XLV EUROPE’S BOUQUET

A group of ?sthetes—the women in the livery of Burne-Jones, the men in the satin small-clothes, velvet coat, and silk stockings affected by Wilde—stood before the great stone mantel in the octagonal drawing-room of Ordham, permitting the brilliant company to gaze upon them. The only celebrities present were the reigning professional beauty, that famous young politician who resembled an intellectual pug, and the great poet who looked like the reincarnation of Paris and Helen of Troy. The rest of the distinguished company scattered throughout the endless suites of state reception rooms were drawn from nearly every old family in the kingdom, and there were royalties, domestic and foreign. Mrs. Cutting and Lady Bridgminster had assembled these unrivalled house parties one after another, the former not only with a proud satisfaction, but with the complacent sense of fulfilling a patriotic duty, the latter with a keen relish in handling the income of millions as were it her very own.

Mabel, spared every detail, had only to dress herself exquisitely, sit at the head of the table in the dining room, or in a high abbot’s chair, carved and gilded, in one of the salons, look radiant, and chatter. She did all to perfection.

But these three notable figures, two with inexhaustible wardrobes from Paris, the other looking alternately like a Burne-Jones or a Rossetti, to say nothing of the magnificent rooms, now made richer and more inviting by a thousand subtle touches, were but a background for the young host. Never for a moment had Ordham been reminded that this lavish display, this recrudescence of the glory of his house, this skilful gathering of the most difficult people in England, had been accomplished with his wife’s money, not with his own delayed inheritance. He had heard of the unhappy fate of American husbands, but had quite forgotten that beyond the seas the world was woman’s. In this splendid company he was the legitimate host, the chief figure; several of the men that ruled the destinies of Britain might have had long and meaning conferences with “Lady Pat,” so subtly did they flatter and court him.

The natural modesty of his disposition was deftly overlaid by the as natural assurance of his birth and bringing up, for not only was he consulted, flattered, his judgment challenged that it might inevitably pronounce the last word, by these three women, until he felt older and more important every day, but his position as host threw him into intimate association with many of the most eminent men and women in England. And besides their friendship for Lady Pat, they were much impressed with the Aladdin-like, yet never vulgar, lavishness of these entertainments, and really found Ordham as charming and clever as people always did when he was on his good behaviour.

Nor did Ordham trouble himself to remember that all was not his. The first party was not over before he had slipped insensibly into the r?le of hereditary lord of the manor, forgotten the existence of his elder brother, or remembered him only to feel a passing relief that he need no longer wish him dead and experience that hateful demoralizing shame. Some of the guests were dull, notably the most important, but there were others whose conversation he found delightful; and the perpetual atmosphere of gayety, brilliancy, life, which now pervaded the castle, diverted his mind from the Continent. For not even in the old days, when his father had been a cabinet minister, had Ordham Castle known anything like this. The family rent-roll was large, but not inexhaustible. It was all very romantic, enchanting, and his self-love was mightily tickled. Had he come into his titles and estates upon the death of his father, he would have been less impressed no doubt; but after a long interval of petty financial annoyances, this sudden good fortune filled him with an abiding if complacent sense of enjoyment. One moment of humiliation and the work would have been undone. But if Mrs. Cutting and Mabel had not discovered the pride and sensitiveness in that complicated nature, there was always her ladyship to advise; and day by day the young man who had accomplished nothing, who had not even been chosen by destiny to succeed his father, was lifted higher and higher into that rarefied atmosphere where the nectar of flattery was ever at his lips, in goblets of gold fashioned to delight the artist within him. Mabel had even renounced the desire to remain uninterruptedly at Ordham for a year; they were to go to London as soon as she was no longer equal to house parties; her husband should continue to be amused in that capital he did not pretend to despise.

As for the chef at the castle, he had no rival in New York, and received a higher salary than the American Minister. The wages of the old servants were increased, and although they disapproved of alien blood, they were well content to see their idol in his rightful position. Nevertheless, they longed for the great day when this ancient domain should really be his, not rented with American dollars. They corresponded with a servant in the small household of the secluded Bridgminster and were not as impatient as they might otherwise have been. American wives were well enough, particularly when high-bred and inoffensive, but they wanted to see the Ordham coffers carried back to the castle.

But Ordham cast not a thought to the ancestral coffers, assisted perhaps by those water-tight compartments with which nature had endowed him, and more particularly when he strolled among his guests after dinner, discharging his duties as host with the zest of youth under his languid manner. It is true that the small and repeated doses of Americanism administered by Margarethe Styr lingered in his mental system, but they were kept sternly under. If once or twice they whispered that he was living on his wife’s fortune, he sharply reminded them that neither Mrs. Cutting nor Mabel could have assembled parties like this, and that, apparently, was all they lived for. Lady Bridgminster, although hospitable to celebrities and artists, when they knew how to behave themselves, was notoriously one of the most exclusive hostesses in the kingdom. “New people” had seldom found a permanent place on her visiting list, never unless they were foreigners. Mrs. Cutting, with her unerring social instinct, had recognized this fact during her first season in London, but although she had the good fortune to take her ladyship’s fancy, she would have been dropped in time had she proved of no material benefit. Nor could Lady Bridgminster have induced certain personages to come to an American woman’s house parties until this marriage of the daughter had placed her in a new and infinitely more important position. Of all this Ordham as a man of the world was fully conscious, but what he did not suspect was that his mother also was determined to keep him in England. Why the diplomatic career, now that he possessed the riches to which that was to have been but the stepping-stone? Nor would he have the same opportunities for magnificence on the Continent, certainly not for being of service to her distinguished self. He was kind and generous, but he had a habit of forgetting people when out of their range. And although he had immediately settled an income on herself, as well as on two of his brothers, that would be a small compensation indeed for the free hand she now enjoyed.

