This House to Let

Nina made up her mind to one thing, that, if she was not genuinely and devotedly in love with him, she must be one of the most perfect actresses to be met with off the stage.

And Guy was still infatuated. When he had made her that strange offer, he knew that he was drifting, but he had still left some small remnant of self-control. But her fascination had proved too strong. Every day she wove the chains more strongly round him.

And then there came a time when absence from her was unbearable, when he took to counting the hours that elapsed between their next meeting. The end was inevitable. The moment came when he definitely made up his mind that he could not break away; that existence without her would be intolerable.

They were married quietly before the registrar, a strange wedding for the heir to the Southleigh earldom. No relatives of his were present, as he had forborne to give them any notice of his intention. She was unattended also. Even her cousin, Mr Dutton, did not put in an appearance. Knowing her future husband’s dislike of the young man, she had not paid him the compliment of requesting his attendance.

The day before the marriage, she spoke to him in a tremulous voice and with tears in her eyes.

“Guy, darling, I have said very little about this before, but you must not think I am blind to the sacrifices you are making. From to-morrow I bid adieu to my past life, to all the few friends and acquaintances I have made; I know that you will be happier by my doing so. Henceforth I devote my whole life to you. Your people shall be my people, if they will forgive me and have me.”

He clasped her to his breast with a lover’s rapture. How sweet and womanly she looked as she uttered those words in her low, broken tones. He understood what she meant. For his sake she was going to give up all that shady L’Estrange crew, to see as little of her objectionable cousin as possible. She explained, later on, that she could not ignore him altogether, as he had the management of her small affairs in his hands. But all this could be conducted by correspondence.

Guy was delighted. He knew well enough that his own world would not accept his marriage kindly, that they would never take his wife to their offended bosom. But they would rub along somehow. There were plenty of men he could bring to their house, and perhaps a few decent women who were perfectly respectable, but not too strait-laced. And, anyway, the world was well lost for love like this.

It cannot be said that, on the social side, their existence was a very brilliant one. It did not matter so much to Guy, he had never been over-fond of society. He liked his men friends, and having been a bachelor so long, he was fond of club life. He got quite as much amusement and distraction as he wanted.

His wife had many lonely hours, but she was wise in this respect that she never sought to chain him to her side. Whenever he came home he found her there waiting for him, affectionate and welcoming. Perhaps, after her stormy and chequered past, what would have been dullness to others seemed to her the peace she had been longing for.

She got on very well with her husband’s male friends, most of whom openly expressed amongst themselves their admiration for her. If she had been a woman of a flirtatious temperament she could have had a good time without overstepping the bounds of decorum. But she never exceeded the limits of strict friendship. She never indulged in an intimacy that could have the least element of danger in it. The general vote was, that she was very beautiful, very charming, in a quiet, elusive way, but naturally of a cold and unimpassionable nature. Only for her husband did her glance take on a warmer expression, her voice a tenderer tone.

The few women who came to the house found her unsatisfactory. The impression made upon them – and women are pretty shrewd when dissecting one of their own sex – was that she was a person who lived too much within herself, had a rooted disinclination “to let herself go” in those little confidential chats which are indulged in when no men are present. And for that studied reticence there must be some cogent reason. Above all, she never referred to her girlhood, never made any allusions to her family. The general impression was that Mrs Spencer had something to hide.

Anyway, after many months of married life, Guy was still as much in love with her as ever, and he was always profoundly touched by the pretty and impressive way in which she insisted that all the advantages were on her side, that she could never repay him sufficiently for the sacrifices he had so cheerfully made.

Of course Guy knew nothing of what his friends were saying; the men who admired her beauty, and were disappointed at the negative qualities which accompanied it; the women who found her unsatisfactory and were determined that she had something to hide.

All he knew, and was content in knowing, was this – that after many months of matrimony, for they had been married few weeks before the Armistice was proclaimed – that Armistice which was to be the precursor of a golden era – he was quite happy. She was a perfect wife, from his point of view, and he never looked back with the faintest misgiving. What he had done then, he would do again to-day, in spite of the fact that her reticence with regard to the past was as profound with him as with the various acquaintances who occasionally visited her.

