"I cut his mouth, I'm sure," he replied, wiping his hand from which the blood ran, "and I hope I knocked out one or two of his teeth."

Then the exhilaration faded as quickly as it had come, for as Lydia looked up at him, while he stood there wiping the blood from his bruised knuckles, he saw, for the first time since his return to Botetourt, that there was admiration in her eyes. So it was the brute, after all, and not the spirit that had triumphed over her.

CHAPTER V

THE HOUSE OF DREAMS

FROM that night there was a new element in Lydia's relation to him, an increased consideration, almost a deference, as if, for the first time, he had shown himself capable of commanding her respect. This change, which would have pleased him, doubtless, twenty years before, had only the effect now of adding to his depression, for he saw in it a tribute from his wife not to his higher, but to his lower nature. All his patient ideals, all his daily self-sacrifice, had not touched her as had that one instant's violence; and it occurred to him, with a growing recognition of the hopeless inconsistency of life, that if he had treated her with less delicacy, less generosity, if he had walked roughshod over her feminine scruples, instead of yielding to them, she might have entertained for him by this time quite a wholesome wifely regard. Then the mere possibility disgusted him, and he saw that to have compromised with her upon any lower plane would have been always morally repugnant to him. After all, the dominion of the brute was not what he was seeking.

On the morning after his scene with Geoffrey, Alice came to him and begged for the minutest particulars of the quarrel. She wanted to know how it had begun? If Geoffrey had been really horrible? And if he had noticed the new bronze dragon she had bought for the hall? Upon his replying that he had not, she seemed disappointed, he thought, for a minute.

"It's very fine," she said, "I bought it from what's-his-name, that famous man in Paris? If I ever have money enough I shall get the match to it, so there'll be the pair of them." Then seeing his look of astonishment, she hastened to correct the impression she had made. "Of course, I mean that I'd like to have done it, if I had been going to live there."

"It would take more than a bronze dragon, or a pair of them, to make that house a home, dear," was his only comment.

"But it's very handsome," she remarked after a moment, "everything in it is so much more costly than the things here." He made no rejoinder, and she added with vehemence, "but of course, I wouldn't go back, not even if it were a palace!"

Then a charming merriment seized her, and she clung to him and kissed him and called him a dozen silly pet names. "No, she won't ever, ever play in that horrid old house again," she sang gaily between her kisses.

For several days these exuberant spirits lasted, and then he prepared himself to meet the inevitable reaction. Her looks drooped, she lost her colour and grew obviously bored, and in the end she complained openly that there was nothing for her to do in the house, and that she couldn't go out of doors because she hadn't the proper clothes. To his reminder that it was she herself who had prevented his sending for her trunks, she replied that there was plenty of time, and that "besides n.o.body could pack them unless she was there to overlook it."

"If anybody is obliged to go back there, for heaven's sake, let me be the one," he urged desperately at last.

"To knock out more of poor Geoffrey's teeth? Oh, you naughty, naughty, papa!"--she cried, lifting a reproving finger. The next instant her laughter bubbled out at the delightful picture of "papa in the midst of her Paris gowns. I'd be so afraid you'd roll up Geoffrey in my precious laces," she protested, half seriously.

For a week nothing more was said on the subject, and then she remarked irritably that her room was cold and she hadn't her quilted silk dressing-gown. When he asked her to ride with him, she declared that her old habit was too tight for her and her new one was at the other house.

When he suggested driving instead, she replied that she hadn't her fur coat and she would certainly freeze without it. At last one bright, cold day, when he came up to luncheon, Lydia told him, with her strange calmness, that Alice had gone back to her husband.

"I knew it would come in time," she said, and he bowed again before her unerring prescience.

"Do you mean to tell me that she's willing to put up with Heath for the sake of a little extra luxury?" he demanded.

"Oh, that's a part of it. She likes the newness of the house and the air of costliness about it, but most of all, she feels that she could never settle down to our monotonous way of living. Geoffrey promised her to take her to Europe again in the summer and I think she began to grow restless when it appeared that she might have to give it up."

"But one of us could have taken her to Europe, if that's all she wanted.

You could have gone with her."

"Not in Alice's way, we could never have afforded it. She told me this when I offered to go with her if she would definitely separate from Geoffrey."

"Then you didn't want her to go back? You didn't encourage it?"

"I encouraged her to behave with decency--and this isn't decent."

"No, I admit that. It decidedly is not."

"Yet we have no a.s.surance that she won't fly in upon us at dinner to-night, with all the servants about," she reflected mournfully.

