when "Miss Flink," in a state of sulky collapse, had been sent
+home in her taxi, Doris, Bentley, and Miss Wigram held a conference. But
+it came to little. Bentley, the hater of "rows," simply could not be
+moved to take the thing up. "I kept her from scalping him!--" he
+laughed--"and I'm not due for any more!" Doris said little. A whirl of
+arguments and projects were in her mind. But she kept her own counsel
+about them. As to the possibility of inducing the man to break it off,
+she repeated the only condition on which it could be done; at which
+Uncle Charles laughed, and Alice Wigram fell into a long and thoughtful
+silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doris arrived at home rather early. What with the emotions of the day,
+the heat, and her work, she was strangely tired and over-done. After tea
+she strolled out into Kensington Gardens, and sat under the shade of
+trees already autumnal, watching the multitude of children--children of
+the people--enjoying the nation's park all to themselves, in the
+complete absence of their social betters. What ducks they were, some of
+them--the little, grimy, round-faced things--rolling on the grass, or
+toddling after their sisters and brothers. They turned large,
+inquisitive eyes upon her, which seemed to tease her heart-strings.
+
+And suddenly,--it was in Kensington Gardens that out of the heart of a
+long and vague reverie there came a flash--an illumination--which wholly
+changed the life and future of Doris Meadows. After the thought in which
+it took shape had seized upon her, she sat for some time motionless;
+then rising to her feet, tottering a little, like one in bewilderment,
+she turned northwards, and made her way hurriedly towards Lancaster
+Gate. In a house there, lived a lady, a widowed lady, who was Doris's
+godmother, and to whom Doris--who had lost her own mother in her
+childhood--had turned for counsel before now. How long it was since she
+had seen "Cousin Julia"!--nearly two months. And here she was, hastening
+to her, and not able to bear the thought that in all human probability
+Cousin Julia was not in town.
+
+But, by good luck, Doris found her godmother, perching in London between
+a Devonshire visit and a Scotch one. They talked long, and Doris walked
+slowly home across the park. A glory of spreading sun lay over the
+grassy glades; the Serpentine held reflections of a sky barred with
+rose; London, transfigured, seemed a city of pearl and fire. And in
+Doris's heart there was a glory like that of the evening,--and, like the
+burning sky, bearing with it a promise of fair days to come. The glory
+and the promise stole through all her thoughts, softening and
+transmuting everything.
+
+"When _he_ grows up--if he were to marry such a woman--and I didn't
+know--if all _his_ life--and mine--were spoilt--and nobody said a word!"
+
+Her eyes filled with tears. She seemed to be walking with Arthur through
+a world of beauty, hand in hand.
+
+How many hours to Pitlochry? She ran into the Kensington house, asking
+for railway guides, and peremptorily telling Jane to get down the small
+suitcase from the box-room at once.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"'Barbarians, Philistines, Populace!'"
+
+The young golden-haired man of letters who was lounging on the grass
+beside Arthur Meadows repeated the words to himself in an absent voice,
+turning over the pages meanwhile of a book lying before him, as though
+in search of a passage he had noticed and lost. He presently found it
+again, and turned laughing towards Meadows, who was trifling with a
+French novel.
+
+"Do you remember this passage in _Culture and Anarchy_--'I often,
+therefore, when I want to distinguish clearly the aristocratic class
+from the Philistines proper, or middle class, name the former, in my own
+mind, _the Barbarians_. And when I go through the country, and see this
+or that beautiful and imposing seat of theirs crowning the landscape,
+"There," I say to myself, "is a great fortified post of the
+Barbarians!"'"
+
+The youth pointed smiling to the fine Scotch house seen sideways on the
+other side of the lawn. Its turreted and battlemented front rose high
+above the low and spreading buildings which made the bulk of the house,
+so that it was a feudal castle--by no means, however, so old as it
+looked--on a front view, and a large and roomy villa from the rear.
+Meadows, looking at it, appreciated the fitness of the quotation, and
+laughed in response.
+
+"Ungrateful wretch," he said--"after that dinner last night!"
+
+"All the same, Matthew Arnold had that dinner in mind--_chef_ and all!
+Listen! 'The graver self of the Barbarian likes honours and
+consideration; his more relaxed self, field-sports and pleasures.'
+Isn't it exact? Grouse-driving in the morning--bridge, politics,
+Cabinet-making, and the best of food in the evening. And I should put
+our hostess very high--wouldn't you?--among the chatelaines of the
+'great fortified posts'?"
+
+Meadows assented, but rather languidly. The day was extremely hot; he
+was tired, moreover, by a long walk with the guns the day before, and by
+conversation after dinner, led by Lady Dunstable, which had lasted up to
+nearly one o'clock in the morning. The talk had been brilliant, no
+doubt. Meadows, however, did not feel that he had come off very well in
+it. His hostess had deliberately pitted him against two of the ablest
+men in England, and he was well aware that he had disappointed her. Lady
+Dunstable had a way of behaving to her favourite author or artist of the
+moment as though she were the fancier and he the cock. She fought him
+against the other people's cocks with astonishing zeal and passion; and
+whenever he failed to kill, or lost too many feathers in the process,
+her annoyance was evident.
+
+Meadows was in truth becoming a little tired of her dictation, although
+it was only ten days since he had arrived under her roof. There was a
+large amount of lethargy combined with his ability; and he hated to be
+obliged to live at any pace but his own. But Rachel Dunstable was an
+imperious friend, never tired herself, apparently, either in mind or
+body; and those who could not walk, eat, and talk to please her were apt
+to know it. Her opinions too, both political and literary, were in some
+directions extremely violent; and though, in general, argument and
+contradiction gave her pleasure, she had her days and moods, and Meadows
+had already suffered occasional sets-down, of a kind to which he was not
+accustomed.
+
+But if he was--just a little--out of love with his new friend, in all
+other respects he was enjoying himself enormously. The long days on the
+moors, the luxurious life indoors, the changing and generally agreeable
+company, all the thousand easements and pleasures that wealth brings
+with it, the skilled service, the motors, the costly cigars, the
+wines--there was a Sybarite in Meadows which revelled in them all. He
+had done without them; he would do without them again; but there they
+were exceedingly good creatures of God, while they lasted; and only the
+hypocrites pretended otherwise. His sympathy, in the old
+poverty-stricken days, would have been all with the plaintive
+American--"There's d-----d good times in the world, and I ain't in
+'em."
+
+All the same, the fleshpots of Pitlochry had by no means put his wife
+out of his mind. His incurable laziness and procrastination in small
+things had led him to let slip post after post; but that very morning,
+at any rate, he had really written her a decent letter. And he was
+beginning to be anxious to hear from her about the yachting plan. If
+Lady Dunstable had asked him a few days later, he was not sure he would
+have accepted so readily. After all, the voyage might be stormy, and the
+lady--difficult. Doris must be dull in London,--"poor little cat!"
+
+But then a very natural wrath returned upon him. Why on earth had she
+stayed behind? No doubt Lady Dunstable was formidable, but so was Doris
+in her own way. "She'd soon have held her own. Lady D. would have had to
+come to terms!" However, he remembered with some compunction that Doris
+did seem to have been a good deal neglected at Crosby Ledgers, and that
+he had not done much to help her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was an "off" day for the shooters, and Lady Dunstable's guests were
+lounging about the garden, writing letters or playing a little leisurely
+golf on the lower reaches of the moor. Some of the ladies, indeed, had
+not yet appeared downstairs; a sleepy heat reigned over the valley with
+its winding stream, and veiled the distant hills. Meadows's companion,
+Ralph Barrow, a young novelist of promise, had gone fast asleep on the
+grass; Meadows was drowsing over his book; the dogs slept on the terrace
+steps; and in the summer silence the murmur of the river far below stole
+up the hill on which the house stood, and its soft song held the air.
+
+Suddenly there was a disturbance. The dogs sprang up and barked. There
+was a firm step on the gravel. Lady Dunstable, stick in hand, her short
+leather-bound skirt showing boots and gaiters of the most business-like
+description, came quickly towards the seat on which Meadows sat.
+
+"Mr. Meadows, I summon you for a walk! Sir Luke and Mr. Frome are
+coming. We propose to get to the tarn and back before lunch."
+
+The tarn was at least two miles away, a stiff climb over difficult moor.
+Meadows, startled from something very near sleep, looked up, and a
+spirit of revolt seized upon him, provoked by the masterful tone and
+eyes of the lady.
+
+"Very sorry, Lady Dunstable!--but I must write some letters before
+luncheon."
+
+"Oh no!--put them off! I have been thinking of what you told me
+yesterday of your scheme for your new set of lectures. I have a great
+deal to say to you about it."
+
+"I really shouldn't be worth talking to now," laughed Meadows; "this
+heat has made me so sleepy. To-night--or after tea--by all means!"
+
+Lady Dunstable looked annoyed.
+
+"I am expecting the Duke's party at tea," she said peremptorily. "This
+will be my only chance to-day."
+
+"Then let's put it off--till to-morrow!" said Meadows, as he rose, still
+smiling. "It is most kind of you, but I really must write my letters,
+and my brains are pulp. But I will escort you through the garden, if I
+may."
+
+His hostess turned sharply, and walked back towards the front of the
+house where Sir Luke and Mr. Frome, a young and rising Under-Secretary,
+were waiting for her. Meadows accompanied her, but found her exceedingly
+ungracious. She did, however, inform him, as they followed the other two
+towards the exit from the garden, that she had come to the conclusion
+that the subject he was proposing for his second series of lectures, to
+be given at Dunstable House during the winter, "would never do."
+
+"Famous Controversies of the Nineteenth Century--political and
+religious." The very sound of it was enough to keep people away! "What
+people expect from you is talk about _persons_--not ideas. Ideas are not
+your line!"
+
+Meadows flushed a little. What his "line" might be, he said, he had not
+yet discovered. But he liked his subject, and meant to stick to it.
+
+Lady Dunstable turned on him a pair of sarcastic eyes.
+
+"That's so like you clever people. You would die rather than take
+advice."
+
+"Advice!--yes. As much as you like, dear lady. But--"
+
+"But what--" she asked, imperatively, nettled in her turn.
+
+"Well--you must put it prettily!" said Meadows, smiling. "We want a
+great deal of jam with the powder."
+
+"You want to be flattered? I never flatter! It is the most despicable of
+arts."
+
+"On the contrary--one of the most skilled. And I have heard you do it to
+perfection."
+
+His daring half irritated, half amused her. It was her turn to flush.
+Her thin, sallow face and dark eyes lit up vindictively.
+
+"One should never remind one's friends of their vices," she said with
+animation.
+
+"Ah--if they _are_ vices! But flattery is merely a virtue out of
+place--kindness gone wrong. From the point of view of the moralist, that
+is. From the point of view of the ordinary mortal, it is what no
+men--and few women--can do without!"
+
+She smiled grimly, enjoying the spar. They carried it on a little while,
+Meadows, now fairly on his mettle, administering a little deft though
+veiled castigation here and there, in requital for various acts of
+rudeness of which she had been guilty towards him and others during the
+preceding days. She grew restive occasionally, but on the whole she bore
+it well. Her arrogance was not of the small-minded sort; and the best
+chance with her was to defy her.
+
+At the gate leading on to the moor, Meadows resolutely came to a stop.
+
+"Your letters are the merest excuse!" said Lady Dunstable. "I don't
+believe you will write one of them! I notice you always put off
+unpleasant duties."
+
+"Give me credit at least for the intention."
+
+Smiling, he held the gate open for her, and she passed through,
+discomfited, to join Sir Luke on the other side. Mr. Frome, the
+Under-Secretary, a young man of Jewish family and amazing talents, who
+had been listening with amusement to the conversation behind him, turned
+back to say to Meadows, at a safe distance--"Keep it up!--Keep it up!
+You avenge us all!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently, as she and her two companions wound slowly up the moor, Sir
+Luke Malford, who had only arrived the night before, inquired gaily of
+his hostess:
+
+"So she wouldn't come?--the little wife?"
+
+"I gave her every chance. She scorned us."
+
+"You mean--'she funked us.' Have you any idea, I wonder, how alarming
+you are?"
+
+Lady Dunstable exclaimed impatiently:
+
+"People represent me as a kind of ogre. I am nothing of the kind. I only
+expect everybody to play up."
+
+"Ah, but you make the rules!" laughed Sir Luke. "I thought that young
+woman might have been a decided acquisition."
+
+"She hadn't the very beginnings of a social gift," declared his
+companion. "A stubborn and rather stupid little person. I am much afraid
+she will stand in her husband's way."
+
+"But suppose you blow up a happy home, by encouraging him to come
+without her? I bet anything she is feeling jealous and ill-used. You
+ought--I am sure you ought--to have a guilty conscience; but you look
+perfectly brazen!"
+
+Sir Luke's banter was generally accepted with indifference, but on this
+occasion it provoked Lady Dunstable. She protested with vehemence that
+she had given Mrs. Meadows every chance, and that a young woman who was
+both trivial and conceited could not expect to get on in society. Sir
+Luke gathered from her tone that she and Mrs. Meadows had somewhat
+crossed swords, and that the wife might look out for consequences. He
+had been a witness of this kind of thing before in Lady Dunstable's
+circle; and he was conscious of a passing sympathy with the
+pleasant-faced little woman he remembered at Crosby Ledgers. At the same
+time he had been Rachel Dunstable's friend for twenty years; originally,
+her suitor. He spent a great part of his life in her company, and her
+ways seemed to him part of the order of things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile Meadows walked back to the house. He had been a good deal
+nettled by Lady Dunstable's last remark to him. But he had taken pains
+not to show it. Doris might say such things to him--but no one else.
+They were, of course, horribly true! Well--quarrelling with Lady
+Dunstable was amusing enough--when there was room to escape her. But how
+would it be in the close quarters of a yacht?
+
+On his way through the garden he fell in with Miss Field--Mattie Field,
+the plump and smiling cousin of the house, who was apparently as
+necessary to the Dunstables in the Highlands, as in London, or at Crosby
+Ledgers. Her rôle in the Dunstable household seemed to Meadows to be
+that of "shock absorber." She took all the small rubs and jars on her
+own shoulders, so that Lady Dunstable might escape them. If the fish did
+not arrive from Edinburgh, if the motor broke down, if a gun failed, or
+a guest set up influenza, it was always Miss Field who came to the
+rescue. She had devices for every emergency. It was generally supposed
+that she had no money, and that the Dunstables made her residence with
+them worth while. But if so, she had none of the ways of the poor
+relation. On the contrary, her independence was plain; she had a very
+free and merry tongue; and Lady Dunstable, who snubbed everybody, never
+snubbed Mattie Field. Lord Dunstable was clearly devoted to her.
+
+She greeted Meadows rather absently.
+
+"Rachel didn't carry you off? Oh, then--I wonder if I may ask you
+something?"
+
+Meadows assured her she might ask him anything.
+
+"I wonder if you will save yourself for a walk with Lord Dunstable.
+Will you ask him? He's very low, and you would cheer him up."
+
+Meadows looked at her interrogatively. He too had noticed that Lord
+Dunstable had seemed for some days to be out of spirits.
+
+"Why do people have sons!" said Miss Field, briskly.
+
+Meadows understood the reference. It was common knowledge among the
+Dunstables' friends that their son was anything but a comfort to them.
+
+"Anything particularly wrong?" he asked her in a lowered voice, as they
+neared the house. At the same time, he could not help wondering whether,
+under all circumstances--if her nearest and dearest were made mincemeat
+in a railway accident, or crushed by an earth-quake--this fair-haired,
+rosy-cheeked lady would still keep her perennial smile. He had never yet
+seen her without it.
+
+Miss Field replied in a joking tone that Lord Dunstable was depressed
+because the graceless Herbert had promised his parents a visit--a whole
+week--in August, and had now cried off on some excuse or other. Meadows
+inquired if Lady Dunstable minded as much as her husband.
+
+"Quite!" laughed Miss Field. "It is not so much that she wants to see
+Herbert as that she's found someone to marry him to. You'll see the lady
+this afternoon. She comes with the Duke's party, to be looked at."
+
+"But I understand that the young man is by no means manageable?"
+
+Miss Field's amusement increased.
+
+"That's Rachel's delusion. She knows very well that she hasn't been able
+to manage him so far; but she's always full of fresh schemes for
+managing him. She thinks, if she could once marry him to the right wife,
+she and the wife between them could get the whip hand of him."
+
+"Does she care for him?" said Meadows, bluntly.
+
+Miss Field considered the question, and for the first time Meadows
+perceived a grain of seriousness in her expression. But she emerged from
+her meditations, smiling as usual.
+
+"She'd be hard hit if anything very bad happened!"
+
+"What could happen?"
+
+"Well, of course they never know whether he won't marry to please
+himself--produce somebody impossible!"
+
+"And Lady Dunstable would suffer?"
+
+Miss Field chuckled.
+
+"I really believe you think her a kind of griffin--a stony creature with
+a hole where her heart ought to be. Most of her friends do. Rachel, of
+course, goes through life assuming that none of the disagreeable things
+that happen to other people will ever happen to her. But if they ever
+did happen--"
+
+"The very stones would cry out? But hasn't she lost all influence with
+the youth?"
+
+"She won't believe it. She's always scheming for him. And when he's not
+here she feels so affectionate and so good! And directly he comes--"
+
+"I see! A tragedy--and a common one! Well, in half an hour I shall be
+ready for his lordship. Will you arrange it? I must write a letter
+first."
+
+Miss Field nodded and departed. Meadows honestly meant to follow her
+into the house and write some pressing business letters. But the
+sunshine was so delightful, the sight of the empty bench and the
+abandoned novel on the other side of the lawn so beguiling, that after
+all he turned his lazy steps thither-ward, half ashamed, half amused to
+think how well Lady Dunstable had read his character.
+
+The guests had all disappeared. Meadows had the garden to himself, and
+all its summer prospect of moor and stream. It was close on noon--a hot
+and heavenly day! And again he thought of Doris cooped up in London.
+Perhaps, after all, he would get out of that cruise!
+
+Ah! there was the morning train--the midnight express from King's Cross
+just arriving in the busy little town lying in the valley at his feet.
+He watched it gliding along the valley, and heard the noise of the
+brakes. Were any new guests expected by it? he wondered. Hardly! The
+Lodge seemed quite full.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Twenty minutes later he threw away the novel impatiently. Midway, the
+story had gone to pieces. He rose from his feet, intending this time to
+tackle his neglected duties in earnest. As he did so, he heard a motor
+climbing the steep drive, and in front of it a lady, walking.
+
+He stood arrested--in a stupor of astonishment.
+
+Doris!--by all the gods!--_Doris_!
+
+It was indeed Doris. She came wearily, looking from side to side, like
+one uncertain of her way. Then she too perceived Meadows, and stopped.
+
+Meadows was conscious of two mixed feelings--first, a very lively
+pleasure at the sight of her, and then annoyance. What on earth had she
+come for? To recover him?--to protest against his not writing?--to make
+a scene, in short? His guilty imagination in a flash showed her to him
+throwing herself into his arms--weeping--on this wide lawn--for all the
+world to see.
+
+But she did nothing of the kind. She directed the motor, which was
+really a taxi from the station, to stop without approaching the front
+door, and then she herself walked quickly towards her husband.
+
+"Arthur!--you got my letter? I could only write yesterday."
+
+She had reached him, and they had joined hands mechanically.
+
+"Letter?--I got no letter! If you posted one, it has probably arrived
+by your train. What on earth, Doris, is the meaning of this? Is there
+anything wrong?"
+
+His expression was half angry, half concerned, for he saw plainly that
+she was tired and jaded. Of course! Long journeys always knocked her up.
+She meanwhile stood looking at him as though trying to read the
+impression produced on him by her escapade. Something evidently in his
+manner hurt her, for she withdrew her hand, and her face stiffened.
+
+"There is nothing wrong with me, thank you! Of course I did not come
+without good reason."
+
+"But, my dear, are you come to stay?" cried Meadows, looking helplessly
+at the taxi. "And you never wrote to Lady Dunstable?"
+
+For he could only imagine that Doris had reconsidered her refusal of the
+invitation which had originally included them both, and--either tired
+of being left alone, or angry with him for not writing--had devised this
+_coup de main_, this violent shake to the kaleidoscope. But what an
+extraordinary step! It could only cover them both with ridicule. His
+cheeks were already burning.
+
+Doris surveyed him very quietly.
+
+"No--I didn't write to Lady Dunstable--I wrote to _you_--and sent her a
+message. I suppose--I shall have to stay the night."
+
+"But what on earth are we to say to her?" cried Meadows in desperation.
+"They're out walking now--but she'll be back directly. There isn't a
+corner in the house! I've got a little bachelor room in the attics.
+Really, Doris, if you were going to do this, you should have given both
+her and me notice! There is a crowd of people here!"
+
+Frown and voice were Jovian indeed. Doris, however, showed no tremors.
+
+"Lady Dunstable will find somewhere to put me up," she said, half
+scornfully. "Is there a telegram for me?"
+
+"A telegram? Why should there be a telegram? What is the meaning of all
+this? For heaven's sake, explain!"
+
+Doris, however, did not attempt to explain. Her mood had been very soft
+on the journey. But Arthur's reception of her had suddenly stirred the
+root of bitterness again; and it was shooting fast and high. Whatever
+she had done or left undone, he ought _not_ to have been able to conceal
+that he was glad to see her--he ought _not_ to have been able to think
+of Lady Dunstable first! She began to take a pleasure in mystifying him.
+
+"I expected a telegram. I daresay it will come soon. You see I've asked
+someone else to come this afternoon--and she'll have to be put up too."
+
+"Asked someone else!--to Lady Dunstable's house!" Meadows stood
+bewildered. "Really, Doris, have you taken leave of your senses?"
+
+She stood with shining eyes, apparently enjoying his astonishment. Then
+she suddenly bethought herself.
+
+"I must go and pay the taxi." Turning round, she coolly surveyed the
+"fortified post." "It looks big enough to take me in. Arthur!--I think
+you may pay the man. Just take out my bag, and tell the footman to put
+it in your room. That will do for the present. I shall sit down here and
+wait for Lady Dunstable. I'm pretty tired."
+
+The thought of what the magnificent gentleman presiding over Lady
+Dunstable's hall would say to the unexpected irruption of Mrs. Meadows,
+and Mrs. Meadows's bag, upon the "fortified post" he controlled, was
+simply beyond expressing. Meadows tried to face his wife with dignity.
+
+"I think we'd better keep the taxi, Doris. Then you and I can go back to
+the hotel together. We can't force ourselves upon Lady Dunstable like
+this, my dear. I'd better go and tell someone to pack my things. But we
+must, of course, wait and see Lady Dunstable--though how you will
+explain your coming, and get yourself--and me--out of this absurd
+predicament, I cannot even pretend to imagine!"
+
+Doris sat down--wearily.
+
+"Don't keep the taxi, Arthur. I assure you Lady Dunstable will be very
+glad to keep both me--and my bag. Or if she won't--Lord Dunstable will."
+
+Meadows came nearer--bent down to study her tired face.
+
+"There's some mystery, of course, Doris, in all this! Aren't you going
+to tell me what it means?"
+
+His wife's pale cheeks flushed.
+
+"I would have told you--if you'd been the least bit glad to see me!
+But--if you don't pay the taxi, Arthur, it will run up like anything!"
+
+She pointed peremptorily to the ticking vehicle and the impatient
+driver. Meadows went mechanically, paid the driver, shouldered the bag,
+and carried it into the hall of the Lodge. He then perceived that two
+grinning and evidently inquisitive footmen, waiting in the hall for
+anything that might turn up for them to do, had been watching the whole
+scene--the arrival of the taxi, and the meeting between the unknown lady
+and himself, through a side window.
+
+Burning to box someone's ears, Meadows loftily gave the bag to one of
+them with instructions that it should be taken to his room, and then
+turned to rejoin his wife.
+
+As he crossed the gravel in front of the house, his mind ran through all
+possible hypotheses. But he was entirely without a clue--except the clue
+of jealousy. He could not hide from himself that Doris had been jealous
+of Lady Dunstable, and had perhaps been hurt by his rather too numerous
+incursions into the great world without her, his apparent readiness to
+desert her for cleverer women. "Little goose!--as if I ever cared
+twopence for any of them!"--he thought angrily. "And now she makes us
+both laughing-stocks!"
+
+And yet, Doris being Doris--a proud, self-contained, well-bred little
+person, particularly sensitive to ridicule--the whole proceeding became
+the more incredible the more he faced it.
+
+One o'clock!--striking from the church tower in the valley! He hurried
+towards the slight figure on the distant seat. Lady Dunstable might
+return at any moment. He foresaw the encounter--the great lady's
+insolence--Doris's humiliation--and his own. Well, at least let him
+agree with Doris on a common story, before his hostess arrived.
+
+He sped across the grass, very conscious, as he approached the seat, of
+Doris's drooping look and attitude. Travelling all those hours!--and no
+doubt without any proper breakfast! However Lady Dunstable might
+behave, he would carry Doris into the Lodge directly, and have her
+properly looked after. Miss Field and he would see to that.
+
+Suddenly--a sound of talk and laughter, from the shrubbery which divided
+the flower garden from the woods and the moor. Lady Dunstable emerged,
+with her two companions on either hand. Her vivid, masculine face was
+flushed with exercise and discussion. She seemed to be attacking the
+Under-Secretary, who, however, was clearly enjoying himself; while Sir
+Luke, walking a little apart, threw in an occasional gibe.
+
+"I tell you your land policy here in Scotland will gain you nothing; and
+in England it will lose you everything.--Hullo!"
+
+Lady Dunstable's exclamation, as she came to a stop and put up a
+tortoise-shell eyeglass, was clearly audible.
+
+"Doris!" cried Meadows excitedly in his wife's ear--"Look here!--what
+are you going to say!--what am I to say! that you got tired of London,
+and wanted some Scotch air?--that we intend to go off together?--For
+goodness' sake, what is it to be?"
+
+Doris rose, her lips breaking irrepressibly into smiles.
+
+"Never mind, Arthur; I'll get through somehow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The two ladies advanced towards each other across the lawn, while
+Meadows followed his wife in speechless confusion and annoyance, utterly
+at a loss how to extricate either himself or Doris; compelled, indeed,
+to leave it all to her. Sir Luke and the Under-Secretary had paused in
+the drive. Their looks as they watched Lady Dunstable's progress showed
+that they guessed at something dramatic in the little scene.
+
+Nothing could apparently have been more unequal than the two chief
+actors in it. Lady Dunstable, with the battlements of "the great
+fortified post" rising behind her, tall and wiry of figure, her black
+hawk's eyes fixed upon her visitor, might have stood for all her class;
+for those too powerful and prosperous Barbarians who have ruled and
+enjoyed England so long. Doris, small and slight, in a blue cotton coat
+and skirt, dusty from long travelling, and a childish garden hat, came
+hesitatingly over the grass, with colour which came and went.
+
+"How do you do, Mrs. Meadows! This is indeed an unexpected pleasure! I
+must quarrel with your husband for not giving us warning."
+
+Doris's complexion had settled into a bright pink as she shook hands
+with Lady Dunstable. But she spoke quite composedly.
+
+"My husband knew nothing about it, Lady Dunstable. My letter does not
+seem to have reached him."
+
+"Ah? Our posts are very bad, no doubt; though generally, I must say,
+they arrive very punctually. Well, so you were tired of London?--you
+wanted to see how we were looking after your husband?"
+
+Lady Dunstable threw a sarcastic glance at Meadows standing tongue-tied
+in the background.
+
+"I wanted to see you," said Doris quietly, with a slight accent on the
+"you."
+
+Lady Dunstable looked amused.
+
+"Did you? How very nice of you! And you've--you've brought your
+luggage?" Lady Dunstable looked round her as though expecting to see it
+at the front door.
+
+"I brought a bag. Arthur took it in for me."
+
+"I'm so sorry! I assure you, if I had only known--But we haven't a
+corner! Mr. Meadows will bear me out--it's absurd, but true. These
+Scotch lodges have really no room in them at all!"
+
+Lady Dunstable pointed with airy insolence to the spreading pile behind
+her. Doris--for all the agitation of her hidden purpose--could have
+laughed outright. But Meadows, rather roughly, intervened.
+
+"We shall, of course, go to the hotel, Lady Dunstable. My wife's letter
+seems somehow to have missed me, but naturally we never dreamed of
+putting you out. Perhaps you will give us some lunch--my wife seems
+rather tired--and then we will take our departure."
+
+Doris turned--put a hand on his arm--but addressed Lady Dunstable.
+
+"Can I see you--alone--for a few minutes--before lunch?"
