This year the tour was to start with the interesting city of Lincoln and the party assembled on the platform at King's Cross at an early hour. The plan was to lunch in the train, so as to start sight-seeing immediately on arrival, and continue (with a short excursion to the hotel in order to have the tea which had been included in the terms) until the fading light made it impossible to distinguish ancestral tombs or Norman arches. Lady Ayr had not seen Seymour since his engagement, and, as she ate rather grisly beef sandwiches, she gave him her views on the step. Though they were all together in one compartment the conversation might be considered a private one, for Lord Ayr was sleeping gently in one corner, John was absorbed in the account of the Roman remains at Lincoln (Lindum Colonia, as he had already announced), and Esther with a slightly leaky stylograph was writing a description of their depressing journey to Nadine.
"What you are marrying on, Seymour, I don't know," she said. "Neither your father nor I will be able to increase your allowance, and Nadine Waldenech has the appearance of being an expensive young woman. I hope she realizes she is marrying the son of a poor man, and that we go third class."
"She is aware of all that," said Seymour, wiping his long white finger-tips on an exceedingly fine cambric handkerchief, after swallowing a sandwich or two, "and we are marrying really on her money."
"I am not sure that I approve of that," said his mother.
"The remedy is obvious," remarked Seymour. "You can increase my allowance. I have no objection. Mother, would you kindly let me throw the rest of that sandwich out of the window? It makes me ill to look at it."
"We are not talking about sandwiches. Why do you not earn some money like other younger sons?"
"I do. I earned four pounds last week, with describing your party and other things, and there is my embroidery as well, which I shall work at more industriously. I shall do embroidery in the evening after dinner while Nadine smokes."
Lady Ayr looked out of the window and pointed magisterially to the towers of some great church in the town through which the train was passing.
"Peterborough," she said. "We shall see Peterborough on our way back. Peterborough, John. Ayr and Esther, we are passing through Peterborough."
Esther looked out upon the mean backs of houses.
"The sooner we pass through Peterborough the better," she observed.
John turned rapidly over the leaves of his guide-book.
"Peterborough is seventy-eight miles from London, and contains many buildings of interest," he informed them.
Lady Ayr returned to Seymour.
"I hope you will insist on her leaving off smoking when you are married to her," she said. "I cannot say she is the wife I should have chosen for you."
"I chose her myself," observed Seymour.
"Tell me more about her. Certainly the Waldenechs are a very old family, there is that to be said. Is she serious? Does she feel her responsibilities? Or is she like her mother?"
Seymour brushed a few remaining sandwich-crumbs off his trousers.
"I think Aunt Dodo is one of the most serious people I know," he said. "She is serious about everything. She does everything with all her might. Nadine is not quite so serious as that. She is rather flippant about things like food and dress. However, no doubt my influence will make her more serious. But as a matter of fact I can't tell you about Nadine. A fortnight ago, when I proposed to her, I could have. I could have given you a very complete account of her. But I can't any longer: I am getting blind about her. I only know that it is she. Not so long ago I told her a quantity of her faults with ruthless accuracy, but I couldn't now. I can't see them any more: there's a glamor."
Esther looked up.
"Oh, Seymour," she said, "are you talking about Nadine? Are you falling in love with her? How very awkward! Does she know?"
Seymour pointed a withering finger at his sister.
"Little girls should mind their own business," he said.
"Oh, but it is my business. Nadine matters far more than any one else. She might easily think it not right to marry you if you were in love with her."
Lady Ayr turned a petrifying gaze from one to the other.
"She seems a very extraordinary young person," she said. "And in any case Esther has no business to know anything about it."
"Whether she thinks it right or not, she is going to marry me," said Seymour.
Esther shook her head.
"You are indeed blind about Nadine," she said, "if you think she would ever do anything she thought wrong."
"You might be describing John," said Seymour rather hotly.
"Anyhow, Nadine is not like John."
"I see no resemblance," said Lady Ayr. "But it is something to know she would not do anything she thought wrong."
"When you say it in that voice, Mother," said Esther, "you make nonsense of it."
"The same words in any voice mean the same thing," said Lady Ayr.
Seymour sighed.
"I am on Esther's side for once," he said.
Esther turned to her brother.
