“I shouldn’t like him born anyhow, you know, darling,” Cecil had said.
“We should have married,” she had murmured.
“I hate these hurried, patched-up weddings,” he had persisted. “I want to marry you in state, my darling. The Earls of Randford have always married their wives in the little abbey, and the tenants would hardly forgive me, you know, if I scamped it.”
“What if …” she had not been able to finish.
“No ifs,” he had said gaily. He was a god, young and blond, defying death.
So they had denied themselves for the sake of the child, who was never to be born, though they could not know it, and she had not allowed herself to regret her acquiescence. Cecil had felt his duty to his race, and though he loved her and she had never doubted his love, he drew her into his duty. This she had understood, for she had been reared within it, too. A noblewoman, however loved and cherished for her own sake, was nonetheless dedicated to the sacred future. She would not have been happy, either, had she forgotten that. Their love was purified by their faith in themselves and their kind, their belief that they were more than simple human beings.
Now that Cecil was dead she was released from that duty. There was nothing sacred in her being anything except herself. She knew no other heir of England whom she wanted to marry, or who wanted to marry her, and had there been such an one, it was doubtful whether the high sense of obligation would have been enough. With Cecil she could consecrate herself but without him, and therefore without love, even duty was not enough for her. There was no reason why she should consider it necessary merely to produce an heir for an ancient house. She was quite free.
Such freedom led to the immense restlessness which her self-control concealed beneath a cloak of consideration and kindness, these being also essentials of habitual good breeding. Only Michael divined that beneath the cloak so gracefully worn she was trembling with discontent.
“You need to get away,” he had told her. “You are jumpy.”
“I am not jumpy,” she had replied with unusual brusqueness.
“Don’t pretend,” Michael had said. “You ought to marry. Cecil has been dead for years.”
“I don’t see anyone to marry,” she had retorted.
“I’ll look about,” he had promised in a lordly way.
To which she had merely said, as she used to say to him when he was a little boy, “Don’t be silly.”
Nevertheless he had come back from London some months later with the preposterous declaration that he had found a chap, an American, who might be amusing for her to marry. Such conversation of course was not carried on before their parents. Even so she had been irritated by it. “I can’t imagine any marriage amusing,” she had told him. They were outdoors in the yew garden and she was on her knees by the Italian fountain, cleaning away fallen leaves. Michael stood watching her, not offering to help. He did not like to dirty his hands.
“This chap isn’t amusing, exactly,” he said.
“He’s rather terrifying actually — immensely tall and thin, greenish gray eyes under black brows, and that sort of thing. He looks immensely unhappy, I must say, the way Americans do if they are not the giggling kind. He’s searching, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Searching?” She had looked up.
“He’s rich as mud,” Michael said. “It can’t be that. I can’t make him out, except that there’s power in him.”
“What power?”
“I don’t know — energy, smothered under something impatience held down, enemy of everybody! He’s not friendly, doesn’t put out his hand when he sees you. I’ve invited him down — you’ll see.”
She had been attracted to William Lane the moment she had looked up from the piano and had seen him standing there. She had gone on playing so that she could look at him without speaking. He was not youthful, and above all things now youth wearied her. For the first time in these ten years she had found herself conscious of being a woman, not young but still beautiful and wanting so to be thought.
She had seen very soon that William thought her beautiful not merely for herself but for what she was over and beyond. He valued her for what she had inherited, but which was nevertheless a part of her, and it pleased her to have it so. He could not, she believed, have fallen in love merely with beauty. A chorus girl whom a king might love would have repelled him.
Pondering upon this, asking herself why it was that kings and peers throughout the history of England could so joyously lie upon hay and straw with milkmaids and gypsies who could not be queens, she penetrated the secret of William’s soul. He wanted a queen that he might be king. His kingdom he had made, a modern kingdom, money and power in absolute combination now as always, and over it he reigned ably enough. But the secret longing was in his soul unrevealed, and perhaps unknown even to himself. If she accepted him he would be assured. He would have evidence of what had been unseen, he would become in substance that which he had hoped he was.
At thirty, she reflected, as the days of that week passed, a woman accepts quickly or she rejects. He was in the decade beyond her and was, moreover, a man accustomed to quick decisions. He let her know within a few days that his was made. When he left Hulme Castle at the end of the week he managed to say good-by alone with her, and she helped him to arrange it so.
“May I come back in a fortnight?” he asked.
“We shall be happy to see you,” she had replied, purposely conventional.
“It will be a long fortnight for me, Lady Emory.”
She had only smiled at this, and she looked down and saw his hand clasping hers. A strange small hand he had, curiously hairy!
“Come,” she said to herself in silence, “let’s not think of such things as that!”
To discipline herself, she let him hold her hand a second longer.
When William came back after a fortnight he found Lady Emory so composed, as she led him on the second evening to a part of the castle still unknown to him, that he wondered if she had divined his thoughts. He was surprised to feel his heart begin to beat more quickly than he had ever felt it before.
“You haven’t seen the gallery, I think,” She opened a paneled door and he saw a space, seemingly endless, hung with paintings. “Let’s walk right away down to the end. The view is the loveliest picture of all.”
He followed her a long way to the great windows from ceiling to floor at the end of the gallery, and when she sat down on a yellow satin sofa he took his seat there, too, but not near her.
She looked at him, her dark eyes quietly waiting, and he saw with some shock that she was used to men falling suddenly in love with her, that she was prepared, and then he dreaded so soon to put her to the test of proposal.
“Did you know I grew up as a boy in China?” he asked her abruptly.
“Yes. But what makes you think of it now?” Lady Emory asked.
“Something about this castle, the silence here, and the moon shining as it used to on a palace in Peking.”
“The moon was late tonight.”