+
+"_Before_ lunch? We are all very hungry, I'm afraid," said Lady
+Dunstable, with a smile. Meadows was conscious of a rising fury. His
+quick sense perceived something delicately offensive in every word and
+look of the great lady. Doris, of course, had done an incredibly foolish
+thing. What she had come to say to Lady Dunstable he could not conceive;
+for the first explanation--that of a silly jealousy--had by now entirely
+failed him. But it was evident to him that Lady Dunstable assumed it--or
+chose to assume it. And for the first time he thought her odious!
+
+Doris seemed to guess it, for she pressed his arm as though to keep him
+quiet.
+
+"Before lunch, please," she repeated. "I think--you will soon
+understand." With an odd, and--for the first time--slightly puzzled look
+at her visitor, Lady Dunstable said with patronising politeness--
+
+"By all means. Shall we come to my sitting-room?"
+
+She led the way to the house. Meadows followed, till a sign from Doris
+waved him back. On the way Doris found herself greeted by Sir Luke
+Malford, bowed to by various unknown gentlemen, and her hand grasped by
+Miss Field.
+
+"You do look done! Have you come straight from London? What--is Rachel
+carrying you off? I shall send you in a glass of wine and a biscuit
+directly!"
+
+Doris said nothing. She got somehow through all the curious eyes turned
+upon her; she followed Lady Dunstable through the spacious passages of
+the Lodge, adorned with the usual sportsman's trophies, till she was
+ushered into a small sitting-room, Lady Dunstable's particular den,
+crowded with photographs of half the celebrities of the day--the poets,
+_savants_, and artists, of England, Europe, and America. On an easel
+stood a masterly small portrait of Lord Dunstable as a young man, by
+Bastien Lepage; and not far from it--rather pushed into a corner--a
+sketch by Millais of a fair-haired boy, leaning against a pony.
+
+By this time Doris was quivering both with excitement and fatigue. She
+sank into a chair, and turned eagerly to the wine and biscuits with
+which Miss Field pursued her. While she ate and drank, Lady Dunstable
+sat in a high chair observing her, one long and pointed foot crossed
+over the other, her black eyes alive with satiric interrogation, to
+which, however, she gave no words.
+
+The wine was reviving. Doris found her voice. As the door closed on Miss
+Field, she bent forward:--
+
+"Lady Dunstable, I didn't come here on my own account, and had there
+been time of course I should have given you notice. I came entirely on
+your account, because something was happening to you--and Lord
+Dunstable--which you didn't know, and which made me--very sorry for
+you!"
+
+Lady Dunstable started slightly.
+
+"Happening to me?--and Lord Dunstable?"
+
+"I have been seeing your son, Lady Dunstable."
+
+An instant change passed over the countenance of that lady. It darkened,
+and the eyes became cold and wary.
+
+"Indeed? I didn't know you were acquainted with him."
+
+"I never saw him till a few days ago. Then I saw him--in my uncle's
+studio--with a woman--a woman to whom he is engaged."
+
+Lady Dunstable started again.
+
+"I think you must be mistaken," she said quickly, with a slight but
+haughty straightening of her shoulders.
+
+Doris shook her head.
+
+"No, I am not mistaken. I will tell you--if you don't mind--exactly what
+I have heard and seen."
+
+And with a puckered brow and visible effort she entered on the story of
+the happenings of which she had been a witness in Bentley's studio. She
+was perfectly conscious--for a time--that she was telling it against a
+dead weight of half scornful, half angry incredulity on Lady Dunstable's
+part. Rachel Dunstable listened, indeed, attentively. But it was clear
+that she resented the story, which she did not believe; resented the
+telling of it, on her own ground, by this young woman whom she
+disliked; and resented above all the compulsory discussion which it
+involved, of her most intimate affairs, with a stranger and her social
+inferior. All sorts of suspicions, indeed, ran through her mind as to
+the motives that could have prompted Mrs. Meadows to hurry up to
+Scotland, without taking even the decently polite trouble to announce
+herself, bringing this unlikely and trumped-up tale. Most probably, a
+mean jealousy of her husband, and his greater social success!--a
+determination to force herself on people who had not paid the same
+attention to herself as to him, to _make_ them pay attention,
+willy-nilly. Of course Herbert had undesirable acquaintances, and was
+content to go about with people entirely beneath him, in birth and
+education. Everybody knew it, alack! But he was really not such a
+fool--such a heartless fool--as this story implied! Mrs. Meadows had
+been taken in--willingly taken in--had exaggerated everything she said
+for her own purposes. The mother's wrath indeed was rapidly rising to
+the smiting point, when a change in the narrative arrested her.
+
+"And then--I couldn't help it!"--there was a new note of agitation in
+Doris's voice--"but what had happened was so _horrid_--it was so like
+seeing a man going to ruin under one's eyes, for, of course, one knew
+that she would get hold of him again--that I ran out after your son and
+begged him to break with her, not to see her again, to take the
+opportunity, and be done with her! And then he told me quite calmly that
+he _must_ marry her, that he could not help himself, but he would never
+live with her. He would marry her at a registry office, provide for her,
+and leave her. And then he said he would do it _at once_--that he was
+going to his lawyers to arrange everything as to money and so on--on
+condition that she never troubled him again. He was eager to get it
+done--that he might be delivered from her--from her company--which one
+could see had become dreadful to him. I implored him not to do such a
+thing--to pay any money rather than do it--but not to marry her! I
+begged him to think of you--and his father. But he said he was bound to
+her--he had compromised her, or some such thing; and he had given his
+word in writing. There was only one thing which could stop it--if she
+had told him lies about her former life. But he had no reason to think
+she had; and he was not going to try and find out. So then--I saw a ray
+of daylight--"
+
+She stopped abruptly, looking full at the woman opposite, who was now
+following her every word--but like one seized against her will.
+
+"Do you remember a Miss Wigram, Lady Dunstable--whose father had a
+living near Crosby Ledgers?"
+
+Lady Dunstable moved involuntarily--her eyelids flickered a little.
+
+"Certainly. Why do you ask?"
+
+"_She_ saw Mr. Dunstable--and Miss Flink--in my uncle's studio, and she
+was so distressed to think what--what Lord Dunstable"--there was a
+perceptible pause before the name--"would feel, if his son married her,
+that she determined to find out the truth about her. She told me she had
+one or two clues, and I sent her to a cousin of mine--a very clever
+solicitor--to be advised. That was yesterday morning. Then I got my
+uncle to find out your son--and bring him to me yesterday afternoon
+before I started. He came to our house in Kensington, and I told him I
+had come across some very doubtful stories about Miss Flink. He was very
+unwilling to hear anything. After all, he said, he was not going to live
+with her. And she had nursed him--"
+
+"Nursed him!" said Lady Dunstable, quickly. She had risen, and was
+leaning against the mantelpiece, looking sharply down upon her visitor.
+
+"That was the beginning of it all. He was ill in the winter--in his
+lodgings."
+
+"I never heard of it!" For the first time, there was a touch of
+something natural and passionate in the voice.
+
+Doris looked a little embarrassed.
+
+"Your son told me it was pneumonia."
+
+"I never heard a word of it! And this--this creature nursed him?" The
+tone of the robbed lioness at last!--singularly inappropriate under all
+the circumstances. Doris struggled on.
+
+"An actor friend of your son brought her to see him. And she really
+devoted herself to him. He declared to me he owed her a great deal--"
+
+"He need have owed her nothing," said Lady Dunstable, sternly. "He had
+only to send a postcard--a wire--to his own people."
+
+"He thought--you were so busy," said Doris, dropping her eyes to the
+carpet.
+
+A sound of contemptuous anger showed that her shaft--her mild shaft--had
+gone home. She hurried on--"But at last I got him to promise me to wait
+a week. That was yesterday at five o'clock. He wouldn't promise me to
+write to you--or his father. He seemed so desperately anxious to settle
+it all--in his own way. But I said a good deal about your name--and the
+family--and the horrible pain he would be giving--any way. Was it
+kind--was it right towards you, not only to give you _no_ opportunity of
+helping or advising him--but also to take no steps to find out whether
+the woman he was going to marry was--not only unsuitable, wholly
+unsuitable--that, of course, he knows--but _a disgrace_? I argued with
+him that he must have some suspicion of the stories she has told him at
+different times, or he wouldn't have tried to protect himself in this
+particular way. He didn't deny it; but he said she had looked after him,
+and been kind to him, when nobody else was, and he should feel a beast
+if he pressed her too hardly."
+
+"'When nobody else was'!" repeated Lady Dunstable, scornfully, her voice
+trembling with bitterness. "Really, Mrs. Meadows, it is very difficult
+for me to believe that my son ever used such words!"
+
+Doris hesitated, then she raised her eyes, and with the happy feeling of
+one applying the scourge, in the name of Justice, she said with careful
+mildness:--
+
+"I hope you will forgive me for telling you--but I feel as if I oughtn't
+to keep back anything--Mr. Dunstable said to me: 'My mother might have
+prevented it--but--she was never interested in me.'"
+
+Another indignant exclamation from Lady Dunstable. Doris hurried on.
+"Only this is the important point! At last I got his promise, and I got
+it in writing. I have it here."
+
+Dead silence. Doris opened her little handbag, took out a letter, in an
+open envelope, and handed it to Lady Dunstable, who at first seemed as
+if she were going to refuse it. However, after a moment's hesitation,
+she lifted her long-handled eyeglass and read it. It ran as follows:
+
+    DEAR MRS. MEADOWS,--I do not know whether I ought to do what you ask
+    me. But you have asked me very kindly--you have really been awfully
+    good to me, in taking so much trouble. I know I'm a stupid
+    fool--they always told me so at home. But I don't want to do
+    anything mean, or to go back on a woman who once did me a good turn;
+    with whom also once--for I may as well be quite honest about it--I
+    thought I was in love. However, I see there is something in what you
+    say, and I will wait a week before marrying Miss Flink. But if you
+    tell my people--I suppose you will--don't let them imagine they can
+    break it off--except for that one reason. And _I_ shan't lift a
+    finger to break it off. I shall make no inquiries--I shall go on
+    with the lawyers, and all that. My present intention is to marry
+    Miss Flink--on the terms I have stated--in a week's time. If you do
+    see my people--especially my father--tell them I'm awfully sorry to
+    be such a nuisance to them. I got myself into the mess without
+    meaning it, and now there's really only one way out. Thank you
+    again.
+                              Yours gratefully,
+                                   HERBERT DUNSTABLE.
+
+
+Lady Dunstable crushed the letter in her hand. All pretence of
+incredulity was gone. She began to walk stormily up and down. Doris sank
+back in her chair, watching her, conscious of the most strangely mingled
+feelings, a touch of womanish triumph indeed, a pleasing sense of
+retribution, but, welling up through it, something profound and tender.
+If _he_ should ever write such a letter to a stranger, while his mother
+was alive!
+
+Lady Dunstable stopped.
+
+"What chance is there of saving my son?" she said, peremptorily. "You
+will, of course, tell us all you know. Lord Dunstable must go to town at
+once." She touched an electric bell beside her.
+
+"Oh no!" cried Doris, springing up. "He mustn't go, please, until we
+have some more information. Miss Wigram is coming--this afternoon."
+
+Rachel Dunstable stood stupefied--with her hand on the bell.
+
+"Miss Wigram--coming."
+
+"Don't you see?" cried Doris. "She was to spend all yesterday afternoon
+and evening in seeing two or three people--people who know. There is a
+friend of my uncle's--an artist--who saw a great deal of Miss Flink, and
+got to know a lot about her. Of course he may not have been willing to
+say anything, but I think he probably would--he was so mad with her for
+a trick she played him in the middle of a big piece of work. And if he
+was able to put us on any useful track, then Miss Wigram was to come up
+here straight, and tell you everything she could. But I thought there
+would have been a telegram--from her--" Her voice dropped on a note of
+disappointment.
+
+There was a knock at the door. The butler entered, and at the same
+moment the luncheon gong echoed through the house.
+
+"Tell Miss Field not to wait luncheon for me," said Lady Dunstable
+sharply. "And, Ferris, I want his lordship's things packed at once, for
+London. Don't say anything to him at present, but in ten minutes' time
+just manage to tell him quietly that I should like to see him here. You
+understand--I don't want any fuss made. Tell Miss Field that Mrs.
+Meadows is too tired to come in to luncheon, and that I will come in
+presently."
+
+The butler, who had the aspect of a don or a bishop, said "Yes, my
+lady," in that dry tone which implied that for twenty years the house of
+Dunstable had been built upon himself, as its rock, and he was not going
+to fail it now. He vanished, with just one lightning turn of the eyes
+towards the little lady in the blue linen dress; and Lady Dunstable
+resumed her walk, sunk in flushed meditation. She seemed to have
+forgotten Doris, when she heard an exclamation:--
+
+"Ah, there _is_ the telegram!"
+
+And Doris, running to the window, waved to a diminutive telegraph boy,
+who, being new to his job, had come up to the front entrance of the
+Lodge instead of the back, and was now--recognising his
+misdeed--retreating in alarm from the mere aspect of "the great
+fortified post." He saw the lady at the window, however, and checked his
+course.
+
+"For me!" cried Doris, triumphantly--and she tore it open.
+
+    Can't arrive till between eight and nine. Think I have got all we
+    want. Please take a room for me at hotel.--ALICE WIGRAM.
+
+Doris turned back into the room, and handed the telegram to Lady
+Dunstable, who read it slowly.
+
+"Did you say this was the Alice Wigram I knew?"
+
+"Her father had one of your livings," repeated Doris. "He died last
+year."
+
+"I know. I quarrelled with him. I cannot conceive why Alice Wigram
+should do me a good turn!" Lady Dunstable threw back her head, her
+challenging look fixed upon her visitor. Doris was certain she had it in
+her mind to add--"or you either!"--but refrained.
+
+"Lord Dunstable was always a friend to her father," said Doris, with the
+same slight emphasis on the "Lord" as before. "And she felt for the
+estate--the poor people--the tenants."
+
+Rachel Dunstable shook her head impatiently.
+
+"I daresay. But I got into a scrape with the Wigrams. I expect that you
+would think, Mrs. Meadows--perhaps most people would think, as of course
+her father did--that I once treated Miss Wigram unkindly!"
+
+"Oh, what does it matter?" cried Doris, hastily,--"what _does_ it
+matter? She wants to help--she's sorry for you. You should _see_ that
+woman! It would be too awful if your son was tied to her for life!"
+
+She sat up straight, all her soul in her eyes and in her pleasant face.
+
+There was a pause. Then Lady Dunstable, whose expression had changed,
+came a little nearer to her.
+
+"And you--I wonder why you took all this trouble?"
+
+Doris said nothing. She fell back slowly in her chair, looking
+at the tall woman standing over her. Tears came into her
+eyes--brimmed--overflowed--in silence. Her lips smiled. Rachel Dunstable
+bent over her in bewilderment.
+
+"To have a son," murmured Doris under her breath, "and then to see him
+ruined like this! No love for him!--no children--no grandchildren for
+oneself, when one is old--"
+
+Her voice died away.
+
+"'To have a son'?" repeated Lady Dunstable, wondering--"but you have
+none!"
+
+Doris said nothing. Only she put up her hand feebly, and wiped away the
+tears--still smiling. After which she shut her eyes.
+
+Lady Dunstable gasped. Then the long, sallow face flushed deeply. She
+walked over to a sofa on the other side of the room, arranged the
+pillows on it, and came back to Doris.
+
+"Will you, please, let me put you on that sofa? You oughtn't to have had
+this long journey. Of course you will stay here--and Miss Wigram too. It
+seems--I shall owe you a great deal--and I could not have expected
+you--to think about me--at all. I can do rude things. But I can also--be
+sorry for my sins!"
+
+Doris heard an awkward and rather tremulous laugh. Upon which she
+opened her eyes, no less embarrassed than her hostess, and did as she
+was told. Lady Dunstable made her as comfortable as a hand so little
+used to the feminine arts could manage.
+
+"Now I will send you in some luncheon, and go and talk to Lord
+Dunstable. Please rest till I come back."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doris lay still. She wanted very much to see Arthur, and she wondered,
+till her head ached, whether he would think her a great fool for her
+pains. Surely he would come and find her soon. Oh, the time people spent
+on lunching in these big houses!
+
+The vibration of the train seemed to be still running through her limbs.
+She was indeed wearied out, and in a few minutes, what with the sudden
+quiet and the softness of the cushions which had been spread for her,
+she fell unexpectedly asleep.
+
+When she woke, she saw her husband sitting beside her--patiently--with
+a tray on his knee.
+
+"Oh, Arthur!--what time is it? Have I been asleep long?"
+
+"Nearly an hour. I looked in before, but Lady Dunstable wouldn't let me
+wake you. She--and he--and I--have been talking. Upon my word, Doris,
+you've been and gone and done it! But don't say anything! You've got to
+eat this chicken first."
+
+He fed her with it, looking at her the while with affectionate and
+admiring eyes. Somehow, Doris became dimly aware that she was going to
+be a heroine.
+
+"Have they told you, Arthur?"
+
+"Everything that you've told her. (No--not everything!--thought Doris.)
+You _are_ a brick, Doris! And the way you've done it! That's what
+impresses her ladyship! She knows very well that she would have muffed
+it. You're the practical woman! Well, you can rest on your laurels,
+darling! You'll have the whole place at your feet--beginning with your
+husband--who's been dreadfully bored without you. There!"
+
+He put down his Jovian head, and rubbed his cheek tenderly against hers,
+till she turned round, and gave him the lightest of kisses.
+
+"Was he an abominable correspondent?" he said, repentantly.
+
+"Abominable!"
+
+"Did you hate him!"
+
+"Whenever I had time. When do you start on your cruise, Arthur!"
+
+"Any time--some time--never!" he said, gaily. "Give me that Capel Curig
+address, and I'll wire for the rooms this afternoon. I came to the
+conclusion this morning that the same yacht couldn't hold her ladyship
+and me."
+
+"Oh!--so she's been chastening _you_?" said Doris, well pleased.
+
+Meadows nodded.
+
+"The rod has not been spared--since Sunday. It was then she got tired of
+me. I mark the day, you see, almost the hour. My goodness!--if you're
+not always up to your form--epigrams, quotations--all pat--"
+
+"She plucks you--without mercy. Down you slither into the second class!"
+Doris's look sparkled.
+
+"There you go--rejoicing in my humiliations!" said Meadows, putting an
+arm round the scoffer. "I tell you, she proposes to write my next set of
+lectures for me. She gave me an outline of them this morning."
+
+Then they both laughed together like children. And Doris, with her head
+on a strong man's shoulder, and a rough coat scrubbing her cheek,
+suddenly bethought her of the line--"Journeys end in lovers' meeting--"
+and was smitten with a secret wonder as to how much of her impulse to
+come north had been due to an altruistic concern for the Dunstable
+affairs, and how much to a firm determination to recapture Arthur from
+his Gloriana. But that doubt she would never reveal. It would be so bad
+for Arthur!
+
+She rose to her feet.
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"Lord and Lady Dunstable? Gone off to Dunkeld to find their solicitor
+and bring him back to meet Miss Wigram. They'll be home by tea. I'm to
+look after you."
+
+"Are we going to an hotel?"
+
+Meadows laughed immoderately.
+
+"Come and look at your apartment, my dear. One of her ladyship's maids
+has been told off to look after you. As I expect you have arrived with
+little more than a comb-and-brush bag, there will be a good deal to do."
+
+Doris caught him by the coat-fronts.
+
+"You don't mean to say that I shall be expected to dine to-night! I have
+_not_ brought an evening dress."
+
+"What does that matter? I met Miss Field in the passage, as I was coming
+in to you, and she said: 'I see Mrs. Meadows has not brought much
+luggage. We can lend her anything she wants. I will send her a few of
+Rachel's tea-gowns to choose from.'"
+
+Doris's laugh was hysterical; then she sobered down.
+
+"What time is it? Four o'clock. Oh, I wish Miss Wigram was here! You
+know, Lord Dunstable must go to town to-night! And Miss Wigram can't
+arrive till after the last train from here."
+
+"They know. They've ordered a special, to take Lord Dunstable and the
+solicitor to Edinburgh, to catch the midnight mail."
+
+"Oh, well--if you can bully the fates like that!--" said Doris, with a
+shrug. "How did he take it?"
+
+Meadows's tone changed.
+
+"It was a great blow. I thought it aged him."
+
+"Was she nice to him?" asked Doris, anxiously.
+
+"Nicer than I thought she could be," said Meadows, quietly. "I heard
+her say to him--'I'm afraid it's been my fault, Harry.' And he took her
+hand, without a word."
+
+"I will _not_ cry!" said Doris, pressing her hands on her eyes. "If it
+comes right, it will do them such a world of good! Now show me my room."
+
+But in the hall, waiting to waylay them, they found Miss Field, beaming
+as usual.
+
+"Everything is ready for you, dear Mrs. Meadows, and if you want
+anything you have only to ring. This way--"
+
+"The ground-floor?" said Doris, rather mystified, as they followed.
+
+"We have put you in what we call--for fun--our state-rooms. Various
+Royalties had them last year. They're in a special wing. We keep them
+for emergencies. And the fact is we haven't got another corner."
+
+Doris, in dismay, took the smiling lady by the arm.
+
+"I can't live up to it! Please let us go to the inn."
+
+But Meadows and Miss Field mocked at her; and she was soon ushered into
+a vast bedroom, in the midst of which, on a Persian carpet, sat her
+diminutive bag, now empty. Various elegant "confections" in the shape of
+tea-gowns and dressing-gowns littered the bed and the chairs. The
+toilet-table showed an array of coroneted brushes. As for the superb
+Empire bed, which had belonged to Queen Hortense, and was still hung
+with the original blue velvet sprinkled with golden bees, Doris eyed it
+with a firm hostility.
+
+"We needn't sleep in it," she whispered in Meadows's ear. "There are two
+sofas."
+
+Meanwhile Miss Field and others flitted about, adding all the luxuries
+of daily use to the splendour of the rooms. Gardeners appeared bringing
+in flowers, and an anxious maid, on behalf of her ladyship, begged that
+Mrs. Meadows would change her travelling dress for a comfortable white
+tea-gown, before tea-time, suggesting another "creation" in black and
+silver for dinner. Doris, frowning and reluctant, would have refused;
+but Miss Field said softly "Won't you? Rachel will be so distressed if
+she mayn't do these little things for you. Of course she doesn't deserve
+it; but--"
+
+"Oh yes--I'll put them on--if she likes," said Doris, hurriedly. "It
+doesn't matter."
+
+Miss Field laughed. "I don't know where all these things come from," she
+said, looking at the array. "Rachel buys half of them for her maids, I
+should think--she never wears them. Well, now I shall leave you till
+tea-time. Tea will be on the lawn--Mr. Meadows knows where. By the
+way--" she looked, smiling, at Meadows--"they've put off the Duke. If
+you only knew what that means."
+
+She named a great Scotch name, the chief of the ancient house to which
+Lady Dunstable belonged. Miss Field described how this prince of Dukes
+paid a solemn visit every year to Franick Castle, and the eager
+solicitude--almost agitation--with which the visit was awaited, by Lady
+Dunstable in particular.
+
+"You don't mean," cried Doris, "that there is anybody in the whole world
+who frightens Lady Dunstable?"
+
+"As she frightens us? Yes!--on this one day of the year we are all
+avenged. Rachel, metaphorically, sits on a stool and tries to please. To
+put off 'the Duke' by telephone!--what a horrid indignity! But I've just
+inflicted it."
+
+Mattie Field smiled, and was just going away when she was arrested by a
+timid question from Doris.
+
+"Please--shall Arthur go down to Pitlochry and engage a room for Miss
+Wigram?"
+
+Miss Field turned in amusement.
+
+"A room! Why, it's all ready! She is your lady-in-waiting."
+
+And taking Doris by the arm she led her to inspect a spacious apartment
+on the other side of a passage, where the Lady Alice or Lady Mary
+without whom Royal Highnesses do not move about the world was generally
+put up.
+
+"I feel like Christopher Sly," said Doris, surveying the scene, with her
+hands in her jacket pockets. "So will she. But never mind!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Events flowed on. Lord and Lady Dunstable came back by tea-time,
+bringing with them the solicitor, who was also the chief factor of their
+Scotch estate. Lord Dunstable looked old and wearied. He came to find
+Doris on the lawn, pressing her hand with murmured words of thanks.
+
+"If that child Alice Wigram--of course I remember her well!--brings us
+information we can go upon, we shall be all right. At least there's
+hope. My poor boy! Anyway, we can never be grateful enough to you."
+
+As for Lady Dunstable, the large circle which gathered for tea under a
+group of Scotch firs talked indeed, since Franick Castle existed for
+that purpose, but they talked without a leader. Their hostess sat silent
+and sombre, with thoughts evidently far away. She took no notice of
+Meadows whatever, and his attempts to draw her fell flat. A neighbour
+had walked over, bringing with him--maliciously--a Radical M.P. whose
+views on the Scotch land question would normally have struck fire and
+fury from Lady Dunstable. She scarcely recognised his name, and he and
+the Under-Secretary launched into the most despicable land heresies
+under her very nose--unrebuked. She had not an epigram to throw at
+anyone. But her eyes never failed to know where Doris Meadows was, and
+indeed, though no one but the two or three initiated knew why, Doris was
+in some mysterious but accepted way the centre of the party. Everybody
+spoiled her; everybody smiled upon her. The white tea-gown which she
+wore--miracle of delicate embroidery--had never suited Lady Dunstable;
+it suited Doris to perfection. Under her own simple hat, her eyes--and
+they were very fine eyes--shone with a soft and dancing humour. It was
+all absurd--her being there--her dress--this tongue-tied hostess--and
+these agreeable men who made much of her! She must get Arthur out of it
+as soon as possible, and they would look back upon it and laugh. But for
+the moment it was pleasant, it was stimulating! She found herself
+arguing about the new novels, and standing at bay against a whole group
+of clever folk who were tearing Mr. Augustus John and other gods of her
+idolatry to pieces. She was not shy; she never really had been; and to
+find that she could talk as well as other people--or most other
+people--even in these critical circles, excited her. The circle round
+her grew; and Meadows, standing on the edge of it, watched her with
+astonished eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The northern evening sank into a long and glowing twilight. The hills
+stood in purple against a tawny west, and the smoke from the little town
+in the valley rose clear and blue into air already autumnal. The guests
+of Franick had scattered in twos and threes over the gardens and the
+moor, while Doris, her host and hostess, and the solicitor, sat and
+waited for Alice Wigram. She came with the evening train, tired, dusty,
+and triumphant; and the information she brought with her was more than
+enough to go upon. The past of Elena Flink--poor lady!--shone luridly
+out; and even the countenance of the solicitor cleared. As for Lord
+Dunstable, he grasped the girl by both hands.
+
+"My dear child, what you have done for us! Ah, if your father were
+here!"
+
+And bending over her, with the courtly grace of an old man, he kissed
+her on the brow. Alice Wigram flushed, turning involuntarily towards
+Lady Dunstable.
+
+"Rachel!--don't we owe her everything," said Lord Dunstable with
+emotion--"her and Mrs. Meadows? But for them, our boy might have wrecked
+his life."
+
+"He appears to have been a most extraordinary fool!" said Lady Dunstable
+with energy:--a recrudescence of the natural woman, which was positively
+welcome to everybody. And it did not prevent the passage of some
+embarrassed but satisfactory words between Herbert Dunstable's mother
+and Alice Wigram, after Lady Dunstable had taken her latest guest to
+"Lady Mary's" room, bidding her go straight to bed, and be waited on.
+
+Lord Dunstable and the lawyer departed after dinner to meet their
+special train at Perth. Lady Dunstable, with variable spirits, kept the
+evening going, sometimes in a brown study, sometimes as brilliant and
+pugnacious as ever. Doris slipped out of the drawing-room once or twice
+to go and gossip with Alice Wigram, who was lying under silken
+coverings, inclined to gentle moralising on the splendours of the great,
+and much petted by Miss Field and the house-keeper.
+
+"How nice you look!" said the girl shyly, on one occasion, as Doris came
+stealing in to her. "I never saw such a pretty gown!"
+
+"Not bad!" said Doris complacently, throwing a glance at the large
+mirror near. It was still the white tea-gown, for she had firmly
+declined to sample anything else, in truth well aware that Arthur's
+eyes approved both it and her in it.
+
+"Lord Dunstable has been so kind," whispered Miss Wigram. "He said I
+must always henceforth look upon him as a kind of guardian. Of course I
+should never let him give me a farthing!"
