A Manifest Destiny Part 4

"Good-morning, my lady," she said, gently, in answer to Bettina's friendly salutation. "Will your ladys.h.i.+p not have a shawl? This room is always cool, no matter what the weather is."

Bettina declined the wrap, but pa.s.sed on to the next picture, requesting the woman to come with her and act as cicerone.

"What is your name? I ought to know it," she said.

"Parlett, your ladys.h.i.+p."

"And how long have you lived here, Parlett?"

"Over forty years, my lady. I was here in the old lord's time. That is his picture, with his lady next to him."

Bettina looked with interest at the two pictures designated.

"He is thought to be very much like his present lords.h.i.+p," said the housekeeper.

"Yes, I see it," said Bettina, feeling an instinct to guard her countenance. Here were the same keen eyes, the same resolute jaw, the same thin lips and hard lines about the mouth. Only in the older face they were yet more accentuated, and instead of the not unbecoming thinness of hair which showed in the son, there was a frank expanse of bald head which made his features all the harder.

Hurrying away from the contemplation of this portrait, Bettina turned to its companion. Here she encountered a face and form which were truly all womanly, if by womanliness is meant abject submission and self-effacement. The poor little lady looked patiently hopeless, and her deprecating air seemed the last in the world calculated to hold its own against such a lord. That she had not done so--of her own full surrender of herself, in mind and soul and body--the picture seemed a plain representation.

"Poor woman! She looks as if she had suffered," said Bettina.

"Oh yes, my lady," Parlett answered, as if divided between the inclination to talk and the duty to be silent.

"She was unhappy, then?" said Bettina. "You need not hesitate to answer. His lords.h.i.+p has told me what a trusted servant of the family you are, and I shall treat you as such. You need not fear to speak to me quite freely."

"Yes, my lady, she had a great deal of sadness in her life," went on the housekeeper, thus encouraged. "She had six daughters before she had a son, and this was naturally a disappointment to his lords.h.i.+p.

One after the other these children died, which grieved her ladys.h.i.+p sorely, for she was a very devoted mother. His lords.h.i.+p had never noticed them much, being angry at not having an heir, and this made my lady all the fonder of them. She had little const.i.tution herself, and the children were sickly. At last, however, an heir was born, but her ladys.h.i.+p died at his birth. It seemed a pity, my lady, did it not? For his lords.h.i.+p was greatly pleased with the heir, and, of course, my lady would have been much happier after that."

Bettina did not answer. The evident reasonableness of the father's position, in the eyes of this good and gentle woman, made it impossible for her to speak without dissent to such an atrocity as Lord Hurdly's att.i.tude seemed to her. So she moved away, and the woman took the hint and said no more.

A little distance off, at the end of the long room, she had caught sight of an object that made her heart beat suddenly. She did no more than glance at it, and then returned to the contemplation of the picture before which she was standing. But she had recognized Horace Spotswood in the tall stripling of perhaps fifteen who stood in riding-clothes at the side of a pawing gray horse.

By the time she had made her way to it, in its regular succession, she had quite recovered her calmness and had made up her mind as to her course.

"And who is this handsome boy?" she said, with perfect self-possession, as they stood before the large canvas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'AND WHO IS THIS HANDSOME BOY?'"]

"That is Mr. Horace, my lady," said the woman, a sudden tone of emotion mingling with the deference in her voice as her eyes dwelt on the picture fondly.

And who could wonder at this? Surely a more winsome lad had never been seen. He was even then tall, and in his riding coat and breeches looked strangely slender, in contrast to the broad-shouldered physique which she had lately known so well. But the eyes were just the same--direct, frank, eager eyes, which looked straight at you and seemed to make a demand upon you to be as open and frank in return.

Had Bettina searched the world, she could not, as she knew, have found a more significant contrast than the comparison of the honest eyes with the guarded, cold, inscrutable ones into which it was now her lot to look so often.

"Have you known him a long time?" she asked, pleasantly, as the woman remained silent.

"Oh, since he was a little lad, my lady! We all love Mr. Horace here.

He is the handsomest and kindest young gentleman in the world, and he's that good to me that I couldn't be fonder of my own son, not forgetting the difference, my lady."

Bettina detected a tone of regretfulness in the woman's voice, and also, she thought, an effort to conceal it. If there was a feeling akin to this regret in her own heart, she also must conceal it. These allusions to the handsome, enthusiastic young fellow to whom she had promised herself in marriage had stirred her deeply. The idea of any one, servant or equal, speaking in this way of the man who was her husband, at any time in his life, gave her a nervous desire to laugh.

It was followed by an equally nervous impulse to cry.

Walking ahead of the housekeeper, she gained a moment's opportunity for the recovery of her self-control, and she made good use of it.

"Parlett," she said, presently, "I do not want you to think that in marrying Lord Hurdly I have done an injury to Mr. Spotswood." In spite of herself, her voice shook at the name.

"Oh no, my lady--" began Parlett, but her mistress interrupted her, saying, quickly:

"Of course he always knew that his lords.h.i.+p might marry, and could not have been unprepared for such a possibility; but in order that he might feel no difference in his present position on that account, Lord Hurdly has settled on him what is really a handsome fortune--not only the income of it, but the princ.i.p.al also. I tell you this that you may understand that he is none the worse off, so far as money goes, through his cousin's marriage to me."

"Yes, my lady. I understand, my lady. Thank you for telling me," said Parlett, somewhat nervously. "Of course every one knows that you have done him no harm, my lady, and we knew, of course, that his lords.h.i.+p would do the handsome thing by him."

