Part 18 (1/2)

'I know she will enjoy herself with you. She has been accustomed to a very quiet life here.'

'It is a lovely spot; but I own I cannot understand how you can have lived here exclusively during all these years--you who used to be all life and fire, loving change, action, political and diplomatic society, to dance upon the crest of the wave, as it were. Your whole nature must have suffered some curious change.'

Their close intimacy of the past warranted freedom of speech in the present.

'My nature did undergo a change, and a severe one,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gloomily.

'It was that horrid--and I daresay unfortunate scandal about his lords.h.i.+p; and then the sad shock of his death,' murmured Lady Kirkbank, sympathetically. 'Most women, with your youth and beauty, would have forgotten the scandal and the husband in a twelvemonth, and would have made a second marriage more brilliant than the first. But no Indian widow who ever performed suttee was more worthy of praise than you, or even that person of Ephesus, whose story I have heard somewhere. Indeed, I have always spoken of your life as a long suttee. But you mean to re-appear in society next season, I hope, when you present your granddaughter?'

'I shall certainly go up to London to present her, and possibly I may spend the season in town; but I shall feel like Rip Van Winkle.'

'No, no, you won't, my dear Di. You have kept yourself _au courant_, I know. Even my silly gossiping letters may have been of _some_ use.'

'They have been most valuable. Let me give you another cup of tea,' said Lady Maulevrier, who had been officiating at her own exquisite tea-table, an arrangement of inlaid woods, antique silver, and modern china, which her friend p.r.o.nounced a perfect poem.

Indeed, the whole room was poetic, Lady Kirkbank declared, and there are many highly praised scenes which less deserve the epithet. The dark red walls and cedar dado, the stamped velvet curtains, of an indescribable shade between silver-grey and olive, the Sheraton furniture, the parqueterie floor and Persian prayer-rugs, the deep yet brilliant hues of crackle porcelain and Chinese cloisonne enamel, the artistic fireplace, with dog-stove, low bra.s.s fender, and ingle-nook recessed under the high mantelpiece, all combined to form a luxurious and harmonious whole.

Lady Kirkbank admired the _tout ensemble_ in the fitful light of the fire, the dim grey of deepening twilight.

'There never was a more delicious cell!' she exclaimed, 'but still I should feel it a prison, if I had to spend six weeks in the year in it.

I never stay more than six weeks anywhere out of London; and I always find six weeks more than enough. The first fortnight is rapture, the third and fourth weeks are calm content, the fifth is weariness, the sixth a fever to be gone. I once tried a seventh week at Pontresina, and I hated the place so intensely that I dared not go back there for the next three years. But now tell me. Diana, have you really performed suttee, have you buried yourself alive in this sweet spot deliberately, or has the love of retirement grown upon you, and have you become a kind of lotus-eater?'

'I believe I have become a kind of lotus-eater. My retirement here has been no sentimental sacrifice to Lord Maulevrier's memory.'

'I am glad to hear that; for I really think the worst possible use a woman can make of her life is in wasting it on lamentation for a dead and gone husband. Life is odiously short at the best, and it is mere imbecility to fritter away any of our scanty portion upon the dead, who can never be any the better for our tears.'

'My motive in living at Fellside was not reverence for the dead. And now let us talk of the gay world, of which you know all the secrets. Have you heard anything more about Lord Hartfield?'

'Ah, there is a subject in which you have reason to be interested. I have not forgotten the romance of your youth--that first season in which Ronald Hollister used to haunt every place at which you appeared. Do you remember that wet afternoon at the Chiswick flower-show, when you and he and I took shelter in the orange house, and you two made love to each other most audaciously in an atmosphere of orange-blossoms that almost stifled me? Yes, those were glorious days!'

'A short summer of gladness, a brief dream,' sighed Lady Maulevrier. 'Is young Lord Hartfield like his father?'

'No, he takes after the Ilmingtons; but still there is a look of your old sweetheart--yes, I think there is an expression. I have not seen him for nearly a year. He is still abroad, roaming about somewhere in search of adventures. These young men who belong to the Geographical and the Alpine Club are hardly ever at home.'

'But though they may be sometimes lost to society, they are all the more worthy of society's esteem when they do appear,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'I think there must be an enn.o.bling influence in Alpine travel, or in the vast solitudes of the Dark Continent. A man finds himself face to face with unsophisticated nature, and with the grandest forces of the universe. Professor Tyndall writes delightfully of his Alpine experiences; his mind seems to have ripened in the solitude and untainted air of the Alps. And I believe Lord Hartfield is a young man of very high character and of considerable cultivation, is he not?'

'He is a splendid young fellow. I never heard a word to his disparagement, even from those people who pretend to know something bad about everybody. What a husband he would make for one of your girls!'

'Admirable! But those perfect arrangements, which seem predestined by heaven itself, are so rarely realised on earth,' answered the dowager, lightly.

She was not going to show her cards, even to an old friend.

'Well, it would be very sweet if they were to meet next season and fall in love with each other,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'He is enormously rich, and I daresay your girls will not be portionless.'

'Lesbia may take a modest place among heiresses,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'I have lived so quietly during the last forty years that I could hardly help saving money.'

'How nice!' sighed Georgie. 'I never saved sixpence in my life, and am always in debt.'

'The little fortune I have saved is much too small for division. Lesbia will therefore have all I can leave her. Mary has the usual provision as a daughter of the Maulevrier house.'