+
+"Why no, that's the kind of thing one couldn't do!" said Doris with
+decision. "But there are plenty of other ways of being nice. Well--here
+we all are, as happy as larks; and what we've really done, I suppose, is
+to take a woman's character away, and give her another push to
+perdition."
+
+"She hadn't any character!" cried Alice Wigram indignantly. "And she
+would have gone to perdition without us, and taken that poor youth with
+her. Oh, I know, I know! But morals are a great puzzle to me. However, I
+firmly remind myself of that 'one in the eye,' and then all my doubts
+depart. Good-night. Sleep well! You know very well that I should have
+shirked it if it hadn't been for you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A little later the Meadowses stood together at the open window of their
+room, which led by a short flight of steps to a flowering garden below.
+All Franick had gone to bed, and this wing in which the "state-rooms"
+were, seemed to be remote from the rest of the house. They were alone;
+the night was balmy; and there was a flood of secret joy in Doris's
+veins which gave her a charm, a beguilement Arthur had never seen in her
+before. She was more woman, and therefore more divine! He could hardly
+recall her as the careful housewife, harassed by lack of pence, knitting
+her brows over her butcher's books, mending endless socks, and trying to
+keep the nose of a lazy husband to the grindstone. All that seemed to
+have vanished. This white sylph was pure romance--pure joy. He saw her
+anew; he loved her anew.
+
+"Why did you look so pretty to-night? You little witch!" he murmured in
+her ear, as he held her close to him.
+
+"Arthur!"--she drew herself away from him. "_Did_ I look pretty? Honour
+bright!"
+
+"Delicious! How often am I to say it?"
+
+"You'd better not. Don't wake the devil in me, Arthur! It's all this
+tea-gown. If you go on like this, I shall have to buy one like it."
+
+"Buy a dozen!" he said joyously. "Look there, Doris--you see that path?
+Let's go on to the moor a little."
+
+Out they crept, like truant children, through the wood-path and out upon
+the moor. Meadows had brought a shawl, and spread it on a rock, full
+under the moonlight. There they sat, close together, feeling all the
+goodness and glory of the night, drinking in the scents of heather and
+fern, the sounds of plashing water and gently moving winds. Above them,
+the vault of heaven and the friendly stars; below them, the great hollow
+of the valley, the scattered lights, the sounds of distant trains.
+
+"She didn't kiss me when she said good-night!" said Doris suddenly. "She
+wasn't the least sentimental--or ashamed--or grateful! Having said what
+was necessary, she let it alone. She's a real lady--though rather a
+savage. I like her!"
+
+"Who are you talking of? Lady Dunstable? I had forgotten all about her.
+All the same, darling, I should like to know what made you do all this
+for a woman you _said_ you detested!"
+
+"I did detest her. I shall probably detest her again. Leopards don't
+change their spots, do they? But I shan't--fear her any more!"
+
+Something in her tone arrested Meadows's attention.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, what I say!" cried Doris, drawing herself a little from him, with
+a hand on his shoulder. "I shall never fear her, or anyone, any more.
+I'm safe! Why did I do it? Do you really want to know? I did
+it--because--I was so sorry for her--poor silly woman,--who can't get on
+with her own son! Arthur!--if our son doesn't love me better than hers
+loves her--you may kill me, dear, and welcome!"
+
+"Doris! There is something in your voice--! What are you hiding from
+me?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But as to the rest of that conversation under the moon, let those
+imagine it who may have followed this story with sympathy.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Great Success, by Mrs Humphry Ward
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Great Success, by Mrs Humphry Ward
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Great Success
+
+Author: Mrs Humphry Ward
+
+Release Date: August 25, 2004 [EBook #13288]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GREAT SUCCESS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Maria Khomenko and
+PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Look there, Doris--you see that path? Let's go on to
+the moor a little."]
+
+A Great Success
+
+By
+
+Mrs. Humphry Ward
+Author of "Eltham House," "Delia Blanchflower," etc.
+
+New York
+Hearst's International Library Co.
+1916
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"Arthur,--what did you give the man?"
+
+"Half a crown, my dear! Now don't make a fuss. I know exactly what
+you're going to say!"
+
+"_Half a crown!_" said Doris Meadows, in consternation. "The fare was
+one and twopence. Of course he thought you mad. But I'll get it back!"
+
+And she ran to the open window, crying "Hi!" to the driver of a
+taxi-cab, who, having put down his fares, was just on the point of
+starting from the door of the small semi-detached house in a South
+Kensington street, which owned Arthur and Doris Meadows for its master
+and mistress.
+
+The driver turned at her call.
+
+"Hi!--Stop! You've been over-paid!"
+
+The man grinned all over, made her a low bow, and made off as fast as he
+could.
+
+Arthur Meadows, behind her, went into a fit of laughter, and as his
+wife, discomfited, turned back into the room he threw a triumphant arm
+around her.
+
+"I had to give him half a crown, dear, or burst. Just look at these
+letters--and you know what a post we had this morning! Now don't bother
+about the taxi! What does it matter? Come and open the post."
+
+Whereupon Doris Meadows felt herself forcibly drawn down to a seat on
+the sofa beside her husband, who threw a bundle of letters upon his
+wife's lap, and then turned eagerly to open others with which his own
+hands were full.
+
+"H'm!--Two more publishers' letters, asking for the book--don't they
+wish they may get it! But I could have made a far better bargain if I'd
+only waited a fortnight. Just my luck! One--two--four--autograph fiends!
+The last--a lady, of course!--wants a page of the first lecture. Calm!
+Invitations from the Scottish Athenaeum--the Newcastle Academy--the
+Birmingham Literary Guild--the Glasgow Poetic Society--the 'British
+Philosophers'--the Dublin Dilettanti!--Heavens!--how many more! None of
+them offering cash, as far as I can see--only fame--pure and undefiled!
+Hullo!--that's a compliment!--the Parnassians have put me on their
+Council. And last year, I was told, I couldn't even get in as an
+ordinary member. Dash their impudence!... This is really astounding!
+What are yours, darling?"
+
+And tumbling all his opened letters on the sofa, Arthur Meadows rose--in
+sheer excitement--and confronted his wife, with a flushed countenance.
+He was a tall, broadly built, loose-limbed fellow, with a fine shaggy
+head, whereof various black locks were apt to fall forward over his
+eyes, needing to be constantly thrown back by a picturesque action of
+the hand. The features were large and regular, the complexion dark, the
+eyes a pale blue, under bushy brows. The whole aspect of the man,
+indeed, was not unworthy of the adjective "Olympian," already freely
+applied to it by some of the enthusiastic women students attending his
+now famous lectures. One girl artist learned in classical archaeology,
+and a haunter of the British Museum, had made a charcoal study of a
+well-known archaistic "Diespiter" of the Augustan period, on the same
+sheet with a rapid sketch of Meadows when lecturing; a performance which
+had been much handed about in the lecture-room, though always just
+avoiding--strangely enough--the eyes of the lecturer.... The expression
+of slumbrous power, the mingling of dream and energy in the Olympian
+countenance, had been, in the opinion of the majority, extremely well
+caught. Only Doris Meadows, the lecturer's wife, herself an artist, and
+a much better one than the author of the drawing, had smiled a little
+queerly on being allowed a sight of it.
+
+However, she was no less excited by the batch of letters her husband had
+allowed her to open than he by his. Her bundle included, so it appeared,
+letters from several leading politicians: one, discussing in a most
+animated and friendly tone the lecture of the week before, on "Lord
+George Bentinck"; and two others dealing with the first lecture of the
+series, the brilliant pen-portrait of Disraeli, which--partly owing to
+feminine influence behind the scenes--had been given _verbatim_ and with
+much preliminary trumpeting in two or three Tory newspapers, and had
+produced a real sensation, of that mild sort which alone the British
+public--that does not love lectures--is capable of receiving from the
+report of one. Persons in the political world had relished its plain
+speaking; dames and counsellors of the Primrose League had read the
+praise with avidity, and skipped the criticism; while the mere men and
+women of letters had appreciated a style crisp, unhackneyed, and alive.
+The second lecture on "Lord George Bentinck" had been crowded, and the
+crowd had included several Cabinet Ministers, and those great ladies of
+the moment who gather like vultures to the feast on any similar
+occasion. The third lecture, on "Palmerston and Lord John"--had been not
+only crowded, but crowded out, and London was by now fully aware that it
+possessed in Arthur Meadows a person capable of painting a series of La
+Bruyere-like portraits of modern men, as vivid, biting, and
+"topical"--_mutatis mutandis_--as the great French series were in their
+day.
+
+Applications for the coming lecture on "Lord Randolph" were arriving by
+every post, and those to follow after--on men just dead, and others
+still alive--would probably have to be given in a much larger hall than
+that at present engaged, so certain was intelligent London that in going
+to hear Arthur Meadows on the most admired--or the most
+detested--personalities of the day, they at least ran no risk of
+wishy-washy panegyric, or a dull caution. Meadows had proved himself
+daring both in compliment and attack; nothing could be sharper than his
+thrusts, or more Olympian than his homage. There were those indeed who
+talked of "airs" and "mannerisms," but their faint voices were lost in
+the general shouting.
+
+"Wonderful!" said Doris, at last, looking up from the last of these
+epistles. "I really didn't know, Arthur, you were such a great man."
+
+Her eyes rested on him with a fond but rather puzzled expression.
+
+"Well, of course, dear, you've always seen the seamy side of me," said
+Meadows, with the slightest change of tone and a laugh. "Perhaps now
+you'll believe me when I say that I'm not always lazy when I seem
+so--that a man must have time to think, and smoke, and dawdle, if he's
+to write anything decent, and can't always rush at the first job that
+offers. When you thought I was idling--I wasn't! I was gathering up
+impressions. Then came an attractive piece of work--one that suited
+me--and I rose to it. There, you see!"
+
+He threw back his Jovian head, with a look at his wife, half combative,
+half merry.
+
+Doris's forehead puckered a little.
+
+"Well, thank Heaven that it _has_ turned out well!" she said, with a
+deep breath. "Where we should have been if it hadn't I'm sure I don't
+know! And, as it is--By the way, Arthur, have you got that packet ready
+for New York?" Her tone was quick and anxious.
+
+"What, the proofs of 'Dizzy'? Oh, goodness, that'll do any time. Don't
+bother, Doris. I'm really rather done--and this post is--well, upon my
+word, it's overwhelming!" And, gathering up the letters, he threw
+himself with an air of fatigue into a long chair, his hands behind his
+head. "Perhaps after tea and a cigarette I shall feel more fit."
+
+"Arthur!--you know to-morrow is the last day for catching the New York
+mail."
+
+"Well, hang it, if I don't catch it, they must wait, that's all!" said
+Meadows peevishly. "If they won't take it, somebody else will."
+
+"They" represented the editor and publisher of a famous New York
+magazine, who had agreed by cable to give a large sum for the "Dizzy"
+lecture, provided it reached them by a certain date.
+
+Doris twisted her lip.
+
+"Arthur, _do_ think of the bills!"
+
+"Darling, don't be a nuisance! If I succeed I shall make money. And if
+this isn't a success I don't know what is." He pointed to the letters on
+his lap, an impatient gesture which dislodged a certain number of them,
+so that they came rustling to the floor.
+
+"Hullo!--here's one you haven't opened. Another coronet! Gracious! I
+believe it's the woman who asked us to dinner a fortnight ago, and we
+couldn't go."
+
+Meadows sat up with a jerk, all languor dispelled, and held out his hand
+for the letter.
+
+"Lady Dunstable! By George! I thought she'd ask us,--though you don't
+deserve it, Doris, for you didn't take any trouble at all about her
+first invitation--"
+
+"We were _engaged_!" cried Doris, interrupting him, her eyebrows
+mounting.
+
+"We could have got out of it perfectly. But now, listen to this:
+
+    "Dear Mr. Meadows,--I hope your wife will excuse my writing to you
+    instead of to her, as you and I are already acquainted. Can I induce
+    you both to come to Crosby Ledgers for a week-end, on July 16? We
+    hope to have a pleasant party, a diplomat or two, the Home
+    Secretary, and General Hichen--perhaps some others. You would, I am
+    sure, admire our hill country, and I should like to show you some of
+    the precious autographs we have inherited.
+
+                              "Yours sincerely,
+                                   "RACHEL DUNSTABLE.
+
+    "If your wife brings a maid, perhaps she will kindly let me know."
+
+Doris laughed, and the amused scorn of her laugh annoyed her husband.
+However, at that moment their small house-parlourmaid entered with the
+tea-tray, and Doris rose to make a place for it. The parlourmaid put it
+down with much unnecessary noise, and Doris, looking at her in alarm,
+saw that her expression was sulky and her eyes red. When the girl had
+departed, Mrs. Meadows said with resignation--
+
+"There! that one will give me notice to-morrow!"
+
+"Well, I'm sure you could easily get a better!" said her husband
+sharply.
+
+Doris shook her head.
+
+"The fourth in six months!" she said, sighing. "And she really is a good
+girl."
+
+"I suppose, as usual, she complains of me!" The voice was that of an
+injured man.
+
+"Yes, dear, she does! They all do. You give them a lot of extra work
+already, and all these things you have been buying lately--oh, Arthur,
+if you _wouldn't_ buy things!--mean more work. You know that copper
+coal-scuttle you sent in yesterday?"
+
+"Well, isn't it a beauty?--a real Georgian piece!" cried Meadows,
+indignantly.
+
+"I dare say it is. But it has to be cleaned. When it arrived Jane came
+to see me in this room, shut the door, and put her back against it
+'There's another of them beastly copper coal-scuttles come!' You should
+have seen her eyes blazing. 'And I should like to know, ma'am, who's
+going to clean it--'cos I can't.' And I just had to promise her it might
+go dirty."
+
+"Lazy minx!" said Meadows, good-humouredly, with his mouth full of
+tea-cake. "At last I have something good to look at in this room." He
+turned his eyes caressingly towards the new coal-scuttle. "I suppose I
+shall have to clean it myself!"
+
+Doris laughed again--this time almost hysterically--but was checked by a
+fresh entrance of Jane, who, with an air of defiance, deposited a heavy
+parcel on a chair beside her mistress, and flounced out again.
+
+"What is this?" said Doris in consternation. "_Books_? More books?
+Heavens, Arthur, what have you been ordering now! I couldn't sleep last
+night for thinking of the book-bills."
+
+"You little goose! Of course, I must buy books! Aren't they my tools, my
+stock-in-trade? Haven't these lectures justified the book-bills a dozen
+times over?"
+
+This time Arthur Meadows surveyed his wife in real irritation and
+disgust.
+
+"But, Arthur!--you could get them _all_ at the London Library--you know
+you could!"
+
+"And pray how much time do I waste in going backwards and forwards after
+books? Any man of letters worth his salt wants a library of his
+own--within reach of his hand."
+
+"Yes, if he can pay for it!" said Doris, with plaintive emphasis, as she
+ruefully turned over the costly volumes which the parcel contained.
+
+"Don't fash yourself, my dear child! Why, what I'm getting for the Dizzy
+lecture is alone nearly enough to pay all the book bills."
+
+"It isn't! And just think of all the others! Well--never mind!"
+
+Doris's protesting mood suddenly collapsed. She sat down on a stool
+beside her husband, rested her elbow on his knee, and, chin in hand,
+surveyed him with a softened countenance. Doris Meadows was not a
+beauty; only pleasant-faced, with good eyes, and a strong, expressive
+mouth. Her brown hair was perhaps her chief point, and she wore it
+rippled and coiled so as to set off a shapely head and neck. It was
+always a secret grievance with her that she had so little positive
+beauty. And her husband had never flattered her on the subject. In the
+early days of their marriage she had timidly asked him, after
+one of their bridal dinner-parties in which she had worn her
+wedding-dress--"Did I look nice to-night? Do you--do you ever think I
+look pretty, Arthur?" And he had looked her over, with an odd change of
+expression--careless affection passing into something critical and
+cool:--"I'm never ashamed of you, Doris, in any company. Won't you be
+satisfied with that?" She had been far from satisfied; the phrase had
+burnt in her memory from then till now. But she knew Arthur had not
+meant to hurt her, and she bore him no grudge. And, by now, she was too
+well acquainted with the rubs and prose of life, too much occupied with
+house-books, and rough servants, and the terror of an overdrawn account,
+to have any time or thought to spare to her own looks. Fortunately she
+had an instinctive love for neatness and delicacy; so that her little
+figure, besides being agile and vigorous--capable of much dignity too on
+occasion--was of a singular trimness and grace in all its simple
+appointments. Her trousseau was long since exhausted, and she rarely had
+a new dress. But slovenly she could not be.
+
+It was the matter of a new dress which was now indeed running in her
+mind. She took up Lady Dunstable's letter, and read it pensively through
+again.
+
+"You can accept for yourself, Arthur, of course," she said, looking up.
+"But I can't possibly go."
+
+Meadows protested loudly.
+
+"You have no excuse at all!" he declared hotly. "Lady Dunstable has
+given us a month's notice. You _can't_ get out of it. Do you want me to
+be known as a man who accepts smart invitations without his wife? There
+is no more caddish creature in the world."
+
+Doris could not help smiling upon him. But her mouth was none the less
+determined.
+
+"I haven't got a single frock that's fit for Crosby Ledgers. And I'm not
+going on tick for a new one!"
+
+"I never heard anything so absurd! Shan't we have more money in a few
+weeks than we've had for years?"
+
+"I dare say. It's all wanted. Besides, I have my work to finish."
+
+"My dear Doris!"
+
+A slight red mounted in Doris's cheeks.
+
+"Oh, you may be as scornful as you like! But ten pounds is ten pounds,
+and I like keeping engagements."
+
+The "work" in question meant illustrations for a children's book. Doris
+had accepted the commission with eagerness, and had been going regularly
+to the Campden Hill studio of an Academician--her mother's brother--who
+was glad to supply her with some of the "properties" she wanted for her
+drawings.
+
+"I shall soon not allow you to do anything of the kind," said Meadows
+with decision.
+
+"On the contrary! I shall always take paid work when I can get it," was
+the firm reply--"unless--"
+
+"Unless what?"
+
+"You know," she said quietly. Meadows was silent a moment, then reached
+out for her hand, which she gave him. They had no children; and, as he
+well knew, Doris pined for them. The look in her eyes when she nursed
+her friends' babies had often hurt him. But after all, why despair? It
+was only four years from their wedding day.
+
+But he was not going to be beaten in the matter of Crosby Ledgers. They
+had a long and heated discussion, at the end of which Doris surrendered.
+
+"Very well! I shall have to spend a week in doing up my old black gown,
+and it will be a botch at the end of it. But--_nothing--will induce
+me_--to get a new one!"
+
+She delivered this ultimatum with her hands behind her, a defeated, but
+still resolute young person. Meadows, having won the main battle, left
+the rest to Providence, and went off to his "den" to read all his
+letters through once more--agreeable task!--and to write a note of
+acceptance to the Home Secretary, who had asked him to luncheon. Doris
+was not included in the invitation. "But anybody may ask a husband--or a
+wife--to lunch, separately. That's understood. I shan't do it often,
+however--that I can tell them!" And justified by this Spartan temper as
+to the future, he wrote a charming note, accepting the delights of the
+present, so full of epigram that the Cabinet Minister to whom it was
+addressed had no sooner read it than he consigned it instanter to his
+wife's collection of autographs.
+
+Meanwhile Doris was occupied partly in soothing the injured feelings of
+Jane, and partly in smoothing out and inspecting her one evening frock.
+She decided that it would take her a week to "do it up," and that she
+would do it herself. "A week wasted!" she thought--"and all for nothing.
+What do we want with Lady Dunstable! She'll flatter Arthur, and make him
+lazy. They all do! And I've no use for her at all. _Maid_ indeed! Does
+she think nobody can exist without that appendage? How I should like to
+make her live on four hundred a year, with a husband that will spend
+seven!"
+
+She stood, half amused, half frowning, beside the bed on which lay her
+one evening frock. But the frown passed away, effaced by an expression
+much softer and tenderer than anything she had allowed Arthur to see of
+late. Of course she delighted in Arthur's success; she was proud,
+indeed, through and through. Hadn't she always known that he had this
+gift, this quick, vivacious power of narrative, this genius--for it was
+something like it--for literary portraiture? And now at last the
+stimulus had come--and the opportunity with it. Could she ever forget
+the anxiety of the first lecture--the difficulty she had had in making
+him finish it--his careless, unbusiness-like management of the whole
+affair? But then had come the burst of praise and popularity; and
+Arthur was a new man. No difficulty--or scarcely--in getting him to work
+since then! Applause, so new and intoxicating, had lured him on, as she
+had been wont to lure the black pony of her childhood with a handful of
+sugar. Yes, her Arthur was a genius; she had always known it. And
+something of a child too--lazy, wilful, and sensuous--that, too, she had
+known for some time. And she loved him with all her heart.
+
+"But I won't have him spoilt by those fine ladies!" she said to herself,
+with frowning clear-sightedness. "They make a perfect fool of him. Now,
+then, I'd better write to Lady Dunstable. Of course she ought to have
+written to me!"
+
+So she sat down and wrote:
+
+    Dear Lady Dunstable,--We have much pleasure in accepting your kind
+    invitation, and I will let you know our train later. I have no maid,
+    so--
+
+But at this point Mrs. Meadows, struck by a sudden idea, threw down her
+pen.
+
+"Heavens!--suppose I took Jane? Somebody told me the other day that
+nobody got any attention at Crosby Ledgers without a maid. And it might
+bribe Jane into staying. I should feel a horrid snob--but it would be
+rather fun--especially as Lady Dunstable will certainly be immensely
+surprised. The fare would be only about five shillings--Jane would get
+her food for two days at the Dunstables' expense--and I should have a
+friend. I'll do it."
+
+So, with her eyes dancing, Doris tore up her note, and began again:
+
+    Dear Lady Dunstable,--We have much pleasure in accepting your kind
+    invitation, and I will let you know our train later. As you kindly
+    permit me, I will bring a maid.
+
+                              Yours sincerely,
+                                   DORIS MEADOWS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The month which elapsed between Lady Dunstable's invitation and the
+Crosby Ledgers party was spent by Doris first in "doing up" her frock,
+and then in taking the bloom off it at various dinner-parties to which
+they were already invited as the "celebrities" of the moment; in making
+Arthur's wardrobe presentable; in watching over the tickets and receipts
+of the weekly lectures; in collecting the press cuttings about them; in
+finishing her illustrations; and in instructing the awe-struck Jane, now
+perfectly amenable, in the mysteries that would be expected of her.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Meadows heard various accounts from artistic and literary
+friends of the parties at Crosby Ledgers. These accounts were generally
+prefaced by the laughing remark, "But anything _I_ can say is ancient
+history. Lady Dunstable dropped us long ago!"
+
+Anyway, it appeared that the mistress of Crosby Ledgers could be
+charming, and could also be exactly the reverse. She was a creature of
+whims and did precisely as she pleased. Everything she did apparently
+was acceptable to Lord Dunstable, who admired her blindly. But in one
+point at least she was a disappointed woman. Her son, an unsatisfactory
+youth of two-and-twenty, was seldom to be seen under his parents' roof,
+and it was rumoured that he had already given them a great deal of
+trouble.
+
+"The dreadful thing, my dear, is the _games_ they play!" said the wife
+of a dramatist, whose one successful piece had been followed by years of
+ill-fortune.
+
+"_Games?_" said Doris. "Do you mean cards--for money?"
+
+"Oh, dear no! Intellectual games. _Bouts-rimes;_ translations--Lady
+Dunstable looks out the bits and some people think the
+words--beforehand; paragraphs on a subject--in a particular
+style--Pater's, or Ruskin's, or Carlyle's. Each person throws two slips
+into a hat. On one you write the subject, on another the name of the
+author whose style is to be imitated. Then you draw. Of course Lady
+Dunstable carries off all the honours. But then everybody believes she
+spends all the mornings preparing these things. She never comes down
+till nearly lunch."
+
+"This is really appalling!" said Doris, with round eyes. "I have
+forgotten everything I ever knew."
+
+As for her own impressions of the great lady, she had only seen her once
+in the semi-darkness of the lecture-room, and could only remember a
+long, sallow face, with striking black eyes and a pointed chin, a
+general look of distinction and an air of one accustomed to the "chief
+seat" at any board--whether the feasts of reason or those of a more
+ordinary kind.
+
+As the days went on, Doris, for all her sturdy self-reliance, began to
+feel a little nervous inwardly. She had been quite well-educated, first
+at a good High School, and then in the class-rooms of a provincial
+University; and, as the clever daughter of a clever doctor in large
+practice, she had always been in touch with the intellectual world,
+especially on its scientific side. And for nearly two years before her
+marriage she had been a student at the Slade School. But since her
+imprudent love-match with a literary man had plunged her into the
+practical work of a small household, run on a scanty and precarious
+income, she had been obliged, one after another, to let the old
+interests go. Except the drawing. That was good enough to bring her a
+little money, as an illustrator, designer of Christmas cards, etc.; and
+she filled most of her spare time with it.
+
+But now she feverishly looked out some of her old books--Pater's
+"Studies," a volume of Huxley's Essays, "Shelley" and "Keats" in the
+"Men of Letters" series. She borrowed two or three of the political
+biographies with which Arthur's shelves were crowded, having all the
+while, however, the dispiriting conviction that Lady Dunstable had been
+dandled on the knees of every English Prime Minister since her birth,
+and had been the blood relation of all of them, except perhaps Mr. G.,
+whose blood no doubt had not been blue enough to entitle him to the
+privilege.
+
+However, she must do her best. She kept these feelings and preparations
+entirely secret from Arthur, and she saw the day of the visit dawn in a
+mood of mingled expectation and revolt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+It was a perfect June evening: Doris was seated on one of the spreading
+lawns of Crosby Ledgers,--a low Georgian house, much added to at various
+times, and now a pleasant medley of pillared verandahs, tiled roofs,
+cupolas, and dormer windows, apparently unpretending, but, as many
+people knew, one of the most luxurious of English country houses.
+
+Lady Dunstable, in a flowing dress of lilac crepe and a large black hat,
+had just given Mrs. Meadows a second cup of tea, and was clearly doing
+her duty--and showing it--to a guest whose entertainment could not be
+trusted to go of itself. The only other persons at the tea-table--the
+Meadowses having arrived late--were an elderly man with long Dundreary
+whiskers, in a Panama hat and a white waistcoat, and a lady of uncertain
+age, plump, kind-eyed, and merry-mouthed, in whom Doris had at once
+divined a possible harbour of refuge from the terrors of the situation.
+Arthur was strolling up and down the lawn with the Home Secretary,
+smoking and chatting--talking indeed nineteen to the dozen, and entirely
+at his ease. A few other groups were scattered over the grass; while
+girls in white dresses and young men in flannels were playing tennis in
+the distance. A lake at the bottom of the sloping garden made light and
+space in a landscape otherwise too heavily walled in by thick woodland.
+White swans floated on the lake, and the June trees beyond were in their
+freshest and proudest leaf. A church tower rose appropriately in a
+corner of the park, and on the other side of the deer-fence beyond the
+lake a herd of red deer were feeding. Doris could not help feeling as
+though the whole scene had been lately painted for a new "high life"
+play at the St. James's Theatre, and she half expected to see Sir George
+Alexander walk out of the bushes.
+
+"I suppose, Mrs. Meadows, you have been helping your husband with his
+lectures?" said Lady Dunstable, a little languidly, as though the heat
+oppressed her. She was making play with a cigarette and her half-shut
+eyes were fixed on the "lion's" wife. The eyes fascinated Doris. Surely
+they were artificially blackened, above and below? And the lips--had art
+been delicately invoked, or was Nature alone responsible?
+
+"I copy things for Arthur," said Doris. "Unfortunately, I can't type."
+
+At the sound of the young and musical voice, the gentleman with the
+Dundreary whiskers--Sir Luke Malford--who had seemed half asleep, turned
+sharply to look at the speaker. Doris too was in a white dress, of the
+simplest stuff and make; but it became her. So did the straw hat, with
+its wreath of wild roses, which she had trimmed herself that morning.
+There was not the slightest visible sign of tremor in the young woman;
+and Sir Luke's inner mind applauded her.
+
+"No fool!--and a lady," he thought. "Let's see what Rachel will make of
+her."
+
+"Then you don't help him in the writing?" said Lady Dunstable, still
+with the same detached air. Doris laughed.
+
+"I don't know what Arthur would say if I proposed it. He never lets
+anybody go near him when he's writing."
+
+"I see; like all geniuses, he's dangerous on the loose." Was Lady
+Dunstable's smile just touched with sarcasm? "Well!--has the success of
+the lectures surprised you?"