Not even the close intimacy of married life had elicited any of those allusions and confidences which enable one to piece together, in some measure, the life-history of the person who makes them. But Guy had a generous nature, and was one of the least suspicious of men. He attributed this strange reticence to the fact that the past contained nothing but painful memories, that even to the man she loved she could not reopen the old wounds.

On this particular night, Lady Nina was awaiting her guests. It was a little dinner-party to meet the young married couple, six in all, herself and father, Mr and Mrs Spencer, a young woman friend of the hostess, and an old friend of the Southleigh family, Hugh Murchison, already met with in the early chapters of this history.

Murchison was the first arrival. He walked with a slight limp, the result of a bad wound in the leg. He had been laid-up for a very long time at his own home with the effects of shell-shock. He had only been in London for a few days, and it was ages since the Southleighs had seen him. They welcomed him warmly.

After a little desultory conversation Nina spoke:

“You know from my note that you are here to-night especially to meet Guy and his wife, the wife that he sprang upon us in such a sudden and dramatic manner.”

“Yes, I understood that. You know I have been out of the world so long, and more than half the time not in my right senses, that I had heard nothing of the details till, a day or two ago, I picked it up from club gossip. Then I was told that Guy had picked up a girl from nowhere, about whom nothing was known, and married her on the sly at a registry-office. I suppose it would be too unkind to assume that Guy had gone off his head?”

Lord Southleigh growled out from his easy-chair. “Of course he was off his head when he did it. And the devil of it is he seems just as much off his head now. They are like turtle-doves, my dear boy, after several months of marriage.”

Lady Nina laughed. “My dear father gets more cynical every day. He insinuates as a general proposition, anyway it can be deduced from his remarks, that every man who marries a girl for love ought to be disillusioned shortly after the honeymoon. Well, certainly Guy is as much in love as ever, and, to be quite fair, she seems just as much in love with him.”

“She’s putting it on, I suppose,” suggested Hugh, who in a less obtrusive fashion was nearly as cynical as his host. “If she came from nowhere, and nobody knows anything about her, we may safely assume that she married him for his money, and that he was too infatuated to recognise the fact. Is she very bewitching?”

“She is certainly very good-looking,” was Nina’s reply. “Many people say she is beautiful. From a man’s point of view, she would be considered very charming in a subtle and elusive sort of way. Of course, my father hates her, it is a terrible shock to his pride to think she is going to inherit the family honours. Guy could have married anybody, although there would always have been still the danger that he would have been married for his money. When it comes to this point, there is not much difference between the well-born and low-born adventuress.”

From which remarks it will be gathered that the Lady Nina Spencer was a young woman of independent opinions, and not too strongly imbued with caste prejudices.

Hugh reflected for a few moments. His thoughts had travelled back to those days at Blankfield, which now seemed so very far off. What folly will not a certain type of man commit for the sake of a pretty woman? Jack Pomfret, in a moment of frenzy, had taken his life when he found he was tied up to a girl the accomplice and the decoy of a criminal.

And Guy Spencer, a man of a very different type from the easy-going, pleasure-loving Pomfret, had made a hash of his opportunities, flouted his family obligations, to pursue the desire of the moment, to marry out of his own class.

“What I hear is, that there is something very mysterious about her, that she preserves a strange reticence as to her past, makes no allusion to family or relatives. Does Guy know what other people do not know, and is he keeping his mouth shut? It is strange. Even if a man marries a ballet-girl, it comes out sooner or later that her father was a railway porter, or something of that sort.” He pulled himself up suddenly, and added, awkwardly: “I say, you know, I am afraid I have been very indiscreet. I forgot for the moment that she is one of the family now.”

A deep growl came from the Earl’s armchair: “She is not one of the family, she never will be. If the young fool had not been left that money by his godmother he would never have dared to do this disgraceful thing. By gad, Hugh, it is over a hundred years since there was such a mésalliance in our family: please Heaven it will be a hundred years before there is another.”

Nina took up the conversation at the point where her angry father left it.

“Of course, Hugh, you can say what you like. You are our old friend; you are Guy’s for that matter, and we are prepared to discuss this thing with you quite frankly. Guy may know more than we imagine; personally, I think he knows very little, and only what she has told him.”

