This was the woman with whom Elton Gwynne was infatuated at the most critical moment of his career. Of her profound aybsses he suspected nothing. She reigned in his imagination as the unique woman in whom intellect and pa.s.sion, tenderness and all the social graces united in an exquisite harmony. There had been a time when, dazzled by the brilliancy of his ascending star, and Brathland being but a name to her, she had considered marriage with a man who a.s.suredly would be the next leader of a Liberal House, and was no less certain of being prime-minister. She was under no delusion that she could one day induce him to accept a peerage, but she was reasonably sure that Zeal would not marry again, and there were times when the heir looked so ill that she tightened her bonds about the heir-presumptive, while a.s.suring him that she was too much in love with liberty to think of marriage. Even when Zeal came back from Norway or Sorrento looking almost well, she never permitted Gwynne to escape, to see so much as a corner of her ego that might disturb the image of herself she had created in his mind; and when she met Brathland and her senses swam with the subtle scent of strawberry leaves, she saw no reason for losing the stimulating society and flattering attentions of the brightest star in the political firmament. Therefore, when he was ready to hand, in the crushing hour of her riven ambitions, and his own of serenest effulgence, she promptly reflected that the distance between a marquisate and a dukedom was quickly traversed by a powerful statesman. Meanwhile, although Elton Gwynne would no doubt be a hideous trial as a husband, his wife's position, supported by a million in the funds and another in Chicago, would be one of the most brilliant in England. And she too had seen Lord Zeal in Piccadilly on Sat.u.r.day.

XIX

The sudden elevation of her Jack to a marquisate, beside whose roots, gripping the foundations of Britain's aristocracy, and ramifying the length and breadth of its society, the lost dukedom was a mere mushroom, created for a favorite of the last George, and notorious for its _mesalliances_, did not cost Mrs. Kaye a moment's loss of poise. She merely wondered that she had ever questioned her star. People that disliked her found a subtle suggestion of arrogance in her manner, and the slight significant smile on her large firm lips was a trifle more stereotyped. Those that she favored with the abundance of her offerings remembered afterwards that she had never been so brilliant as during the month that followed the announcement of her bethrothal, and attributed the fact to the electrified springs of affection.

Gwynne and she had been invited to the same houses for the rest of the autumn, but he cancelled his engagements while begging her to fulfil hers, as he should be too busy to entertain her were she so sweet as to insist upon coming to Capheaton. This she had not the least intention of doing, for she not only yearned for the additional tribute due to her, but she always avoided long sojourns in Lady Victoria's vicinity, knowing her as a woman of caprice, who often dropped people as abruptly as she took them up. Susceptible to the charm of novelty, so far Mrs.

Kaye had wholly pleased her; but the clever Julia gauged the depths of her future mother-in-law's credulity and kept her distance. With all her reason for self-gratulation, in the depths of her cynical soul she was quite aware of her natural inferiority to the women she emulated in all but their license. That prerogative, with the wisdom that had marked her upward course, she had flagrantly avoided, knowing that the world is complacent only to those that fire its sn.o.bbishness, never to those that fan the flame; and while she bitterly envied these women, she never forgot the market value of her own unimpeachable virtue. She could not in any case have been the slave of her pa.s.sions, but her serenity was sometimes ruffled as she reflected that, in spite of eminence achieved, her caution in this and in other respects branded her in her secret soul as second rate.

But if she tactfully did not insist upon flying to Capheaton, she wrote such charming letters, happily free of solecisms, that Gwynne wondered at his failure to sound the depths of her charm. But he refrained from meeting her, and the reason was that he was slowly working towards a momentous decision, and wished to arm himself at all points before braving her possible disapproval. When he was his cool normal collected self again, he gave way to his impatience to see the woman he had every reason to believe was deeply in love with him. He telegraphed her a peremptory appeal to go up to her house in London, and she was too wise to refuse. It was now October and London quite bearable. She telegraphed to her servants to strip her house of its summer shroud, and returned early on the day of his choice.

It is hardly necessary to state that Mrs. Kaye lived in Park Lane. She had cultivated half-tones with a notable success, but to symbolize her new estate was a temptation it had not occurred to her to resist.

Shortly after her return from India she had bought a large house in the facade of London, and furnished it with a luxury that satisfied one of the deepest cravings of her being, while her admirable sense of balance saved her from the peculiar extravagances of the cocotte.