+
+Doris pondered.
+
+"No," she said at last, "not really. I always thought Arthur had it in
+him."
+
+"But you hardly expected such a run--such an excitement!"
+
+"I don't know," said Doris, coolly. "I think I did--sometimes. The
+question is how long it will last."
+
+She looked, smiling, at her interrogator.
+
+The gentleman with the whiskers stooped across the table.
+
+"Oh, nothing lasts in this world. But that of course is what makes a
+good time so good."
+
+Doris turned towards him--demurring--for the sake of conversation. "I
+never could understand how Cinderella enjoyed the ball."
+
+"For thinking of the clock?" laughed Sir Luke. "No, no!--you can't mean
+that. It's the expectation of the clock that doubles the pleasure. Of
+course you agree, Rachel!"--he turned to her--"else why did you read me
+that very doleful poem yesterday, on this very theme?--that it's only
+the certainty of death that makes life agreeable? By the way, George
+Eliot had said it before!"
+
+"The poem was by a friend of mine," said Lady Dunstable, coldly. "I read
+it to you to see how it sounded. But I thought it poor stuff."
+
+"How unkind of you! The man who wrote it says he lives upon your
+friendship."
+
+"That, perhaps, is why he's so thin."
+
+Sir Luke laughed again.
+
+"To be sure, I saw the poor man--after you had talked to him the other
+night--going to Dunstable to be consoled. Poor George! he's always
+healing the wounds you make."
+
+"Of course. That's why I married him. George says all the civil things.
+That sets me free to do the rude ones."
+
+"Rachel!" The exclamation came from the plump lady opposite, who was
+smiling broadly, and showing some very white teeth. A signal passed from
+her eyes to those of Doris, as though to say "Don't be alarmed!"
+
+But Doris was not at all alarmed. She was eagerly watching Lady
+Dunstable, as one watches for the mannerisms of some well-known
+performer. Sir Luke perceived it, and immediately began to show off his
+hostess by one of the sparring matches that were apparently frequent
+between them. They fell to discussing a party of guests--landowners from
+a neighbouring estate--who seemed to have paid a visit to Crosby Ledgers
+the day before. Lady Dunstable had not enjoyed them, and her tongue on
+the subject was sharpness itself, restrained by none of the ordinary
+compunctions. "Is this how she talks about all her guests--on Monday
+morning?" thought Doris, with quickened pulse as the biting sentences
+flew about.
+
+... "Mr. Worthing? Why did he marry her? Oh, because he wanted a stuffed
+goose to sit by the fire while he went out and amused himself.... Why
+did she marry him? Ah, that's more difficult to answer. Is one obliged
+to credit Mrs. Worthing with any reasons--on any subject? However, I
+like Mr. Worthing--he's what men ought to be."
+
+"And that is--?" Doris ventured to put in.
+
+"Just--men," said Lady Dunstable, shortly.
+
+Sir Luke laughed over his cigarette.
+
+"That you may fool them? Well, Rachel, all the same, you would die of
+Worthing's company in a month."
+
+"I shouldn't die," said Lady Dunstable, quietly. "I should murder."
+
+"Hullo, what's my wife talking about?" said a bluff and friendly voice.
+Doris looked up to see a handsome man with grizzled hair approaching.
+
+"Mrs. Meadows? How do you do? What a beautiful evening you've brought!
+Your husband and I have been having a jolly talk. My word!--he's a
+clever chap. Let me congratulate you on the lectures. Biggest success
+known in recent days!"
+
+Doris beamed upon her host, well pleased, and he settled down beside
+her, doing his kind best to entertain her. In him, all those protective
+feelings towards a stranger, in which his wife appeared to be
+conspicuously lacking, were to be discerned on first acquaintance. Doris
+was practically sure that his inner mind was thinking--"Poor little
+thing!--knows nobody here. Rachel's been scaring her. Must look after
+her!"
+
+And look after her he did. He was by no means an amusing companion.
+Lazy, gentle, and ineffective, Doris quickly perceived that he was
+entirely eclipsed by his wife, who, now that she was relieved of Mrs.
+Meadows, was soon surrounded by a congenial company--the Home Secretary,
+one or two other politicians, the old General, a literary Dean, Lord
+Staines, a great racing man, Arthur Meadows, and one or two more. The
+talk became almost entirely political--with a dash of literature. Doris
+saw at once that Lady Dunstable was the centre of it, and she was not
+long in guessing that it was for this kind of talk that people came to
+Crosby Ledgers. Lady Dunstable, it seemed, was capable of talking like a
+man with men, and like a man of affairs with the men of affairs. Her
+political knowledge was astonishing; so, evidently, was her background
+of family and tradition, interwoven throughout with English political
+history. English statesmen had not only dandled her, they had taught
+her, walked with her, written to her, and--no doubt--flirted with her.
+Doris, as she listened to her, disliked her heartily, and at the same
+time could not help being thrilled by so much knowledge, so much contact
+with history in the making, and by such a masterful way, in a woman,
+with the great ones of the earth. "What a worm she must think me!"
+thought Doris--"what a worm she _does_ think me--and the likes of me!"
+
+At the same time, the spectator must needs admit there was something
+else in Lady Dunstable's talk than mere intelligence or mere
+mannishness. There was undoubtedly something of "the good fellow," and,
+through all her hard hitting, a curious absence--in conversation--of the
+personal egotism she was quite ready to show in all the trifles of life.
+On the present occasion her main object clearly was to bring out Arthur
+Meadows--the new captive of her bow and spear; to find out what was in
+him; to see if he was worthy of her inner circle. Throwing all
+compliment aside, she attacked him hotly on certain statements--certain
+estimates--in his lectures. Her knowledge was personal; the knowledge of
+one whose father had sat in Dizzy's latest Cabinet, while, through the
+endless cousinship of the English landed families, she was as much
+related to the Whig as to the Tory leaders of the past. She talked
+familiarly of "Uncle This" or "Cousin That," who had been apparently the
+idols of her nursery before they had become the heroes of England; and
+Meadows had much ado to defend himself against her store of anecdote and
+reminiscence. "Unfair!" thought Doris, breathlessly watching the contest
+of wits. "Oh, if she weren't a woman, Arthur could easily beat her!"
+
+But she was a woman, and not at all unwilling, when hard pressed, to
+take advantage of that fact.
+
+All the same, Meadows was stirred to most unwonted efforts. He proved to
+be an antagonist worth her steel; and Doris's heart swelled with secret
+pride as she saw how all the other voices died down, how more and more
+people came up to listen, even the young men and maidens,--throwing
+themselves on the grass, around the two disputants. Finally Lady
+Dunstable carried off the honours. Had she not seen Lord Beaconsfield
+twice during the fatal week of his last general election, when England
+turned against him, when his great rival triumphed, and all was lost?
+Had he not talked to her, as great men will talk to the young and
+charming women whose flatteries soften their defeats; so that, from the
+wings, she had seen almost the last of that well-graced actor, caught
+his last gestures and some of his last words?
+
+"Brava, brava!" said Meadows, when the story ceased, although it had
+been intended to upset one of his own most brilliant generalisations;
+and a sound of clapping hands went round the circle. Lady Dunstable, a
+little flushed and panting, smiled and was silent. Meadows, meanwhile,
+was thinking--"How often has she told that tale? She has it by heart.
+Every touch in it has been sharpened a dozen times. All the same--a
+wonderful performance!"
+
+Lord Dunstable, meanwhile, sat absolutely silent, his hat on the back
+of his head, his attention fixed on his wife. As the group broke up, and
+the chairs were pushed back, he said in Doris's ear--"Isn't she an
+awfully clever woman, my wife?"
+
+Before Doris could answer, she heard Lady Dunstable carelessly--but none
+the less peremptorily--inviting her women guests to see their rooms.
+Doris walked by her hostess's side towards the house. Every trace of
+animation and charm had now vanished from that lady's manner. She was as
+languid and monosyllabic as before, and Doris could only feel once again
+that while her clever husband was an eagerly welcomed guest, she herself
+could only expect to reckon as his appendage--a piece of family luggage.
+
+Lady Dunstable threw open the door of a spacious bedroom. "No doubt you
+will wish to rest till dinner," she said, severely. "And of course your
+maid will ask for what she wants." At the word "maid," did Doris dream
+it, or was there a satiric gleam in the hard black eyes? "Pretender," it
+seemed to say--and Doris's conscience admitted the charge.
+
+And indeed the door had no sooner closed on Lady Dunstable before an
+agitated knock announced Jane--in tears.
+
+She stood opposite her mistress in desperation.
+
+"Please, ma'am--I'll have to have an evening dress--or I can't go in to
+supper!"
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" said Doris, staring at her.
+
+"Every maid in this 'ouse, ma'am, 'as got to dress for supper. The maids
+go in the 'ousekeeper's room, an' they've all on 'em got dresses
+V-shaped, or cut square, or something. This black dress, ma'am, won't do
+at all. So I can't have no supper. I couldn't dream, ma'am, of goin' in
+different to the others!"
+
+"You silly creature!" said Doris, springing up. "Look here--I'll lend
+you my spare blouse. You can turn it in at the neck, and wear my white
+scarf. You'll be as smart as any of them!"
+
+And half laughing, half compassionate, she pulled her blouse out of the
+box, adjusted the white scarf to it herself, and sent the bewildered
+Jane about her business, after having shown her first how to unpack her
+mistress's modest belongings, and strictly charged her to return half an
+hour before dinner. "Of course I shall dress myself,--but you may as
+well have a lesson."
+
+The girl went, and Doris was left stormily wondering why she had been
+such a fool as to bring her. Then her sense of humour conquered, and her
+brow cleared. She went to the open window and stood looking over the
+park beyond. Sunset lay broad and rich over the wide stretches of grass,
+and on the splendid oaks lifting their dazzling leaf to the purest of
+skies. The roses in the garden sent up their scent, there was a plashing
+of water from an invisible fountain, and the deer beyond the fence
+wandered in and out of the broad bands of shadow drawn across the park.
+Doris's young feet fidgeted under her. She longed to be out exploring
+the woods and the lake. Why was she immured in this stupid room, to
+which Lady Dunstable had conducted her with a chill politeness which had
+said plainly enough "Here you are--and here you stay!--till dinner!"
+
+"If I could only find a back-staircase," she thought, "I would soon be
+enjoying myself! Arthur, lucky wretch, said something about playing
+golf. No!--there he is!"
+
+And sure enough, on the farthest edge of the lawn going towards the
+park, she saw two figures walking--Lady Dunstable and Arthur! "Deep in
+talk of course--having the best of times--while I am shut up
+here--half-past six!--on a glorious evening!" The reflection, however,
+was, on the whole, good-humoured. She did not feel, as yet, either
+jealous or tragic. Some day, she supposed, if it was to be her lot to
+visit country houses, she would get used to their ways. For Arthur, of
+course, it was useful--perhaps necessary--to be put through his paces by
+a woman like Lady Dunstable. "And he can hold his own. But for me? I
+contribute nothing. I don't belong to them--they don't want me--and what
+use have I for them?"
+
+Her meditations, however, were here interrupted by a knock. On her
+saying "Come in"--the door opened cautiously to admit the face of the
+substantial lady, Miss Field, to whom Doris had been introduced at the
+tea-table.
+
+"Are you resting?" said Miss Field, "or only 'interned'?"
+
+"Oh, please come in!" cried Doris. "I never was less tired in my life."
+
+Miss Field entered, and took the armchair that Doris offered her,
+fronting the open window and the summer scene. Her face would have
+suited the Muse of Mirth, if any Muse is ever forty years of age. The
+small, up-turned nose and full red lips were always smiling; so were the
+eyes; and the fair skin and still golden hair, the plump figure and gay
+dress of flower-sprigged muslin, were all in keeping with the part.
+
+"You have never seen my cousin before?" she inquired.
+
+"Lady Dunstable? Is she your cousin?"
+
+Miss Field nodded. "My first cousin. And I spend a great part of the
+year here, helping in different ways. Rachel can't do without me now, so
+I'm able to keep her in order. Don't ever be shy with her! Don't ever
+let her think she frightens you!--those are the two indispensable rules
+here."
+
+"I'm afraid I should break them," said Doris, slowly. "She does
+frighten me--horribly!"
+
+"Ah, well, you didn't show it--that's the chief thing. You know she's a
+much more human creature than she seems."
+
+"Is she?" Doris's eyes pursued the two distant figures in the park.
+
+"You'd think, for instance, that Lord Dunstable was just a cipher? Not
+at all. He's the real authority here, and when he puts his foot down
+Rachel always gives in. But of course she's stood in the way of his
+career."
+
+Doris shrank a little from these indiscretions. But she could not keep
+her curiosity out of her eyes, and Miss Field smilingly answered it.
+
+"She's absorbed him so! You see he watches her all the time. She's like
+an endless play to him. He really doesn't care for anything else--he
+doesn't want anything else. Of course they're very rich. But he might
+have done something in politics, if she hadn't been so much more
+important than he. And then, naturally, she's made enemies--powerful
+enemies. Her friends come here of course--her old cronies--the people
+who can put up with her. They're devoted to her. And the young
+people--the very modern ones--who think nice manners 'early Victorian,'
+and like her rudeness for the sake of her cleverness. But the
+rest!--What do you think she did at one of these parties last year?"
+
+Doris could not help wishing to know.
+
+"She took a fancy to ask a girl near here--the daughter of a clergyman,
+a great friend of Lord Dunstable's, to come over for the Sunday. Lord
+Dunstable had talked of the girl, and Rachel's always on the look-out
+for cleverness; she hunts it like a hound! She met the young woman too
+somewhere, and got the impression--I can't say how--that she would 'go.'
+So on the Saturday morning she went over in her pony-carriage--broke in
+on the little Rectory like a hurricane--of course you know the people
+about here regard her as something semi-divine!--and told the girl she
+had come to take her back to Crosby Ledgers for the Sunday. So the poor
+child packed up, all in a flutter, and they set off together in the
+pony-carriage--six miles. And by the time they had gone four Rachel had
+discovered she had made a mistake--that the girl wasn't clever, and
+would add nothing to the party. So she quietly told her that she was
+afraid, after all, the party wouldn't suit her. And then she turned the
+pony's head, and drove her straight home again!"
+
+"Oh!" cried Doris, her cheeks red, her eyes aflame.
+
+"Brutal, wasn't it?" said the other. "All the same, there are fine
+things in Rachel. And in one point she's the most vulnerable of women!"
+
+"Her son?" Doris ventured.
+
+Miss Field shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"He doesn't drink--he doesn't gamble--he doesn't spend money--he doesn't
+run away with other people's wives. He's just nothing!--just incurably
+empty and idle. He comes here very little. His mother terrifies him. And
+since he was twenty-one he has a little money of his own. He hangs about
+in studios and theatres. His mother doesn't know any of his friends.
+What she suffers--poor Rachel! She'd have given everything in the world
+for a brilliant son. But you can't wonder. She's like some strong plant
+that takes all the nourishment out of the ground, so that the plants
+near it starve. She can't help it. She doesn't mean to be a vampire!"
+
+Doris hardly knew what to say. Somehow she wished the vampire were not
+walking with Arthur! That, however, was not a sentiment easily
+communicable; and she was just turning it into something else when Miss
+Field said--abruptly, like someone coming to the real point--
+
+"Does your husband like her?"
+
+"Why yes, of course!" stammered Doris. "She's been awfully kind to us
+about the lectures, and--he loves arguing with her."
+
+"She loves arguing with _him_!" 'said Miss Field triumphantly. "She
+lives just for such half-hours as that she gave us on the lawn after
+tea--and all owing to him--he was so inspiring, so stimulating. Oh,
+you'll see, she'll take you up tremendously--if you want to be taken
+up!"
+
+The smiling blue eyes looked gaily into Doris's puzzled countenance.
+Evidently the speaker was much amused by the Meadowses' situation--more
+amused than her sense of politeness allowed her to explain. Doris was
+conscious of a vague resentment.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't see what Lady Dunstable will get out of me," she
+said, drily.
+
+Miss Field raised her eyebrows.
+
+"Are you going then to let him come here alone? She'll be always asking
+you! Oh, you needn't be afraid--" and this most candid of cousins
+laughed aloud. "Rachel isn't a flirt--except of the intellectual kind.
+But she takes possession--she sticks like a limpet."
+
+There was a pause. Then Miss Field added:
+
+"You mustn't think it odd that I say these things about Rachel. I have
+to explain her to people. She's not like anybody else."
+
+Doris did not quite see the necessity, but she kept the reflection to
+herself, and Miss Field passed lightly to the other guests--Sir Luke, a
+tame cat of the house, who quarrelled with Lady Dunstable once a month,
+vowed he would never come near her again, and always reappeared; the
+Dean, who in return for a general submission, was allowed to scold her
+occasionally for her soul's health; the politicians whom she could not
+do without, who were therefore handled more gingerly than the rest; the
+military and naval men who loved Dunstable and put up with his wife for
+his sake; and the young people--nephews and nieces and cousins--who
+liked an unconventional hostess without any foolish notions of
+chaperonage, and always enjoyed themselves famously at Crosby Ledgers.
+
+"Now then," said Miss Field, rising at last, "I think you have the
+_carte du pays_--and there they are, coming back." She pointed to
+Meadows and Lady Dunstable, crossing the lawn. "Whatever you do, hold
+your own. If you don't want to play games, don't play them. If you want
+to go to church to-morrow, go to church. Lady Dunstable of course is a
+heathen. And now perhaps, you might _really_ rest."
+
+"Such a jolly walk!" said Meadows, entering his wife's room flushed
+with exercise and pleasure. "The place is divine, and really Lady
+Dunstable is uncommonly good talk. Hope you haven't been dull, dear?"
+
+Doris replied, laughing, that Miss Field had taken pity on what would
+otherwise have been solitary confinement, and that now it was time to
+dress. Meadows kissed her absently, and, with his head evidently still
+full of his walk, went to his dressing-room. When he reappeared, it was
+to find Doris attired in a little black gown, with which he was already
+too familiar. She saw at once the dissatisfaction in his face.
+
+"I can't help it!" she said, with emphasis. "I did my best with it,
+Arthur, but I'm not a genius at dressmaking. Never mind. Nobody will
+take any notice of me."
+
+He quite crossly rebuked her. She really must spend more on her dress.
+It was unseemly--absurd. She looked as nice as anybody when she was
+properly got up.
+
+"Well, don't buy any more copper coal-scuttles!" she said slyly, as she
+straightened his tie, and dropped a kiss on his chin. "Then we'll see."
+
+They went down to dinner, and on the staircase Meadows turned to say to
+his wife in a lowered voice:
+
+"Lady Dunstable wants me to go to them in Scotland--for two or three
+weeks. I dare say I could do some work."
+
+"Oh, does she?" said Doris.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What perversity drove Lady Dunstable during the evening and the Sunday
+that followed to match every attention that was lavished on Arthur
+Meadows by some slight to his wife, will never be known. But the fact
+was patent. Throughout the diversions or occupations of the forty-eight
+hours' visit, Mrs. Meadows was either ignored, snubbed, or
+contradicted. Only Arthur Meadows, indeed, measuring himself with
+delight, for the first time, against some of the keenest brains in the
+country, failed to see it. His blindness allowed Lady Dunstable to run a
+somewhat dangerous course, unchecked. She risked alienating a man whom
+she particularly wished to attract; she excited a passion of antagonism
+in Doris's generally equable breast, and was quite aware of it.
+Notwithstanding, she followed her whim; and by the Sunday evening there
+existed between the great lady and her guest a state of veiled war, in
+which the strokes were by no means always to the advantage of Lady
+Dunstable.
+
+Doris, for instance, with other guests, expressed a wish to attend
+morning service on Sunday at a famous cathedral some three miles away.
+Lady Dunstable immediately announced that everybody who wished to go to
+church would go to the village church within the park, for which alone
+carriages would be provided. Then Doris and Sir Luke combined, and
+walked to the cathedral, three miles there and three miles back--to the
+huge delight of the other and more docile guests. Sunday evening, again,
+was devastated by what were called "games" at Crosby Ledgers. "Gad, if I
+wouldn't sooner go in for the Indian Civil again!" said Sir Luke. Doris,
+with the most ingratiating manner, but quite firmly, begged to be
+excused. Lady Dunstable bit her lip, and presently, _a propos de
+bottes_, launched some observations on the need of co-operation in
+society. It was shirking--refusing to take a hand, to do one's
+best--false shame, indeed!--that ruined English society and English
+talk. Let everybody take a lesson from the French! After which the lists
+were opened, so to speak, and Lady Dunstable, Meadows, the Dean, and
+about half the young people produced elegant pieces of translation,
+astounding copies of impromptu verse, essays in all the leading styles
+of the day, and riddles by the score. The Home Secretary, who had been
+lassoed by his hostess, escaped towards the middle of the ordeal, and
+wandered sadly into a further room where Doris sat chatting with Lord
+Dunstable. He was carrying various slips of paper in his hand, and asked
+her distractedly if she could throw any light on the question--"Why is
+Lord Salisbury like a poker?"
+
+"I can't think of anything to say," he said helplessly, "except 'because
+they are both upright.' And here's another--'Why is the Pope like a
+thermometer?' I did see some light on that!" His countenance cheered a
+little. "Would this do? 'Because both are higher in Italy than in
+England.' Not very good!--but I must think of something."
+
+Doris put her wits to his. Between them they polished the riddle; but by
+the time it was done the Home Secretary had begun to find Meadows's
+little wife, whose existence he had not noticed hitherto, more agreeable
+than Lady Dunstable's table with its racked countenances, and its too
+ample supply of pencils and paper. A deadly crime! When Lady Dunstable,
+on the stroke of midnight, swept through the rooms to gather her guests
+for bed, she cast a withering glance on Doris and her companion.
+
+"So you despised our little amusements?" she said, as she handed Mrs.
+Meadows her candle.
+
+"I wasn't worthy of them," smiled Doris, in reply.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, I call that a delightful visit!" said Meadows as the train next
+morning pulled out of the Crosby Ledgers station for London. "I feel
+freshened up all over."
+
+Doris looked at him with rather mocking eyes, but said nothing. She
+fully recognised, however, that Arthur would have been an ungrateful
+wretch if he had not enjoyed it. Lady Dunstable had been, so to speak,
+at his feet, and all her little court had taken their cue from her. He
+had been flattered, drawn out, and shown off to his heart's content, and
+had been most naturally and humanly happy. "And I," thought Doris with
+sudden repentance, "was just a spiky, horrid little toad! What was wrong
+with me?" She was still searching, when Meadows said reproachfully:
+
+"I thought, darling, you might have taken a little more trouble to make
+friends with Lady Dunstable. However, that'll be all right. I told her,
+of course, we should be delighted to go to Scotland."
+
+"Arthur!" cried Doris, aghast. "Three weeks! I couldn't, Arthur! Don't
+ask me!"
+
+"And, pray, why?" he angrily inquired.
+
+"Because--oh, Arthur, don't you understand? She is a man's woman. She
+took a particular dislike to me, and I just had to be stubborn and
+thorny to get on at all. I'm awfully sorry--but I _couldn't_ stay with
+her, and I'm certain you wouldn't be happy either."
+
+"I should be perfectly happy," said Meadows, with vehemence. "And so
+would you, if you weren't so critical and censorious. Anyway"--his
+Jove-like mouth shut firmly--"I have promised."
+
+"You couldn't promise for me!" cried Doris, holding her head very high.
+
+"Then you'll have to let me go without you?"
+
+"Which, of course, was what you swore not to do!" she said, provokingly.
+"I thought my wife was a reasonable woman! Lady Dunstable rouses all my
+powers; she gives me ideas which may be most valuable. It is to the
+interest of both of us that I should keep up my friendship with her."
+
+"Then keep it up," said Doris, her cheeks aflame. "But you won't want
+me to help you, Arthur."
+
+He cried out that it was only pride and conceit that made her behave so.
+In her heart of hearts, Doris mostly agreed with him. But she wouldn't
+confess it, and it was presently understood between them that Meadows
+would duly accept the Dunstables' invitation for August, and that Doris
+would stay behind.
+
+After which, Doris looked steadily out of the window for the rest of the
+journey, and could not at all conceal from herself that she had never
+felt more miserable in her life. The only person in the trio who
+returned to the Kensington house entirely happy was Jane, who spent the
+greater part of the day in describing to Martha, the cook-general, the
+glories of Crosby Ledgers, and her own genteel appearance in Mrs.
+Meadows's blouse.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+During the weeks that followed the Meadowses' first visit to Crosby
+Ledgers, Doris's conscience was by no means asleep on the subject of
+Lady Dunstable. She felt that her behaviour in that lady's house, and
+the sudden growth in her own mind of a quite unmanageable dislike, were
+not to be defended in one who prided herself on a general temper of
+coolness and common sense, who despised the rancour and whims of other
+women, hated scenes, and had always held jealousy to be the smallest and
+most degrading of passions. Why not laugh at what was odious, show
+oneself superior to personal slights, and enjoy what could be enjoyed?
+And above all, why grudge Arthur a woman friend?
+
+None of these arguments, however, availed at all to reconcile Doris to
+the new intimacy growing under her eyes. The Dunstables came to town,
+and invitations followed. Mr. and Mrs. Meadows were asked to a large
+dinner-party, and Doris held her peace and went. She found herself at
+the end of a long table with an inarticulate schoolboy of seventeen, a
+ward of Lord Dunstable's, on her left, and with an elderly colonel on
+her right, who, after a little cool examination of her through an
+eyeglass, decided to devote himself to the _debutante_ on his other
+side, a Lady Rosamond, who was ready to chatter hunting and horses to
+him through the whole of dinner. The girl was not pretty, but she was
+fresh and gay, and Doris, tired with "much serving," envied her spirits,
+her evident assumption that the world only existed for her to
+laugh and ride in, her childish unspoken claim to the best of
+everything--clothes, food, amusements, lovers. Doris on her side made
+valiant efforts with the schoolboy. She liked boys, and prided herself
+on getting on with them. But this specimen had no conversation--at any
+rate for the female sex--and apparently only an appetite. He ate
+steadily through the dinner, and seemed rather to resent Doris's
+attempts to distract him from the task. So that presently Doris found
+herself reduced to long tracts of silence, when her fan was her only
+companion, and the watching of other people her only amusement.
+
+Lord and Lady Dunstable faced each other at the sides of the table,
+which was purposely narrow, so that talk could pass across it. Lady
+Dunstable sat between an Ambassador and a Cabinet Minister, but Meadows
+was almost directly opposite to her, and it seemed to be her chief
+business to make him the hero of the occasion. It was she who drew him
+into political or literary discussion with the Cabinet Minister, so that
+the neighbours of each stayed their own talk to listen; she who would
+insist on his repeating "that story you told me at Crosby Ledgers;" who
+attacked him abruptly--rudely even, as she had done in the country--so
+that he might defend himself; and when he had slipped into all her traps
+one after the other, would fall back in her chair with a little
+satisfied smile. Doris, silent and forgotten, could not keep her eyes
+for long from the two distant figures--from this new Arthur, and the
+sallow-faced, dark-eyed witch who had waved her wand over him.
+
+_Wasn't_ she glad to see her husband courted--valued as he
+deserved--borne along the growing stream of fame? What matter, if she
+could only watch him from the bank?--and if the impetuous stream were
+carrying him away from her? No! She wasn't glad. Some cold and deadly
+thing seemed to be twining about her heart. Were they leaving the dear,
+poverty-stricken, debt-pestered life behind for ever, in which, after
+all, they had been so happy: she, everything to Arthur, and he, so
+dependent upon her? No doubt she had been driven to despair, often, by
+his careless, shiftless ways; she had thirsted for success and money;
+just money enough, at least, to get along with. And now success had
+come, and money was coming. And here she was, longing for the old, hard,
+struggling past--hating the advent of the new and glittering future. As
+she sat at Lady Dunstable's table, she seemed to see the little room in
+their Kensington house, with the big hole in the carpet, the piles of
+papers and books, the reading-lamp that would smoke, her work-basket,
+the house-books, Arthur pulling contentedly at his pipe, the
+fire crackling between them, his shabby coat, her shabby
+dress--Bliss!--compared to this splendid scene, with the great Vandycks
+looking down on the dinner-table, the crowd of guests and servants, the
+costly food, the dresses, and the diamonds--with, in the distance, _her_
+Arthur, divided, as it seemed, from her by a growing chasm, never
+remembering to throw her a look or a smile, drinking in a tide of
+flattery he would once have been the first to scorn, captured,
+exhibited, befooled by an unscrupulous, egotistical woman, who would
+drop him like a squeezed orange when he had ceased to amuse her. And the
+worst of it was that the woman was not a mere pretender! She had a fine,
+hard brain,--"as good as Arthur's--nearly--and he knows it. It is that
+which attracts him--and excites him. I can mend his socks; I can listen
+while he reads; and he used to like it when I praised. Now, what I say
+will never matter to him any more; that was just sentiment and nonsense;
+now, he only wants to know what _she_ says;--that's business! He writes
+with her in his mind--and when he has finished something he sends it off
+to her, straight. I may see it when all the world may--but she has the
+first-fruits!"
