Chapter 7. A Four-In-Hand And One In The Bush

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_ CHAPTER VII. A FOUR-IN-HAND AND ONE IN THE BUSH

The four-in-hand which was drawn up in front of the great terrace of Ripon House the next morning reflected much credit upon Mr. Jawkins's _savoir faire_. The new harness glistened in the sunlight of the bright November morning; the grooms, in the nattiest of coats and the whitest and tightest of breeches, were standing at the horses' heads; and the horses themselves, beautifully matched, clean-limbed and glossy, were fresh from a toilet as carefully made as that of a professional beauty, or even Mrs. Oswald Carey's own. And that lady stood on the threshold of the Doric portal, her clinging driving-dress seeming loath to hide the grand curves of her figure, and her violet eyes drinking in the day. As she stood there, she seemed anything but the flower of a moribund civilization, the last blossom of an ancient _regime_; but there is a certain force which flourishes in anarchy, a life which feeds upon the decay of other lives, and grows but the more beautiful for it. Geoffrey looked upon her with a half-repelled, unwilling admiration, little knowing how near he had been to her the night before. Then Maggie Windsor came out, and he tried to look at her instead.

"Remarkably fine horses, those, Mr. Windsor," remarked the Duke, with a gravely approving nod of his polished head. "Remarkably fine horses," he repeated, as if one could not have too much of a good thing from a duke; and this time he threw in a wave of his patrician hand, gratis. Jawkins looked at him with admiration, and again felt that he was a prime investment. The strawberry-colored dome of his bald head was alone worth the money, not to mention the strawberry leaves.

"And does not your Grace admire the break?" asked Mr. Jawkins, with a preliminary bow and smirk. "It is a new pattern; and the panels picked out in cream color are thought to give a monstrous fine tone to the body. And as for the horses--they're from ex-President Rourke's state stables."

The Duke looked as if he deprecated the introduction of any such recent personage into the company, even by the mention of his name; and at that moment the Duchess arrived with Sir John Dacre. Sir John did not look much like the member of a coaching party; a close observer might have noted a slight mutual glance of intelligence passing between his eyes and Geoffrey's. Mrs. Oswald Carey was that close observer.

"A four-in-hand is all very well for those that like it," observed Mr. Windsor to the Duke, "but give me a box buggy and a span of long-tailed horses. Are you off to-day, Jawkins?"

"Yes; the Prince has sent telegrams at twenty-minute intervals all through the morning, and in the latest one he began to swear. The Prince is a natural linguist and can swear in fifteen different languages. I must be off to Brighton at once. I will return late at night. I have left one of my young men, who will take good care of you, you know. Good-by, Mr. Windsor--your Grace, I am your most obedient--" Jawkins bowed low and jumped into his little dog-cart. By this time the break had got fairly loaded; the horses were given their heads; the horn sounded; and in the wake of the great equipment provided for Mr. Jawkins's clients, Jawkins himself rattled contentedly along to the station.

A fine show made the paint and silver and the flowers and the gay cloaks and furs and the beautiful women among them. What is more dashing and brilliant than a coaching-party? What more inspiring to the eye, more light and careless; what fun more fast and furious? And many a man that morning, who felt his hand clothed with all the might of the people, looked curiously at the equipage of the Yankee millionaire and envied these gay people, the haughty beauty of the women, the gentlemen with their calm, unruffled exterior, and the light-heartedness, the carelessness of it all.

Now, upon this coach were six people; and as they bowled along in the crisp November morning they were thinking of many things. Let us fancy, if we can, what some of these gay thoughts were. On the inside seat was Mr. Sydney, the hired wit, the broken-down man-about-town; his health gone, his future gone, with no family, no friends, no faith in a hereafter and no joy in the present; and the day preceding, at dinner, he had eaten a _vol-au-vent_ which had disagreed with him. Next Mr. Sydney came the Duchess, the gaunt and dignified lady who awed even Jawkins to repose. There was not a night of her life that she did not cry like any schoolgirl whose lover has forgotten her, at the shame of her life, and the bitterness and humiliation of her daily bread. She would rail at the old Duke, who had come to it so easily, and was willing to prostitute the honors of his race for gross creature comforts, his claret, his cigar; and every morning, when her old eyes opened, she hated the daylight that told her she was not yet dead.

