the hunting season closed. france still rode for several hours every day, but it was patent that his restlessness was increasing. when he was not riding, he was walking, and he walked more than half the night about the house and grounds. oddly enough, however, the serenity of his mien was unruffled, and julia came upon him several times standing before a long mirror in one of the halls, his head so high that the muscles of his neck creaked, his eyes flashing with a pride and triumph no harassed king ever felt on his coronation morn. as a rule, he left the table the moment the meal was over, preferring to take his coffee alone out of doors or in the library, but one day julia, who was beginning to take a certain scientific interest in his developments, arrested his attention as he was about to rise.
“didn’t you tell me once that kingsborough and the little chap were delicate? i heard the other day that both are remarkably fit. the little boy always has been, and the duke gets stronger every day.”
she looked at him ingenuously as she spoke, quite prepared for an outburst of rage, but he only bestowed upon her a smile of withering contempt.
“they are merely indulging in what the americans call ‘bluff.’ i happen to know that they are both full of disease and cannot last the year out. i shall be duke of kingsborough before christmas.”
“how nice. that is the reason, i suppose, you don’t mind all these duns. we may be sold out any day, you know. summonses are becoming as thick as rain, and i am told that not a man in the stables or kennels has been paid?—”
“they all understand perfectly. the summonses and grumblings are a mere matter of form. i have promised an enormous rate of interest and higher wages when i have moved into kingsborough house and bosquith. the other estates i have already agreed to let to american millionnaires. they are impatiently awaiting kingsborough’s death.”
“ah? where have you met the millionnaires?”
“they have been hunting with the hertfordshire all winter, and we have discussed matters at my solicitor’s.”
julia knew that he had not been to london for several months, save for the queen’s funeral, but forbore to press the subject. she remarked amiably:?—
“what a fine income you will have!”
his eyes flashed. “ah, yes! millions.”
“surely not quite that.”
“millions. kingsborough’s income alone is two millions.”
“i thought it was forty thousand pounds.”
“forty thousand for a duke of kingsborough! no emperor has a vaster revenue.”
“how jolly. my robes of state shall be woven of pure gold. meanwhile, why don’t you go to paris for a while? i notice that you are restless, since you have nothing to ride after, and nothing to kill. you keep me awake at night banging about the house.”
“do i?” france’s eyes flashed with something besides triumph, but it passed almost at once. he was losing interest in her. as he rose, bent his head graciously and sauntered out into the garden, he forgot her absolutely in a new vision that had haunted him since the queen’s funeral. there for the first time he had seen sovereigns en masse. the sight had thrilled him; he had made up his mind to signalize his succession by the greatest banquet london had ever known; all the reigning princes of europe should attend it. the letters of invitation were already written. he had written them many times, finding one of the keenest pleasures he had ever known in the process, congratulating himself that for the first time in his life he was about to have associates worthy of his name and ego. but although he had never heard the word paranoia, and while at bosquith had finally dismissed from his mind the haunting thought of insanity (it was outside of reason that he, harold france, could even sprain the wonderful organ he had inherited with other unique characteristics from the most illustrious house in europe), nevertheless, instinct warned him to lock up his letters of invitation, and keep his grandiose dreams to himself. only to julia, and only when she spurred him to speech, did he admit a very little of what filled his thoughts day and night.
but he was well aware that his nerves were on edge, and he was beginning to be troubled with pains in his head. he slept little, and when he thought of it took a malicious pleasure in disturbing his prisoner, whom he could imagine sitting on the edge of her bed pistol in hand.
but it was not the pistol that kept him from breaking down the door and laughing in her face. he had anticipated amusing himself with her female terrors as soon as the hunting season closed, but he found himself grown quite indifferent not only to her charm, but to the exquisite pleasure it had once given him to torture her. his dreams and visions, his increasing delusions, filled his life. woman was too contemptible to consider; were it not that it gratified his growing passion for autocracy to have a prisoner of state, he might have amused himself by turning her out of the house in the middle of the night and dogging her footsteps to stanmore or bushey.