"Seymour, you ought to tell Nadine you are falling in love with her," she said. "I really don't think she would approve. Why, you might become as bad as Hugh. Of course you are not so stupid as Hugh – ah, stupid is the wrong word – you haven't got such a plain kind of intellect as Hugh – which was Nadine's main objection – "
Seymour patted Esther's hand with odious superiority. "You are rather above yourself, my little girl," he said, "because just now I agreed with you. It has gone to your head, and makes you think yourself clever. Shut your eyes till we get to Lincoln. You will feel less giddy by degrees. And when you open them again, you can mind your own business, and mother will tell you about the Goths and Vandals who built the cathedral. You are a Vandal yourself: you will have a fellow-feeling. Mother, dear, put down that window. I am going to see cathedrals to please you, but I will not be stifled to please anybody. The carriage reeks of your beef sandwiches. But I think I have some scent in my bag."
"I am quite sure you have," said Esther scornfully. "I am writing to Nadine, by the way. I shall tell her you are falling in love with her."
"You can tell her exactly what you please," said Seymour suavely. "Ah, here is some wall-flower scent. It is like a May morning. Yes, tell Nadine what you please, but don't bother me. What is the odious town we are coming to? I think it must be Lincoln. John, here is Lincoln, and all the people are ancient Romans."
Seymour obligingly sprayed the expensive scent about the carriage, even though they were so shortly to disembark.
"The river Witham," said John, pointing to a small and fetid ditch. "Remains of Roman villas – "
"The inhabitants of which died of typhoid," said Seymour. "Tell Nadine we are enjoying Lincoln, Esther. Had father better be allowed to sleep on, or shall I wake him? There is a porter: call him, Mother – I won't carry my bag even to save you sixpence. But don't tell him we are marchionesses and lords and ladies, because then he will expect a shilling. I perceive a seedy-looking 'bus outside. That is probably ours. It looks as if it came from some low kind of inn. I wish I had brought Antoinette. And yet I don't know. She would probably have given notice after seeing the degradation of our summer holiday."
"Seymour, you are making yourself exceedingly disagreeable," said his mother.
"It is intentional. You made yourself disagreeable to me: you began. As for you, Esther, you must expect to see a good deal less of Nadine after she and I are married. I will not have you mooning about the house, reminding her of all the damned – yes, I said damned – nonsense you and she and Berts and Hugh talked about the inequality of marriages where one person is clever and the other stupid, or where one loves and the other doesn't. You have roused me, you and mother between you, and I am here to tell you that I will manage my own affairs, which are Nadine's also, without the smallest assistance from you. Put that in – in your ginger-beer, or whatever we have for dinner, and drink it. You thought I was only a sort of thing that waved its hands and collected jade, and talked in rather a squeaky voice, and walked on its toes. Well, you have found out your mistake, and don't let me have to teach it you again. You can tell Nadine in your letter exactly what I have said. And don't rouse me again: it makes me hot. But mind your own business instead, and remember that when I want either your advice or mother's I will ask for it. Till then you can keep it completely to yourselves. You needn't answer me: I don't want to hear anything you have got to say. Let us go to the cathedral. I suppose it is that great cockshy on the top of the hill. I know it will prove to have been built by our forefathers. The verger will like to know about it. But bear in mind I don't want to be told anything about Nadine."
Seymour had become quite red in the face with the violence of the feelings that prompted these straightforward remarks, and before putting the spray of wall-flower scent back into his bag, he shut his eyes and squirted himself in the face in order to cool himself, while Esther stared at him open-mouthed. She hardly knew him, for he had become exactly like a man, a transformation more unexpected than anything that ever happened at a pantomime, and she instantly and correctly connected this change in him with what he had been saying. For the reason of the change was perfectly simple and sufficient: during those last days at Winston, after the departure of Hugh, he had fallen in love with Nadine, and his nature, which had really been neither that of man or woman, had suddenly sexed itself. He had not in the least cast off his tastes and habits; to spray himself and a stuffy railway-carriage with wall-flower scent was still perfectly natural to him, and no doubt, unless Nadine objected very much, he would continue to take Antoinette about with him as his maid, but he had declared himself a man, and found, even as his sister found, that the change in him was as immense as it was unexpected. He thought with more than usual scorn of Nadine's friends, such as Esther and Berts, who all played about together like healthy, but mentally anemic, children, for he, the most anemic of them all, had suddenly had live blood, as it were, squirted into him. Indeed the only member of the clan whom he thought of with toleration was Hugh, with whom he felt a bond of brotherhood, for Hugh, like himself, loved Nadine like a man. Already also he felt sorry for him, recognizing in him a member of his own sex. Hitherto he had disliked his own sex, because they were men, now he found himself detesting people like Berts, because they were not. For men, so he had begun to perceive, are essentially those who are aware of the fact of women; the rest of them, to which he had himself till so lately belonged, he now classified as more or less intellectual amœbæ. And the corresponding members of the other sex were just as bad: Esther had no sense of sex, nor perhaps, and here he paused, had Nadine.
