An Unknown Lover - Mrs George de Horne Vaizey (microsoft ebook reader TXT) 📗

The new house had been found; a sunny, airy, sufficiently spacious house, and the bride-elect having graciously expressed her approval, an army of workmen were busy with the decorations. Grizel had come to pay a flying visit to The Glen to superintend their efforts, explaining that though she possessed sufficient strength of character to bear with equanimity such trial as Providence might please to send, to live with a wrong shade of paint passed the limits of her endurance.

“If it were even the tiniest degree wrong, I’d nag at Martin till his life was a burden,” she announced, smiling the while the slow, imperturbable smile which gave so emphatic a contradiction to her words.

“But it wouldn’t be my fault!” protested Martin, trying to show sufficient distress at the threat to satisfy Grizel’s sense of dignity, but his thanks for the effort were a grimace, and an emphatic: “It will always be your fault!” which silenced him once for all.

Grizel indeed was in her most irresponsible mood, scandalising Katrine by refusing to be serious even on that most solemn of subjects, the ordering of Martin’s food.

“I couldn’t possibly think of food beforehand. It’s disgusting! If I knew what was coming to table, I couldn’t eat a bite! The cook must do it. What are cooks for?”

“Plain cooks at under thirty pounds a year don’t consider menus within their province. They stare into space, and twirl their fingers while you plan. And even then they need directing.”

Grizel sighed.

“But I don’t like plain cooks! I’ll have a fancy one. Forty pounds,—fifty—whatever she asks, and a kitchen maid to do the work.”

“Then,” prophesied Katrine gloomily, “Martin will be ruined. She’ll fry up all his royalties.”

“I’ll tell her she’s not to. And besides,” Grizel’s voice swelled with importance; she had caught the sneer on Katrine’s lips at those first words, and now she had a really sensible addenda. “I’ll bribe her! In reverse ratio. The smaller the bills, the bigger the bribe.”

“Then,” pursued Katrine relentlessly, “she’ll give you bad qualities. Salt butter; dripping instead of lard; cheap jams; rank tea!”

“Oh, my gracious!” Grizel grimaced again, more violently than before, but the next moment she smiled triumphant. “I’ll buy a vidder! A gentle, domesticated little vidder who’s redooced, and seeks a home. She shall have two rooms, and kind treatment, and be paid by results. Good food, small bills,—big salary. Small food, big bills,—out she goes! Don’t tell me I can’t! There are thousands of vidders. It will be a pious deed.”

“And what,” queried Katrine the practical, “will you do?”

“Interfere, of course! What d’you expect?” Grizel turned her head toward her fiancé, who had been a delighted listener to the discussion. “And make love to Martin. I shan’t have time for anything else.”

Katrine left the room, head in air, whereupon Martin made haste to take his bride in his arms.

“Happy?” she asked softly, tilting her head so as to look into his face. “Content?”

“Ah, Grizel, not quite... When I have you always... when you are my wife!”

“No qualms at all—no doubt? Because there’s still time... Sure you realise exactly what you are getting? An expensive wife, impracticable and lazy. And I’m twenty-eight. I shan’t change. And not a bit clever, except in one way!”

“What way, Grizel?”

“You know—”

“I want to be told!”

The golden eyes grew dark, the pale face glowed. Ah! Grizel’s lover needed no telling. Not one woman in a thousand could love like this soft, sweet thing, whose outer appearance was so calm and still. She who had contrived to love with tenderness a cantankerous old woman, lavished a very flood of devotion on the man of her choice. His starved nature absorbed it like a thirsty plant, but his delight in her was still fearful, incredulous; the sudden transformation of his life had the perilous radiance of a dream.

The engagement had been a veritable nine days’ wonder. English newspapers had published more or less accurate life histories of the interesting couple; American journals had excelled themselves in imaginative details. Blurred caricature portraits of the prospective bride and bridegroom had appeared side by side, to the amusement of the one, and the helpless fury of the other. The outer world labelled Grizel, fool, and Martin, knave; envied the unsuspecting distant relations, to whom would come the news of a great inheritance; and then promptly, mercifully, forgot. Friends also ceased in due time to forward notes of ostensible congratulation, behind which the real amaze was plainly stamped; only one effect was of any lasting nature, and regarding this Martin felt an odd mixture of chagrin and elation. His agent reported a large increase in the sale of his books, and publishers bid against each other for the privilege of publishing his new novel. The artist in him resented so spurious a success; the lover rejoiced in the prospect of increased prosperity which would make it possible to provide more luxuries for his bride.

Grizel was whole-hearted in her choice of love rather than riches, but when one has been accustomed to think in thousands, it is difficult to grasp the importance of fractional amounts. She thought it absurd to weigh the matter of an extra hundred a year in so important a matter as the rent of the house in which one would have to live; she took for granted the existence of a carriage, as simply as that of a table, and had not dimly imagined the possibility of existence without a maid. Martin did not delude himself that the financial future was free from difficulty, but as for years past he had been living well below his income, he was prepared to meet the exigencies of a period of adjustment. Meantime Grizel’s suggestion of the “vidder” seemed an admirable solution, and he told himself cheerfully that with such a check on household expenses, things could not go far wrong. In a few years’ time Grizel would have adapted herself to the new conditions and be able to take over the reins; in the meantime he was well content that she should devote herself to a more attractive rôle!

But one shadow had clouded the sun of Martin’s content, and within the last weeks that also had been removed, for after having obstinately refused all overtures from himself and her friends, after proclaiming by day or by night that she must go out into the world and fight her own battles, Katrine had shown a sudden and mysterious volte-face. One Thursday