She had seen Lady Victoria's expressive boudoir at Capheaton, and its mate in Curzon Street, and relieved the envy they inspired in a caustic epigram that happily did not reach the insolent beauty's ear. "These old coquettes," she had lisped, with an amused uplift of one eyebrow. "They surround themselves with the atmosphere of the demi-monde and forget that a wrinkle is as fatal as a chaperon."

The pictures in her own house were as correct as they were costly, and she had no boudoir. She invariably received her guests in the drawing-room, an immense and unique apartment, with a frieze of dusky copies of old masters, all of a size, and all framed in gilt as dim with time. From them depended a tapestry of crimson silk brocade of uncheckered surface. By a cunning arrangement of furniture the great room was broken up into a semblance of smaller ones, each with its group of comfortable chairs, its tea-table, or book case, or cabinet of bibelots, or open hearth. And all exhaled the inviting atmosphere of occupation.

Mrs. Kaye, rested, and more self-possessed than if the hastening lover had been the late Lord Brathland, but agreeably stirred nevertheless, awaited the new peer in a charming corner before a screen of dull gold, the last reviews on a table beside her, the afternoon sun shining in on her healthy unworn face. When he entered and advanced impetuously across the room she decided that he certainly was a dear, even if he lacked the fascination of Brathland and his kind. And his halo was almost visible.

She therefore yielded enchantingly when he enveloped her, smothered her, stormed her lips, and even pulled her hair. She finally got him over to the little sofa--she had advanced to meet him--but remained in his arm, the very picture of tender voluptuous young womanhood. Indeed, she was well pleased, and found her Jack, with that light blazing in his eyes, quite handsome, and fascinating in his own boyish imperious self-confident way.

It was half an hour before she rang for tea, and then she looked so pretty and domestic on the other side of the little table, with its delicate and costly service, that Gwynne was obliged to pause and summon all his resolution before proceeding to another subject that possessed him as fully as herself; but he succeeded, for not even pa.s.sion could turn him from his course; and she gave him his opening.

"Poor Lord Strathland!" she exclaimed, with a tear in her throat. "He was always so jolly and amusing, quite the most cheerful person I ever met. And before your cousin became--lost his health--we were great friends. Indeed he never quite forgot me. But it was for you I was so horribly cut up. I cried for two nights."

"Did you? But I was positive you did not make those tears in your first letter with your hair-brush." He laughed like a happy school-boy, while she protested with a roughish expression that made her look like a very young girl.

"It need not prevent our immediate marriage," he said. "What do you say to the last of this month?"

"I could get ready. Only girls, who never have any clothes, poor things, get trousseaux in these days. I had set my heart upon spending the honeymoon at the Abbey, but it would be rather indecent yet awhile; don't you think so?"

He had not an atom of tact and rushed upon his doom. "We shall have to cut the Abbey," he said, firmly. "I start for California three weeks from to-day."

"Indeed?" she said, stiffly. "I should have thought you would have consulted me. Not but that I shall be enchanted to visit California, but--well, you _are_ rather lordly, you know."

"My dear girl, I have been too hara.s.sed to consider the amenities. And when a man is rearranging his whole life he must isolate himself or run the risk of clouds in his judgment."

He paused. She disguised her mortification and answered, kindly: "I can understand that in this sudden demand for readjustment you have had many bad moments. It was far too soon for you to go up to the Peers'. But with your marvellous energies, your genius--there is no other word for it--you can soon astonish the world anew with a patent for defossilization. At all events the Peers' will enter upon a new life as a sort of mastodon cave swept out and illuminated by the most energetic and aspiring of knights-errant."

Gwynne laughed dryly. "The role does not appeal to me; nor any other in the same setting. I have done a month of the hardest thinking of my life. Everything that went before looks like child's play. I have arrived at the definite conclusion that my career in England has come to a full stop, and I have made up my mind to create another--out of whole cloth--in the United States."

She stared at him, her face not yet unset, but her eyes expanding with incredulous apprehension. "You mean to desert England?" she asked, quietly.

"Forever. Absolutely. It is all or nothing. I cannot become an American citizen until five years after entering the country, and I do not wish to lose any valuable time. Having made up my mind, I have ceased to wonder if I shall like it. That is now beside the question. I shall drop my t.i.tle as a matter of course, and hope that I shall pa.s.s undiscovered as John Gwynne. In short, I shall begin life all over again--as if I were a criminal in disguise instead of the sport of circ.u.mstances. I have ceased to regret the inevitable and begun to be stimulated by the thought of a struggle to which all that I have had here was a mere game, and I am sure that you, with your brains and energy, will enjoy the fight as much as I. I am not going into the wilderness. We shall be only two hours from San Francisco, which I am told is the only city in America that in the least suggests Europe; it should be very attractive.