That, it is true, gave him long pause. He knew quite well that Nadine had been no more in love with him, when they had got engaged, than he had been with her. They had both been, and she so he must suppose was still, quite undeveloped as regards those instincts. Hugh with all his devotion and developed manliness awoke no corresponding flame in her, and Seymour was quite clear-sighted enough to see that there was no sign of his having succeeded where Hugh had failed. She belonged, as Dodo had remarked, to that essentially modern type of girl, which, unless she marries while quite young, will probably be spinster still at thirty. They had brains, they had a hundred intellectual and artistic interests, and studied mummies, or logic, or Greek gems, or themselves, and lived in flats, eagerly and happily, and smoked and substituted tea for dinner. They knew of nothing in their natures that gave them any imperious call; on the other hand they called imperiously though unintentionally to others. Nadine had called like that to Hugh, and was dismayed at the tumult she had roused, regretting it, but not comprehending it. And now she had called like that to Seymour. She was like the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, calling in her sleep. Hugh had answered her first and had fought his way through thicket and briar, but his coming had not awakened her. Then she had called again, and this time Seymour stood by her. She had given him her hand, but her sleep had been undisturbed. She smiled at him, but she smiled in her sleep.
The seedy 'bus, of the type not yet quite extinct, with straw on the bottom of it, proved to be sent for them and they proceeded over cobbled streets, half deafened by the clatter of ill-fitting windows. After a minute or two of this Seymour firmly declined to continue, for he said the straw got up his trousers and tickled his legs, and the drums of his ears were bursting. So he got delicately out, in order to take a proper conveyance, and promised to meet the rest of them at the west door of the cathedral. Here he sat very comfortably for ten minutes till they arrived, and entering in the manner of a storming party, they literally stumbled over an astonished archdeacon who was superintending some measurement of paving stone immediately inside, and proved to be a cousin of Lady Ayr's. This fact was not elicited without pomp, for the cathedral was not open to visitors at this hour, as he informed them, on which Lady Ayr said, "I suppose there will be no difficulty in the way of the Marquis of Ayr – Ayr, this is an archdeacon – and his wife and family seeing it." Upon which "an" archdeacon said, "Oh, are you Susie Ayr?" Explanations of cousinship – luckily satisfactory – followed, and they were conducted round the cathedral by him free of all expense, and dined with him in the evening, at a quarter to eight, returning home at ten in order to get a grip of all they were going to see next day, by a diligent perusal of the guide-books.
They were staying at an ancient hostelry called the "Goat and Compasses," a designation the origin of which John very obligingly explained to them, but Seymour, still perhaps suffering from the straw at the bottom of the 'bus, thought that the "Flea and Compasses" would be a more descriptive title. No room was on the level with any other room or with the passage outside it, and short obscure flights of steps designed to upset the unwary communicated between them. A further trap was laid down for unsuspicious guests in the matter of doors and windows, for the doors were not quite high enough to enable the person of average height to pass through them without hitting his forehead against the jamb, and the windows, when induced to open, descended violently again in the manner of a guillotine. The floors were as wavy as the pavement of St. Mark's at Venice, the looking-glasses seemed like dusky wells, at the bottom of which the gazer darkly beheld his face, and the beds had feather mattresses on them. Altogether, it was quite in the right style, except that it was not a "temperance hotel," for the accommodation of Lady Ayr on a tour of family culture, and she and John, after a short and decisive economical interview with the proprietor, took possession of the largest table in the public drawing-room, ejecting therefrom two nervous spinsters who had been looking forward to playing Patience on it, and spreading their maps of the town over it, read to each other out of guide-books, while Lord Ayr propped himself up dejectedly in a corner, where he hoped to drop asleep unperceived. The troublesome interview with the proprietor had been on the subject of making a deduction from the agreed terms, since they had all dined out. He was finally routed by a short plain statement of the case by Lady Ayr.
