A Manifest Destiny Part 7

"I thought so," said her husband, with a strange mixture of satisfaction and anger in his hard tones. "I have been expecting some such foolery as this for some time, and I am not blinded to the motive behind it. What do you care about those devils of Indian savages? What does Horace Spotswood care about them? Just as little!

Enough, and too much, of my money has gone already to the prolonging of their worthless lives. If that graceless cub chooses to go on wasting money on them he can do it, but I take this occasion to inform you, Lady Hurdly--and I'd advise you to remember what I say--that I do not choose that any more of my money shall go in that direction. Do you understand?"

There was an insolence in his tone which he had never used to her before. She resented it keenly. Rising to her feet, with an instinct which forbade her to preside over the table at the other end of which he was seated as master, she said, with a tinge of anger in her quiet tones:

"The money was partly my own--from my mother's little fortune; and she would have held, with me, that I could put it to no more holy use. As to the rest, I understood that that also was my own. I did not know that you required of me an account of how I used it."

"How you used it? You may light your fire with it, for all I care!

But there is one thing for which I do care, and which I mean to see nipped in the bud; and that is this ridiculous sentimentality which you are indulging in over Horace Spotswood. If you are regretting your young lover, that is your own affair, but when you come to flaunt this regret before the eyes of the public it becomes my affair, and as such I propose to put a stop to it."

Bettina trembled with the rage of resentment that possessed her. She recollected herself enough, however, not to speak until she had paused long enough to be sure that she could control herself. Then she said:

"You are forgetting yourself, Lord Hurdly, when you presume to speak to me as you have just done. I have given you no occasion to do so, and you know it. If there are certain regrets in my marriage to you, your present conduct justifies them. But permit me to say, on my side, that I can imagine no explanation of your behavior, except to suppose that it proceeds from a consciousness in your own mind of having wronged this man."

She was looking at him narrowly. His features did not flush, nor did his cold eyes falter. And yet, in spite of the long habit of guardedness which now stood him in such good stead, there was a consciousness about him, like an atmosphere, which told her that her thrust had drawn blood.

"I thought so!" she said, using the very words which he had used to her. "I have for a long time been struggling in my mind against a doubt which sometimes would arise, that I might have been deceived.

Everywhere, in public and in private, that I hear that young man spoken of, it is with words of confidence, admiration, and affection."

Still her penetrating gaze was on him, and still he bore it without flinching.

"You saw the letter," he said, with a sneer. "If that was not enough for you--" He broke off with a harsh, unpleasant laugh.

"It was enough," she said. "Surely it has sufficed to fix my fate in life. But it is possible that that letter gave an exaggerated account. Still, if the half of it was so, I was more than justified in cutting loose from him. No one could possibly blame me."

"No one does, so far as I can see," was the malicious answer. "I hear of no complaints from others, and certainly I have uttered none. You make a very satisfactory Lady Hurdly, and I suppose you get enough out of the position to repay you for anything you may have lost--at least, from the world's point of view, you should have done so."

Bettina did not answer at once. A sickness of soul was creeping over her that made all life look suddenly loathsome. The one feeble ray that penetrated the darkness in which she felt herself enveloped was the help that came from a certain ideal which she had recently enthroned in her own heart. As the world's need, the wider issues affecting the myriad lives beyond her own, had recently been brought before her consciousness, she had felt her way, as simply and weakly as a child might have done, to one plain principle of life--that it was worth while to try to be good. Never had she felt so keenly as in this minute the utter futility of hoping to be happy. Yet in this minute she felt more than ever, also, that happiness was not all.

It was only rarely that she had any personal talk with her husband.

The wall of separation between them seemed to be thickening by silent accretion all the time. It was very difficult to scale this wall, and she felt that any effort to do so irked him no less than it did her.

So, with an instinct not to let go the present opportunity, she said, rather eagerly, as he was rising to go away:

"Sit down a moment. We do not often speak together. I have something on my mind to say to you."

He resumed his seat and lighted a cigar--an action which discouraged her by its nonchalance. Still, she was determined to go on. By a great effort she made her voice very gentle, as she said:

"I know I have disappointed you in what you had hoped from this marriage between us, and I want to tell you I am very sorry. If I have not been able to give you the feeling which you desired--"

He interrupted her.