+
+And in poor Doris's troubled mind the whole scene--save the two central
+figures, Lady Dunstable and Arthur--seemed to melt away. She was not the
+first wife, by a long way, into whose quiet breast Lady Dunstable had
+dropped these seeds of discord. She knew it well by report; but it was
+hateful, both to wifely feeling and natural vanity, that _she_ should
+now be the victim of the moment, and should know no more than her
+predecessors how to defend herself. "Why can't I be cool and
+cutting--pay her back when she is rude, and contradict her when she's
+absurd? She _is_ absurd often. But I think of the right things to say
+just five minutes too late. I have no nerve--that's the point!--only
+_l'esprit d'escalier_ to perfection. And she has been trained to this
+sort of campaigning from her babyhood. No good growling! I shall never
+hold my own!"
+
+Then, into this despairing mood there dropped suddenly a fragment of her
+neighbour, the Colonel's, conversation--"Mrs. So-and-so? Impossible
+woman! Oh, one doesn't mind seeing her graze occasionally at the other
+end of one's table--as the price of getting her husband, don't you
+know?--but--"
+
+Doris's sudden laugh at the Colonel's elbow startled that gentleman so
+that he turned round to look at her. But she was absorbed in the menu,
+which she had taken up, and he could only suppose that something in it
+amused her.
+
+A few days later arrived a letter for Meadows, which he handed to his
+wife in silence. There had been no further discussion of Lady Dunstable
+between them; only a general sense of friction, warnings of hidden fire
+on Doris's side, and resentment on his, quite new in their relation to
+each other. Meadows clearly thought that his wife was behaving very
+badly. Lady Dunstable's efforts on his behalf had already done him
+substantial service; she had introduced him to all kinds of people
+likely to help him, intellectually and financially; and to help him was
+to help Doris. Why would she be such a little fool? So unlike her,
+too!--sensible, level-headed creature that she generally was. But he was
+afraid of losing his own temper, if he argued with her. And indeed his
+lazy easy-goingness loathed argument of this domestic sort, loathed
+scenes, loathed doing anything disagreeable that could be put off.
+
+But here was Lady Dunstable's letter:
+
+    Dear Mr. Arthur,--Will your wife forgive me if I ask you to come to
+    a tiny _men's_ dinner-party next Friday at 8.15--to meet the
+    President of the Duma, and another Russian, an intimate friend of
+    Tolstoy's? All males, but myself! So I hope Mrs. Meadows will let
+    you come.
+
+                              Yours sincerely,
+                                   RACHEL DUNSTABLE.
+
+
+"Of course, I won't go if you don't like it, Doris," said Meadows with
+the smile of magnanimity.
+
+"I thought you were angry with me--once--for even suggesting that you
+might!" Doris's tone was light, but not pleasing to a husband's ears.
+She was busy at the moment in packing up the American proofs of the
+Disraeli lecture, which at last with infinite difficulty she had
+persuaded Meadows to correct and return.
+
+"Well--but of course--this is exceptional!" said Meadows, pacing up and
+down irresolutely.
+
+"Everything's exceptional--in that quarter," said Doris, in the same
+tone. "Oh, go, of course!--it would be a thousand pities not to go."
+
+Meadows at once took her at her word. That was the first of a series of
+"male" dinners, to which, however, it seemed to Doris, if one might
+judge from Arthur's accounts, that a good many female exceptions were
+admitted, no doubt by way of proving the rule. And during July, Meadows
+lunched in town--in the lofty regions of St. James's or Mayfair--with
+other enthusiastic women admirers, most of them endowed with long purses
+and long pedigrees, at least three or four times a week. Doris was
+occasionally asked and sometimes went. But she was suffering all the
+time from an initial discouragement and depression, which took away
+self-reliance, and left her awkwardly conscious. She struggled, but in
+vain. The world into which Arthur was being so suddenly swept was
+strange to her, and in many ways antipathetic; but had she been happy
+and in spirits she could have grappled with it, or rather she could have
+lost herself in Arthur's success. Had she not always been his slave?
+But she was not happy! In their obscure days she had been Arthur's best
+friend, as well as his wife. And it was the old comradeship which was
+failing her; encroached upon, filched from her, by other women; and
+especially by this exacting, absorbing woman, whose craze for Arthur
+Meadows's society was rapidly becoming an amusement and a scandal even
+to those well acquainted with her previous records of the same sort.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The end of July arrived. The Dunstables left town. At a concert, for
+which she had herself sent them tickets, Lady Dunstable met Doris and
+her husband, the night before she departed.
+
+"In ten days we shall expect you at Pitlochry," she said, smiling, to
+Arthur Meadows, as she swept past them in the corridor. Then, pausing,
+she held out a perfunctory hand to Doris.
+
+"And we really can't persuade you to come too?"
+
+The tone was careless and patronising. It brought the sudden red to
+Doris's cheek. For one moment she was tempted to say--"Thank you--since
+you are so kind--after all, why not?"--just that she might see the
+change in those large, malicious eyes--might catch their owner unawares,
+for once. But, as usual, nerve failed her. She merely said that her
+drawing would keep her all August in town; and that London, empty, was
+the best possible place for work. Lady Dunstable nodded and passed on.
+
+The ten days flew. Meadows, kept to it by Doris, was very busy preparing
+another lecture for publication in an English review. Doris, meanwhile,
+got his clothes ready, and affected a uniformly cheerful and indifferent
+demeanour. On Arthur's last evening at home, however, he came suddenly
+into the sitting-room, where Doris was sewing on some final buttons, and
+after fidgeting about a little, with occasional glances at his wife, he
+said abruptly:
+
+"I say, Doris, I won't go if you're going to take it like this."
+
+She turned upon him.
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"Oh, don't pretend!" was the impatient reply. "You know very well that
+you hate my going to Scotland!"
+
+Doris, all on edge, and smarting under the too Jovian look and frown
+with which he surveyed her from the hearthrug, declared that, as it was
+not a case of her going to Scotland, but of his, she was entirely
+indifferent. If he enjoyed it, he was quite right to go. _She_ was going
+to enjoy her work in Uncle Charles's studio.
+
+Meadows broke out into an angry attack on her folly and unkindness. But
+the more he lost his temper, the more provokingly Doris kept hers. She
+sat there, surrounded by his socks and shirts, a trim, determined little
+figure--declining to admit that she was angry, or jealous, or offended,
+or anything of the kind. Would he please come upstairs and give her his
+last directions about his packing? She thought she had put everything
+ready; but there were just a few things she was doubtful about.
+
+And all the time she seemed to be watching another Doris--a creature
+quite different from her real self. What had come over her? If anybody
+had told her beforehand that she could ever let slip her power over her
+own will like this, ever become possessed with this silent, obstinate
+demon of wounded love and pride, never would she have believed them! She
+moved under its grip like an automaton. She would not quarrel with
+Arthur. But as no soft confession was possible, and no mending or
+undoing of what had happened, to laugh her way through the difficult
+hours was all that remained. So that whenever Meadows renewed the
+attempt to "have it out," he was met by renewed evasion and "chaff" on
+Doris's side, till he could only retreat with as much offended dignity
+as she allowed him.
+
+It was after midnight before she had finished his packing. Then, bidding
+him a smiling good night, she fell asleep--apparently--as soon as her
+head touched the pillow.
+
+The next morning, early, she stood on the steps waving farewell to
+Arthur, without a trace of ill-humour. And he, though vaguely
+uncomfortable, had submitted at last to what he felt was her fixed
+purpose of avoiding a scene. Moreover, the "eternal child" in him, which
+made both his charm and his weakness, had already scattered his
+compunctions of the preceding day, and was now aglow with the sheer joy
+of holiday and change. He had worked very hard, he had had a great
+success, and now he was going to live for three weeks in the lap of
+luxury; intellectual luxury first and foremost--good talk, good company,
+an abundance of books for rainy days; but with the addition of a supreme
+_chef_, Lord Dunstable's champagne, and all the amenities of one of the
+best moors in Scotland.
+
+Doris went back into the house, and, Arthur being no longer in the
+neighbourhood, allowed herself a few tears. She had never felt so lonely
+in her life, nor so humiliated. "My moral character is gone," she said
+to herself. "I have no moral character. I thought I was a sensible,
+educated woman; and I am just an ''Arriet,' in a temper with her
+''Arry.' Well--courage! Three weeks isn't long. Who can say that Arthur
+mayn't come back disillusioned? Rachel Dunstable is a born tyrant. If,
+instead of flattering him, she begins to bully him, strange things may
+happen!"
+
+The first week of solitude she spent in household drudgery. Bills had to
+be paid, and there was now mercifully a little money to pay them with.
+Though it was August, the house was to be "spring-cleaned," and Doris
+had made a compact with her sulky maids that when it began she would do
+no more than sleep and breakfast at home. She would spend her days in
+the Campden Hill studio, and sup on a tray--anywhere. On these terms,
+they grudgingly allowed her to occupy her own house.
+
+The studio in which she worked was on the top of Campden Hill, and
+opened into one of the pleasant gardens of that neighbourhood. Her
+uncle, Charles Bentley, an elderly Academician, with an ugly, humorous
+face, red hair, red eyebrows, a black skull-cap, and a general weakness
+for the female sex, was very fond of his niece Doris, and inclined to
+think her a neglected and underrated wife. He was too fond of his own
+comfort, however, to let Meadows perceive this opinion of his; still
+less did he dare express it to Doris. All he could do was to befriend
+her and make her welcome at the studio, to advise her about her
+illustrations, and correct her drawing when it needed it. He himself was
+an old-fashioned artist, quite content to be "mid" or even "early"
+Victorian. He still cultivated the art of historical painting, and was
+still as anxious as any contemporary of Frith to tell a story. And as
+his manner was no less behind the age than his material, his pictures
+remained on his hands, while the "vicious horrors," as they seemed to
+him, of the younger school held the field and captured the newspapers.
+But as he had some private means, and no kith or kin but his niece, the
+indifference of the public to his work caused him little disturbance.
+He pleased his own taste, allowing himself a good-natured contempt for
+the work which supplanted him, coupled with an ever-generous hand for
+any post-Impressionist in difficulties.
+
+On the August afternoon when Doris, escaping at last from her maids and
+her accounts, made her way up to the studio, for some hours' work on the
+last three or four illustrations wanted for a Christmas book, Uncle
+Charles welcomed her with effusion.
+
+"Where have you been, child, all this time? I thought you must have
+flitted entirely."
+
+Doris explained--while she set up her easel--that for the first time in
+their lives she and Arthur had been seeing something of the great world,
+and--mildly--"doing" the season. Arthur was now continuing the season in
+Scotland, while she had stayed at home to work and rest. Throughout her
+talk, she avoided mentioning the Dunstables.
+
+"H'm!" said Uncle Charles, "so you've been junketing!"
+
+Doris admitted it.
+
+"Did you like it?"
+
+Doris put on her candid look.
+
+"I daresay I should have liked it, if I'd made a success of it. Of
+course Arthur did."
+
+"Too much trouble!" said the old painter, shaking his head. "I was in
+the swim, as they call it, for a year or two. I might have stayed there,
+I suppose, for I could always tell a story, and I wasn't afraid of the
+big-wigs. But I couldn't stand it. Dress-clothes are the deuce! And
+besides, talk now is not what it used to be. The clever men who can say
+smart things are too clever to say them. Nobody wants 'em! So let's
+'cultivate our garden,' my dear, and be thankful. I'm beginning a new
+picture--and I've found a topping new model. What can a man want more?
+Very nice of you to let Arthur go, and have his head. Where is
+it?--some smart moor? He'll soon be tired of it."
+
+Doris laughed, let the question as to the "smart moor" pass, and came
+round to look at the new subject that Uncle Charles was laying in. He
+explained it to her, well knowing that he spoke to unsympathetic ears,
+for whatever Doris might draw for her publishers, she was a passionate
+and humble follower of those modern experimentalists who have made the
+Slade School famous. The subject was, it seemed, to be a visit paid to
+Joanna the mad and widowed mother of Charles V., at Tordesillas, by the
+envoys of Henry VII., who were thus allowed by Ferdinand, the Queen's
+father, to convince themselves that the Queen's profound melancholia
+formed an insuperable barrier to the marriage proposals of the English
+King. The figure of the distracted Queen, crouching in white beside a
+window from which she could see the tomb of her dead and adored
+husband, the Archduke Philip, and some of the splendid figures of the
+English embassy, were already sketched.
+
+"I have been fit to hang myself over her!" said Bentley, pointing to the
+Queen. "I tried model after model. At last I've got the very thing! She
+comes to-day for the first time. You'll see her! Before she comes, I
+must scrape out Joanna, so as to look at the thing quite fresh. But I
+daresay I shall only make a few sketches of the lady to-day."
+
+"Who is she, and where did you get her!"
+
+Bentley laughed. "You won't like her, my dear! Never mind. Her
+appearance is magnificent--whatever her mind and morals may be."
+
+And he described how he had heard of the lady from an artist friend who
+had originally seen her at a music-hall, and had persuaded her to come
+and sit to him. The comic haste and relief with which he had now
+transferred her to Bentley lost nothing in Bentley's telling. Of course
+she had "a fiend of a temper." "Wish you joy of her! Oh, don't ask me
+about her! You'll find out for yourself." "I can manage her," said Uncle
+Charles tranquilly. "I've had so many of 'em."
+
+"She is Spanish?"
+
+"Not at all. She is Italian. That is to say, her mother was a
+Neapolitan, the daughter of a jeweller in Hatton Garden, and her father
+an English bank clerk. The Neapolitans have a lot of Spanish blood in
+them--hence, no doubt, the physique."
+
+"And she is a professional model!"
+
+"Nothing of the sort!--though she will probably become one. She is a
+writer--Heaven save the mark!--and I have to pay her vast sums to get
+her. It is the greatest favour."
+
+"A _writer_?"
+
+"Poetess!--and journalist!" said Uncle Charles, enjoying Doris's
+puzzled look. "She sent me her poems yesterday. As to journalism"--his
+eyes twinkled--"I say nothing--but this. Watch her _hats_! She has the
+reputation--in certain circles--of being the best-hatted woman in
+London. All this I get from the man who handed her on to me. As I said
+to him, it depends on what 'London' you mean."
+
+"Married?"
+
+"Oh dear no, though of course she calls herself 'Madame' like the rest
+of them--Madame Vavasour. I have reason, however, to believe that her
+real name is Flink--Elena Flink. And I should say--very much on the
+look-out for a husband; and meanwhile very much courted by boys--who go
+to what she calls her 'evenings.' It is odd, the taste that some youths
+have for these elderly Circes."
+
+"Elderly?" said Doris, busy the while with her own preparations. "I was
+hoping for something young and beautiful!"
+
+"Young?--no!--an unmistakable thirty-five. Beautiful? Well, wait till
+you see her ... H'm--that shoulder won't do!"--Doris had just placed a
+preliminary sketch of one of her "subjects" under his eyes--"and that
+bit of perspective in the corner wants a lot of seeing to. Look here!"
+The old Academician, brought up in the spirit of Ingres--"le dessin,
+c'est la probite!--le dessin, c'est l'honneur!"--fell eagerly to work on
+the sketch, and Doris watched.
+
+They were both absorbed, when there was a knock at the door. Doris
+turned hastily, expecting to see the model. Instead of which there
+entered, in response to Bentley's "Come in!" a girl of four or five and
+twenty, in a blue linen dress and a shady hat, who nodded a quiet "Good
+afternoon" to the artist, and proceeded at once with an air of business
+to a writing-table at the further end of the studio, covered with
+papers.
+
+"Miss Wigram," said the artist, raising his voice, "let me introduce you
+to my niece, Mrs. Meadows."
+
+The girl rose from her chair again and bowed. Then Doris saw that she
+had a charming tired face, beautiful eyes on which she had just placed
+spectacles, and soft brown hair framing her thin cheeks.
+
+"A novelty since you were here," whispered Bentley in Doris's ear.
+"She's an accountant--capital girl! Since these Liberal budgets came
+along, I can't keep my own accounts, or send in my own income-tax
+returns--dash them! So she does the whole business for me--pays
+everything--sees to everything--comes once a week. We shall all be run
+by the women soon!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The studio had grown very quiet. Through some glass doors open to the
+garden came in little wandering winds which played with some loose
+papers on the floor, and blew Doris's hair about her eyes as she stooped
+over her easel, absorbed in her drawing. Apparently absorbed: her
+subliminal mind, at least, was far away, wandering on a craggy Scotch
+moor. A lady on a Scotch pony--she understood that Lady Dunstable often
+rode with the shooters--and a tall man walking beside her, carrying, not
+a gun, but a walking stick:--that was the vision in the crystal. Arthur
+was too bad a shot to be tolerated in the Dunstable circle; had indeed
+wisely announced from the beginning that he was not to be included among
+the guns. All the more time for conversation, the give and take of wits,
+the pleasures of the intellectual tilting-ground; the whole watered by
+good wine, seasoned with the best of cooking, and lapped in the general
+ease of a house where nobody ever thought of such a vulgar thing as
+money except to spend it.
+
+Doris had in general a severe mind as to the rich and aristocratic
+classes. Her own hard and thrifty life had disposed her to see them _en
+noir_. But the sudden rush of a certain section of them to crowd
+Arthur's lectures had been certainly mollifying. If it had not been for
+the Vampire, Doris was well aware that her standards might have given
+way.
+
+As it was, Lady Dunstable's exacting ways, her swoop, straight and
+fierce, on the social morsel she desired, like that of an eagle on the
+sheepfold, had made her, in Doris's sore consciousness, the
+representative of thousands more; all greedy, able, domineering,
+inevitably getting what they wanted, and more than they deserved;
+against whom the starved and virtuous intellectuals of the professional
+classes were bound to contend to the death. The story of that poor girl,
+that clergyman's daughter, for instance--could anything have been more
+insolent--more cruel? Doris burned to avenge her.
+
+Suddenly--a great clatter and noise in the passage leading from the
+small house behind to the studio and garden.
+
+"Here she is!"
+
+Uncle Charles sprang up, and reached the studio door just as a shower of
+knocks descended upon it from outside. He opened it, and on the
+threshold there stood two persons; a stout lady in white, surmounted by
+a huge black hat with a hearse-like array of plumes; and, behind her, a
+tall and willowy youth, with--so far as could be seen through the chinks
+of the hat--a large nose, fair hair, pale blue eyes, and a singular
+deficiency of chin. He carried in his arms a tiny black Spitz with a
+pink ribbon round its neck.
+
+The lady looked, frowning, into the interior of the studio. She held in
+her hand a very large fan, with the handle of which she had been rapping
+the door; and the black feathers with which she was canopied seemed to
+be nodding in her eyes.
+
+"Maestro, you are not alone!" she said in a deep, reproachful voice.
+
+"My niece, Mrs. Meadows--Madame Vavasour," said Bentley, ushering in the
+new-comer.
+
+Doris turned from her easel and bowed, only to receive a rather scowling
+response.
+
+"And your friend?" As he spoke the artist looked blandly at the young
+man.
+
+"I brought him to amuse me, Maestro. When I am dull my countenance
+changes, and you cannot do it justice. He will talk to me--I shall be
+animated--and you will profit."
+
+"Ah, no doubt!" said Bentley, smiling. "And your friend's name?"
+
+"Herbert Dunstable--Honourable Herbert Dunstable!--Signor Bentley," said
+Madame Vavasour, advancing with a stately step into the room, and waving
+peremptorily to the young man to follow.
+
+Doris sat transfixed and staring. Bentley turned to look at his niece,
+and their eyes met--his full of suppressed mirth. The son!--the
+unsatisfactory son! Doris remembered that his name was Herbert. In the
+train of this third-rate sorceress!
+
+Her thoughts ran excitedly to the distant moors, and that magnificent
+lady, with her circle of distinguished persons, holiday-making
+statesmen, peers, diplomats, writers, and the like. Here was a humbler
+scene! But Doris's fancy at once divined a score of links between it and
+the high comedy yonder.
+
+Meanwhile, at the name of Dunstable, the girl accountant in the distance
+had also moved sharply, so as to look at the young man. But in the
+bustle of Madame Vavasour's entrance, and her passage to the sitter's
+chair, the girl's gesture passed unnoticed.
+
+"I'm just worn out, Maestro!" said the model languidly, uplifting a
+pair of tragic eyes to the artist. "I sat up half the night writing. I
+had a subject which tormented me. But I have done something _splendid_!
+Isn't it splendid, Herbert?"
+
+"Ripping!" said the young man, grinning widely.
+
+"Sit down!" said Madame, with a change of tone. And the youth sat down,
+on the very low chair to which she pointed him, doing his best to
+dispose of his long legs.
+
+"Give me the dog!" she commanded. "You have no idea how to hold
+him--poor lamb!"
+
+The dog was handed to her; she took off her enormous hat with many sighs
+of fatigue, and then, with the dog on her lap, asked how she was to sit.
+Bentley explained that he wished to make a few preliminary sketches of
+her head and bust, and proceeded to pose her. She accepted his
+directions with a curious pettishness, as though they annoyed her; and
+presently complained loudly that the chair was uncomfortable, and the
+pose irksome. He handled her, however, with a good-humoured mixture of
+flattery and persuasion, and at last, stepping back, surveyed the
+result--well content.
+
+There was no doubt whatever that she was a very handsome woman, and that
+her physical type--that of the more lethargic and heavily built
+Neapolitan--suggested very happily the mad and melancholy Queen. She had
+superb black hair, eyes profoundly dark, a low and beautiful brow, lips
+classically fine, a powerful head and neck, and a complexion which, but
+for the treatment given it, would have been of a clear and beautiful
+olive. She wore a draggled dress of cream-coloured muslin, very
+transparent over the shoulders, somewhat scandalously wanting at the
+throat and breast, and very frayed and dirty round the skirt. Her feet,
+which were large and plump, were cased in extremely pointed shoes with
+large paste buckles; and as she crossed them on the stool provided for
+them she showed a considerable amount of rather clumsy ankle. The hands
+too were large, common, and ill-kept, and the wrists laden with
+bracelets. She was adorned indeed with a great deal of jewellery,
+including some startling earrings of a bright green stone. The hat,
+which she had carefully placed on a chair beside her, was truly a
+monstrosity!--but, as Doris guessed, an expensive monstrosity, such as
+the Rue de la Paix provides, at anything from a hundred and fifty to two
+hundred and fifty francs, for those of its cosmopolitan customers whom
+it pillages and despises. How did the lady afford it? The rest of her
+dress suggested a struggle with small means, waged by one who was greedy
+for effect, obtained at a minimum of trouble. That she was rouged and
+powdered goes without saying.
+
+And the young man? Doris perceived at once his likeness to his father--a
+feeble likeness. But he was evidently simple and good-natured, and to
+all appearance completely in the power of the enchantress. He fanned her
+assiduously. He picked up all the various belongings--gloves,
+handkerchiefs, handbag--which she perpetually let fall. He ran after the
+dog whenever it escaped from the lady's lap and threatened mischief in
+the studio; and by way of amusing her--the purpose for which he had been
+imported--he kept up a stream of small cryptic gossip about various
+common acquaintances, most of whom seemed to belong to the music-hall
+profession, and to be either "stars" or the satellites of "stars."
+Madame listened to him with avidity, and occasionally broke into a
+giggling laugh. She had, however, two manners, and two kinds of
+conversation, which she adopted with the young man and the Academician
+respectively. Her talk with the youth suggested the jealous ascendency
+of a coarse-minded woman. She occasionally flattered him, but more
+generally she teased or "ragged" him. She seemed indeed to feel him
+securely in her grip; so that there was no need to pose for him,
+as--figuratively as well as physically--she posed for Bentley. To the
+artist she gave her opinions on pictures or books--on the novels of Mr.
+Wells, or the plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw--in the languid or drawling tone
+of accepted authority; dropping every now and then into a broad cockney
+accent, which produced a startling effect, like that of unexpected
+garlic in cookery. Bentley's gravity was often severely tried, and Doris
+altered the position of her own easel so that he and she could not see
+each other. Meanwhile Madame took not the smallest notice of Mr.
+Bentley's niece, and Doris made no advances to the young man, to whom
+her name was clearly quite unknown. Had Circe really got him in her
+toils? Doris judged him soft-headed and soft-hearted; no match at all
+for the lady. The thought of her walking the lawns or the drawing-rooms
+of Crosby Ledgers as the betrothed of the heir stirred in Arthur
+Meadows's wife a silent, and--be it confessed!--a malicious convulsion.
+Such mothers, so self-centred, so set on their own triumphs, with their
+intellectual noses so very much in the clouds, deserved such sons! She
+promised herself to keep her own counsel, and watch the play.
+
+The sitting lasted for two hours. When it was over, Uncle Charles, all
+smiles and satisfaction, went with his visitors to the front door.
+
+He was away some little time, and returned, bubbling, to the studio.
+
+"She's been cross-examining me about her poems! I had to confess I
+hadn't read a word of them. And now she's offered to recite next time
+she comes! Good Heavens--how can I get out of it? I believe, Doris,
+she's hooked that young idiot! She told me she was engaged to him. Do
+you know anything of his people?"
+
+The girl accountant suddenly came forward. She looked flushed and
+distressed.
+
+"I do!" she said, with energy. "Can't somebody stop that? It will break
+their hearts!"
+
+Doris and Uncle Charles looked at her in amazement.
+
+"Whose hearts?" said the painter.
+
+"Lord and Lady Dunstable's."
+
+"You know them?" exclaimed Doris.
+
+"I used to know them--quite well," said the girl, quietly. "My father
+had one of Lord Dunstable's livings. He died last year. He didn't like
+Lady Dunstable. He quarrelled with her, because--because she once did a
+very rude thing to me. But this would be _too_ awful! And poor Lord
+Dunstable! Everybody likes him. Oh--it must be stopped!--it _must_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+When Doris reached home that evening, the little Kensington house, with
+half its carpets up and all but two of its rooms under dust-sheets,
+looked particularly lonely and unattractive. Arthur's study was
+unrecognisable. No cheerful litter anywhere. No smell of tobacco, no
+sign of a male presence! Doris, walking restlessly from room to room,
+had never felt so forsaken, so dismally certain that the best of life
+was done. Moreover, she had fully expected to find a letter from Arthur
+waiting for her; and there was nothing.
+
+It was positively comic that under such circumstances anybody should
+expect her--Doris Meadows--to trouble her head about Lady Dunstable's
+affairs. Of course she would feel it if her son made a ridiculous and
+degrading marriage. But why not?--why shouldn't he come to grief like
+anybody else's son? Why should heaven and earth be moved in order to
+prevent it?--especially by the woman to whose possible jealousy and pain
+Lady Dunstable had certainly never given the most passing thought.
+
+All the same, the distress shown by that odd girl, Miss Wigram, and her
+appeal both to the painter and his niece to intervene and save the
+foolish youth, kept echoing in Doris's memory, although neither she nor
+Bentley had received it with any cordiality. Doris had soon made out
+that this girl, Alice Wigram, was indeed the clergyman's daughter whom
+Lady Dunstable had snubbed so unkindly some twelve months before. She
+was evidently a sweet-natured, susceptible creature, to whom Lord
+Dunstable had taken a fancy, in his fatherly way, during occasional
+visits to her father's rectory, and of whom he had spoken to his wife.
+That Lady Dunstable should have unkindly slighted this motherless girl,
+who had evidently plenty of natural capacity under her shyness, was just
+like her, and Doris's feelings of antagonism to the tyrant were only
+sharpened by her acquaintance with the victim. Why should Miss Wigram
+worry her self? Lord Dunstable? Well, but after all, capable men should
+keep such wives in order. If Lord Dunstable had not been scandalously
+weak, Lady Dunstable would not have become a terror to her sex.