"If you can afford to take us in for so much, dinner included," she said, "you can afford to take us in for less without dinner. I think there is no more to be said on the subject. Breakfast, please, at a quarter past eight punctually and I shall require a second candle in my bedroom. I think your terms, which I do not say are excessive, included lights? Thank you!"
Seymour had declined to take part in this guide-book conference, saying with truth that he felt sure it would all be very completely explained to him next day, and let himself out into the streets of the town which were already growing empty of passengers. Above the sky was lucent with many stars, and the moon which had risen an hour before, cleared the house-roofs and shone down into the street with a very white light, making the gas-lamps look red. Last night it had been full, and from the terrace at Winston they had all watched it rise, full-flaring, over the woods below the house. Then he and Nadine had strolled away together, and in that luminous solitude with her, he had felt himself constrained and tongue-tied. He had no longer at command the talk that usually rose so glibly to his lips, that gay, witty, inconsequent gabble that had truthfully represented what went on in his quick discerning brain. His brain now was taken up with one topic only, and it was as hard for him to speak to her of that, as it was for him to speak of anything else. He knew that she had entered into her engagement with him, in the same spirit in which he had proposed to her. They liked each other; each found the other a stimulating companion; by each no doubt the attraction of the other's good looks was felt. She, he was certain, regarded him now as she had regarded him then, while for him the whole situation had undergone so complete a change, that he felt that the very fortress of his identity had been stormed and garrisoned by the besieging host. And what was the host? That tall girl with the white slim hands, who, without intention, had picked up a key and, cursorily, so it seemed, had unlocked his heart, so that it stood open to her. Honestly, he did not know that it was made to unlock: he had thought of it always as some toy Swiss châlet, not meant to be opened. But she had opened it, and gone inside.
The streets grew emptier: lights appeared behind blinds in upper windows, and only an occasional step sounded on the pavements. He had come to an open market place, and from where he paused and stood the western towers of the cathedral rose above the intervening roofs, and aspired whitely into the dark velvet of the night. Hitherto, Seymour would have found nothing particular to say about moonlight, in which he took but the very faintest interest, except that it tended to provoke an untimely loquaciousness in cats. But to-night he found his mind flooded with the most hackneyed and commonplace reflections. It reminded him of Nadine; it was white and chaste and aloof like her … he wanted her, and he was going to get her, and yet would she really be his in the sense that he was hers? Then for a moment habit asserted itself, and he told himself he was being common, that he was dropping to the level of plain and barbarous Hugh. It was very mortifying, yet he could not keep off that level. He kept on dropping there, as he stared at the moonlit towers of the cathedral, unsatisfied and longing. But it may be doubted whether he would have felt better satisfied, if he had known how earnestly Nadine had tried to drop, or rise, to the moonlit plane, or how sincerely, even with tears, she had deplored her inability to do so. For it was not he whom she had sought to join there.
CHAPTER VIII
Dodo was seated in her room in Jack's house in town, intermittently arguing with him and Miss Grantham and Edith and Berts, and in intervals looking up as many of her friends as she could remember the names of and asking them to her dance. The month was November, and the dance was for to-day week, which was the first of December, and as far as she had got at present, it appeared that all her friends were in town and that they would all come. Nadine was similarly employed next door, and as they both asked anybody who occurred to them, the same people frequently got asked twice over.
"Which," said Dodo, "is an advantage, as it looks as if we really wanted them very much. Oh, is that Esther? Esther, we are having a dance on December the first, and will you all come? Yes: wasn't it a good idea? That is nice. Of course, delighted if your mother cares to come, too – "
"Then I shan't," said Berts.
"Berts, shut up," said Dodo in a penetrating whisper. "Yes, darling Esther, Berts said something, but I don't know what it was as they are all talking together. Yes, a cotillion. Good-by. Look out Hendrick's Stores, Grantie. But I really won't lead the cotillion with Berts. It is too ridiculous: a man may not lead the cotillion with his grandmother: it comes in the prayer-book."