Many young people were invited to Ordham. If he could not sit beside them at table, he could play tennis and croquet with them, loiter about the park and in the woods with girls almost as pretty as his wife, sit with them in the picturesque ruin of the original castle, occupied by generations of Ordhams before the tidal wave of the Renaissance reached England. There was also music, private theatricals, tableaux, and not too much dancing, which he detested. There were other young men, not all of them mad on the subject of sport, and always some brilliant figure from the artistic world like Wilde, then the idol of all the clever young brains in the empire. Altogether, he thought, as he strolled through the great rooms of his castle to-night, he felt that life was quite enchanting and only hoped that he would not grow fat.

He paused beside Mabel, who immediately turned her shoulder upon her little court and looked up at him with a brilliant smile. She was too well-bred to display her adoration in public, but at least she might pretend that he was an illustrious guest. She wore her favourite shimmering green, with lilies in her girdle. Her golden hair shone like nebul? against a dull piece of green tapestry, thrown over the back of a tall chair by an unerring ?sthete.

“Are you bored, Jackie darling?” she whispered.

“Of course not. How can you ask such a thing? No one is bored. It is quite astonishing how you and the respective maters manage. Even the men that have been out all day seem to have got hold of the right women and look almost awake.”

“Lady Pat says that English women are much more amusing than they used to be, and I adore them, myself. How wonderful it all is, and the most, most, most wonderful is that I have a husband, although I am only nineteen, whom all these distinguished and worldly people admire.”

This speech struck him as obscurely pathetic, consequently its flattery missed the mark. He looked down upon her kindly. “Don’t overdo it,” he whispered. “I must go now and talk to that old lady with her wig on one side. Fortunately she is rather amusing, or I might resent being her host.”

“Do you mean the duchess—your grandmother?” asked Mabel, wonderingly. Why were English people so odd sometimes?

“I believe she is. I only remembered for the moment that she often makes me laugh.”

Mabel stood watching him as he bent with his formal manner and charming smile over the old lady of whom she stood in some awe, for there was no more caustic tongue in England than the old duchess’s, and she lost no opportunity of informing the Cuttings that they were the first Americans she had ever met. But it was her husband’s careless words that held Mabel’s puzzled attention. She understood her own departures from the truth, because they were deliberate and inevitable; but it was difficult for the direct and businesslike American mind to comprehend the casual—or affected?—lie when the truth would have been far less trouble. Ordham, unless driven to the wall—when he lied as coolly as if it were a sort of royal prerogative—thought no one worth a deliberate fabrication. But he had an instinctive dislike of the obvious, and all the little affectations of his class. He was sometimes audaciously candid, but he rarely thought in a straight line. The wit of the day said of him, several years later, that whereas all the English were liars, the Scotch more liars, and the Irish most liars, Bridgminster was the only man he had ever met who could lie with the simplicity of a savage, the grace of an artist, and the blandness of an Oriental. Therefore when his opportunity came would he prove himself the greatest diplomatist in Europe.

At eleven o’clock he stood watching the charming procession of women in their flashing jewels and trailing gowns filing down the long gallery, candle in hand, when Mabel passed him.

“Shall you come over soon?” she whispered, with her head on one side in the fashion which seems to be peculiar to American women when begging their lords not to stay out late. Ordham looked at her in surprise and a faint sense of displeasure, but he said kindly:

“I am afraid not. The men sit up late—those that have not been out, you know. I cannot well leave them.”

“You leave them when you are tired of them in the field, fast enough.” Mabel looked pretty, even when she pouted, but her husband replied calmly:

“You should get to sleep as early as possible. I’ll look in later and see if you are awake, but better put the light out and drop off.”

“I can sleep in the morning, and I hardly see anything of you now that we have such a lot of company.”

“I thought you wanted house parties.”

“I did—I do. But I did not realize that they would separate us so much.”

It was on the tip of Ordham’s tongue to remark that he did not fancy any man saw more of his wife, but bethought himself in time that this might sound ungallant. Nevertheless, he was tired of reiterating his adoration when he wanted to go to sleep or to talk with people whose minds were engaged with less personal matters, and he had, perhaps unconsciously, drifted into the habit of seeking his couch as late as possible. He often assured himself that he loved Mabel as much as ever (of course), but love was entitled to vacations, and a man should feel that his soul was his own, not his wife’s. Mabel had been well coached, and her woman’s instincts were sharp, her brain calculating, but she loved with as much passion as her nature was capable of generating, and no woman in love avoids mistakes. Love made her insistent, demand constant verbal demonstration, until Ordham sometimes felt that if called upon once more to reiterate “I love you,” he should give full rein to the sulks which so often arose in him. But Mabel reasoned that he was hers, he had received proof that she had married him for love alone, why should not he seek her every moment when he was off duty as host, instead of compelling her to resort to wiles, coaxings, tears? She was still astonished at the discovery that the ceremony of marriage had not put an end to all effort. Where was the happy ever after?

She drooped a little at his last words, and the change from her grand air was so sudden that he said contritely, although an angry flush rose to his face, “You know that it is my duty to take all possible care of you, but I’ll break loose from the smoking room as soon as I decently can, and wander over.”

This promise he forgot before she was out of sight. Leaving the men to take care of themselves, he sought a little room off the library which his father had used as a den and he had appropriated to himself. He locked the door behind him, and opening his desk, took out a letter he had received that morning from Margarethe Styr but had not yet found time to read.