On the ranch you shall have every comfort and luxury. You must be sick of London, anyhow. You have conquered everything here."

He paused and regarded her in some trepidation. In spite of his self-confidence he had had his moments of doubt. And although he had antic.i.p.ated tears and remonstrance, he was unprepared for the more subtle weapon of amus.e.m.e.nt, flickering through absolute calm. He suddenly wished that she were younger. He had never given a thought to her age before, but he remembered that she had lived for two years longer than himself, and it made him feel even less than thirty.

"My dear boy," she said, wonderingly, "I never heard anything so romantic and impossible. Of course it is the American cousin with whom you have been shut up all these weeks that has been putting such preposterous ideas into your head. I always said that nature just missed making you a poet. But if you wish to work out your manifest destiny--to be immortalized in history--you will remind yourself that England is the one place on earth where an Anglo-Saxon can cut a really great figure.

Not only because he has the proper background of traditions, but because he has an audience trained to recognize a man's greatness during his lifetime. If you go in for those unspeakable American politics you will never be given credit for anything higher than your medium; in other words, should you develop into a statesman on American lines you would never be recognized for anything but a successful politician. Even if you survived in their hurly-burly of history, you would be judged by contemporary standards--infused with a certain contempt because you were not American-born."

"I have thought it all out. The obstacles to greatness, even more than to success, have whetted my appet.i.te for the struggle. I must fight!

fight! fight! I must exercise my powers of usefulness to some good end, and now, now, when I am young and ardent. I should go mad sitting round doing nothing. I have no temper for attacking the pa.s.sive resistance of inertia. I want to fight out in the open. If I fail I will take my beating like a man. But I have not the least intention of failing. I am acutely aware of the powers within me, and I can use them anywhere."

"Then why not in the Upper House?" she asked, quickly.

"For the reasons I have given you, and because I should fear the results on my character. You know what it means to be a peer of Great Britain.

Flattery without accomplishment is demoralizing--would be to me, at all events. It is wine to me when I am achieving, but it would drug me in idleness. Are you so wedded to London?"

"London is the _raison d'etre_ of life. Has it occurred to you," she asked, gently, "that I might refuse to go to America?"

"I was afraid the idea would be something of a shock, but I was sure you would see the matter in my light."

"It is not wanting in power! But it seems that I am. I have never aspired to the role of Amelia Sedley. I have, in fact, rather a p.r.o.nounced individuality; and yet you have taken upon yourself to dispose of my future as if I were a slip of eighteen--delighted at the prospect of a husband."

"Indeed you are wrong!" he cried, distressed to have bruised so beloved an ego. "But, I repeat, it was a question I was forced to decide alone.

Nor would it have been fair to ask you to a.s.sume any part of so great a responsibility. Do you suppose I did not think of that? Do you suppose I have ever lost sight of your happiness? Let me think for both and you shall not regret it."

She could have smiled outright at this evidence of the ingenuousness of man, but her breast was raging with a fury of disappointment and consternation. She kept her eyes down lest they should betray her. But suddenly she had an inspiration. She controlled herself with a masterly effort, flooded her eyes with tenderness, raised them, and said, softly:

"I do love London, love it with what I called a pa.s.sion before I--before we met. And I cannot believe that this extraordinary resolution of yours has had time to mature. Promise me at least that you will not apply for letters of citizenship for at least a year after your arrival--"

"I shall apply the day after I arrive in Rosewater." He steeled himself, for he had had his experience of woman's wiles; and his faith in masculine supremacy as a habit did not waver. "I only regret that the time of probation must be so long. I am on fire to throw myself into the arena--however, there will be opportunities to make myself known and felt. I have decided to study law meanwhile--and the law, it seems, is a career in itself in America."

And then he watched her eyes, fascinated. They slowly hardened, until, with the sun slanting into them, they looked like bronze. She was too intent upon studying his own to hide them, and upon arriving at a final conclusion. She reached it in a moment, for to her habit of rapid thought and her understanding of the workings of the masculine mind she owed no little of her supremacy among the clever women of London.

"I see that your decision is irrevocable," she said. "You are yourself; no one could make or unmake you, and G.o.d forbid that I should try.