Somehow these civil, rea.s.suring words smote painfully upon Bettina's consciousness. When this woman spoke so confidently of Lord Hurdly's doing the handsome thing by his former heir, she felt it to be the hollow tribute of a conventional loyalty, and the a.s.surance that it was understood that she herself had done him no harm grated on her also. Now that she was quite alone and free to think things out, as she had shrunk from doing heretofore, and as, in the rush of the London season, she had been able to avoid doing, she felt a sense of compunction toward Horace that seriously depressed her.

Dismissing the housekeeper, she put on a shade-hat and went for a ramble in the park. How beautiful it was! What shrubs, what trees, what undulations of rich emerald turf! She could not in the least feel that she had any right in it all. But how must a creature love it who had looked upon its n.o.ble beauties from childhood up to youth, and on to manhood, with the belief that it would some day be his own! She could not stifle the feeling that she had wronged that being if by her marriage she should be the means of depriving him of such a fortune and position, and deep, deep down in her consciousness she had a boding fear that, if all things hidden could be revealed, it might be shown that in a keener sense than this she had also wronged him.

For marriage had been in many ways an illumination to Bettina. The revelation of her own heart which it had given her was one which she tried hard to shut her eyes to. Twice she had consented to the idea of marrying without love. Once she had actually done this thing. Only her own heart knew what had been the consequences to her. But of one thing she had often felt glad. This was that she had not entered into a loveless marriage with a man who had loved her as she had believed Horace did at the time he had so ardently wooed her. From such a wrong as that might she be delivered!

As her thoughts now dwelt on Horace and the circ.u.mstances of their brief past together, the memory of his honest, tender, self-forgetful att.i.tude toward her recurred to her half wistfully, in contrast to her recent experiences. Lord Hurdly's manner toward her had, in truth, changed from the very hour of their marriage. He no longer had the air of a solicitous suitor, but took at once that of the a.s.sured husband and master. It made her think what she had heard of his father and of his poor little mother's history. Not that she could fancy herself becoming, under any circ.u.mstances, a Griselda; though she could without difficulty imagine him in his father's _role_.

But what right had she, she asked herself, to expect to reap where she had not sown? She had married for money and position, and she had got them. What more had she expected?

Nothing more, perhaps; but in one point she had been disappointed--namely, in the power of these things to give her what she longed for, and what she could define only under the indefinite term happiness.

CHAPTER V

Bettina's talk with Parlett had set her mind to working very actively in a direction in which she had not allowed it to stray before. The thought of Horace always brought a sense of pain and spiritual discomfort to her, which she instinctively desired to shake off; and in the restless whirl of London life, which left her little time for thought of any kind, she had not much difficulty in doing so.

Now, however, she had nothing to do but to think and to become acquainted with her new possessions, the latter occupation being a strong stimulus to the former. There were many a.s.sociations with Horace at Kingdon Hall. It was extraordinary how many things that he had told her in connection with this place came back to her. She was constantly recognizing pictures or persons or names with which he had made her familiar. The persons were, of course, the servants, steward, tenants, and the like, for she had seen no others. Even in walking about the lawn she had found his initials cut on trees, and the very dogs which joined her when she would go out for her walks had names on their collars that she knew. There was one, a magnificent Great Dane, which bore Horace's name there as well as his own. This dog, Comrade, she had heard Horace speak of with a special affection.

True, Kingdon Hall had never been Horace's home, but he had grown up with the idea that it might be, and since coming to manhood had felt wellnigh secure that it would be. All his life he had been in the habit of making visits here, and the impression which he had left behind him was almost surprising to Bettina.

The place in which this impression was strongest was in the hearts of the servants. Bettina, through Nora, had a.s.sured herself of this. The devoted servant, who had the sole object in life of serving her beloved mistress, had, by Bettina's orders, informed herself on this point, and all that she gathered in the servants' hall she retailed to Bettina in her room. Nora, like every one else, had been won by Horace's manner and appearance, but, of course, when her mistress had drawn off from him, she had no idea of anything but acceptance of the changed conditions. Still, she was inwardly delighted when Bettina explained to her how anxious she was to learn all that she could about Mr. Horace, so that she might lose no opportunity of furthering his interest with Lord Hurdly, and making up to him, as far as possible, for having disappointed him in his worldly prospects by marrying his cousin.

That he could hold her accountable for any other wrong to him she did not admit. At times the memory of his fresh and buoyant youth, in so great contrast to the jaded maturity of his cousin, knocked at the door of her heart, and the ardent expressions of his wors.h.i.+pping, pa.s.sionate love for her echoed there with a distinctness that amazed her.

Surely he had loved her--this she could not doubt. But if his love had been so slight that a few months of absence had cooled it, and of so poor a quality that a new caprice had taken its place so soon, she was well rid of it. That this had been so the letter which Lord Hurdly had shown her sufficiently attested, and she must guard herself against the folly of sentimental regrets.

It was not Horace that she regretted. It was only the ideal of the love between man and woman which her brief intercourse with him had held up to her. She had seen love in a different guise since then--or what went by the name of love--and surely the contrast must have had a deeper root than the mere difference between youth and middle-age.

It was not often that Bettina allowed herself to think of these things. But now, in her solitude and idleness, visions would come of the eager lover, strong as a young Narcissus, who represented love in such a simple, wholesome guise--or at least so it had seemed to be.

Then she would shake off the image, and tell herself it was but seeming, as the result had proved, and so she would accuse herself of weakness and sentimentality. These thoughts were getting to be inconvenient. They haunted her too persistently, and at last she began to wish for the time to come when her days would again be too crowded with engagements for her to indulge in such foolish reflections.

The truth was, deep down in Bettina's heart there was a fear which she could not wholly still in any waking hour. She could and did refuse to recognize it, even in her own soul; but there it was, and there it remained, to rise again and again, and almost stifle her with the sinister possibility which it suggested.