"Feeling?" he said. "Who wants feeling nowadays in a wife? No one expects it. I wanted some one to make a handsome figure as Lady Hurdly. I expected that you would do that, and you have not disappointed me."

"If this is true, I'm glad to know it," she said; "but, at any rate, you could not blame me for not giving you the love another woman might have given you. I never deceived you as to that. I told you I had not that love to give; not--as you have so unjustly hinted--because I had given it to another man, but because I was then incapable of love. I had no thought of any one beyond myself. I was miserably ignorant and egoistic. It was in ignorance and egoism that I took the position of your wife, but I think from the first that I have tried, as I could, to fulfil its obligations. I have tried to be and to appear what you would wish. And I am not unmindful of the honor and distinction which my marriage to you has conferred upon me."

"Gad! I should hope not! One of the biggest positions in England!" he exclaimed, in a tone of scornful irritation. With these words he rose and left the room.

Bettina's pride was deeply wounded. It had been that new a.s.sertion of the control of duty which had led her to say these things to her husband. She had conquered much in herself before speaking, and she felt that she had a right to resent the almost brutal insensibility with which he had received her words.

As she turned from the breakfast-room and mounted to her own apartments she felt conscious of a new humiliation in her life. Up to this time she had believed that Lord Hurdly would have been incapable of such speech as he had used to her that morning. She had done a good deal--more than was required of her, she told herself--in speaking to him as she had done after his words in the early part of their conversation, and now it seemed plain to her that she had fulfilled her whole duty toward him, and that if it had done no good, the fault was on his side and not on hers.

Once in her own rooms, she gave herself up to profoundly sorrowful thoughts. She was only twenty-two. How long the path of her future life looked, and whither would it lead? She had attained all that any woman could desire in the way of the world's bestowment. She did not underrate the value of this. On the contrary, it was as essential to one part of her nature as something far different in the way of human possibility was to another part. She did not lose her hold upon the actual because she was striving after the unattained. All this power and admiration was very important to her, though she felt the insufficiency of mere worldly prosperity. "Pleasure to have it, none; to lose it, pain," were words that very nearly fitted her state of mind. At the thought of going back to the obscurity she had come out of she shrank.

CHAPTER IX

That talk with Lord Hurdly made a distinct epoch in their relations to each other. Neither ever referred to it, but it had left its impress upon both. To Bettina it gave the a.s.surance that she had done all that could possibly be required of her, in her desire to come to a true and amicable understanding with her husband, and, after it, she had a greater sense of freedom. To Lord Hurdly it gave an insight into Bettina's nature which he had not had before. He found her to be possessed of a power of caustic speech which, he was bound to acknowledge, had made him feel uncomfortable. He felt also that he had not succeeded in a.s.serting his supremacy over her quite so conclusively as he could have wished. He had, moreover, an uncomfortable warning, from the recollection of her words and looks, that it might be better for him to think twice in future before crossing swords with her. He was a man who hated opposition, and who was quite unused to dealing with it in his own house. He was still master, and his sovereignty no one had even questioned. As he desired to keep this so, he did not care to enter into any further discussion with Bettina. There were circ.u.mstances not beyond his conceiving which might cause him a greater loss of prestige than any already endured, and the thought of these made him careful to avoid coming again into close quarters with Bettina.

This position on his part led to an att.i.tude toward his wife which might have been interpreted agreeably, since he no longer seemed to watch her so narrowly as he had done. He seemed, without speaking on the subject, to give her rather more freedom, and he never again referred to her interest in the Indian famine or in the doings of Horace Spotswood.

Yet Bettina had the same uncomfortable sense of being criticised and held to strict account. She felt as if evidence were rolling up against her which might one day be brought before her all at once.

She had, however, acquired a thirst for some knowledge of things beyond her own narrow interests, which was not to be calmed except by indulgence. When she looked about her in the great throbbing life of London, she found so many objects which seemed absolutely to stand waiting for her interest and partic.i.p.ation that she was soon caught in the strong movement of woman's work in social life in its wider and deeper meaning.

