Chapter 1

No one can possibly imagine the unpleasantness of a honey-moon until
they have tried it. It is no wonder one is told nothing at all
about it. Even to keep my word and obey grandmamma I could never
have undertaken it if I had had an idea what it would be like.
Really, girls' dreams are the silliest things in the world. I can't
help staring at all the married people I see about. "You--poor
wretches!--have gone through this," I say to myself; and then I wonder
and wonder that they can smile and look gay. I long to ask them when
the calmness and indifference set in; how long I shall have to wait
before I can really profit by grandmamma's lesson of the caterpillar.
It was useful for the _fiancailles_, but it has not comforted me much
since my wedding.

In old-fashioned books, when the heroine comes to anything exciting,
or when the situation is too difficult for the author to describe,
there is always a row of stars. It seems to mean a jump, a break to be
filled up as each person pleases. I feel I must leave this part of my
life marked with this row of stars.

It is two weeks now since I wrote my name Ambrosine de Calincourt
Athelstan for the last time, two weeks since I walked down the
rose-strewn guillotine steps on Augustus's arm, two weeks since
he--Ah, no! I will never look back at that. Let these hideous two
weeks sink into the abyss of oblivion!

It hardly seems possible that in fifteen days one could so completely
alter one's views and notions of life. I cannot look at anything with
the same eyes. It is all very well for people to talk philosophy, but
it is difficult to be philosophical when one's every sense is being
continually _froisse_. I feel sometimes that I could commit murder,
and I do not know when I shall be able to take the Marquis's advice to
remain placid and shut my eyes and try to get what good out of life I
can.

Augustus as a husband is extremely unpleasant. I hate the way his
hair is brushed--there always seems to be a lock sticking up in the
back; I hate the way he ties his ties; I hate everything he says and
does. I keep saying to myself when I hear him coming, "remember the
caterpillar, caterpillar, caterpillar." And once in the beginning,
when I was screwing up my eyes not to see, he got quite close before I
knew and he heard me saying it aloud.

He bounced away, thinking I meant there was one crawling on him, and
then he got quite cross.

"There are no caterpillars here, Ambrosine. How silly you are!" he
said.

He revels in being at once recognized as a bridegroom. He has
dreadfully familiar ways and catches hold of my arm in public, making
us both perfectly ridiculous. He has insisted upon buying me numbers
of gorgeous garments for my outer covering, but when I ventured to
order some very fine other things he grumbled at the cost.

"I don't mind your getting clothes that will show the money I've put
into them," he explained, "but I'm bothered if I'll encourage useless
extravagance in this way."

At the play he never understands more than a few words, but is always
asking me to explain what it means when there is anything interesting,
so I miss most of it myself from having to talk, and some of the
French plays are really very funny, I find, and have opened my eyes
a great deal, and I--even I--could laugh if I were left in peace to
listen a little.

Augustus is furiously angry, too, when the Frenchmen look at me. I
never thought I could even notice the gaze of strangers, but I am
ashamed to say that last night it quite pleased me.

We were dining at Paillard's, and two really nice-looking Frenchmen
had the next table. They looked at me, and Augustus glared at them and
fussed the waiters more than usual, and wanted to hurry me as much
as possible to get away; so I asked for other dishes and peaches and
nectarines and things out of season. At last, when I had dawdled quite
an extra half-hour, it came to an end, and the usual sums on the
margin of the bill began--Augustus adds up every item to see no sou
has been overcharged. At this point I looked up and caught one of
the Frenchmen's eye. Of course I glanced away at once, but there was
such a gleam of fun in his that I nearly smiled. Then, suddenly the
recollection came upon me that this creature, this thing sitting
opposite me, belonged to me. I have his name, he is my husband. I must
not laugh with others at his odious ways. After that I was glad to
creep away.

I am worried about grandmamma. She has not written; there only came a
small note from the Marquis. I am sure she must be very ill, if not
already dead. I cannot grieve; I almost feel as if I wished it so.
Augustus as a grandson-in-law would sting her fine senses unbearably.
He blusters continually, and his airs of proprietorship _envers moi_
would irritate her; besides, she would always have the idea that she
is cheating me by remaining alive, that, after all, my marriage was
not a necessity if she is still there to keep me. Oh, dear grandmamma!
if I could save you a moment's sorrow you know I would. When I said
good-bye to her she held me close and kissed me. "Ambrosine," she
said, "I shall have started upon my journey before you come back;
you must not grieve or be sad. My last advice to you, my child, is
to remember life is full of compensations, as you will find. Try to
see the bright and gay side of things, and, above all, do not be
dramatic."