Next the Duchess came Maggie Windsor. Come now (you might say), she, at least, is in her place upon a four-in-hand, with her young life, her happy lot, her pretty, pouting lips and laughing eyes? I do not know; I marked the quiver of those pretty lips, and the flush of her fresh face, as her eyes, no longer laughing, looked at Mrs. Carey, just in front. Beside her sits Sir John Dacre. His lips are closed firmly above the square blue chin, and his eyes, beneath a prematurely wrinkled brow, look straight before him out upon the road. Perhaps you would not call Sir John's face attractive; his expression does not change enough for charm, and there is not light enough in those still gray eyes. As you see it now, so his expression has been these twenty years, from his studious youth at Oxford on. The four horses break into a furious canter down the hill; the coach sways from side to side; and Dacre still looks far ahead and down the road. If there is no light in the eyes, there is no tremor of the lips; just so he looked when at the doorway, all unconscious that Mary Lincoln was looking at his eyes and finding them attractive. Dacre has never thought of women; his life has had but a single thought, a single hope, and that, perhaps, a forlorn one.

In front, on the box-seat, is Geoffrey Ripon, driving, and Ripon is miserable that Maggie Windsor is there, miserable that Eleanor Carey is there, so miserable about either that he half forgets he has promised his life to Dacre, and with him, so close that her full arm touches his, and troubles him as if it had some magnetic influence, sits the beautiful woman whose girlhood he had loved; she, now knowing this, now conscious of the might of love, and of the power that it gave her womanhood upon this man; and in her heart the madness of her misery, the scorning of her world, the courage and the passion of despair.

It is a gay coaching party, and many such another rattles through this world with the footmen and the shining trappings and the pomp of paint and varnish. Oddly enough, no one speaks for moments, while they whirl down the avenue beneath the stately trees. "Where shall I drive you to?" finally says Ripon to the company.

"Where you like," says Miss Windsor, after a pause. "You must know the prettiest place--you have known this country from your childhood."

Ripon drove them up to the highest crest of the down, where the long main wave of the green hills stretches eastward along the coast, and the faint blue sea sleeps glimmering in the south. Still no one spoke; Dacre's eyes were lost over the ocean; even Miss Windsor was grave and silent. Mrs. Carey tried to point out a sail to Geoffrey; he could not see it, and she leaned over close to him that he might follow the direction of her eye. Her breath seemed warm upon his face after the sea breeze.

"Your eyes are not so good as they used to be," said she. Geoffrey looked at her, and thought to himself that hers were deeper. He said so; but she only laughed the more and looked at him again. "Do you remember our rides in the pony-carriage?" she went on. "Poor Neddy!"

He did remember the rides in the pony-carriage only too well; when he sat beside the laughing girl, and she looked up at him as they drove through the leafy lanes when the shadows lengthened till the sunbeams crept under the old trees and touched her hair with gold. It was in one of these drives that he had vowed that he would always love her. He had broken a sixpence with her in earnest of their betrothal contract. But he did not like to have those drives recalled with Maggie Windsor sitting just behind them. The horses were conveniently restive just then, and perhaps Geoffrey did not put on quite so much brake going down the hill as was necessary. The heavy vehicle went down with a rush; Geoffrey and Mrs. Carey were not looking at the horses, the Duchess was indifferent, Sydney looked on dyspeptically, and Dacre was looking far ahead, as was his wont. Only Maggie Windsor gave a little scream and grasped the rail.

"It was not so hard to drive Neddy as that four," Mrs. Carey went on. "If I remember aright, the reins were often on the dash-board, and we were not always absorbed in the scenery, I fear." Mrs. Carey sighed, and looked away over the green hills and valleys.

"Poor old Neddy!" said Geoffrey, lightly. "I suppose he carries no such happy burdens now."

"Some people are happy yet," the woman answered. "I told you yesterday I had never blamed you for forgetting me after you went to Oxford. It was true. But I missed you very much." There was a little tremor in her voice as she said this. Geoffrey pricked his horses nervously.