No sooner was it found that Lady Hurdly was willing to interest herself in such matters than they came crowding upon her. It was a new and delightful consciousness to her that she might become part of the power that was working against the evil in the world, and she threw herself into the effort with spirit and enthusiasm.

Life became better for her after that. The importance of her position was borne into her in a new and better way. By being Lady Hurdly she might hope, perhaps, to do some little service in bettering the lots of those who were at the other extreme of life's scale from her, whereas if she had remained in her former position she would have had as little value at one end as at the other.

Apart from these considerations of pure altruism was the sweet thought that she was drawing nearer to her mother in spirit, now that she was trying so hard to give help to others; and sometimes another thought would come. This was that, far apart as their lives must be, she was trying to do in her sphere what Horace was doing in his, and perhaps with the same hope in the heart of each--namely, that the record of the future might help to compensate for the mistakes and wrong-doings of the past. She found herself pa.s.sionately hoping that he had flung his evil past behind him, just as she was trying to throw hers.

Under these changed conditions, Bettina's second season in London was unlike the first in both its object and its results. From some unknown and unquestioned source she was becoming penetrated with the "scorn for miserable aims that end with self," and by the time that she was ready to return to Kingdon Hall her life had become so informed with its new purpose that she looked forward to the leisure which her removal there would give with real satisfaction in its opportunity for better work. Besides, she had now in view a personal supervision of the affairs on the Kingdon Hall estate, which she was eager to enter into. She had awakened to the duty of looking after the interests of tenants and the good of the parish.

Whether she would have the approval of her husband in such work or not she was unable to guess. So far, beyond a rather cynical and distant observation of her new interests he had never interfered, but she guessed that the probable explanation of this fact was that he felt that her prominence in philanthropic activities, which had been approved by the best society, was a new way of reflecting glory upon himself.

For, as time had pa.s.sed and Bettina had got a truer insight into the man she had married, the fact had confronted her that he was egoistic to the last degree. His cold neutrality of manner veiled this to most people, but to her keen and constant observation the length and breadth of his egoism were at times almost sickening.

She was therefore not unprepared for what happened when she began her visiting among the poor at Kingdon and her investigation into the needs of her husband's tenants. She had gone to work openly about it, and he had taken no notice; but one morning, when he was about to leave for a few days' hunting in one of the neighboring counties, he said to her, at the moment of departure:

"I want to tell you that I do not approve of the innovations which you are beginning to make in the management of affairs on the estate.

The ladies of Kingdon Hall, heretofore, have left these matters to their husbands, and I prefer that you do the same. I mention it now so that I may see no signs of interference on my return."

It was not at all unusual for him to take this tone with her, and he was following his usual custom in speaking to her in a moment of haste, whenever he had anything unpleasant to say. He could, in this way, end the conversation where he chose, and she saw that he had no intention of lingering now. The cart was at the door, and he had on his overcoat and even his hat, and stood drawing on and b.u.t.toning his gloves, with an unlighted cigar between his teeth. His eyes were bent upon his task, under frowning brows.

His cool and careless words, which her knowledge of him taught her were the veneering for an inexorable resolution, gave her a shock of disappointment. She did not often take a humble tone with him, but there was humility as well as entreaty in her voice as she now said,

"You won't forbid my going to see the tenants, and making things a little better for them, if I can, will you?"

"I forbid all interference," he answered, in a tone that made her feel that he relished the exercise of his power. "You can safely leave the affairs of my tenants to me. They have fared sufficiently well in my hands so far."

At one time these words and tones would have provoked a sharp retort, but Bettina had so far changed since the early months of her marriage that the thoughts of her own wrongs and indignities were now less insistent than the troubles of these poor people, which she had hoped to be able to alleviate.

"Oh, indeed you are mistaken!" she said, urgently. "You do not know how much they need what a very little money and effort would supply them with. Don't refuse to let me help them. It is a thing so near to my heart."

She saw his face grow harder.

"It is also," he said, "near my pocket. Going in for charity is all very well, if it amuses you, and I did not interfere with your doing so in London. Here, however, it is different. The time has come to stop it."