She was always cheerful, grandmamma, but if I could just see her again
to tell her I will, indeed I will, try to follow her advice! Hush!
here is Augustus; I hear his clumsy footsteps. He has a telegram.

Alas! alas! My fears are true--grandmamma died this morning. Oh! I
cannot write, the tears make everything a mist.

* * * * *

It is late July and I am at Ledstone as its nominal mistress--I say
nominal, for Augustus's mother reigns, as she always did.

The sorrow of grandmamma's death, the feeling that nothing can matter
in the world now, has kept me from caring or asserting myself in any
way. I feel numb. I seem to be a person listening from some gallery
when they all speak around me, and that the Ambrosine who answers
placidly is an automaton who moves by clockwork.

Shall I ever wake again? I sit night after night in my mother-in-law's
"budwar," the crimson-satin chairs staring at me, the wedding-cake
ornament with its silver leaves glittering in the electric light; I
sit there listening vaguely to her admonitions and endless prattle
of Augustus's perfections. I have now heard every incident of his
childhood: what ailments he had, what medicines suited him best, when
he cut all those superfluous teeth of his.

One little trait appears to have been considered a sign of great
astuteness and infantine perception. His fond parents--the late Mr.
Gurrage was alive then--gave him a new threepenny bit each week to
give to a barrel-organ man who played before the house at Bournemouth.
Augustus at the age of two invariably changed it on the stairs with
the butler for two pennies and two halfpennies, keeping one penny
halfpenny for himself.

"Me dear"--my mother-in-law always completes this story with this
sentence--"Mr. Gurrage said to me, 'Mark my word, Mary Jane, the boy
will get on!'"

In the class of my _belle famille_, mourning is fortunately a matter
of such importance that the wearing of cr�pe for grandmamma has been
allowed to be sufficient reason for abandoning the wedding rejoicings.

Dear grandmamma! it would please you to know your death had done me
even this service. I am encouraged to grieve, especially in public.
Mrs. Gurrage herself put on black, and her face beamed all over with
enjoyable tears the first Sunday we rustled into the family pew stiff
with crepe and hangings of woe. They gave grandmamma what Miss Hoad--I
mean Amelia--called a "proper funeral."

And so all is done--even the Marquis has gone back to France, and only
Roy is left.

There is something in his brown eyes of sympathy which I cannot bear;
the lump keeps coming in my throat. Kind dog, you are my friend.

Next week Lady Tilchester will have returned to Harley, and soon
Augustus and I are to go and pay a three days' visit there.

Once what joy this thought would have caused me--I was going to say
when I was young!--I shall be twenty next October, but I feel as if
I must be at least fifty years old.

Augustus is not a gay companion. He has a sulky temper; he is often
offended with me for no reason, and then a day or so afterwards will
be horribly affectionate, and give me a present to make up for it. I
can never get accustomed to his calling me Ambrosine--it always jars,
as if one suddenly heard a shopman taking this liberty. It is equally
unpleasant as "little woman" or "dearie," both of which besprinkle all
his sentences. He has not a mind that makes it possible to have any
conversation with him. He told me to-day that I was the stupidest cold
statue of a woman he had ever met, and then he shook me until I felt
giddy, and kissed me until I could not see. After a scene of this kind
I feel too limp to move. I creep out into the garden and hide with Roy
in a clump of laurel bushes, where there is a neglected sun-dial that
was once the centre of the old garden, and left there when the new
shrubbery was planted; there is about six feet bare space around it,
and no one ever comes there, so I am safe.

Sometimes from my hiding-place I hear Augustus calling me, but I never
answer, and yesterday I caught sight of him through the bushes biting
his nails with annoyance; he could not think where I had disappeared
to. It comforted me to sit there and make faces at him like a
gutter-child.

I have never had the courage to go back to the cottage. It is just as
it was, with all grandmamma's dear old things in it, waiting for me to
decide where I will have them put. Hephzibah has married her grocer's
man, and lives there as caretaker.

I suppose some day I shall have to go down and settle things, but I
feel as if it would be desecration to bring the S�vres and miniatures
and the Louis XV. _bergere_ here to hobnob with the new productions
from Tottenham Court Road.

Augustus is having some rooms arranged for me, so that I, too, shall
have a "budwar" for myself. He has not consulted my taste; it is all
to be a surprise. And an army of workmen are still in the house, and
I have caught glimpses of brilliant, new, gilt chairs and terra-cotta
and buffish brocade (I loathe those colors) being carried up.