+
+As for Uncle Charles, he had simply declined all responsibility in the
+matter. He had never seen the Dunstables, wouldn't know them from Adam,
+and had no concern whatever in what happened to their son. The situation
+merely excited in him one man's natural amusement at the folly of
+another. The boy was more than of age. Really he and his mother must
+look after themselves. To meddle with the young man's love affairs,
+simply because he happened to visit your studio in the company of a
+lady, would be outrageous. So the painter laughed, shook his head, and
+went back to his picture. Then Miss Wigram, looking despondently from
+the silent Doris to the artist at work, had said with sudden energy, "I
+must find out about her! I'm--I'm sure she's a horrid woman! Can you
+tell me, sir"--she addressed Bentley--"the name of the gentleman who was
+painting her before she came here?"
+
+Bentley had hummed and hawed a little, twisting his red moustache, and
+finally had given the name and address; whereupon Miss Wigram had
+gathered up her papers, some of which had drifted to the floor between
+her table and Doris's easel, and had taken an immediate departure, a
+couple of hours before her usual time, throwing, as she left the
+studio, a wistful and rather puzzled look at Mrs. Meadows.
+
+Doris congratulated herself that she had kept her own counsel on the
+subject of the Dunstables, both with Uncle Charles and Miss Wigram.
+Neither of them had guessed that she had any personal acquaintance with
+them. She tried now to put the matter out of her thoughts. Jane brought
+in a tray for her mistress, and Doris supped meagrely in Arthur's
+deserted study, thinking, as the sunset light came in across the dusty
+street, of that flame and splendour which such weather must be kindling
+on the moors, of the blue and purple distances, the glens of rocky
+mountains hung in air, "the gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme"!
+She remembered how on their September honeymoon they had wandered in
+Ross-shire, how the whole land was dyed crimson by the heather, and how
+impossible it was to persuade Arthur to walk discreetly rather than,
+like any cockney tripper, with his arm round his sweetheart. Scotland
+had not been far behind the Garden of Eden under those circumstances.
+But Arthur was now pursuing the higher, the intellectual joys.
+
+She finished her supper, and then sat down to write to her husband. Was
+she going to tell him anything about the incident of the afternoon? Why
+should she? Why should she give him the chance of becoming more than
+ever Lady Dunstable's friend--pegging out an eternal claim upon her
+gratitude?
+
+Doris wrote her letter. She described the progress of the spring
+cleaning; she reported that her sixth illustration was well forward, and
+that Uncle Charles was wrestling with another historical picture, a
+_machine_ neither better nor worse than all the others. She thought that
+after all Jane would soon give warning; and she, Doris, had spent three
+pounds in petty cash since he went away; how, she could not remember,
+but it was all in her account book.
+
+And she concluded:
+
+    I understand then that we meet at Crewe on Friday fortnight? I have
+    heard of a lodging near Capel Curig which sounds delightful. We
+    might do a week's climbing and then go on to the sea. I really
+    _shall_ want a holiday. Has there not been ten minutes even--since
+    you arrived--to write a letter in?--or a postcard? Shall I send you
+    a few addressed?
+
+Having thus finished what seemed to her the dullest letter she had ever
+written in her life, she looked at it a while, irresolutely, then put it
+in an envelope hastily, addressed, stamped it, and rang the bell for
+Jane to run across the street with it and post it. After which, she sat
+idle a little while with flushed cheeks, while the twilight gathered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gate of the trim front garden swung on its hinges. Doris turned to
+look. She saw, to her astonishment, that the girl-accountant of the
+morning, Miss Wigram, was coming up the flagged path to the house. What
+could she want?
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Meadows--I'm so sorry to disturb you--" said the visitor, in
+some agitation, as Doris, summoned by Jane, entered the dust-sheeted
+drawing-room. "But you dropped an envelope with an address this
+afternoon. I picked it up with some of my papers and never discovered it
+till I got home."
+
+She held out the envelope. Doris took it, and flushed vividly. It was
+the envelope with his Scotch address which Arthur had written out for
+her before leaving home--"care of the Lord Dunstable, Franick Castle,
+Pitlochry, Perthshire, N.B." She had put it in her portfolio, out of
+which it had no doubt slipped while she was at work.
+
+She and Miss Wigram eyed each other. The girl was evidently agitated.
+But she seemed not to know how to begin what she had to say.
+
+Doris broke the silence.
+
+"You were astonished to find that I know the Dunstables?"
+
+"Oh, no!--I didn't think--" stammered her visitor--"I supposed some
+friend of yours might be staying there."
+
+"My husband is staying there," said Doris, quietly. Really it was too
+much trouble to tell a falsehood. Her pride refused.
+
+"Oh, I see!" cried Miss Wigram, though in fact she was more bewildered
+than before. Why should this extraordinary little lady have behaved at
+the studio as if she had never heard of the Dunstables, and be now
+confessing that her husband was actually staying in their house?
+
+Doris smiled--with perfect self-possession.
+
+"Please sit down. You think it odd, of course, that I didn't tell you I
+knew the Dunstables, while we were talking about them. The fact is I
+didn't want to be mixed up with the affair at all. We have only lately
+made acquaintance with the Dunstables. Lady Dunstable is my husband's
+friend. I don't like her very much. But neither of us knows her well
+enough to go and tell her tales about her son."
+
+Miss Wigram considered--her gentle, troubled eyes bent upon Doris. "Of
+course--I know--how many people dislike Lady Dunstable. She did
+a--rather cruel thing to me once. The thought of it humiliated and
+discouraged me for a long time. It made me almost glad to leave home.
+And of course she hasn't won Mr. Herbert's confidence at all. She has
+always snubbed and disapproved of him. Oh, I knew him very little. I
+have hardly ever spoken to him. You saw he didn't recognise me this
+afternoon. But my father used to go over to Crosby Ledgers to coach him
+in the holidays, and he often told me that as a boy he was _terrified_
+of his mother. She either took no notice of him at all, or she was
+always sneering at him, and scolding him. As soon as ever he came of age
+and got a little money of his own, he declared he wouldn't live at home.
+His father wanted him to go into Parliament or the army, but he said he
+hated the army, and if he was such a dolt as his mother thought him it
+would be ridiculous to attempt politics. And so he just drifted up to
+town and looked out for people that would make much of him, and wouldn't
+snub him. And that, of course, was how he got into the toils of a woman
+like that!"
+
+The girl threw up her hands tragically.
+
+Doris sat up, with energy.
+
+"But what on earth," she said, "does it matter to you or to me?"
+
+"Oh, can't you see?" said the other, flushing deeply, and with the tears
+in her eyes. "My father had one of Lord Dunstable's livings. We lived on
+that estate for years. Everybody loved Lord Dunstable. And though Lady
+Dunstable makes enemies, there's a great respect for the _family_.
+They've been there since Queen Elizabeth's time. And it's _dreadful_ to
+think of a woman like--well, like that!--reigning at Crosby Ledgers. I
+think of the poor people. Lady Dunstable's good to them; though of
+course you wouldn't hear anything about it, unless you lived there. She
+tries to do her duty to them--she really does--in her own way. And, of
+course, they _respect_ her. No Dunstable has ever done anything
+disgraceful! Isn't there something in '_Noblesse oblige'? Think_ of this
+woman at the head of that estate!"
+
+"Well, upon my word," said Doris, after a pause, "you _are_ feudal.
+Don't you feel yourself that you are old-fashioned?"
+
+Mrs. Meadows's half-sarcastic look at first intimidated her visitor, and
+then spurred her into further attempts to explain herself.
+
+"I daresay it's old-fashioned," she said slowly, "but I'm sure it's
+what father would have felt. Anyway, I went off to try and find out what
+I could. I went first to a little club I belong to--for professional
+women--near the Strand, and I asked one or two women I found there--who
+know artists--and models--and write for papers. And very soon I found
+out a great deal. I didn't have to go to the man whose address Mr.
+Bentley gave me. Madame Vavasour _is_ a horrid woman! This is not the
+first young man she's fleeced--by a long way. There was a man--younger
+than Mr. Dunstable, a boy of nineteen--three years ago. She got him to
+promise to marry her; and the parents came down, and paid her enormously
+to let him go. Now she's got through all that money, and she boasts
+she's going to marry young Dunstable before his parents know anything
+about it. She's going to make sure of a peerage this time. Oh, she's
+odious! She's greedy, she's vulgar, she's false! And of course"--the
+girl's eyes grew wide and scared--"there may be other things much worse.
+How do we know?"
+
+"How do we know indeed!" said Doris, with a shrug. "Well!"--she turned
+her eyes full upon her guest--"and what are you going to do?"
+
+An eager look met hers.
+
+"Couldn't you--couldn't you write to Mr. Meadows, and ask him to warn
+Lady Dunstable?"
+
+Doris shook her head.
+
+"Why don't you do it yourself?"
+
+The girl flushed uncomfortably. "You see, father quarrelled with her
+about that unkind thing she did to me--oh, it isn't worth telling!--but
+he wrote her an angry letter, and they never spoke afterwards. Lady
+Dunstable never forgives that kind of thing. If people find fault with
+her, she just drops them. I don't believe she'd read a letter from me!"
+
+"_Les offenses_, etc.," said Doris, meditating. "But what are the facts?
+Has the boy actually promised to marry her? She may have been telling
+lies to my uncle."
+
+"She tells everybody so. I saw a girl who knows her quite well. They
+write for the same paper--it's a fashion paper. You saw that hat, by the
+way, she had on? She gets them as perquisites from the smart shops she
+writes about. She has a whole cupboard of them at home, and when she
+wants money she sells them for what she can get. Well, she told me that
+Madame--they all call her Madame, though they all know quite well that
+she's not married, and that her name is Flink--boasts perpetually of her
+engagement. It seems that he was ill in the winter--in his lodgings. His
+mother knew nothing about it--he wouldn't tell her, and Madame nursed
+him, and made a fuss of him. And Mr. Dunstable thought he owed her a
+great deal--and she made scenes and told him she had compromised herself
+by coming to nurse him--and all that kind of nonsense. And at last he
+promised to marry her--in writing. And now she's so sure of him that she
+just bullies him--you saw how she ordered him about to-day."
+
+"Well, why doesn't he marry her, if he's such a fool--why hasn't he
+married her long ago?" cried Doris.
+
+Miss Wigram looked distressed.
+
+"I don't know. My friend thinks it's his father. She believes, at least,
+that he doesn't want to get married without telling Lord Dunstable; and
+that, of course, means telling his mother. And he hates the thought of
+the letters and the scenes. So he keeps it hanging on; and lately Madame
+has been furious with him, and is always teasing and sniffing at him.
+He's dreadfully weak, and my friend's afraid that before he's made up
+his own mind what to do that woman will have carried him off to a
+registry office--and got the horrid thing done for good and all."
+
+There was silence a moment. After which Doris said, with a cold
+decision:
+
+"You can't imagine how absurd it seems to me that you should come and
+ask me to help Lady Dunstable with her son. There is nobody in the world
+less helpless than Lady Dunstable, and nobody who would be less grateful
+for being helped. I really cannot meddle with it."
+
+She rose as she spoke, and Miss Wigram rose too.
+
+"Couldn't you--couldn't you--" said the girl pleadingly--"just ask Mr.
+Meadows to warn Lord Dunstable? I'm thinking of the villagers, and the
+farmers, and the schools--all the people we used to love. Father was
+there twenty years! To think of the dear place given over--some day--to
+that creature!"
+
+Her charming eyes actually filled with tears. Doris was touched, but at
+the same time set on edge. This loyalty that people born and bred in the
+country feel to our English country system--what an absurd and unreal
+frame of mind! And when our country system produces Lady Dunstables!
+
+"They have such a pull!"--she thought angrily--"such a hideously unfair
+pull, over other people! The way everybody rushes to help them when they
+get into a mess--to pick up the pieces--and sweep it all up! It's
+irrational--it's sickening! Let them look after themselves--and pay for
+their own misdeeds like the rest of us."
+
+"I can't interfere--I really can't!" she said, straightening her slim
+shoulders. "It is not as though we were old friends of Lord and Lady
+Dunstable. Don't you see how very awkward it would be? Let me advise
+you just to watch the thing a little, and then to apply to somebody in
+the Crosby Ledgers neighbourhood. You must have some friends or
+acquaintances there, who at any rate could do more than we could. And
+perhaps after all it's a mare's nest, and the young man doesn't mean to
+marry her at all!"
+
+The girl's anxious eyes scanned Doris's unyielding countenance; then
+with a sigh she gave up her attempt, and said "Good-bye." Doris went
+with her to the door.
+
+"We shall meet to-morrow, shan't we?" she said, feeling a vague
+compunction. "And I suppose this woman will be there again. You can keep
+an eye on her. Are you living alone--or are you with friends?"
+
+"Oh, I'm in a boarding-house," said Miss Wigram, hastily. Then as though
+she recognised the new softness in Doris's look, she added, "I'm quite
+comfortable there--and I've a great deal of work. Good night."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"All alone!--with that gentle face--and that terrible amount of
+conscience--hard lines!" thought Doris, as she reflected on her visitor.
+"I felt a black imp beside her!"
+
+All the same, the letter which Mrs. Meadows received by the following
+morning's post was not at all calculated to melt the "black imp"
+further. Arthur wrote in a great hurry to beg that she would not go on
+with their Welsh plans--for the moment.
+
+    Lady D---- has insisted on my going on a short yachting cruise with
+    her and Miss Field, the week after next. She wants to show me the
+    West Coast, and they have a small cottage in the Shetlands where we
+    should stay a night or two and watch the sea-birds. It _may_ keep me
+    away another week or fortnight, but you won't mind, dear, will you?
+    I am getting famously rested, and really the house is very
+    agreeable. In these surroundings Lady Dunstable is less of the
+    _bas-bleu_, and more of the woman. You _must_ make up your mind to
+    come another year! You would soon get over your prejudice and make
+    friends with her. She looks after us all--she talks brilliantly--and
+    I haven't seen her rude to anybody since I arrived. There are some
+    very nice people here, and altogether I am enjoying it. Don't you
+    work too hard--and don't let the servants harry you. Post just
+    going. Good night!
+
+Another week or fortnight!--five weeks, or nearly, altogether. Doris was
+sorely wounded. She went to look at herself in the mirror over the
+chimney-piece. Was she not thin and haggard for want of rest and
+holiday? Would not the summer weather be all done by the time Arthur
+graciously condescended to come back to her? Were there not dark lines
+under her eyes, and was she not feeling a limp and wretched creature,
+unfit for any exertion? What was wrong with her? She hated her
+drawing--she hated everything. And there was Arthur, proposing to go
+yachting with Lady Dunstable!--while she might toil and moil--all
+alone--in this August London! The tears rushed into her eyes. Her pride
+only just saved her from a childish fit of crying.
+
+But in the end resentment came to her aid, together with an angry and
+redoubled curiosity as to what might be happening to Lady Dunstable's
+precious son while Lady Dunstable was thus absorbed in robbing other
+women of their husbands. Doris hurried her small household affairs, that
+she might get off early to the studio; and as she put on her hat, her
+fancy drew vindictive pictures of the scene which any day might
+realise--the scene at Franick Castle, when Lady Dunstable, unsuspecting,
+should open the letter which announced to her the advent of her
+daughter-in-law, Elena, _nee_ Flink--or should gather the same unlovely
+fact from a casual newspaper paragraph. As for interfering between her
+and her rich deserts, Doris vowed to herself she would not lift a
+finger. That incredibly forgiving young woman, Miss Wigram, might do as
+she pleased. But when a mother pursues her own selfish ends so as to
+make her only son dislike and shun her, let her take what comes. It was
+in the mood of an Erinnys that Doris made her way northwards to Campden
+Hill, and nobody perceiving the slight erect figure in the corner of the
+omnibus could possibly have guessed at the storm within.
+
+The August day was hot and lifeless. Heat mist lay over the park, and
+over the gardens on the slopes of Campden Hill. Doris could hardly drag
+her weary feet along, as she walked from where the omnibus had set her
+down to her uncle's studio. But it was soon evident that within the
+studio itself there was animation enough. From the long passage
+approaching it Doris heard someone shouting--declaiming--what appeared
+to be verse. Madame, of course, reciting her own poems--poor Uncle
+Charles! Doris stopped outside the door, which was slightly open, to
+listen, and heard these astonishing lines--delivered very slowly and
+pompously, in a thick, strained voice:
+
+     "My heart is adamant! The tear-drops drip and drip--
+     Force their slow path, and tear their desperate way.
+     The vulture Pain sits close, to snip--and snip--and snip
+     My sad, sweet life to ruin--well-a-day!
+     I am deceived--a bleating lamb bereft!--who goes
+     Baa-baaing to the moon o'er lonely lands.
+     Through all my shivering veins a tender fervour flows;
+     I cry to Love--'Reach out, my Lord, thy hands!
+     And save me from these ugly beasts who ramp and rage
+     Around me all day long--beasts fell and sore--
+     Envy, and Hate, and Calumny!--do thou assuage
+     Their impious mouths, O splendid Love, and floor
+     Their hideous tactics, and their noisome spleen,
+     Withering to dust the awful "Might-Have-Been!"'"
+
+"Goodness! 'Howls the Sublime' indeed!" thought Doris, gurgling with
+laughter in the passage. As soon as she had steadied her face she opened
+the studio door, and perceived Lady Dunstable's prospective
+daughter-in-law standing in the middle of the studio, head thrown back
+and hands outstretched, invoking the Cyprian. The shriek of the first
+lines had died away in a stage whisper; the reciter was glaring fiercely
+into vacancy.
+
+Doris's merry eyes devoured the scene. On the chair from which the model
+had risen she had deposited yet another hat, so large, so audacious and
+beplumed that it seemed to have a positive personality, a positive
+swagger of its own, and to be winking roguishly at the audience.
+Meanwhile Madame's muslin dress of the day before had been exchanged for
+something more appropriate to the warmth of her poetry--a tawdry
+flame-coloured satin, in which her "too, too solid" frame was tightly
+sheathed. Her coal-black hair, tragically wild, looked as though no comb
+had been near it for a month, and the gloves drawn half-way up the bare
+arms hardly remembered they had ever been white.
+
+A slovenly, dishevelled, vulgar woman, reciting bombastic nonsense! And
+yet!--a touch of Southern magnificence, even of Southern grace, amid the
+cockney squalor and finery. Doris coolly recognised it, as she stood,
+herself invisible, behind her uncle's large easel. Thence she perceived
+also the other persons in the studio:--Bentley sitting in front of the
+poetess, hiding his eyes with one hand, and nervously tapping the arm of
+his chair with the other; to the right of him--seen sideways--the lanky
+form, flushed face, and open mouth of young Dunstable; and in the far
+distance, Miss Wigram.
+
+Then--a surprising thing! The awkward pause following the recitation was
+suddenly broken by a loud and uncontrollable laugh. Doris, startled,
+turned to look at young Dunstable. For it was he who had laughed. Madame
+also shook off her stage trance to look--a thunderous frown upon her
+handsome face. The young man laughed on--laughed hysterically--burying
+his face in his hands. Madame Vavasour--all attitudes thrown aside--ran
+up to him in a fury.
+
+"Why are you laughing? You insult me!--you have done it before. And now
+before strangers--it is too much! I insist that you explain!"
+
+She stood over him, her eyes blazing. The youth, still convulsed, did
+his best to quiet the paroxysm which had seized him, and at last said,
+gasping:
+
+"I was--I was thinking--of your reciting that at Crosby Ledgers--to my
+mother--and--and what she would say."
+
+Even under her rouge it could be seen that the poetess turned a grey
+white.
+
+"And pray--what would she say?"
+
+The question was delivered with apparent calm. But Madame's eyes were
+dangerous. Doris stepped forward. Her uncle stayed her with a gesture.
+He himself rose, but Madame fiercely waved him aside. Miss Wigram, in
+the distance, had also moved forward--and paused.
+
+"What would she say?" demanded Madame, again--at the sword's point.
+
+"I--I don't know--" said young Dunstable, helplessly, still shaking.
+"I--I think--she'd laugh."
+
+And he went off again, hysterically, trying in vain to stop the fit.
+Madame bit her lip. Then came a torrent of Italian--evidently a torrent
+of abuse; and then she lifted a gloved hand and struck the young man
+violently on the cheek.
+
+"Take that!--you insolent--you--you barbarian! You are my _fiance_,--my
+promised husband--and you mock at me; you will encourage your stuck-up
+mother to mock at me--I know you will! But I tell you--"
+
+The speaker, however, had stopped abruptly, and instead of saying
+anything more she fell back panting, her eyes on the young man. For
+Herbert Dunstable had risen. At the blow, an amazing change had passed
+over his weak countenance and weedy frame. He put his hand to his
+forehead a moment, as though trying to collect his thoughts, and then he
+turned--quietly--to look for his hat and stick.
+
+"Where are you going, Herbert?" stammered Madame. "I--I was carried
+away--I forgot myself!"
+
+"I think not," said the young man, who was extremely pale. "This is not
+the first time. I bid you good morning, Madame--and good-bye!"
+
+He stood looking at the now frightened woman, with a strange, surprised
+look, like one just emerging from a semi-conscious state; and in that
+moment, as Doris seemed to perceive, the traditions of his birth and
+breeding had returned upon him; something instinctive and inherited had
+reappeared; and the gentlemanly, easy-going father, who yet, as Doris
+remembered, when matters were serious "always got his way," was
+there--strangely there--in the degenerate son.
+
+"Where are you going?" repeated Madame, eyeing him. "You promised to
+give me lunch."
+
+"I regret--I have an engagement. Mr. Bentley--when the sitting is
+over--will you kindly see--Miss Flink--into a taxi? I thank you very
+much for allowing me to come and watch your work. I trust the picture
+will be a success. Good-bye!"
+
+He held out his hand to Bentley, and bowed to Doris. Madame made a rush
+at him. But Bentley held her back. He seized her arms, indeed, quietly
+but irresistibly, while the young man made his retreat. Then, with a
+shriek, Madame fell back on her chair, pretending to faint, and Bentley,
+in no hurry, went to her assistance, while Doris slipped out after young
+Dunstable. She overtook him on the door-step.
+
+"Mr. Dunstable, may I speak to you?"
+
+He turned in astonishment, showing a grim pallor which touched her pity.
+
+"I know your mother and father," said Doris hurriedly; "at least my
+husband and I were staying at Crosby Ledges some weeks ago, and my
+husband is now in Scotland with your people. His name is Arthur Meadows.
+I am Mrs. Meadows. I--I don't know whether I could help you. You
+seem"--her smile flashed out--"to be in a horrid mess!"
+
+The young man looked in perplexity at the small, trim lady before him,
+as though realising her existence for the first time. Her honest eyes
+were bent upon him with the same expression she had often worn when
+Arthur had come to her with some confession of folly--the expression
+which belongs to the maternal side of women, and is at once mocking and
+sweet. It said--"Of course you are a great fool!--most men are. But
+that's the _raison d'etre_ of women! Suppose we go into the business!"
+
+"You're very kind--" he groaned--"awfully kind. I'm ashamed you should
+have seen--such a thing. Nobody can help me--thank you very much. I am
+engaged to that lady--I've promised to marry her. Oh, she's got any
+amount of evidence. I've been an ass--and worse. But I can't get out of
+it. I don't mean to try to get out of it. I promised of my own free
+will. Only I've found out now I can never live with her. Her temper is
+fiendish. It degrades her--and me. But you saw! She has made my life a
+burden to me lately, because I wouldn't name a day for us to be married.
+I wanted to see my father quietly first--without my mother knowing--and
+I have been thinking how to manage it--and funking it of course--I
+always do funk things. But what she did just now has settled it--it has
+been blowing up for a long time. I shall marry her--at a registry
+office--as soon as possible. Then I shall separate from her, and--I
+hope--never see her again. The lawyers will arrange that--and money!
+Thank you--it's awfully good of you to want to help me--but you
+can't--nobody can."
+
+Doris had drawn her companion into her uncle's small dining-room and
+closed the door. She listened to his burst of confidence with a puzzled
+concern.
+
+"Why must you marry her?" she said abruptly, when he paused. "Break it
+off! It would be far best."
+
+"No. I promised. I--" he stammered a little--"I seem to have done her
+harm--her reputation, I mean. There is only one thing could let me off.
+She swore to me that--well!--that she was a good woman--that there was
+nothing in her past--you understand--"
+
+"And you know of nothing?" said Doris, gravely.
+
+"Nothing. And you don't think I'm going to try and ferret out things
+against her!" cried the youth, flushing. "No--I must just bear it."
+
+"It's your parents that will have to bear it!"
+
+His face hardened.
+
+"My mother might have prevented it," he said bitterly. "However, I won't
+go into that. My father will see I couldn't do anything else. I'd better
+get it over. I'm going to my lawyers now. They'll take a few days over
+what I want."
+
+"You'll tell your father?"
+
+"I--I don't know," he said, irresolutely. She noticed that he did not
+try to pledge her not to give him away. And she, on her side, did not
+threaten to do so. She argued with him a little more, trying to get at
+his real thoughts, and to straighten them out for him. But it was
+evident he had made up such mind as he had, and that his sudden
+resolution--even the ugly scene which had made him take it--had been a
+relief. He knew at last where he stood.
+
+So presently Doris let him go. They parted, liking each other decidedly.
+He thanked her warmly--though drearily--for taking an interest in him,
+and he said to her on the threshold:
+
+"Some day, I hope, you'll come to Crosby Ledgers again, Mrs.
+Meadows--and I'll be there--for once! Then I'll tell you--if you
+care--more about it. Thanks awfully! Good-bye."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later on, when "Miss Flink," in a state of sulky collapse, had been sent
+home in her taxi, Doris, Bentley, and Miss Wigram held a conference. But
+it came to little. Bentley, the hater of "rows," simply could not be
+moved to take the thing up. "I kept her from scalping him!--" he
+laughed--"and I'm not due for any more!" Doris said little. A whirl of
+arguments and projects were in her mind. But she kept her own counsel
+about them. As to the possibility of inducing the man to break it off,
+she repeated the only condition on which it could be done; at which
+Uncle Charles laughed, and Alice Wigram fell into a long and thoughtful
+silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doris arrived at home rather early. What with the emotions of the day,
+the heat, and her work, she was strangely tired and over-done. After tea
+she strolled out into Kensington Gardens, and sat under the shade of
+trees already autumnal, watching the multitude of children--children of
+the people--enjoying the nation's park all to themselves, in the
+complete absence of their social betters. What ducks they were, some of
+them--the little, grimy, round-faced things--rolling on the grass, or
+toddling after their sisters and brothers. They turned large,
+inquisitive eyes upon her, which seemed to tease her heart-strings.
+
+And suddenly,--it was in Kensington Gardens that out of the heart of a
+long and vague reverie there came a flash--an illumination--which wholly
+changed the life and future of Doris Meadows. After the thought in which
+it took shape had seized upon her, she sat for some time motionless;
+then rising to her feet, tottering a little, like one in bewilderment,
+she turned northwards, and made her way hurriedly towards Lancaster
+Gate. In a house there, lived a lady, a widowed lady, who was Doris's
+godmother, and to whom Doris--who had lost her own mother in her
+childhood--had turned for counsel before now. How long it was since she
+had seen "Cousin Julia"!--nearly two months. And here she was, hastening
+to her, and not able to bear the thought that in all human probability
+Cousin Julia was not in town.
+
+But, by good luck, Doris found her godmother, perching in London between
+a Devonshire visit and a Scotch one. They talked long, and Doris walked
+slowly home across the park. A glory of spreading sun lay over the
+grassy glades; the Serpentine held reflections of a sky barred with
+rose; London, transfigured, seemed a city of pearl and fire. And in
+Doris's heart there was a glory like that of the evening,--and, like the
+burning sky, bearing with it a promise of fair days to come. The glory
+and the promise stole through all her thoughts, softening and
+transmuting everything.
+
+"When _he_ grows up--if he were to marry such a woman--and I didn't
+know--if all _his_ life--and mine--were spoilt--and nobody said a word!"
+
+Her eyes filled with tears. She seemed to be walking with Arthur through
+a world of beauty, hand in hand.
+
+How many hours to Pitlochry? She ran into the Kensington house, asking
+for railway guides, and peremptorily telling Jane to get down the small
+suitcase from the box-room at once.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"'Barbarians, Philistines, Populace!'"
+
+The young golden-haired man of letters who was lounging on the grass
+beside Arthur Meadows repeated the words to himself in an absent voice,
+turning over the pages meanwhile of a book lying before him, as though
+in search of a passage he had noticed and lost. He presently found it
+again, and turned laughing towards Meadows, who was trifling with a
+French novel.
+
+"Do you remember this passage in _Culture and Anarchy_--'I often,
+therefore, when I want to distinguish clearly the aristocratic class
+from the Philistines proper, or middle class, name the former, in my own
+mind, _the Barbarians_. And when I go through the country, and see this
+or that beautiful and imposing seat of theirs crowning the landscape,
+"There," I say to myself, "is a great fortified post of the
+Barbarians!"'"