he still compelled her attendance at table, but otherwise took no notice of her whatever. so absorbed was he that he failed to observe that his wife was now well supplied with books and no longer looked desperate or even discontented. her three devoted friends had made an arrangement with her bookseller to send her all that she ordered from his catalogue, and bridgit had turned over her membership with the london library. one of the first books she sent for was a recent work on insanity. she was not long discovering that france was a paranoiac, and she wrote to her aunt, asking her to invite him to dinner, and two alienists to meet him. but mrs. winstone was shocked at the suggestion, not only because she hated increasingly the “grimy,” in other words serious, side of life, but because it would be a thankless task to assist in proving that a member of one of the great families of britain was a lunatic. she chose, therefore, to believe julia quite mistaken, that france was merely a trifle more impossible than ever, and assumed the high moral ground that it would be unfair to take advantage of a trusting guest. julia concluded that to write to the duke would be equally ineffective, besides making an enemy of him for life, and she knew that france would not be induced to dine with either bridgit or ishbel. he had always hated both of them. there was nothing to do, therefore, but wait for him to develop acute mania, and to keep a pistol in her pocket; taking her walks abroad while he was forced to sleep, and locking herself in her room when she was not at table.
it was during this strain on her nerves that she began to long for the repose of the east. orientalism was in her brain cells. what imagination her mother possessed had been projected toward the east for long before and after her birth. the science of astrology is the birthright of the east, the very word sways and parts the shadowy curtains that hang before civilizations old before the occident was born, evokes the gorgeous heavy sinister pictures of ancient cities, of vast arid plains where only the stars were alive. this mysterious poetical science had been the romance of julia’s youth, and the east was the one quarter of the globe, save great britain, that she had ever heard discussed. in london she had escaped theosophy and other made-up fads of the same nature, but although the call of the east had often and for long been overlaid in her consciousness, it never failed to make itself heard if she stood before a picture portraying india, arabia, persia, or read of personal adventures in the east by writers with the rare gift of atmosphere. in the loneliness and terrors and constant tension of her present life she forgot the call of the too modern, too similar life, across the channel, hearkened increasingly to that of the east. it promised a vast repose, an endless feast of beauty, unfathomable mysteries, a life as different from that of the west as it was in the days of mohammed, zoroaster, or christ.
julia’s first passion was slowly growing in the unsatisfied depths of her mind, but that is the last name she would have given it. she was yet to realize that imaginative people with productive activities, however latent, have passions of the brain or ego as intense and profound as ever one sex compelled in the other in the interests of the race. julia, abominating all that the word love implied (a state of mind inevitable unless she had been coarse and callous), but young, fervent, and conceptive, was both situated and tuned to be caught in the eddies of an impersonal passion. it might have been art, but she was not an artist; study and politics had failed her, and although psychology interested her, she was too restless for science in any form; therefore, she had no sooner chanced upon one or two picturesque old books of eastern travel than she succumbed to the passion for place. she sent for no more books save those that carried her to the orient. her imagination blazed. she was transported into a new and enchanting world. her good resolutions to live for the race were forgotten. the moment she was free she would fly to the east and live. she was almost happy. then she descended into england and the purely personal life with a crash. ishbel sent her a marked copy of a newspaper containing the announcement of mr. jones’s death, a week later wrote that she should marry lord dark as soon as a decent interval had elapsed, and commanding her to leave france and come to london, where employment awaited her.
julia became her cool practical self at once. she packed her boxes, sent for a fly when france had gone for one of his merciless rides,—he was killing his horses,—and left this note behind her:?—
“mr. jones is dead. ishbel will marry lord dark as soon as possible. if you make a second attempt to wreck her business you will have him to reckon with. he is, in any case, well able to take care of her, and no doubt she will give up the business. as there is now no way in which you can injure her or any of my friends, i have made up my mind to leave you once for all. you will save yourself trouble by recalling that we are in the twentieth century and that the law does not compel me to live with you.
“julia.”