"My heart gave a great leap when you came into the room--it should not leap, being Oswald's," she continued, in a more worldly tone, "but it did all the same. A woman's heart cannot forget its first possessor, you know; even now that you have lost it--with the rest of your estates," she added maliciously.

"With the rest of my estates," Geoffrey repeated, almost unconsciously. They had crossed the highest hill by this time, and were upon a lower ridge; before them a long green band of velvety turf stretched away over the billowy downs, the chalk shining through the bare places where the grass was worn away, like flecks of foam. Geoffrey had a sudden thought, and, leaving the road, he cannoned the four noble horses over the close, hard turf.

"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Carey after a moment. "And are all your estates really gone? Can you get none of them back? But where is this--where are you going?"

"I say," said Sydney, "do you know where you are, Brompton? This used to be Goodwood Race-course." Goodwood Race-course; so it was. There was the track, stretching like a band of broad green ribbon over hill and dale; there was the glorious oak wood to the west, above the smooth bit of grass which used to be the lawn, where the ladies of the reign of Victoria had their picnics and showed their dresses, and book-makers used to jostle ministers in the betting-ring. "Ah," said Sydney, "my father has told me of great doings here--when King George's grandfather was the Prince of Wales."

The break rolled silently over the soft greensward, and Geoffrey feared Miss Windsor could overhear their every word, as Mrs. Carey spoke again.

"This is a glorious day--a glorious country," she said. "Do you know, I have not felt so happy since those old days?" She looked up again, and Geoffrey met the magic of her eyes, and lost himself in them. Suddenly she turned them from him. "You should be saying all this--not I," she said.

"When were you married to Mr. Oswald Carey?" asked Geoffrey, abruptly. He felt that he was slipping from his moral moorings and wished to lash himself to them again.

"I have been married four years," she said, coldly. "But you really must be careful of your driving, Lord Brompton. I distract you by talking."

"Not at all," said Geoffrey, half troubled that his parrying question had answered his purpose so well. Mrs. Carey turned round with an indifferent air.

"My dear Duchess, is not the view charming?"

The Duchess made so slight an inclination of her head that it was hardly an affirmative. She did not approve of Mrs. Oswald Carey. Not that her approval mattered anything nowadays. But she thought it bad enough to be a professional beauty and sell one's photograph; and worse still to rent one's face out to enliven dining-parties, and one's neck and shoulders to adorn dinners. True, she herself rented their great name, their ducal title; but then she never could get used to it in others.

If Mrs. Carey noticed the snub, she showed no sign in her face, but turned to Mr. Sydney. He also had found the Duchess rather thorny; and was ready as ever to pay the homage that one who is only a wit owes to beauty. And we know that beauty is more queen than ever in this material age. It is long since our grandfathers first found the folly of dreams and banished art and poetry from England--with opium and other idle drugs.

"Mr. Sydney, you look as fresh as a daisy. I am so glad the _vol-au-vent_ agreed with you."

"My dear madam, you know not of what you speak. My night was terrible, and no such aurora as yourself was in my troubled dream at dawn." Sydney looked over at the Duchess, fancying this speech was rather nicely turned; but her Grace was quite impassive, and evidently maintaining a sort of conversational armed neutrality.

"Oh, Mr. Sydney, you should have more care of yourself, or I fear the day will come when you will dine no longer, but merely sit up and take nourishment. Now, we expect you to be so funny at luncheon."

Sydney began to be offended thinking this too flippant treatment of a man of his position. Meantime Maggie Windsor had been asking Dacre about the beauty. "She told me last night she was a very old friend of Lord Brompton's?"

"Yes, I believe she was. I fancy even there may have been some childish love affair between them." Dacre spoke bluntly, as usual. Love affairs had found no place in Dacre's mind; his only thought was his country and his King; and he spoke with little consciousness of the individual human life his words might wound.

"Look there!" cried Sydney, "there is Goodwood House." Geoffrey looked across the park (they had gone down the hill, through the wood, and were now in the open again) and saw a great, rambling house, the central part of white stone, with two semicircular bays. This part was evidently old, but long brick wings were added of more modern construction. "The county has bought it for a lunatic asylum, I hear from Jawkins," said the wit grimly.

"Where is the Duke of Richmond?" asked Geoffrey. "Still in Russia?"