But--and I forbear to lead up to it artistically--I dissever myself from your chariot wheels. I am not afraid of being crushed, for no doubt you would always remember to be polite, if not considerate. I am not sure that you would even permit me to become unrecognizable with dust. But I am no longer plastic. I am thirty-two, and I am as much I as you are you. I shall watch you from afar with great interest, and I sincerely hope, for both your sakes, that Miss Otis will succeed in marrying you.

I cannot fancy anything more suitable."

He had turned white, but he looked at her steadily. He felt as if the round globe were slipping from under him; and vaguely wondered if she had gone about alluding to him as "the marquess." Then he sprang to his feet, lifted her forcibly from her chair, deposited her on the sofa, and taking her in his arms defied her to dismiss him, to live without him.

As the body, so yielding before, declined even to become rigid in resistance, he poured out such a flood of pleading that, believing pa.s.sion had conquered reason, she flung her arms about his neck and offered to marry him on the morrow if he would promise to remain in England. But there was a crystal quality in Gwynne's intellect that no pa.s.sion could obscure. He merely renewed his pleadings; and then she slipped out of his embrace and rose to her feet.

"We are wasting time," she said. "I always drive before dinner, and I cannot go out in a tea-gown." She paused a moment to summon from her resources the words that would humiliate him most and slake the desire for vengeance that shrieked within her. She had never hated any one so bitterly before, not even in her youth, when snubs were frequent. For the third time she watched a coronet slip through her strong determined impotent fingers. She could forgive her husband and Brathland their untimely deaths, but for this young man, pa.s.sionately in love with her, who tossed the dazzling prize aside as an actor might a "property crown," she felt such a rage of hatred that for almost a moment she thought of giving her inherited self the exquisite satisfaction of scratching his eyes out. But it was too late in her day to be wholly natural, and, indeed, she preferred the weapons the world and her ambitions had given her. As he rose and stared at her doubtingly, she said, without a high or a sharp note, in her clear lisping voice:

"I think it wise to put an end to all this by telling you that I was engaged to Lord Brathland when he died. I was more in love with him than I ever shall be with any one again. You caught me in the violence of the rebound, for I was confused with grief, and distraction was welcome: you are always sufficiently amusing. I have not the least idea it would ever have come off, for, to tell you the truth, my friend, you are too hopelessly the _enfant gate_ for a woman who is neither young enough nor old enough to crave youth on any terms. As a husband, I fear, not to put too fine a point on it, you would be a bore. At the risk of being thought a sn.o.b--to which I am quite indifferent--I will add that as plain John Gwynne you seem to have so shrunk in size as to have become as insignificant as most men are, no doubt, when you catch a glimpse of their unmanufactured side. However"--with the air of a great lady dismissing an object of patronage--"I wish you good-fortune, and sincerely hope that we shall one day read of John Gwynne, senator, and recall for a moment the brilliant Elton Gwynne so long forgotten in this busy London of ours."

During quite half of her discourse Gwynne had felt his soul writhe under a rain of hot metal, gibber towards some abyss where it could hide its humiliation and its scars for ever. His brain seemed vacant and his very nostrils turned white. But like many clever people goaded to words by a furious sense of failure, she overshot her mark, and before she finished his pride had made a terrified rebound and taken complete possession of him. He still felt stripped, lashed, a presumptuous youth before a scornful woman in the ripeness of her maturity, but it was imperative for his future self-respect that he should rea.s.sert his manhood and retire in good order. He let her finish, and then, as she stood with a still impatience, he lifted his eyes and drew himself up.

His face was devoid of expression. His eyes did not even glitter; he might have been listening with voluntary politeness to the speech of majesty laying a corner-stone.

"You are quite right," he said. "You have given me the drubbing I deserve, and I am grateful to you. It was the only thing I needed to snap my last tie with England and brace me for the struggle in America.

It emboldens me to ask another favor--that you will regard what I have told you of my plans as confidential. I shall give out that I am going to travel for a time. As I believe I mentioned, I do not wish to be recognized in the United States; and that by the time I have made my new name my old one will be forgotten, is one of the sure points upon which I have reckoned. Have I your promise?"

"My oath!" she said, flippantly; and although she was not generous enough to admire, and still felt as if the world itself were a corpse, every inherited instinct in her united in a visible respect for a poise that was a gift of the centuries, not a deftly manufactured mask.