+
+The youth pointed smiling to the fine Scotch house seen sideways on the
+other side of the lawn. Its turreted and battlemented front rose high
+above the low and spreading buildings which made the bulk of the house,
+so that it was a feudal castle--by no means, however, so old as it
+looked--on a front view, and a large and roomy villa from the rear.
+Meadows, looking at it, appreciated the fitness of the quotation, and
+laughed in response.
+
+"Ungrateful wretch," he said--"after that dinner last night!"
+
+"All the same, Matthew Arnold had that dinner in mind--_chef_ and all!
+Listen! 'The graver self of the Barbarian likes honours and
+consideration; his more relaxed self, field-sports and pleasures.'
+Isn't it exact? Grouse-driving in the morning--bridge, politics,
+Cabinet-making, and the best of food in the evening. And I should put
+our hostess very high--wouldn't you?--among the chatelaines of the
+'great fortified posts'?"
+
+Meadows assented, but rather languidly. The day was extremely hot; he
+was tired, moreover, by a long walk with the guns the day before, and by
+conversation after dinner, led by Lady Dunstable, which had lasted up to
+nearly one o'clock in the morning. The talk had been brilliant, no
+doubt. Meadows, however, did not feel that he had come off very well in
+it. His hostess had deliberately pitted him against two of the ablest
+men in England, and he was well aware that he had disappointed her. Lady
+Dunstable had a way of behaving to her favourite author or artist of the
+moment as though she were the fancier and he the cock. She fought him
+against the other people's cocks with astonishing zeal and passion; and
+whenever he failed to kill, or lost too many feathers in the process,
+her annoyance was evident.
+
+Meadows was in truth becoming a little tired of her dictation, although
+it was only ten days since he had arrived under her roof. There was a
+large amount of lethargy combined with his ability; and he hated to be
+obliged to live at any pace but his own. But Rachel Dunstable was an
+imperious friend, never tired herself, apparently, either in mind or
+body; and those who could not walk, eat, and talk to please her were apt
+to know it. Her opinions too, both political and literary, were in some
+directions extremely violent; and though, in general, argument and
+contradiction gave her pleasure, she had her days and moods, and Meadows
+had already suffered occasional sets-down, of a kind to which he was not
+accustomed.
+
+But if he was--just a little--out of love with his new friend, in all
+other respects he was enjoying himself enormously. The long days on the
+moors, the luxurious life indoors, the changing and generally agreeable
+company, all the thousand easements and pleasures that wealth brings
+with it, the skilled service, the motors, the costly cigars, the
+wines--there was a Sybarite in Meadows which revelled in them all. He
+had done without them; he would do without them again; but there they
+were exceedingly good creatures of God, while they lasted; and only the
+hypocrites pretended otherwise. His sympathy, in the old
+poverty-stricken days, would have been all with the plaintive
+American--"There's d-----d good times in the world, and I ain't in
+'em."
+
+All the same, the fleshpots of Pitlochry had by no means put his wife
+out of his mind. His incurable laziness and procrastination in small
+things had led him to let slip post after post; but that very morning,
+at any rate, he had really written her a decent letter. And he was
+beginning to be anxious to hear from her about the yachting plan. If
+Lady Dunstable had asked him a few days later, he was not sure he would
+have accepted so readily. After all, the voyage might be stormy, and the
+lady--difficult. Doris must be dull in London,--"poor little cat!"
+
+But then a very natural wrath returned upon him. Why on earth had she
+stayed behind? No doubt Lady Dunstable was formidable, but so was Doris
+in her own way. "She'd soon have held her own. Lady D. would have had to
+come to terms!" However, he remembered with some compunction that Doris
+did seem to have been a good deal neglected at Crosby Ledgers, and that
+he had not done much to help her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was an "off" day for the shooters, and Lady Dunstable's guests were
+lounging about the garden, writing letters or playing a little leisurely
+golf on the lower reaches of the moor. Some of the ladies, indeed, had
+not yet appeared downstairs; a sleepy heat reigned over the valley with
+its winding stream, and veiled the distant hills. Meadows's companion,
+Ralph Barrow, a young novelist of promise, had gone fast asleep on the
+grass; Meadows was drowsing over his book; the dogs slept on the terrace
+steps; and in the summer silence the murmur of the river far below stole
+up the hill on which the house stood, and its soft song held the air.
+
+Suddenly there was a disturbance. The dogs sprang up and barked. There
+was a firm step on the gravel. Lady Dunstable, stick in hand, her short
+leather-bound skirt showing boots and gaiters of the most business-like
+description, came quickly towards the seat on which Meadows sat.
+
+"Mr. Meadows, I summon you for a walk! Sir Luke and Mr. Frome are
+coming. We propose to get to the tarn and back before lunch."
+
+The tarn was at least two miles away, a stiff climb over difficult moor.
+Meadows, startled from something very near sleep, looked up, and a
+spirit of revolt seized upon him, provoked by the masterful tone and
+eyes of the lady.
+
+"Very sorry, Lady Dunstable!--but I must write some letters before
+luncheon."
+
+"Oh no!--put them off! I have been thinking of what you told me
+yesterday of your scheme for your new set of lectures. I have a great
+deal to say to you about it."
+
+"I really shouldn't be worth talking to now," laughed Meadows; "this
+heat has made me so sleepy. To-night--or after tea--by all means!"
+
+Lady Dunstable looked annoyed.
+
+"I am expecting the Duke's party at tea," she said peremptorily. "This
+will be my only chance to-day."
+
+"Then let's put it off--till to-morrow!" said Meadows, as he rose, still
+smiling. "It is most kind of you, but I really must write my letters,
+and my brains are pulp. But I will escort you through the garden, if I
+may."
+
+His hostess turned sharply, and walked back towards the front of the
+house where Sir Luke and Mr. Frome, a young and rising Under-Secretary,
+were waiting for her. Meadows accompanied her, but found her exceedingly
+ungracious. She did, however, inform him, as they followed the other two
+towards the exit from the garden, that she had come to the conclusion
+that the subject he was proposing for his second series of lectures, to
+be given at Dunstable House during the winter, "would never do."
+
+"Famous Controversies of the Nineteenth Century--political and
+religious." The very sound of it was enough to keep people away! "What
+people expect from you is talk about _persons_--not ideas. Ideas are not
+your line!"
+
+Meadows flushed a little. What his "line" might be, he said, he had not
+yet discovered. But he liked his subject, and meant to stick to it.
+
+Lady Dunstable turned on him a pair of sarcastic eyes.
+
+"That's so like you clever people. You would die rather than take
+advice."
+
+"Advice!--yes. As much as you like, dear lady. But--"
+
+"But what--" she asked, imperatively, nettled in her turn.
+
+"Well--you must put it prettily!" said Meadows, smiling. "We want a
+great deal of jam with the powder."
+
+"You want to be flattered? I never flatter! It is the most despicable of
+arts."
+
+"On the contrary--one of the most skilled. And I have heard you do it to
+perfection."
+
+His daring half irritated, half amused her. It was her turn to flush.
+Her thin, sallow face and dark eyes lit up vindictively.
+
+"One should never remind one's friends of their vices," she said with
+animation.
+
+"Ah--if they _are_ vices! But flattery is merely a virtue out of
+place--kindness gone wrong. From the point of view of the moralist, that
+is. From the point of view of the ordinary mortal, it is what no
+men--and few women--can do without!"
+
+She smiled grimly, enjoying the spar. They carried it on a little while,
+Meadows, now fairly on his mettle, administering a little deft though
+veiled castigation here and there, in requital for various acts of
+rudeness of which she had been guilty towards him and others during the
+preceding days. She grew restive occasionally, but on the whole she bore
+it well. Her arrogance was not of the small-minded sort; and the best
+chance with her was to defy her.
+
+At the gate leading on to the moor, Meadows resolutely came to a stop.
+
+"Your letters are the merest excuse!" said Lady Dunstable. "I don't
+believe you will write one of them! I notice you always put off
+unpleasant duties."
+
+"Give me credit at least for the intention."
+
+Smiling, he held the gate open for her, and she passed through,
+discomfited, to join Sir Luke on the other side. Mr. Frome, the
+Under-Secretary, a young man of Jewish family and amazing talents, who
+had been listening with amusement to the conversation behind him, turned
+back to say to Meadows, at a safe distance--"Keep it up!--Keep it up!
+You avenge us all!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently, as she and her two companions wound slowly up the moor, Sir
+Luke Malford, who had only arrived the night before, inquired gaily of
+his hostess:
+
+"So she wouldn't come?--the little wife?"
+
+"I gave her every chance. She scorned us."
+
+"You mean--'she funked us.' Have you any idea, I wonder, how alarming
+you are?"
+
+Lady Dunstable exclaimed impatiently:
+
+"People represent me as a kind of ogre. I am nothing of the kind. I only
+expect everybody to play up."
+
+"Ah, but you make the rules!" laughed Sir Luke. "I thought that young
+woman might have been a decided acquisition."
+
+"She hadn't the very beginnings of a social gift," declared his
+companion. "A stubborn and rather stupid little person. I am much afraid
+she will stand in her husband's way."
+
+"But suppose you blow up a happy home, by encouraging him to come
+without her? I bet anything she is feeling jealous and ill-used. You
+ought--I am sure you ought--to have a guilty conscience; but you look
+perfectly brazen!"
+
+Sir Luke's banter was generally accepted with indifference, but on this
+occasion it provoked Lady Dunstable. She protested with vehemence that
+she had given Mrs. Meadows every chance, and that a young woman who was
+both trivial and conceited could not expect to get on in society. Sir
+Luke gathered from her tone that she and Mrs. Meadows had somewhat
+crossed swords, and that the wife might look out for consequences. He
+had been a witness of this kind of thing before in Lady Dunstable's
+circle; and he was conscious of a passing sympathy with the
+pleasant-faced little woman he remembered at Crosby Ledgers. At the same
+time he had been Rachel Dunstable's friend for twenty years; originally,
+her suitor. He spent a great part of his life in her company, and her
+ways seemed to him part of the order of things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile Meadows walked back to the house. He had been a good deal
+nettled by Lady Dunstable's last remark to him. But he had taken pains
+not to show it. Doris might say such things to him--but no one else.
+They were, of course, horribly true! Well--quarrelling with Lady
+Dunstable was amusing enough--when there was room to escape her. But how
+would it be in the close quarters of a yacht?
+
+On his way through the garden he fell in with Miss Field--Mattie Field,
+the plump and smiling cousin of the house, who was apparently as
+necessary to the Dunstables in the Highlands, as in London, or at Crosby
+Ledgers. Her role in the Dunstable household seemed to Meadows to be
+that of "shock absorber." She took all the small rubs and jars on her
+own shoulders, so that Lady Dunstable might escape them. If the fish did
+not arrive from Edinburgh, if the motor broke down, if a gun failed, or
+a guest set up influenza, it was always Miss Field who came to the
+rescue. She had devices for every emergency. It was generally supposed
+that she had no money, and that the Dunstables made her residence with
+them worth while. But if so, she had none of the ways of the poor
+relation. On the contrary, her independence was plain; she had a very
+free and merry tongue; and Lady Dunstable, who snubbed everybody, never
+snubbed Mattie Field. Lord Dunstable was clearly devoted to her.
+
+She greeted Meadows rather absently.
+
+"Rachel didn't carry you off? Oh, then--I wonder if I may ask you
+something?"
+
+Meadows assured her she might ask him anything.
+
+"I wonder if you will save yourself for a walk with Lord Dunstable.
+Will you ask him? He's very low, and you would cheer him up."
+
+Meadows looked at her interrogatively. He too had noticed that Lord
+Dunstable had seemed for some days to be out of spirits.
+
+"Why do people have sons!" said Miss Field, briskly.
+
+Meadows understood the reference. It was common knowledge among the
+Dunstables' friends that their son was anything but a comfort to them.
+
+"Anything particularly wrong?" he asked her in a lowered voice, as they
+neared the house. At the same time, he could not help wondering whether,
+under all circumstances--if her nearest and dearest were made mincemeat
+in a railway accident, or crushed by an earth-quake--this fair-haired,
+rosy-cheeked lady would still keep her perennial smile. He had never yet
+seen her without it.
+
+Miss Field replied in a joking tone that Lord Dunstable was depressed
+because the graceless Herbert had promised his parents a visit--a whole
+week--in August, and had now cried off on some excuse or other. Meadows
+inquired if Lady Dunstable minded as much as her husband.
+
+"Quite!" laughed Miss Field. "It is not so much that she wants to see
+Herbert as that she's found someone to marry him to. You'll see the lady
+this afternoon. She comes with the Duke's party, to be looked at."
+
+"But I understand that the young man is by no means manageable?"
+
+Miss Field's amusement increased.
+
+"That's Rachel's delusion. She knows very well that she hasn't been able
+to manage him so far; but she's always full of fresh schemes for
+managing him. She thinks, if she could once marry him to the right wife,
+she and the wife between them could get the whip hand of him."
+
+"Does she care for him?" said Meadows, bluntly.
+
+Miss Field considered the question, and for the first time Meadows
+perceived a grain of seriousness in her expression. But she emerged from
+her meditations, smiling as usual.
+
+"She'd be hard hit if anything very bad happened!"
+
+"What could happen?"
+
+"Well, of course they never know whether he won't marry to please
+himself--produce somebody impossible!"
+
+"And Lady Dunstable would suffer?"
+
+Miss Field chuckled.
+
+"I really believe you think her a kind of griffin--a stony creature with
+a hole where her heart ought to be. Most of her friends do. Rachel, of
+course, goes through life assuming that none of the disagreeable things
+that happen to other people will ever happen to her. But if they ever
+did happen--"
+
+"The very stones would cry out? But hasn't she lost all influence with
+the youth?"
+
+"She won't believe it. She's always scheming for him. And when he's not
+here she feels so affectionate and so good! And directly he comes--"
+
+"I see! A tragedy--and a common one! Well, in half an hour I shall be
+ready for his lordship. Will you arrange it? I must write a letter
+first."
+
+Miss Field nodded and departed. Meadows honestly meant to follow her
+into the house and write some pressing business letters. But the
+sunshine was so delightful, the sight of the empty bench and the
+abandoned novel on the other side of the lawn so beguiling, that after
+all he turned his lazy steps thither-ward, half ashamed, half amused to
+think how well Lady Dunstable had read his character.
+
+The guests had all disappeared. Meadows had the garden to himself, and
+all its summer prospect of moor and stream. It was close on noon--a hot
+and heavenly day! And again he thought of Doris cooped up in London.
+Perhaps, after all, he would get out of that cruise!
+
+Ah! there was the morning train--the midnight express from King's Cross
+just arriving in the busy little town lying in the valley at his feet.
+He watched it gliding along the valley, and heard the noise of the
+brakes. Were any new guests expected by it? he wondered. Hardly! The
+Lodge seemed quite full.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Twenty minutes later he threw away the novel impatiently. Midway, the
+story had gone to pieces. He rose from his feet, intending this time to
+tackle his neglected duties in earnest. As he did so, he heard a motor
+climbing the steep drive, and in front of it a lady, walking.
+
+He stood arrested--in a stupor of astonishment.
+
+Doris!--by all the gods!--_Doris_!
+
+It was indeed Doris. She came wearily, looking from side to side, like
+one uncertain of her way. Then she too perceived Meadows, and stopped.
+
+Meadows was conscious of two mixed feelings--first, a very lively
+pleasure at the sight of her, and then annoyance. What on earth had she
+come for? To recover him?--to protest against his not writing?--to make
+a scene, in short? His guilty imagination in a flash showed her to him
+throwing herself into his arms--weeping--on this wide lawn--for all the
+world to see.
+
+But she did nothing of the kind. She directed the motor, which was
+really a taxi from the station, to stop without approaching the front
+door, and then she herself walked quickly towards her husband.
+
+"Arthur!--you got my letter? I could only write yesterday."
+
+She had reached him, and they had joined hands mechanically.
+
+"Letter?--I got no letter! If you posted one, it has probably arrived
+by your train. What on earth, Doris, is the meaning of this? Is there
+anything wrong?"
+
+His expression was half angry, half concerned, for he saw plainly that
+she was tired and jaded. Of course! Long journeys always knocked her up.
+She meanwhile stood looking at him as though trying to read the
+impression produced on him by her escapade. Something evidently in his
+manner hurt her, for she withdrew her hand, and her face stiffened.
+
+"There is nothing wrong with me, thank you! Of course I did not come
+without good reason."
+
+"But, my dear, are you come to stay?" cried Meadows, looking helplessly
+at the taxi. "And you never wrote to Lady Dunstable?"
+
+For he could only imagine that Doris had reconsidered her refusal of the
+invitation which had originally included them both, and--either tired
+of being left alone, or angry with him for not writing--had devised this
+_coup de main_, this violent shake to the kaleidoscope. But what an
+extraordinary step! It could only cover them both with ridicule. His
+cheeks were already burning.
+
+Doris surveyed him very quietly.
+
+"No--I didn't write to Lady Dunstable--I wrote to _you_--and sent her a
+message. I suppose--I shall have to stay the night."
+
+"But what on earth are we to say to her?" cried Meadows in desperation.
+"They're out walking now--but she'll be back directly. There isn't a
+corner in the house! I've got a little bachelor room in the attics.
+Really, Doris, if you were going to do this, you should have given both
+her and me notice! There is a crowd of people here!"
+
+Frown and voice were Jovian indeed. Doris, however, showed no tremors.
+
+"Lady Dunstable will find somewhere to put me up," she said, half
+scornfully. "Is there a telegram for me?"
+
+"A telegram? Why should there be a telegram? What is the meaning of all
+this? For heaven's sake, explain!"
+
+Doris, however, did not attempt to explain. Her mood had been very soft
+on the journey. But Arthur's reception of her had suddenly stirred the
+root of bitterness again; and it was shooting fast and high. Whatever
+she had done or left undone, he ought _not_ to have been able to conceal
+that he was glad to see her--he ought _not_ to have been able to think
+of Lady Dunstable first! She began to take a pleasure in mystifying him.
+
+"I expected a telegram. I daresay it will come soon. You see I've asked
+someone else to come this afternoon--and she'll have to be put up too."
+
+"Asked someone else!--to Lady Dunstable's house!" Meadows stood
+bewildered. "Really, Doris, have you taken leave of your senses?"
+
+She stood with shining eyes, apparently enjoying his astonishment. Then
+she suddenly bethought herself.
+
+"I must go and pay the taxi." Turning round, she coolly surveyed the
+"fortified post." "It looks big enough to take me in. Arthur!--I think
+you may pay the man. Just take out my bag, and tell the footman to put
+it in your room. That will do for the present. I shall sit down here and
+wait for Lady Dunstable. I'm pretty tired."
+
+The thought of what the magnificent gentleman presiding over Lady
+Dunstable's hall would say to the unexpected irruption of Mrs. Meadows,
+and Mrs. Meadows's bag, upon the "fortified post" he controlled, was
+simply beyond expressing. Meadows tried to face his wife with dignity.
+
+"I think we'd better keep the taxi, Doris. Then you and I can go back to
+the hotel together. We can't force ourselves upon Lady Dunstable like
+this, my dear. I'd better go and tell someone to pack my things. But we
+must, of course, wait and see Lady Dunstable--though how you will
+explain your coming, and get yourself--and me--out of this absurd
+predicament, I cannot even pretend to imagine!"
+
+Doris sat down--wearily.
+
+"Don't keep the taxi, Arthur. I assure you Lady Dunstable will be very
+glad to keep both me--and my bag. Or if she won't--Lord Dunstable will."
+
+Meadows came nearer--bent down to study her tired face.
+
+"There's some mystery, of course, Doris, in all this! Aren't you going
+to tell me what it means?"
+
+His wife's pale cheeks flushed.
+
+"I would have told you--if you'd been the least bit glad to see me!
+But--if you don't pay the taxi, Arthur, it will run up like anything!"
+
+She pointed peremptorily to the ticking vehicle and the impatient
+driver. Meadows went mechanically, paid the driver, shouldered the bag,
+and carried it into the hall of the Lodge. He then perceived that two
+grinning and evidently inquisitive footmen, waiting in the hall for
+anything that might turn up for them to do, had been watching the whole
+scene--the arrival of the taxi, and the meeting between the unknown lady
+and himself, through a side window.
+
+Burning to box someone's ears, Meadows loftily gave the bag to one of
+them with instructions that it should be taken to his room, and then
+turned to rejoin his wife.
+
+As he crossed the gravel in front of the house, his mind ran through all
+possible hypotheses. But he was entirely without a clue--except the clue
+of jealousy. He could not hide from himself that Doris had been jealous
+of Lady Dunstable, and had perhaps been hurt by his rather too numerous
+incursions into the great world without her, his apparent readiness to
+desert her for cleverer women. "Little goose!--as if I ever cared
+twopence for any of them!"--he thought angrily. "And now she makes us
+both laughing-stocks!"
+
+And yet, Doris being Doris--a proud, self-contained, well-bred little
+person, particularly sensitive to ridicule--the whole proceeding became
+the more incredible the more he faced it.
+
+One o'clock!--striking from the church tower in the valley! He hurried
+towards the slight figure on the distant seat. Lady Dunstable might
+return at any moment. He foresaw the encounter--the great lady's
+insolence--Doris's humiliation--and his own. Well, at least let him
+agree with Doris on a common story, before his hostess arrived.
+
+He sped across the grass, very conscious, as he approached the seat, of
+Doris's drooping look and attitude. Travelling all those hours!--and no
+doubt without any proper breakfast! However Lady Dunstable might
+behave, he would carry Doris into the Lodge directly, and have her
+properly looked after. Miss Field and he would see to that.
+
+Suddenly--a sound of talk and laughter, from the shrubbery which divided
+the flower garden from the woods and the moor. Lady Dunstable emerged,
+with her two companions on either hand. Her vivid, masculine face was
+flushed with exercise and discussion. She seemed to be attacking the
+Under-Secretary, who, however, was clearly enjoying himself; while Sir
+Luke, walking a little apart, threw in an occasional gibe.
+
+"I tell you your land policy here in Scotland will gain you nothing; and
+in England it will lose you everything.--Hullo!"
+
+Lady Dunstable's exclamation, as she came to a stop and put up a
+tortoise-shell eyeglass, was clearly audible.
+
+"Doris!" cried Meadows excitedly in his wife's ear--"Look here!--what
+are you going to say!--what am I to say! that you got tired of London,
+and wanted some Scotch air?--that we intend to go off together?--For
+goodness' sake, what is it to be?"
+
+Doris rose, her lips breaking irrepressibly into smiles.
+
+"Never mind, Arthur; I'll get through somehow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The two ladies advanced towards each other across the lawn, while
+Meadows followed his wife in speechless confusion and annoyance, utterly
+at a loss how to extricate either himself or Doris; compelled, indeed,
+to leave it all to her. Sir Luke and the Under-Secretary had paused in
+the drive. Their looks as they watched Lady Dunstable's progress showed
+that they guessed at something dramatic in the little scene.
+
+Nothing could apparently have been more unequal than the two chief
+actors in it. Lady Dunstable, with the battlements of "the great
+fortified post" rising behind her, tall and wiry of figure, her black
+hawk's eyes fixed upon her visitor, might have stood for all her class;
+for those too powerful and prosperous Barbarians who have ruled and
+enjoyed England so long. Doris, small and slight, in a blue cotton coat
+and skirt, dusty from long travelling, and a childish garden hat, came
+hesitatingly over the grass, with colour which came and went.
+
+"How do you do, Mrs. Meadows! This is indeed an unexpected pleasure! I
+must quarrel with your husband for not giving us warning."
+
+Doris's complexion had settled into a bright pink as she shook hands
+with Lady Dunstable. But she spoke quite composedly.
+
+"My husband knew nothing about it, Lady Dunstable. My letter does not
+seem to have reached him."
+
+"Ah? Our posts are very bad, no doubt; though generally, I must say,
+they arrive very punctually. Well, so you were tired of London?--you
+wanted to see how we were looking after your husband?"
+
+Lady Dunstable threw a sarcastic glance at Meadows standing tongue-tied
+in the background.
+
+"I wanted to see you," said Doris quietly, with a slight accent on the
+"you."
+
+Lady Dunstable looked amused.
+
+"Did you? How very nice of you! And you've--you've brought your
+luggage?" Lady Dunstable looked round her as though expecting to see it
+at the front door.
+
+"I brought a bag. Arthur took it in for me."
+
+"I'm so sorry! I assure you, if I had only known--But we haven't a
+corner! Mr. Meadows will bear me out--it's absurd, but true. These
+Scotch lodges have really no room in them at all!"
+
+Lady Dunstable pointed with airy insolence to the spreading pile behind
+her. Doris--for all the agitation of her hidden purpose--could have
+laughed outright. But Meadows, rather roughly, intervened.
+
+"We shall, of course, go to the hotel, Lady Dunstable. My wife's letter
+seems somehow to have missed me, but naturally we never dreamed of
+putting you out. Perhaps you will give us some lunch--my wife seems
+rather tired--and then we will take our departure."
+
+Doris turned--put a hand on his arm--but addressed Lady Dunstable.
+
+"Can I see you--alone--for a few minutes--before lunch?"
+
+"_Before_ lunch? We are all very hungry, I'm afraid," said Lady
+Dunstable, with a smile. Meadows was conscious of a rising fury. His
+quick sense perceived something delicately offensive in every word and
+look of the great lady. Doris, of course, had done an incredibly foolish
+thing. What she had come to say to Lady Dunstable he could not conceive;
+for the first explanation--that of a silly jealousy--had by now entirely
+failed him. But it was evident to him that Lady Dunstable assumed it--or
+chose to assume it. And for the first time he thought her odious!
+
+Doris seemed to guess it, for she pressed his arm as though to keep him
+quiet.
+
+"Before lunch, please," she repeated. "I think--you will soon
+understand." With an odd, and--for the first time--slightly puzzled look
+at her visitor, Lady Dunstable said with patronising politeness--
+
+"By all means. Shall we come to my sitting-room?"
+
+She led the way to the house. Meadows followed, till a sign from Doris
+waved him back. On the way Doris found herself greeted by Sir Luke
+Malford, bowed to by various unknown gentlemen, and her hand grasped by
+Miss Field.
+
+"You do look done! Have you come straight from London? What--is Rachel
+carrying you off? I shall send you in a glass of wine and a biscuit
+directly!"
+
+Doris said nothing. She got somehow through all the curious eyes turned
+upon her; she followed Lady Dunstable through the spacious passages of
+the Lodge, adorned with the usual sportsman's trophies, till she was
+ushered into a small sitting-room, Lady Dunstable's particular den,
+crowded with photographs of half the celebrities of the day--the poets,
+_savants_, and artists, of England, Europe, and America. On an easel
+stood a masterly small portrait of Lord Dunstable as a young man, by
+Bastien Lepage; and not far from it--rather pushed into a corner--a
+sketch by Millais of a fair-haired boy, leaning against a pony.
+
+By this time Doris was quivering both with excitement and fatigue. She
+sank into a chair, and turned eagerly to the wine and biscuits with
+which Miss Field pursued her. While she ate and drank, Lady Dunstable
+sat in a high chair observing her, one long and pointed foot crossed
+over the other, her black eyes alive with satiric interrogation, to
+which, however, she gave no words.
+
+The wine was reviving. Doris found her voice. As the door closed on Miss
+Field, she bent forward:--
+
+"Lady Dunstable, I didn't come here on my own account, and had there
+been time of course I should have given you notice. I came entirely on
+your account, because something was happening to you--and Lord
+Dunstable--which you didn't know, and which made me--very sorry for
+you!"
+
+Lady Dunstable started slightly.
+
+"Happening to me?--and Lord Dunstable?"
+
+"I have been seeing your son, Lady Dunstable."
+
+An instant change passed over the countenance of that lady. It darkened,
+and the eyes became cold and wary.
+
+"Indeed? I didn't know you were acquainted with him."
+
+"I never saw him till a few days ago. Then I saw him--in my uncle's
+studio--with a woman--a woman to whom he is engaged."
+
+Lady Dunstable started again.
+
+"I think you must be mistaken," she said quickly, with a slight but
+haughty straightening of her shoulders.
+
+Doris shook her head.
+
+"No, I am not mistaken. I will tell you--if you don't mind--exactly what
+I have heard and seen."
