WEBVTT
1
00:00:01.070 --> 00:00:05.650
CHAPTER VI. MARIO PROVANA'S WIFE WAS THE FASHION, THE PRESTIGE
2
00:00:05.669 --> 00:00:30.920
FOR WHICH SOME WOMEN STRIVE AND LABOR FOR YEARS. spending
3
00:00:30.960 --> 00:00:35.340
themselves and their husbands fortunes in the strenuous endeavour at
4
00:00:35.359 --> 00:00:39.490
having to confess themselves failures at last had been won
5
00:00:39.670 --> 00:00:43.329
by vera without an effort her husband's wealth had done
6
00:00:43.429 --> 00:00:47.549
much her youth and the something rare and exceptional in
7
00:00:47.630 --> 00:00:51.429
her beauty had done more but the disbrow's had done
8
00:00:51.770 --> 00:00:55.840
the most of all with such material a triple millionaire's
9
00:00:55.939 --> 00:00:59.359
wife in the first bloom of her loveliness the work
10
00:00:59.579 --> 00:01:02.520
had been easy but no one could deny that the
11
00:01:02.560 --> 00:01:08.269
disbrows had worked and might fairly congratulate themselves as well
12
00:01:08.370 --> 00:01:12.370
as their fair young cousin first second or third as
13
00:01:12.450 --> 00:01:15.950
the case might be upon the result of their tactful
14
00:01:16.269 --> 00:01:20.450
efforts all disbrows were supposed to have tact just as
15
00:01:20.530 --> 00:01:25.239
they had arched insteps and long lean hands it was
16
00:01:25.439 --> 00:01:28.849
as much a mark of their race From the day
17
00:01:28.909 --> 00:01:32.689
of Vera's return from her long Italian honeymoon, she found
18
00:01:32.730 --> 00:01:37.650
herself walled round and protected by her mother's kindred. They
19
00:01:37.670 --> 00:01:41.959
came from all the points of the compass. Lord Oakhampton
20
00:01:42.299 --> 00:01:46.939
from his park in North Devon, Lady Balgory from her
21
00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:53.680
castle in Aberdeenshire, Lady Hellstone from the land's end. They
22
00:01:53.719 --> 00:01:58.459
came unbidden. and overflowing with affection, but much too tactful
23
00:01:58.519 --> 00:02:05.019
to be vulgarly demonstrative. Poor Lady Felicia's foolish pride kept
24
00:02:05.099 --> 00:02:08.400
us all at a distance, they told Vera, but now
25
00:02:08.460 --> 00:02:12.060
that you are emancipated and your own mistress, I hope
26
00:02:12.080 --> 00:02:16.139
you will let us be useful. From countesses down to
27
00:02:16.259 --> 00:02:19.810
hard-up spinsters, they all said the same thing, and no
28
00:02:19.930 --> 00:02:24.800
one could accuse them of gush. they all announced themselves
29
00:02:24.919 --> 00:02:29.259
as worldlings pure and simple and they made no professions
30
00:02:30.599 --> 00:02:33.280
you have made a great match my dear said lady
31
00:02:33.319 --> 00:02:36.719
helstone and you have a great career before you if
32
00:02:36.759 --> 00:02:40.020
you are careful in the choice of your friends that
33
00:02:40.139 --> 00:02:43.490
is the essential point one black sheep among your flock
34
00:02:43.560 --> 00:02:46.949
might spoil all your chances there are men about town
35
00:02:46.969 --> 00:02:50.849
that my husband calls oilers they were called tigers when
36
00:02:50.909 --> 00:02:54.139
my mother was young and one of those in a
37
00:02:54.180 --> 00:02:58.770
new woman's visiting list can wreck her the creatures are
38
00:02:58.849 --> 00:03:02.590
intolerably pushing and don't resist till they can pose as
39
00:03:02.669 --> 00:03:07.810
cavalier servante or at least as l'ami de la maison
40
00:03:08.729 --> 00:03:12.770
vera welcomed this army of blood relations with amiability but
41
00:03:12.830 --> 00:03:16.610
without enthusiasm she was ready to love that one kind
42
00:03:16.689 --> 00:03:19.639