"Then I'll be able to have you more to myself in the evening," said
Augustus. "The drawing-rooms are too big and the mater's budwar is too
small, and you hate my den, so I hope this will please you."

I said "Thank you," without enthusiasm. I would prefer the company
of my mother-in-law or Amelia to being more alone with Augustus. The
crimson-satin chairs are so uncomfortable that now he leaves us almost
directly after dinner to lounge in his "den," and I have to go there
and say good-night to him. The place smells of stale smoke, some
particularly strong, common tobacco he will have in a pipe. He gets
into a soiled, old, blue smoking-coat, and sits there reading the
comic papers, huddled in a deep arm-chair, a whiskey-and-soda mixed
ready by his side. He is generally half-asleep when I get there. I do
not stay five minutes if I can help it; it is not agreeable, the smell
of whiskey.

There are so few books in the house. The first instalment of my
handsome "allowance" will soon be paid me, and then I will have books
of my own. I shall feel like a servant receiving the first month's
wages in a new place--a miserable beginner of a servant who has never
been "out" before. I feel I have earned them, though--earned them with
hard work.

Just this last month numbers of people have been to call on me. They
left only cards at first, because of my "sad loss," but we often are
at home now when they come.

My mother-in-law's visiting-list is a large one, and comprises the
whole of the "villa" people from Tilchester as well as the county
families. With the former she is deliciously patronizingly friendly;
they are all "me dears," and they talk about their servants and
ailments and babies, mixed with the doings of Lady Tilchester--they
always speak of her as the "Marchioness of Tilchester." They are at
home when we return the visits sometimes, too, and this kind of thing
happens: our gorgeous prune-and-scarlet footman condescendingly walks
up their paths and thumps loudly at their well-cleaned brass knocker,
and presses their electric bell. A jaunty lump of a parlor-maid in
a fluster at the sight of so much grandeur says "At home" (some of
them have "days"), and we are ushered into a narrow hall and so to a
drawing-room. They seem always to be papered with buff-and-mustard
papers and to have "pongee" sofa-cushions with frills. There is often
tennis going on on the neat lawn beyond, and we see visions of large,
pink-faced girls and callow youths taking exercise. The hostess gushes
at us: "Dear Mrs. Gurrage, so good of you to come--and this is Mrs.
Gussie?" (Yes, I am called Mrs. Gussie, Oh! grandmamma, do you hear?)
We sit down.

I have no intention of freezing people, but they are hideously ill
at ease with me, and say all kinds of foolishnesses from sheer
nervousness.

The worst happened last week, when one particularly motherly, blooming
solicitor's wife, after recounting to us in full detail the arrival of
her first grandchild, hoped Mrs. Gurrage would soon be in her happy
position!

Merciful Providence, I pray--that--never!

The county people are not so often at home, but when they are it is
hardly more interesting. There do not seem to be many attractive
people among them. They are stiff, and it is my mother-in-law who is
sometimes ill at ease, though she gushes and blusters as usual. The
conversation here is of societies, the Girls' Friendly Society, the
Cottage Hospital, the movements of the Church, the continuance of the
war, the fear the rest of the Tilchester Yeomanry will volunteer;
and now and then the hostess warms up, if there is a question of a
subscription, to her own pet hobby. Their houses are for the most part
tasteless, too; they seem to live in a respectable _born�_ world of
daily duties and sleep. Of the three really big houses within driving
distance, one is shut up, one is inhabited for a month or two in the
autumn, and the third is let to a successful oil merchant to whom
Augustus and my mother-in-law have a great objection, but I can see no
difference between oil and carpets. I have seen the man, and he is a
weazly looking little rat who drives good horses.

I wonder what has become of my kinsman, Antony Thornhirst. He came
with Lady Tilchester to the wedding. I saw his strange eyes looking at
me as I walked down the aisle on Augustus's arm. His face was the only
one I realized in the crowd. We did not speak; indeed, he never was
near me afterwards until I got into the carriage. I wonder if he will
be at Harley--I wonder!

Augustus wishes me to be "very smart" for this visit; he tells me I
am to take all my best clothes and "cut the others out." It really
grieves him that my garments should be black. He suggested to his
mother that she had better lend me some of the "family jewels" to
augment my own large store, but fortunately Mrs. Gurrage is of a
tenacious disposition and likes to keep her own belongings to herself,
so I shall be spared the experience of the park-paling tiara sitting
upon my brow. Such things being unsuitable to be worn at dinner I fear
would have little influence upon Augustus; I am trembling even now at
what I may be forced to glitter in.

We are to drive over to Harley late in the afternoon.