His awful levity broke out as it always did whenever she invoked the sanct.i.ty of convention.

"In that case hadn't we better serve ourselves until she has made up her mind?" he inquired.

But the submission of the martyr is proof even against caustic wit, and she looked at him, after a minute, with a smile of infinite patience.

"For myself I can bear anything," she answered, "but I feel that for her it is shocking to make things so public."

It was shocking. In spite of his flippancy he felt the vulgarity of it as acutely as she felt it; and he was conscious of something closely akin to relief, when Richard Ordway dropped in after dinner to tell them that Alice and Geoffrey had come to a complete reconciliation.

"But will it last?" Lydia questioned, in an uneasy voice.

"We'll hope so at all events," replied the old man, "they appeared certainly to be very friendly when I came away. Whatever happens it is surely to Alice's interest that she should be kept out of a public scandal."

They were still discussing the matter, after Richard had gone, when the girl herself ran in, bringing Geoffrey, and fairly brilliant with life and spirits.

"We've decided to forget everything disagreeable," she said, "we're going to begin over again and be nice and jolly, and if I don't spend too much money, we are going to Egypt in April."

"If you're happy, then I'm satisfied," returned Ordway, and he held out his hand to Geoffrey by way of apology.

To do the young man justice, he appeared to cherish no resentment for the blow, though he still bore a scar on his upper lip. He looked heavy and handsome, and rather amiable in a dull way, and the one discovery Daniel made about him was that he entertained a profound admiration for Richard Ordway. Still, when everybody in Botetourt shared his sentiment, this was hardly deserving of notice.

As the weeks went on it looked as if peace were really restored, and even Lydia's face lost its anxious foreboding, when she gazed on the a.s.sembled family at Thanksgiving. d.i.c.k had grown into a quiet, distinguished looking young fellow, more than ever like his Uncle Richard, and it was touching to watch his devotion to his delicate mother. At least Lydia possessed one enduring consolation in life, Ordway reflected, with a rush of grat.i.tude.

In the afternoon Alice drove with him out into the country, along the pale brown November roads, and he felt, while he sat beside her, with her hand clasped tightly in his under the fur robe, that she was again the daughter of his dreams, who had flown to his arms in the terrible day of his homecoming. She was in one of her rare moods of seriousness, and when she lifted her eyes to his, it seemed to him that they held a new softness, a deeper blueness. Something in her face brought back to him the memory of Emily as she had looked down at him when he knelt before her; and again he was aware of some subtle link which bound together in his thoughts the two women whom he loved.

"There's something I've wanted to tell you, papa, first of all," said Alice, pressing his hand, "I want you to know it before anybody else because you've always loved me and stood by me from the beginning. Now shut your eyes while I tell you, and hold fast to my hand. O papa, there's to be really and truly a baby in the spring, and even if it's a boy--I hope it will be a girl--you'll promise to love it and be good to it, won't you?"

"Love your child? Alice, my darling!" he cried, and his voice broke.

She raised her hand to his cheek with a little caressing gesture, which had always been characteristic of her, and as he opened his eyes upon her, her beauty shone, he thought, with a light that blinded him.

"I hope it will be a little girl with blue eyes and fair hair like mamma's," she resumed softly. "It will be better than playing with dolls, won't it? I always loved dolls, you know. Do you remember the big wax doll you gave me when I was six years old, and how her voice got out of order and she used to crow instead of talking? Well, I kept her for years and years, and even after I was a big girl, and wore long dresses, and did up my hair, I used to take her out sometimes and put on her clothes. Only I was ashamed of it and used to lock the door so no one could see me. But this little girl will be real, you know, and that's ever so much more fun, isn't it? And you shall help teach her to walk, and to ride when she's big enough; and I'll dress her in the loveliest dresses, with French embroidered ruffles, and a little blue bonnet with bunches of feathers, like one in Paris. Only she can't wear that until she's five years old, can she?"

"And now you will have something to think of, Alice, you will be bored no longer?"

"I shall enjoy buying the little things so much, but it's too soon yet to plan about them. Papa, do you think Geoffrey will fuss about money when he hears this?"

"I hope not, dear, but you must be careful. The baby won't need to be extravagant, just at first."

"But she must have pretty clothes, of course, papa. It wouldn't be kind to the little thing to make her look ugly, would it?"

"Are simple things always ugly?"

"Oh, but they cost just as much if they're fine--and I had beautiful clothes when I came. Mamma has told me about them."

She ran on breathlessly, radiant with the promise of motherhood, dwelling in fancy upon the small blond ideal her imagination had conjured into life.