lady who had given her the only happy holiday of
43
00:03:19.719 --> 00:03:24.150
her childhood under whose hospitable roof she had known claude
44
00:03:24.289 --> 00:03:28.250
rutherford but the countesses who had been unaware of her
45
00:03:28.389 --> 00:03:32.659
existence while she was a dependent upon poor lady felicia
46
00:03:33.009 --> 00:03:38.060
could have no claim upon her affection yet they and
47
00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:41.759
their belongings were all pleasant people and in that large
48
00:03:41.800 --> 00:03:44.780
and splendid house which was to be her home in
49
00:03:44.860 --> 00:03:48.389
london she found that people were wanted the emptiness of
50
00:03:48.430 --> 00:03:52.409
those spacious rooms during the long hours when her husband
51
00:03:52.469 --> 00:03:55.830
was at his offices in the city soon became appalling
52
00:03:56.270 --> 00:03:58.969
and she was glad of the lively aunts and cousins
53
00:03:59.340 --> 00:04:03.699
and their following who transformed her drawing-rooms into a parrot-house
54
00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:07.039
both for noise and brilliant colour to say nothing of
55
00:04:07.080 --> 00:04:11.639
the aquiline beaks that prevailed among the dowagers and elderly
56
00:04:11.699 --> 00:04:17.430
bachelors once established as her relations the distance of some
57
00:04:17.490 --> 00:04:21.519
of the cousinship being ignored they came as often as
58
00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:24.540
vera cared to ask them and they brought all the
59
00:04:24.600 --> 00:04:28.199
people whom vera ought to know the poets and novelists
60
00:04:28.379 --> 00:04:31.209
and playwrights who were all dying to know the daughter
61
00:04:31.250 --> 00:04:36.069
of launcelot davis that delightful poet whom everybody loved and
62
00:04:36.189 --> 00:04:40.509
nobody envied his fame had increased since he had gone
63
00:04:40.649 --> 00:04:44.439
into the ground and his shade was now crowned with
64
00:04:44.480 --> 00:04:47.879
that belated fame which is the aureola of the dead
65
00:04:48.670 --> 00:04:52.600
they brought the newest painting people and the fashionable actors
66
00:04:52.680 --> 00:04:56.920
and actresses english or american as well as that useful
67
00:04:56.980 --> 00:05:00.779
following of nice boys who are as necessary in every
68
00:05:00.839 --> 00:05:07.180
drawing-room as occasional chairs or tables to hold tea-cups instigated
69
00:05:07.240 --> 00:05:11.959
by the disbrows and with mario provana's approval vera soon
70
00:05:12.019 --> 00:05:15.610
began that grand business of entertaining to which a triple
71
00:05:15.670 --> 00:05:21.680
millionaire's wife should indubitably devote the greater part of her time, talent,
72
00:05:21.740 --> 00:05:27.110
and energy. Countesses and countess dowagers gave their mornings to her,
73
00:05:27.519 --> 00:05:31.269
advising whom she should invite and how she should entertain.
74
00:05:31.930 --> 00:05:35.149
They instructed her in the table of precedence as solemnly
75
00:05:35.230 --> 00:05:38.930
as if it had been the church catechism, showing her how,
76
00:05:39.269 --> 00:05:44.329
in some rare concatenation, a rule might be broken, as
77
00:05:44.389 --> 00:05:48.360
a past master of harmony might, on occasion allow himself
78
00:05:48.399 --> 00:05:52.189
the use of consecutive fifths. They were never tired of
79
00:05:52.290 --> 00:05:56.449
extending Madame Provena's knowledge of life as it is lived
80
00:05:56.670 --> 00:05:59.350
in the London that is bounded on the south by
81
00:05:59.449 --> 00:06:02.930
Queen Anne's Gate and by Portland Place on the north.