+
+And with a puckered brow and visible effort she entered on the story of
+the happenings of which she had been a witness in Bentley's studio. She
+was perfectly conscious--for a time--that she was telling it against a
+dead weight of half scornful, half angry incredulity on Lady Dunstable's
+part. Rachel Dunstable listened, indeed, attentively. But it was clear
+that she resented the story, which she did not believe; resented the
+telling of it, on her own ground, by this young woman whom she
+disliked; and resented above all the compulsory discussion which it
+involved, of her most intimate affairs, with a stranger and her social
+inferior. All sorts of suspicions, indeed, ran through her mind as to
+the motives that could have prompted Mrs. Meadows to hurry up to
+Scotland, without taking even the decently polite trouble to announce
+herself, bringing this unlikely and trumped-up tale. Most probably, a
+mean jealousy of her husband, and his greater social success!--a
+determination to force herself on people who had not paid the same
+attention to herself as to him, to _make_ them pay attention,
+willy-nilly. Of course Herbert had undesirable acquaintances, and was
+content to go about with people entirely beneath him, in birth and
+education. Everybody knew it, alack! But he was really not such a
+fool--such a heartless fool--as this story implied! Mrs. Meadows had
+been taken in--willingly taken in--had exaggerated everything she said
+for her own purposes. The mother's wrath indeed was rapidly rising to
+the smiting point, when a change in the narrative arrested her.
+
+"And then--I couldn't help it!"--there was a new note of agitation in
+Doris's voice--"but what had happened was so _horrid_--it was so like
+seeing a man going to ruin under one's eyes, for, of course, one knew
+that she would get hold of him again--that I ran out after your son and
+begged him to break with her, not to see her again, to take the
+opportunity, and be done with her! And then he told me quite calmly that
+he _must_ marry her, that he could not help himself, but he would never
+live with her. He would marry her at a registry office, provide for her,
+and leave her. And then he said he would do it _at once_--that he was
+going to his lawyers to arrange everything as to money and so on--on
+condition that she never troubled him again. He was eager to get it
+done--that he might be delivered from her--from her company--which one
+could see had become dreadful to him. I implored him not to do such a
+thing--to pay any money rather than do it--but not to marry her! I
+begged him to think of you--and his father. But he said he was bound to
+her--he had compromised her, or some such thing; and he had given his
+word in writing. There was only one thing which could stop it--if she
+had told him lies about her former life. But he had no reason to think
+she had; and he was not going to try and find out. So then--I saw a ray
+of daylight--"
+
+She stopped abruptly, looking full at the woman opposite, who was now
+following her every word--but like one seized against her will.
+
+"Do you remember a Miss Wigram, Lady Dunstable--whose father had a
+living near Crosby Ledgers?"
+
+Lady Dunstable moved involuntarily--her eyelids flickered a little.
+
+"Certainly. Why do you ask?"
+
+"_She_ saw Mr. Dunstable--and Miss Flink--in my uncle's studio, and she
+was so distressed to think what--what Lord Dunstable"--there was a
+perceptible pause before the name--"would feel, if his son married her,
+that she determined to find out the truth about her. She told me she had
+one or two clues, and I sent her to a cousin of mine--a very clever
+solicitor--to be advised. That was yesterday morning. Then I got my
+uncle to find out your son--and bring him to me yesterday afternoon
+before I started. He came to our house in Kensington, and I told him I
+had come across some very doubtful stories about Miss Flink. He was very
+unwilling to hear anything. After all, he said, he was not going to live
+with her. And she had nursed him--"
+
+"Nursed him!" said Lady Dunstable, quickly. She had risen, and was
+leaning against the mantelpiece, looking sharply down upon her visitor.
+
+"That was the beginning of it all. He was ill in the winter--in his
+lodgings."
+
+"I never heard of it!" For the first time, there was a touch of
+something natural and passionate in the voice.
+
+Doris looked a little embarrassed.
+
+"Your son told me it was pneumonia."
+
+"I never heard a word of it! And this--this creature nursed him?" The
+tone of the robbed lioness at last!--singularly inappropriate under all
+the circumstances. Doris struggled on.
+
+"An actor friend of your son brought her to see him. And she really
+devoted herself to him. He declared to me he owed her a great deal--"
+
+"He need have owed her nothing," said Lady Dunstable, sternly. "He had
+only to send a postcard--a wire--to his own people."
+
+"He thought--you were so busy," said Doris, dropping her eyes to the
+carpet.
+
+A sound of contemptuous anger showed that her shaft--her mild shaft--had
+gone home. She hurried on--"But at last I got him to promise me to wait
+a week. That was yesterday at five o'clock. He wouldn't promise me to
+write to you--or his father. He seemed so desperately anxious to settle
+it all--in his own way. But I said a good deal about your name--and the
+family--and the horrible pain he would be giving--any way. Was it
+kind--was it right towards you, not only to give you _no_ opportunity of
+helping or advising him--but also to take no steps to find out whether
+the woman he was going to marry was--not only unsuitable, wholly
+unsuitable--that, of course, he knows--but _a disgrace_? I argued with
+him that he must have some suspicion of the stories she has told him at
+different times, or he wouldn't have tried to protect himself in this
+particular way. He didn't deny it; but he said she had looked after him,
+and been kind to him, when nobody else was, and he should feel a beast
+if he pressed her too hardly."
+
+"'When nobody else was'!" repeated Lady Dunstable, scornfully, her voice
+trembling with bitterness. "Really, Mrs. Meadows, it is very difficult
+for me to believe that my son ever used such words!"
+
+Doris hesitated, then she raised her eyes, and with the happy feeling of
+one applying the scourge, in the name of Justice, she said with careful
+mildness:--
+
+"I hope you will forgive me for telling you--but I feel as if I oughtn't
+to keep back anything--Mr. Dunstable said to me: 'My mother might have
+prevented it--but--she was never interested in me.'"
+
+Another indignant exclamation from Lady Dunstable. Doris hurried on.
+"Only this is the important point! At last I got his promise, and I got
+it in writing. I have it here."
+
+Dead silence. Doris opened her little handbag, took out a letter, in an
+open envelope, and handed it to Lady Dunstable, who at first seemed as
+if she were going to refuse it. However, after a moment's hesitation,
+she lifted her long-handled eyeglass and read it. It ran as follows:
+
+    DEAR MRS. MEADOWS,--I do not know whether I ought to do what you ask
+    me. But you have asked me very kindly--you have really been awfully
+    good to me, in taking so much trouble. I know I'm a stupid
+    fool--they always told me so at home. But I don't want to do
+    anything mean, or to go back on a woman who once did me a good turn;
+    with whom also once--for I may as well be quite honest about it--I
+    thought I was in love. However, I see there is something in what you
+    say, and I will wait a week before marrying Miss Flink. But if you
+    tell my people--I suppose you will--don't let them imagine they can
+    break it off--except for that one reason. And _I_ shan't lift a
+    finger to break it off. I shall make no inquiries--I shall go on
+    with the lawyers, and all that. My present intention is to marry
+    Miss Flink--on the terms I have stated--in a week's time. If you do
+    see my people--especially my father--tell them I'm awfully sorry to
+    be such a nuisance to them. I got myself into the mess without
+    meaning it, and now there's really only one way out. Thank you
+    again.
+                              Yours gratefully,
+                                   HERBERT DUNSTABLE.
+
+
+Lady Dunstable crushed the letter in her hand. All pretence of
+incredulity was gone. She began to walk stormily up and down. Doris sank
+back in her chair, watching her, conscious of the most strangely mingled
+feelings, a touch of womanish triumph indeed, a pleasing sense of
+retribution, but, welling up through it, something profound and tender.
+If _he_ should ever write such a letter to a stranger, while his mother
+was alive!
+
+Lady Dunstable stopped.
+
+"What chance is there of saving my son?" she said, peremptorily. "You
+will, of course, tell us all you know. Lord Dunstable must go to town at
+once." She touched an electric bell beside her.
+
+"Oh no!" cried Doris, springing up. "He mustn't go, please, until we
+have some more information. Miss Wigram is coming--this afternoon."
+
+Rachel Dunstable stood stupefied--with her hand on the bell.
+
+"Miss Wigram--coming."
+
+"Don't you see?" cried Doris. "She was to spend all yesterday afternoon
+and evening in seeing two or three people--people who know. There is a
+friend of my uncle's--an artist--who saw a great deal of Miss Flink, and
+got to know a lot about her. Of course he may not have been willing to
+say anything, but I think he probably would--he was so mad with her for
+a trick she played him in the middle of a big piece of work. And if he
+was able to put us on any useful track, then Miss Wigram was to come up
+here straight, and tell you everything she could. But I thought there
+would have been a telegram--from her--" Her voice dropped on a note of
+disappointment.
+
+There was a knock at the door. The butler entered, and at the same
+moment the luncheon gong echoed through the house.
+
+"Tell Miss Field not to wait luncheon for me," said Lady Dunstable
+sharply. "And, Ferris, I want his lordship's things packed at once, for
+London. Don't say anything to him at present, but in ten minutes' time
+just manage to tell him quietly that I should like to see him here. You
+understand--I don't want any fuss made. Tell Miss Field that Mrs.
+Meadows is too tired to come in to luncheon, and that I will come in
+presently."
+
+The butler, who had the aspect of a don or a bishop, said "Yes, my
+lady," in that dry tone which implied that for twenty years the house of
+Dunstable had been built upon himself, as its rock, and he was not going
+to fail it now. He vanished, with just one lightning turn of the eyes
+towards the little lady in the blue linen dress; and Lady Dunstable
+resumed her walk, sunk in flushed meditation. She seemed to have
+forgotten Doris, when she heard an exclamation:--
+
+"Ah, there _is_ the telegram!"
+
+And Doris, running to the window, waved to a diminutive telegraph boy,
+who, being new to his job, had come up to the front entrance of the
+Lodge instead of the back, and was now--recognising his
+misdeed--retreating in alarm from the mere aspect of "the great
+fortified post." He saw the lady at the window, however, and checked his
+course.
+
+"For me!" cried Doris, triumphantly--and she tore it open.
+
+    Can't arrive till between eight and nine. Think I have got all we
+    want. Please take a room for me at hotel.--ALICE WIGRAM.
+
+Doris turned back into the room, and handed the telegram to Lady
+Dunstable, who read it slowly.
+
+"Did you say this was the Alice Wigram I knew?"
+
+"Her father had one of your livings," repeated Doris. "He died last
+year."
+
+"I know. I quarrelled with him. I cannot conceive why Alice Wigram
+should do me a good turn!" Lady Dunstable threw back her head, her
+challenging look fixed upon her visitor. Doris was certain she had it in
+her mind to add--"or you either!"--but refrained.
+
+"Lord Dunstable was always a friend to her father," said Doris, with the
+same slight emphasis on the "Lord" as before. "And she felt for the
+estate--the poor people--the tenants."
+
+Rachel Dunstable shook her head impatiently.
+
+"I daresay. But I got into a scrape with the Wigrams. I expect that you
+would think, Mrs. Meadows--perhaps most people would think, as of course
+her father did--that I once treated Miss Wigram unkindly!"
+
+"Oh, what does it matter?" cried Doris, hastily,--"what _does_ it
+matter? She wants to help--she's sorry for you. You should _see_ that
+woman! It would be too awful if your son was tied to her for life!"
+
+She sat up straight, all her soul in her eyes and in her pleasant face.
+
+There was a pause. Then Lady Dunstable, whose expression had changed,
+came a little nearer to her.
+
+"And you--I wonder why you took all this trouble?"
+
+Doris said nothing. She fell back slowly in her chair, looking
+at the tall woman standing over her. Tears came into her
+eyes--brimmed--overflowed--in silence. Her lips smiled. Rachel Dunstable
+bent over her in bewilderment.
+
+"To have a son," murmured Doris under her breath, "and then to see him
+ruined like this! No love for him!--no children--no grandchildren for
+oneself, when one is old--"
+
+Her voice died away.
+
+"'To have a son'?" repeated Lady Dunstable, wondering--"but you have
+none!"
+
+Doris said nothing. Only she put up her hand feebly, and wiped away the
+tears--still smiling. After which she shut her eyes.
+
+Lady Dunstable gasped. Then the long, sallow face flushed deeply. She
+walked over to a sofa on the other side of the room, arranged the
+pillows on it, and came back to Doris.
+
+"Will you, please, let me put you on that sofa? You oughtn't to have had
+this long journey. Of course you will stay here--and Miss Wigram too. It
+seems--I shall owe you a great deal--and I could not have expected
+you--to think about me--at all. I can do rude things. But I can also--be
+sorry for my sins!"
+
+Doris heard an awkward and rather tremulous laugh. Upon which she
+opened her eyes, no less embarrassed than her hostess, and did as she
+was told. Lady Dunstable made her as comfortable as a hand so little
+used to the feminine arts could manage.
+
+"Now I will send you in some luncheon, and go and talk to Lord
+Dunstable. Please rest till I come back."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doris lay still. She wanted very much to see Arthur, and she wondered,
+till her head ached, whether he would think her a great fool for her
+pains. Surely he would come and find her soon. Oh, the time people spent
+on lunching in these big houses!
+
+The vibration of the train seemed to be still running through her limbs.
+She was indeed wearied out, and in a few minutes, what with the sudden
+quiet and the softness of the cushions which had been spread for her,
+she fell unexpectedly asleep.
+
+When she woke, she saw her husband sitting beside her--patiently--with
+a tray on his knee.
+
+"Oh, Arthur!--what time is it? Have I been asleep long?"
+
+"Nearly an hour. I looked in before, but Lady Dunstable wouldn't let me
+wake you. She--and he--and I--have been talking. Upon my word, Doris,
+you've been and gone and done it! But don't say anything! You've got to
+eat this chicken first."
+
+He fed her with it, looking at her the while with affectionate and
+admiring eyes. Somehow, Doris became dimly aware that she was going to
+be a heroine.
+
+"Have they told you, Arthur?"
+
+"Everything that you've told her. (No--not everything!--thought Doris.)
+You _are_ a brick, Doris! And the way you've done it! That's what
+impresses her ladyship! She knows very well that she would have muffed
+it. You're the practical woman! Well, you can rest on your laurels,
+darling! You'll have the whole place at your feet--beginning with your
+husband--who's been dreadfully bored without you. There!"
+
+He put down his Jovian head, and rubbed his cheek tenderly against hers,
+till she turned round, and gave him the lightest of kisses.
+
+"Was he an abominable correspondent?" he said, repentantly.
+
+"Abominable!"
+
+"Did you hate him!"
+
+"Whenever I had time. When do you start on your cruise, Arthur!"
+
+"Any time--some time--never!" he said, gaily. "Give me that Capel Curig
+address, and I'll wire for the rooms this afternoon. I came to the
+conclusion this morning that the same yacht couldn't hold her ladyship
+and me."
+
+"Oh!--so she's been chastening _you_?" said Doris, well pleased.
+
+Meadows nodded.
+
+"The rod has not been spared--since Sunday. It was then she got tired of
+me. I mark the day, you see, almost the hour. My goodness!--if you're
+not always up to your form--epigrams, quotations--all pat--"
+
+"She plucks you--without mercy. Down you slither into the second class!"
+Doris's look sparkled.
+
+"There you go--rejoicing in my humiliations!" said Meadows, putting an
+arm round the scoffer. "I tell you, she proposes to write my next set of
+lectures for me. She gave me an outline of them this morning."
+
+Then they both laughed together like children. And Doris, with her head
+on a strong man's shoulder, and a rough coat scrubbing her cheek,
+suddenly bethought her of the line--"Journeys end in lovers' meeting--"
+and was smitten with a secret wonder as to how much of her impulse to
+come north had been due to an altruistic concern for the Dunstable
+affairs, and how much to a firm determination to recapture Arthur from
+his Gloriana. But that doubt she would never reveal. It would be so bad
+for Arthur!
+
+She rose to her feet.
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"Lord and Lady Dunstable? Gone off to Dunkeld to find their solicitor
+and bring him back to meet Miss Wigram. They'll be home by tea. I'm to
+look after you."
+
+"Are we going to an hotel?"
+
+Meadows laughed immoderately.
+
+"Come and look at your apartment, my dear. One of her ladyship's maids
+has been told off to look after you. As I expect you have arrived with
+little more than a comb-and-brush bag, there will be a good deal to do."
+
+Doris caught him by the coat-fronts.
+
+"You don't mean to say that I shall be expected to dine to-night! I have
+_not_ brought an evening dress."
+
+"What does that matter? I met Miss Field in the passage, as I was coming
+in to you, and she said: 'I see Mrs. Meadows has not brought much
+luggage. We can lend her anything she wants. I will send her a few of
+Rachel's tea-gowns to choose from.'"
+
+Doris's laugh was hysterical; then she sobered down.
+
+"What time is it? Four o'clock. Oh, I wish Miss Wigram was here! You
+know, Lord Dunstable must go to town to-night! And Miss Wigram can't
+arrive till after the last train from here."
+
+"They know. They've ordered a special, to take Lord Dunstable and the
+solicitor to Edinburgh, to catch the midnight mail."
+
+"Oh, well--if you can bully the fates like that!--" said Doris, with a
+shrug. "How did he take it?"
+
+Meadows's tone changed.
+
+"It was a great blow. I thought it aged him."
+
+"Was she nice to him?" asked Doris, anxiously.
+
+"Nicer than I thought she could be," said Meadows, quietly. "I heard
+her say to him--'I'm afraid it's been my fault, Harry.' And he took her
+hand, without a word."
+
+"I will _not_ cry!" said Doris, pressing her hands on her eyes. "If it
+comes right, it will do them such a world of good! Now show me my room."
+
+But in the hall, waiting to waylay them, they found Miss Field, beaming
+as usual.
+
+"Everything is ready for you, dear Mrs. Meadows, and if you want
+anything you have only to ring. This way--"
+
+"The ground-floor?" said Doris, rather mystified, as they followed.
+
+"We have put you in what we call--for fun--our state-rooms. Various
+Royalties had them last year. They're in a special wing. We keep them
+for emergencies. And the fact is we haven't got another corner."
+
+Doris, in dismay, took the smiling lady by the arm.
+
+"I can't live up to it! Please let us go to the inn."
+
+But Meadows and Miss Field mocked at her; and she was soon ushered into
+a vast bedroom, in the midst of which, on a Persian carpet, sat her
+diminutive bag, now empty. Various elegant "confections" in the shape of
+tea-gowns and dressing-gowns littered the bed and the chairs. The
+toilet-table showed an array of coroneted brushes. As for the superb
+Empire bed, which had belonged to Queen Hortense, and was still hung
+with the original blue velvet sprinkled with golden bees, Doris eyed it
+with a firm hostility.
+
+"We needn't sleep in it," she whispered in Meadows's ear. "There are two
+sofas."
+
+Meanwhile Miss Field and others flitted about, adding all the luxuries
+of daily use to the splendour of the rooms. Gardeners appeared bringing
+in flowers, and an anxious maid, on behalf of her ladyship, begged that
+Mrs. Meadows would change her travelling dress for a comfortable white
+tea-gown, before tea-time, suggesting another "creation" in black and
+silver for dinner. Doris, frowning and reluctant, would have refused;
+but Miss Field said softly "Won't you? Rachel will be so distressed if
+she mayn't do these little things for you. Of course she doesn't deserve
+it; but--"
+
+"Oh yes--I'll put them on--if she likes," said Doris, hurriedly. "It
+doesn't matter."
+
+Miss Field laughed. "I don't know where all these things come from," she
+said, looking at the array. "Rachel buys half of them for her maids, I
+should think--she never wears them. Well, now I shall leave you till
+tea-time. Tea will be on the lawn--Mr. Meadows knows where. By the
+way--" she looked, smiling, at Meadows--"they've put off the Duke. If
+you only knew what that means."
+
+She named a great Scotch name, the chief of the ancient house to which
+Lady Dunstable belonged. Miss Field described how this prince of Dukes
+paid a solemn visit every year to Franick Castle, and the eager
+solicitude--almost agitation--with which the visit was awaited, by Lady
+Dunstable in particular.
+
+"You don't mean," cried Doris, "that there is anybody in the whole world
+who frightens Lady Dunstable?"
+
+"As she frightens us? Yes!--on this one day of the year we are all
+avenged. Rachel, metaphorically, sits on a stool and tries to please. To
+put off 'the Duke' by telephone!--what a horrid indignity! But I've just
+inflicted it."
+
+Mattie Field smiled, and was just going away when she was arrested by a
+timid question from Doris.
+
+"Please--shall Arthur go down to Pitlochry and engage a room for Miss
+Wigram?"
+
+Miss Field turned in amusement.
+
+"A room! Why, it's all ready! She is your lady-in-waiting."
+
+And taking Doris by the arm she led her to inspect a spacious apartment
+on the other side of a passage, where the Lady Alice or Lady Mary
+without whom Royal Highnesses do not move about the world was generally
+put up.
+
+"I feel like Christopher Sly," said Doris, surveying the scene, with her
+hands in her jacket pockets. "So will she. But never mind!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Events flowed on. Lord and Lady Dunstable came back by tea-time,
+bringing with them the solicitor, who was also the chief factor of their
+Scotch estate. Lord Dunstable looked old and wearied. He came to find
+Doris on the lawn, pressing her hand with murmured words of thanks.
+
+"If that child Alice Wigram--of course I remember her well!--brings us
+information we can go upon, we shall be all right. At least there's
+hope. My poor boy! Anyway, we can never be grateful enough to you."
+
+As for Lady Dunstable, the large circle which gathered for tea under a
+group of Scotch firs talked indeed, since Franick Castle existed for
+that purpose, but they talked without a leader. Their hostess sat silent
+and sombre, with thoughts evidently far away. She took no notice of
+Meadows whatever, and his attempts to draw her fell flat. A neighbour
+had walked over, bringing with him--maliciously--a Radical M.P. whose
+views on the Scotch land question would normally have struck fire and
+fury from Lady Dunstable. She scarcely recognised his name, and he and
+the Under-Secretary launched into the most despicable land heresies
+under her very nose--unrebuked. She had not an epigram to throw at
+anyone. But her eyes never failed to know where Doris Meadows was, and
+indeed, though no one but the two or three initiated knew why, Doris was
+in some mysterious but accepted way the centre of the party. Everybody
+spoiled her; everybody smiled upon her. The white tea-gown which she
+wore--miracle of delicate embroidery--had never suited Lady Dunstable;
+it suited Doris to perfection. Under her own simple hat, her eyes--and
+they were very fine eyes--shone with a soft and dancing humour. It was
+all absurd--her being there--her dress--this tongue-tied hostess--and
+these agreeable men who made much of her! She must get Arthur out of it
+as soon as possible, and they would look back upon it and laugh. But for
+the moment it was pleasant, it was stimulating! She found herself
+arguing about the new novels, and standing at bay against a whole group
+of clever folk who were tearing Mr. Augustus John and other gods of her
+idolatry to pieces. She was not shy; she never really had been; and to
+find that she could talk as well as other people--or most other
+people--even in these critical circles, excited her. The circle round
+her grew; and Meadows, standing on the edge of it, watched her with
+astonished eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The northern evening sank into a long and glowing twilight. The hills
+stood in purple against a tawny west, and the smoke from the little town
+in the valley rose clear and blue into air already autumnal. The guests
+of Franick had scattered in twos and threes over the gardens and the
+moor, while Doris, her host and hostess, and the solicitor, sat and
+waited for Alice Wigram. She came with the evening train, tired, dusty,
+and triumphant; and the information she brought with her was more than
+enough to go upon. The past of Elena Flink--poor lady!--shone luridly
+out; and even the countenance of the solicitor cleared. As for Lord
+Dunstable, he grasped the girl by both hands.
+
+"My dear child, what you have done for us! Ah, if your father were
+here!"
+
+And bending over her, with the courtly grace of an old man, he kissed
+her on the brow. Alice Wigram flushed, turning involuntarily towards
+Lady Dunstable.
+
+"Rachel!--don't we owe her everything," said Lord Dunstable with
+emotion--"her and Mrs. Meadows? But for them, our boy might have wrecked
+his life."
+
+"He appears to have been a most extraordinary fool!" said Lady Dunstable
+with energy:--a recrudescence of the natural woman, which was positively
+welcome to everybody. And it did not prevent the passage of some
+embarrassed but satisfactory words between Herbert Dunstable's mother
+and Alice Wigram, after Lady Dunstable had taken her latest guest to
+"Lady Mary's" room, bidding her go straight to bed, and be waited on.
+
+Lord Dunstable and the lawyer departed after dinner to meet their
+special train at Perth. Lady Dunstable, with variable spirits, kept the
+evening going, sometimes in a brown study, sometimes as brilliant and
+pugnacious as ever. Doris slipped out of the drawing-room once or twice
+to go and gossip with Alice Wigram, who was lying under silken
+coverings, inclined to gentle moralising on the splendours of the great,
+and much petted by Miss Field and the house-keeper.
+
+"How nice you look!" said the girl shyly, on one occasion, as Doris came
+stealing in to her. "I never saw such a pretty gown!"
+
+"Not bad!" said Doris complacently, throwing a glance at the large
+mirror near. It was still the white tea-gown, for she had firmly
+declined to sample anything else, in truth well aware that Arthur's
+eyes approved both it and her in it.
+
+"Lord Dunstable has been so kind," whispered Miss Wigram. "He said I
+must always henceforth look upon him as a kind of guardian. Of course I
+should never let him give me a farthing!"
+
+"Why no, that's the kind of thing one couldn't do!" said Doris with
+decision. "But there are plenty of other ways of being nice. Well--here
+we all are, as happy as larks; and what we've really done, I suppose, is
+to take a woman's character away, and give her another push to
+perdition."
+
+"She hadn't any character!" cried Alice Wigram indignantly. "And she
+would have gone to perdition without us, and taken that poor youth with
+her. Oh, I know, I know! But morals are a great puzzle to me. However, I
+firmly remind myself of that 'one in the eye,' and then all my doubts
+depart. Good-night. Sleep well! You know very well that I should have
+shirked it if it hadn't been for you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A little later the Meadowses stood together at the open window of their
+room, which led by a short flight of steps to a flowering garden below.
+All Franick had gone to bed, and this wing in which the "state-rooms"
+were, seemed to be remote from the rest of the house. They were alone;
+the night was balmy; and there was a flood of secret joy in Doris's
+veins which gave her a charm, a beguilement Arthur had never seen in her
+before. She was more woman, and therefore more divine! He could hardly
+recall her as the careful housewife, harassed by lack of pence, knitting
+her brows over her butcher's books, mending endless socks, and trying to
+keep the nose of a lazy husband to the grindstone. All that seemed to
+have vanished. This white sylph was pure romance--pure joy. He saw her
+anew; he loved her anew.
+
+"Why did you look so pretty to-night? You little witch!" he murmured in
+her ear, as he held her close to him.
+
+"Arthur!"--she drew herself away from him. "_Did_ I look pretty? Honour
+bright!"
+
+"Delicious! How often am I to say it?"
+
+"You'd better not. Don't wake the devil in me, Arthur! It's all this
+tea-gown. If you go on like this, I shall have to buy one like it."
+
+"Buy a dozen!" he said joyously. "Look there, Doris--you see that path?
+Let's go on to the moor a little."
+
+Out they crept, like truant children, through the wood-path and out upon
+the moor. Meadows had brought a shawl, and spread it on a rock, full
+under the moonlight. There they sat, close together, feeling all the
+goodness and glory of the night, drinking in the scents of heather and
+fern, the sounds of plashing water and gently moving winds. Above them,
+the vault of heaven and the friendly stars; below them, the great hollow
+of the valley, the scattered lights, the sounds of distant trains.
+
+"She didn't kiss me when she said good-night!" said Doris suddenly. "She
+wasn't the least sentimental--or ashamed--or grateful! Having said what
+was necessary, she let it alone. She's a real lady--though rather a
+savage. I like her!"
+
+"Who are you talking of? Lady Dunstable? I had forgotten all about her.
+All the same, darling, I should like to know what made you do all this
+for a woman you _said_ you detested!"
+
+"I did detest her. I shall probably detest her again. Leopards don't
+change their spots, do they? But I shan't--fear her any more!"
+
+Something in her tone arrested Meadows's attention.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, what I say!" cried Doris, drawing herself a little from him, with
+a hand on his shoulder. "I shall never fear her, or anyone, any more.
+I'm safe! Why did I do it? Do you really want to know? I did
+it--because--I was so sorry for her--poor silly woman,--who can't get on
+with her own son! Arthur!--if our son doesn't love me better than hers
+loves her--you may kill me, dear, and welcome!"
+
+"Doris! There is something in your voice--! What are you hiding from
+me?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But as to the rest of that conversation under the moon, let those
+imagine it who may have followed this story with sympathy.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Great Success, by Mrs Humphry Ward
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