"Three thousand and seven," said Miss Grantham. "P'd'n't'n."
"Three double-o seven, Padd," said Dodo briskly, "please, miss. I always say, 'please, miss,' and then they are much pleasanter. I used to say 'I'm Princess Waldenech, please, miss,' but they never believed it, and said 'Garn!' But I was: darling Jack, I was! No, my days of leading the cotillion came to an end under William the Fourth. There is nothing so ridiculous as seeing an old thing – No, I'm not the Warwick Hotel? Do I sound like the Warwick Hotel?"
Dodo's face suddenly assumed an expression of seraphic interest.
"It's too entrancing," she whispered. "I'm sure it's a nice man, because he wants to marry me. He says I didn't meet him in the Warwick Hotel this morning. That was forgetful. Yes? Oh, he's rung off: he has jilted me. I wish I had said I was the Warwick Hotel: it was stupid of me. I wonder if you can be married by telephone with a clergyman taking the place of 'please, miss.' Where had we got to? Oh, yes, Hendrick's: three double-o seven, you idiot. I mean, please, miss. What? Thank you, miss. No, Nadine and Berts shall lead it."
"I would sooner lead with Lady Ayr," said Berts. "Nadine always forgets everything – "
"Oh, Hendrick's, is it?" said Dodo. "Yes, Lady Chesterford. I am really, and I want a band for the evening of December the first. No, not a waistband. Music. Yes, send somebody round." Dodo put down the ear-piece.
"Let us strive not to do several things together," she said. "For the moment we will concentrate on the cotillion. Jack dear, why did you suggest I should lead? It has led to so much talking, of which I have had to do the largest part."
"I want you to," he said. "I'll take you to Egypt in the spring, if you will. I won't otherwise."
"Darling, you are too unfair for words. You want to make an ass of me. You want everybody to say 'Look at that silly old grandmama.' I probably shall be a grandmama quite soon, if Nadine is going to marry Seymour in January – 'Silly old grandmama,' they will say, 'capering about like a two-year-old.' Because I shall caper: if I lead, I shan't be able to resist kicking up."
Jack came across the room and sat on the table by her.
"Don't you want to, Dodo?" he asked quietly.
"Yes, darling, I should love to. I only wanted pressing. Oh, my beloved Berts, what larks! We'll have hoops, and snowballs, and looking-glass, and wooly-bear – don't you know wooly-bear? – and paper-bags and obstacles, and balance. And then the very next day I shall settle down, and behave as befits my years and riches and honor. I am old and Jack is rich, and has endowed me with all his worldly goods, and we are both strictly honorable. But I feel it's a hazardous experiment. If I hear somebody saying, as no doubt I shall, 'Surely, Lady Chesterford is a little old?' I shall collapse in the middle of the floor, and burst into several tears. And then I shall wipe my eyes, both of them if both have cried, and if not, one, and say, 'Beloved Berts, come on!' And on we shall go."
"You haven't asked Hugh yet," said Miss Grantham, looking at the list.
"Nadine did," said Dodo. "He said he wasn't certain. They argued."
"They do," said Berts. "Aunt Dodo, may I come to dine this evening, and have a practice afterwards?"
"Yes, my dear. Are you going? Till this evening then."
Dodo turned to Jack, and spoke low.
"Oh, Jack," she said, "Waldenech's in town. Nadine saw him yesterday."
"Glad I didn't," said Jack.
"I'm sure you are, darling. But here we all are, you know. You can't put him out like a candle. About the dance, I mean. I think I had better ask him. He won't come, if I ask him."
"He won't come anyhow, my dear," said Jack.
"You can't tell. I know him better than you. He's nasty, you know, poor dear. If I didn't ask him, he might come. He might think he ought to have been asked, and so come instead. Whereas if he was asked, he would probably think it merely insulting of me, and so stop at home."