82
00:06:03.629 --> 00:06:07.089
They called it opening her mind and praised her for
83
00:06:07.129 --> 00:06:11.629
the intelligence with which she mastered the social problems. Her
84
00:06:11.689 --> 00:06:15.519
husband was pleased to see her admired and cherished, above
85
00:06:15.930 --> 00:06:18.629
all to see her happy yet he could not but
86
00:06:18.870 --> 00:06:22.250
feel some touch of disappointment when he looked back upon
87
00:06:22.310 --> 00:06:26.269
those quiet afternoons in the olive woods at san marco
88
00:06:26.689 --> 00:06:30.750
and the tea-parties of three in lady felicia's sitting-room and
89
00:06:30.810 --> 00:06:33.790
remembered how he had thought he was marrying a friendless
90
00:06:33.930 --> 00:06:37.730
and unappreciated girl who would be all the world to
91
00:06:37.790 --> 00:06:40.540
him and for whom he must be all the world
92
00:06:40.939 --> 00:06:44.459
and a long future of wedded love He thought he
93
00:06:44.500 --> 00:06:49.069
was marrying a friendless orphan, whose divine inheritance was poetry
94
00:06:49.129 --> 00:06:52.310
and beauty, and he found that he had married the Desperows.
95
00:06:53.649 --> 00:06:57.050
They were all terribly friendly. They never hinted at his
96
00:06:57.149 --> 00:07:01.699
inferior social status, his vulgar level as a tradesman, only
97
00:07:01.759 --> 00:07:06.120
trading in money instead of goods. They behaved as if,
98
00:07:06.800 --> 00:07:12.040
by marrying their cousin, he had become a Desperow. Lady Helstone,
99
00:07:12.319 --> 00:07:16.540
Lady Balgary, lord and lady okehampton treated him with affection
100
00:07:16.699 --> 00:07:21.560
without arrire pensee the most that okehampton as a man
101
00:07:21.600 --> 00:07:24.639
of the world wanted from the great financier was his
102
00:07:24.720 --> 00:07:28.819
advice about the investment of his paltry surplus so trifling
103
00:07:29.019 --> 00:07:31.759
an amount that he blushed to allude to the desire
104
00:07:32.120 --> 00:07:35.620
in such exalted company but now a time had come
105
00:07:36.199 --> 00:07:39.319
when vera needed no counsel from the d'esprows and when
106
00:07:39.360 --> 00:07:43.939
she was beginning to treat those social obligations about which she,
107
00:07:44.279 --> 00:07:48.560
as a tyro, had labored diligently with a royal carelessness.
108
00:07:49.360 --> 00:07:52.399
Her aunts complained that she had grown casual, and that
109
00:07:52.439 --> 00:07:56.230
she had even gone very near offending some of their
110
00:07:56.290 --> 00:08:00.529
particular friends, people whom to have on her visiting list
111
00:08:00.730 --> 00:08:04.930
ought to have been the crown of her life. Vera apologized.
112
00:08:05.750 --> 00:08:08.699
I know far too many people, she said. My house
113
00:08:08.779 --> 00:08:14.560
is becoming a caravanserai. she said my house unconsciously with
114
00:08:14.620 --> 00:08:18.009
a deep-seated knowledge that all those splendid rooms and the
115
00:08:18.069 --> 00:08:21.329
splendid crowds that filled them meant very little in her
116
00:08:21.370 --> 00:08:25.769
husband's life six years of the too much had changed
117
00:08:25.949 --> 00:08:29.610
lady felicia's granddaughter the things that money can buy had
118
00:08:29.649 --> 00:08:32.570
ceased to charm the people whom in her first season
119
00:08:32.929 --> 00:08:35.750
she had thought it a privilege to know had sunk
120