"Giving boxing lessons," said Dacre.

The rest of the ride was made in silence. They went down through a valley naturally fertile. None of the large older houses seemed to be occupied, but were falling into waste. Early in the afternoon they drew up at Chichester Cathedral, among the ruins of which they were to lunch. The grooms took the horses off to an inn in the little village near by, and Jawkins's man proceeded to unpack the hampers.

For some reason, Miss Windsor avoided Geoffrey. The Duchess and Sir John sat silently beside one another; Ripon was left to Mrs. Carey. It was a pretty picnic; but the party did not seem to enjoy it very much. From the Chichester ruin the roof has quite disappeared, but the pointed arches of the nave still stand; and these and the flying buttresses of the choir make a half inclosure of the place, into which the sunlight breaks and slants like broken bars of music through the soft greensward. Here you may lose yourself among the arches and pillars, the broken altars, the overturned fonts, and the old tombs and marble tablets speaking of dead worthies long forgotten. And if you lose yourself with the right person, your loss may be (as these same epitaphs read) her eternal gain.

Geoffrey wandered in here with Mrs. Carey. He had been trying to find Miss Windsor; but he met the other first. He could not treat her rudely, perhaps he did not wish to; but to his speech she answered but in monosyllables or not at all. Finally they sat down on the grass, leaning on an old stone pillar overthrown in a corner, half sheltered by what had been an altar in the old days, before the church was disestablished. Geoffrey did not speak for some time, and when he looked at her he saw that she was crying. Great tears were in her eyes, and as he bent down they seemed tenfold even their usual depth.

"Mrs. Carey! Eleanor!" he cried in despair, "what can be so wrong with you! Pray tell me--please tell me--" She made no answer; her hand was cold and unresisting as he raised it with the soft white arm from the grass; the sleeve fell back, and the setting sunlight showed each little vein in her transparent skin. "Pray, tell me!" Geoffrey went on, and then, more softly, "You know I have never forgotten you!"

Her breast was rising and falling with her weeping; but only a single sigh escaped her lips. At his words a deep sob seemed to break from a full heart; half rising, on an elbow, she placed her hand on Geoffrey's shoulder and drew his head in the bend of her wrist down close to her as she lay. Her lips almost brushed his cheek as she poured into his ear a torrent of words. "I am so miserable! so miserable!" was all he could distinguish. Then she arose, sitting upright.

"Geoffrey Ripon, my life is a lie--a mean, unbroken lie. You know why I married Carey--he could give me position, _eclat_, fashion--fashion, which is all we moderns prize, who have killed our nobles and banished honor from the dictionary. I sold myself to him and I have queened it, there in London, among the lucky gamblers and the demagogues and the foreign millionaires. All that this world--all that the world can give I have had, Geoffrey Ripon. And I tell you that there is nothing but love, love, love. It is these things that are the lie, Geoffrey--not love and truth and honesty. Oh, forgive me, Geoffrey, but I do so crave for love alone."

Ripon looked at her, speechless. As she spoke the glorious lips had a curl that was above the earth, and the eyes a glory that was beyond it; and the grand lines of her figure formed and melted and new formed again as she leaned, restless, upon the fallen stone. She threw her arm about his neck, and drew him down to her.

"Geoffrey, did you ever love me? You never could have loved me, when you left me so. See, the broken sixpence you gave me. I have still got it. I have always kept it." And she tore her collar open, and showed him the broken silver, hanging on a ribbon of her hair about her neck. "Oh, Geoffrey, you never knew that I loved you so! See--" and she drew out the coin and ribbon, and placed it, still warm from her bosom, in his hand. "Geoffrey, I care for nothing but love--this world is a wreck, a sham, a ruin--all is gone--all is gone but love--dear love--"

She drew him closer to her breast. For a moment Geoffrey looked into her marvellous eyes. Then a faint shadow passed across them, and looking aside he thought he saw Miss Windsor, alone, passing one of the arches.

"Hush!" he cried; and throwing the ribbon down he rose and stepped a pace or so aside. "Forgive me, Eleanor," he said to her, as she looked at him, "I loved you once--God knows--but now--it is too late." _

Read next: Chapter 8. Spretae Injuria Formae

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