"Don't whisper to each other," said Edith loudly. "I can't bear a husband and wife whispering to each other. It looks as if they hadn't got over the honeymoon. Dodo, I haven't had a single word with you yet – "
"Darling Edith, you haven't. If you only would go to the other end of the telephone, I would talk to you for hours, simply to thwart the 'please, miss' who asks if we haven't done yet. The only comfortable conversation is conducted on the telephone. Then you say 'hush' to everybody else in the room. Indeed, it isn't usually necessary to say 'hush.' Anybody with a proper interest in the affairs of other people always listens to what you say, trying to reconstruct what the inaudible voice says. Jack was babbling down the telephone the other day, when I particularly wanted to talk, but when he said 'Never let him shave her again,' how could I interrupt?"
"Did he shave her again?" asked Miss Grantham. "Who was she?"
"You shouldn't have said that," said Dodo, "because now I have to explain. It was the poodle, who had been shaved wrong, and she had puppies next day, and they probably all had hair in the unfashionable places. Please talk to each other, and not about poodles. Jack and I have a little serious conversation to get through."
"I will speak," said Edith, "because it matters to me. We've let our house, Dodo, at least Bertie let it, and has gone to Bath, because he is rheumatic; Berts can stay at the Bath Club, because he isn't, but I want to stay with you."
"The house is becoming like Basle railway-station," remarked Jack.
"Yes, dear. Every proper house in town is," said Dodo. "A house in London isn't a house, it is a junction. People dine and lunch and sleep if they have time. I haven't. Yes, Edith, do come. Jack wants you, too, only he doesn't say so, because he is naturally reticent."
Edith instantly got up.
"Then may I have some lunch at once?" she said. "Cold beef will do. But I have a rehearsal at half-past one."
The telephone bell rang, and Dodo took up the ear-piece.
"No, Lady Chesterford is out," she said. "But who is it? It's Waldenech, Jack," she said in a low voice. "No, she hasn't come in yet. What? No: she isn't expected at all. She is quite unexpected."
She replaced the instrument.
"I recognized his voice," she said, "and I oughtn't to have said I was unexpected, because perhaps he will guess. But he sounded a bit thick, don't they say? Yes, dear Edith, have some cold beef, because it is much nicer than anything else. I shall come and have lunch in one minute, too, as I didn't have any breakfast. Take Grantie away with you, and I will join you."
"I won't have cold beef, whatever happens," said Grantie.
Dodo turned round, facing Jack, as soon as the others had left the room, and laid her hand on his knee.
"Jack, I feel sure I am right," she said. "I don't want Waldenech here any more than you do. But after all, he is Nadine's father. I wish Madge or Belle or somebody who writes about society would lay down for us the proper behavior for re-married wives towards their divorced husbands."
"I can tell you the proper behavior of divorced husbands towards re-married wives," said Jack.
"Yes, darling, but you must remember that Waldenech has nothing to do with proper behavior. He always behaved most improperly. If he hadn't, I shouldn't be your wife now. I think that must be an instance of all things working together for good, as St. Peter says."
"Paul," remarked Jack.
"Very likely, though Peter might be supposed to know most about wives. Jack, dear, let us settle this at once, because I am infernally hungry, and the thought of Edith's eating cold beef makes me feel homesick. I think I had much better ask Waldenech to our dance. There he is: I've known him pretty well, and it's just because he is nothing more than an acquaintance now, that I wish to ask him. To ask him will show the – the gulf between us."
Jack shook his head.
"I prefer to show the gulf by not asking him," he said.
Dodo frowned, and tapped the skirt of her riding-habit with her whip. She was rather tired and very hungry, for she had been playing bridge till two o'clock the night before, and had got up at eight to go out riding, and, meaning to have breakfast afterwards, had found herself plunged in the arrangements for her ball, which had lasted without intermission till this moment. But she felt unwilling to give this point up, unless Jack absolutely put his foot down with regard to it.
"I think I am right," she said. "He is rather a devil."
"All the more reason for not asking him."
"Do you mean that you forbid me?" she asked.
He thought for a moment.
"Yes, I forbid you," he said.
Dodo got up at once, flicked him in the face with the end of her riding-whip, and before he had really time to blink, kissed him on exactly the same spot, which happened to be the end of his nose.
"That is finished, then," she said in the most good-humored voice. "And now I have both the whip and the whip-hand. If anything goes wrong, darling, I shall say 'I told you so,' till you wish you had never been born."
He caught her whip and her hands in his.
"You couldn't make me wish that," he said.
Her whole face melted into a sunlight of adorable smiles.