00:08:35.879 --> 00:08:41.200
into the dismal category of bores almost all almost everybody
121
00:08:41.299 --> 00:08:44.340
was a boor except a few men of letters who
122
00:08:44.379 --> 00:08:48.440
had known her father or who loved his verses for
123
00:08:48.500 --> 00:08:51.789
those she had always a welcome and she was proud
124
00:08:51.830 --> 00:08:54.370
when they told her that she was her father's daughter
125
00:08:55.110 --> 00:08:59.450
her eyes her voice were his these enthusiasts told her
126
00:08:59.909 --> 00:09:02.220
she was a creature of fire and light as he
127
00:09:02.289 --> 00:09:06.059
was after three or four years of pleasure in trivial
128
00:09:06.120 --> 00:09:10.279
things she had grown disdainful of all delights except those
129
00:09:10.460 --> 00:09:14.659
of the mind and the imagination. The opera or the theatre,
130
00:09:14.779 --> 00:09:18.409
when Shakespeare was acted, always charmed her, but for the
131
00:09:18.649 --> 00:09:23.889
olopoldrilla of music and nonsense that most people cared for,
132
00:09:24.110 --> 00:09:27.230
she had nothing but scorn. She never missed a fine
133
00:09:27.289 --> 00:09:30.409
concert or a picture show, but she broke half her
134
00:09:30.500 --> 00:09:34.899
engagements to evening parties or appeared for a quarter of
135
00:09:34.960 --> 00:09:38.299
an hour and vanished before her hostess had time to
136
00:09:38.440 --> 00:09:43.039
introduce the new arrivals american or continental who were dying
137
00:09:43.100 --> 00:09:46.370
to know her the general impression was that she gave
138
00:09:46.419 --> 00:09:50.269
herself airs but they were airs that harmonized with her
139
00:09:50.289 --> 00:09:54.389
fragile beauty the something ethereal that distinguished her from other
140
00:09:54.450 --> 00:09:58.870
women if any stout florid creature were to behave like
141
00:09:58.990 --> 00:10:02.850
madame Provena, she would be cut dead, people told Vera's
142
00:10:02.950 --> 00:10:08.879
familiar friend, Lady Susan Amflet. Lady Susan pleaded her friend's
143
00:10:09.029 --> 00:10:14.009
frail constitution as an excuse for casual behavior. She is
144
00:10:14.120 --> 00:10:18.549
all nerves and suffers agonies from ennui. Her father was consumptive,
145
00:10:18.649 --> 00:10:21.429
and her mother was a fragile creature who faded away
146
00:10:21.590 --> 00:10:24.690
after three years of a happy married life. It was
147
00:10:24.710 --> 00:10:28.500
a marriage of romance and beauty. Davis and his wife
148
00:10:28.580 --> 00:10:32.259
were both lovely, but they had no stamina. Vera has
149
00:10:32.360 --> 00:10:36.460
no stamina. Lady Felicia had been lying more than a
150
00:10:36.500 --> 00:10:40.360
year in the family vault in Warwickshire. Her last years
151
00:10:40.419 --> 00:10:43.610
had been the most prosperous and comfortable years of her life.
152
00:10:44.139 --> 00:10:46.600
and the vision of the future that had smiled upon
153
00:10:46.639 --> 00:10:49.840
her in the golden light above the jutting cliff of
154
00:10:49.980 --> 00:10:54.860
Porta Guerra had been amply realized by the unmeasured liberality
155
00:10:54.940 --> 00:11:00.100
of her granddaughter's husband. Before Vera's honeymoon was over, the
156
00:11:00.139 --> 00:11:04.169
shabby lodgings in the dull, unlovely street had been exchanged
157
00:11:04.210 --> 00:11:09.690
for a spacious flat in a red-brick skyscraper overlooking Regent's Park.