“But surely, she must have given some particulars of herself,” cried Hugh, in amazement that a man like his friend Spencer, endowed with a fair share of common-sense, should take a wife upon trust, as it were. To be sure, Pomfret had done the same thing, but then poor old Jack, possessor of many excellent qualities, was singularly deficient in brain-power. He was one of those who never looked before they leaped.

Nina shrugged her shoulders. “All we know is that she was a Miss Stella Keane, the daughter of a man who gambled away his fortune at cards and on the race-course. As for relatives, she has for cousin a Mrs L’Estrange, a woman of good birth, but of somewhat shady reputation, who no longer mixes with her own class. There is another cousin, a man whose name I forget. I gather more from what has been omitted than what is actually said, that he is not a very desirable person, and has not visited Mrs Spencer since her marriage. That is all I have learned during these many months.”

“Not much, certainly. And I suppose the lady dries up when you try to approach her on the subject.”

“Oh yes, her manner then is very marked,” was Nina’s answer. “At the slightest question she seems to become frozen, to shut herself up within her shell. You know, Hugh, I was prepared to make the best of it all for Guy’s sake, although, of course, I quite sympathise with my father’s resentment. I have nothing to say against her manners or her appearance. If not a lady, she is most ladylike, and she never offends. But all the same, I can’t take to her. To me there seems something about her secretive and underhand. She appears to adore Guy, but, as you have suggested, that may be very accomplished acting.”

At this point, Miss Crichton, Lady Nina’s friend, was announced. She was not in the inner counsels of the Southleigh family, so no further allusion was made to Guy’s wife.

A few moments later the Spencers arrived. Guy shook his old friend Murchison warmly by the hand, they had met of late years only once or twice during Hugh’s brief leave from the Front. When they had exchanged a few mutual inquiries, the young husband turned to his wife, looking very slender and elegant in a filmy cream confection.

“Stella, one of my oldest friends, Hugh Murchison. We were boys together. You must have heard me speak of him.”

The young woman held out her hand with a charming smile that lighted up the rather sad face, and made her look what so many of her admirers said she was, quite beautiful.

“Yes, Major Murchison, I have heard of you from my husband, and how much you have suffered in this cruel war. You must come and see us, and renew your old friendship.”

For a moment Hugh could not speak. The room seemed suddenly peopled with ghosts of the past, summoned by the soft tones of that charming voice, so low and sweetly modulated. Then, collecting himself with a great effort, he dropped her hand, and made some formal answer. And at that moment the butler announced that dinner was served.

Chapter Fifteen

Small and informal dinner-parties can be either very lively or very dull, depending, no doubt, upon the careful selection of the guests, also on the personality of the host and hostess, who can sometimes exercise magnetic influence.

Nina was, as a rule, a very vivacious hostess. Her father was uncertain. If he were in a congenial atmosphere, amongst his old friends and comrades, he would radiate geniality. But if there was one guest who did not quite hit it off with him, between whom and himself there was an undefined spirit of personal antagonism, he dried up at once, and became gloomy and morose.

To-night, as his guest of honour, sitting at his right hand, he had the niece-in-law whose entrance into the family he had so bitterly resented. During the long courses he hardly spoke a word. He was rude almost to boorishness.

But although Stella was fully conscious that she was there on sufferance, her admirable self-control enabled her to comport herself with unruffled demeanour. If this spiteful old man hoped that he was annoying her with his churlish behaviour, she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was hurt. She ignored him, as he purposely ignored her.

Miss Crichton, a cheerful, chatty young woman, whose flow of good spirits made her welcome at many houses, sat on the other side of the host. Finding Lord Southleigh disinclined to conversation, and guessing the reason of it, she divided her remarks between Stella Spencer and Murchison, who sat next her.

A good-hearted girl, she felt just a little bit sorry for Stella. Lord Southleigh was not playing the game. His attitude was altogether illogical. It was open to him to refuse to receive his unwelcome niece at all, that would have been perfectly comprehensible. But having admitted her to his house, it was in the worst possible taste to so openly proclaim his dislike and detestation.

Lady Nina talked brightly to her cousin Guy, in the random flashes of her conversation, taking in the others, with the solitary exception of her father, who sat there glum and silent, in one of his blackest and most unapproachable moods. And Miss Crichton did her best, really working very hard to counteract the sombre influence of the taciturn host.