第62章

Horses Laura adored--black ones with flowing tails and manes, like certain pictures she had seen.Nowadays, except on the rarest occasions, she never set foot out of doors, except to take her carriage, her coupe, her phaeton, or her dog-cart.Best of all she loved her saddle horses.She had learned to ride, and the morning was inclement indeed that she did not take a long and solitary excursion through the Park, followed by the groom and Jadwin's two spotted coach dogs.

The great organ terrified her at first.But on closer acquaintance she came to regard it as a vast-hearted, sympathetic friend.She already played the piano very well, and she scorned Jadwin's self-playing "attachment." A teacher was engaged to instruct her in the intricacies of stops and of pedals, and in the difficulties of the "echo" organ, "great" organ, "choir," and "swell." So soon as she had mastered these, Laura entered upon a new world of delight.Her taste in music was as yet a little immature--Gounod and even Verdi were its limitations.But to hear, responsive to the lightest pressures of her finger-tips, the mighty instrument go thundering through the cadences of the "Anvil Chorus" gave her a thrilling sense of power that was superb.

The untrained, unguided instinct of the actress in Laura had fostered in her a curious penchant toward melodrama.She had a taste for the magnificent.She revelled in these great musical "effects" upon her organ, the grandiose easily appealed to her, while as for herself, the role of the "_grande dame,_" with this wonderful house for background and environment, came to be for her, quite unconsciously, a sort of game in which she delighted.

It was by this means that, in the end, she succeeded in fitting herself to her new surroundings.Innocently enough, and with a harmless, almost childlike, affectation, she posed a little, and by so doing found the solution of the incongruity between herself--the Laura of moderate means and quiet life--and the massive luxury with which she was now surrounded.Without knowing it, she began to act the part of a great lady--and she acted it well.She assumed the existence of her numerous servants as she assumed the fact of the trees in the park; she gave herself into the hands of her maid, not as Laura Jadwin of herself would have done it, clumsily and with the constraint of inexperience, but as she would have done it if she had been acting the part on the stage, with an air, with all the nonchalance of a marquise, with--in fine--all the superb condescension of her "grand manner."She knew very well that if she relaxed this hauteur, that her servants would impose on her, would run over her, and in this matter she found new cause for wonder in her husband.

The servants, from the frigid butler to the under groom, adored Jadwin.A half-expressed wish upon his part produced a more immediate effect than Laura's most explicit orders.He never descended to familiarity with them, and, as a matter of fact, ignored them to such an extent that he forgot or confused their names.

But where Laura was obeyed with precise formality and chilly deference, Jadwin was served with obsequious alacrity, and with a good humour that even livery and "correct form" could not altogether conceal.

Laura's eyes were first opened to this genuine affection which Jadwin inspired in his servants by an incident which occurred in the first months of their occupancy of the new establishment.One of the gardeners discovered the fact that Jadwin affected gardenias in the lapel of his coat, and thereat was at immense pains to supply him with a fresh bloom from the conservatory each morning.The flower was to be placed at Jadwin's plate, and it was quite the event of the day for the old fellow when the master appeared on the front steps with the flower in his coat.But a feud promptly developed over this matter between the gardener and the maid who took the butler's place at breakfast every morning.Sometimes Jadwin did not get the flower, and the gardener charged the maid with remissness in forgetting to place it at his plate after he had given it into her hands.In the end the affair became so clamourous that Jadwin himself had to intervene.The gardener was summoned and found to have been in fault only in his eagerness to please.

"Billy," said Jadwin, to the old man at the conclusion of the whole matter, "you're an old fool."And the gardener thereupon had bridled and stammered as though Jadwin had conferred a gift.

"Now if I had called him 'an old fool,'" observed Laura, "he would have sulked the rest of the week."The happiest time of the day for Laura was the evening.

In the daytime she was variously occupied, but her thoughts continually ran forward to the end of the day, when her husband would be with her.Jadwin breakfasted early, and Laura bore him company no matter how late she had stayed up the night before.By half-past eight he was out of the house, driving down to his office in his buggy behind Nip and Tuck.By nine Laura's own saddle horse was brought to the carriage porch, and until eleven she rode in the park.At twelve she lunched with Page, and in the afternoon--in the "upstairs sitting-room" read her Browning or her Meredith, the latter one of her newest discoveries, till three or four.Sometimes after that she went out in her carriage.If it was to "shop" she drove to the "Rookery," in La Salle Street, after her purchases were made, and sent the footman up to her husband's office to say that she would take him home.Or as often as not she called for Mrs.Cressler or Aunt Wess' or Mrs.

Gretry, and carried them off to some exhibit of painting, or flowers, or more rarely--for she had not the least interest in social affairs--to teas or receptions.