158
00:11:11.200 --> 00:11:15.419
large windows lofty ceilings a southern aspect and the very
159
00:11:15.639 --> 00:11:20.139
newest note in decoration and upholstery had replaced the sunless
160
00:11:20.200 --> 00:11:25.059
drawing-room and the philistine walnut furniture and for those last
161
00:11:25.120 --> 00:11:28.960
years the disbrowed clan ceased to talk of captain cunningham's
162
00:11:29.019 --> 00:11:33.840
widow as poor lady felicia what more could any woman
163
00:11:33.960 --> 00:11:36.659
want of wealth than to be able to draw upon
164
00:11:36.740 --> 00:11:40.889
the purse of a troubled millionaire as everything in Lady
165
00:11:40.960 --> 00:11:45.580
Felicia's former surroundings. Her shifting camp of nearly twenty years
166
00:11:45.899 --> 00:11:49.419
had been marked with the broad arrow of poverty. Every
167
00:11:49.460 --> 00:11:53.299
detail of this richly feathered nest of her old age
168
00:11:53.720 --> 00:11:56.919
bore the stamp of riches, and the disbrows, who knew
169
00:11:56.980 --> 00:12:00.200
the price of things, could see that Mario Provana had
170
00:12:00.299 --> 00:12:04.919
treated his wife's relation with princely generosity. Once more, Lady
171
00:12:04.960 --> 00:12:08.679
Felicia's diamonds, those last relics of her youth, to which
172
00:12:08.740 --> 00:12:12.179
she had held through all her necessitous years were to
173
00:12:12.220 --> 00:12:15.440
be met in the houses of the fashionable and the
174
00:12:15.500 --> 00:12:19.899
great and lady felicia herself in a sumptuous velvet gown
175
00:12:20.259 --> 00:12:25.250
silvery hair dressed by a fashionable artist emerged from retirement
176
00:12:25.330 --> 00:12:28.529
in a perfect state of preservation having the advantage by
177
00:12:28.570 --> 00:12:31.789
a decade of giddy dowagers who had never missed a
178
00:12:31.830 --> 00:12:36.049
season the giddy dowagers looked at her through their fausse
179
00:12:36.070 --> 00:12:41.769
main and laughed about lady felicia's resurrection she looks as
180
00:12:41.870 --> 00:12:44.269
if she had been kept in cotton wool and put
181
00:12:44.309 --> 00:12:48.870
to bed at ten o'clock every night they said granny
182
00:12:48.970 --> 00:12:52.389
enjoyed that indian summer of her life and was grateful
183
00:12:53.470 --> 00:12:56.490
you have married a prince she told vera and if
184
00:12:56.529 --> 00:13:00.230
you ever slight him or behave badly you will deserve
185
00:13:00.269 --> 00:13:03.620
to come to a bad end vera protested that she
186
00:13:03.700 --> 00:13:07.809
knew her husband's value and was not ungrateful i want
187
00:13:07.870 --> 00:13:11.460
to make him happy she said that is easy enough
188
00:13:11.840 --> 00:13:14.779
retorted granny you have only to love him as he
189
00:13:14.840 --> 00:13:19.559
deserves to be loved was that so easy vera wondered
190
00:13:19.820 --> 00:13:22.879
sadly it seemed to her that by no fault of
191
00:13:22.960 --> 00:13:26.289
hers there had come a difference in her relations with
192
00:13:26.330 --> 00:13:29.309
her husband he was always kind to her but he
193
00:13:29.330 --> 00:13:32.190
was farther from her than in the first year the
194
00:13:32.309 --> 00:13:35.879
italian year which to look back upon was still the
195
00:13:35.919 --> 00:13:39.679
happiest of her married life he was absorbed in a
196
00:13:40.220 --> 00:13:45.039
business that needed strenuous labour and unflagging care he had
197
00:13:45.120 --> 00:13:48.269
told her that it was not his own interests alone
198
00:13:48.690 --> 00:13:51.169
that he had to guard but the interests of other
199
00:13:51.230 --> 00:13:54.889
people there were thousands of helpless people who would suffer
200
00:13:54.970 --> 00:13:58.269
by his loss of fortune or his loss of prestige
201
00:13:58.620 --> 00:14:01.700
the pinnacle upon which the house of provana stood was
202
00:14:01.779 --> 00:14:05.879
the strong rock of a multitude A certain anxiety was
203
00:14:05.919 --> 00:14:10.080
therefore inevitable throughout his business life. He could never be
204
00:14:10.100 --> 00:14:14.879
the holiday husband, sharing all a wife's trivial pleasures, interested
205
00:14:14.960 --> 00:14:17.240
in all the nothings that make the sum of an
206
00:14:17.460 --> 00:14:22.440
idle woman's existence. Vera accepted the inevitable, and it was
207
00:14:22.679 --> 00:14:25.470
only when she began to think the best people rather
208
00:14:25.590 --> 00:14:29.490
boring that she discovered how the distance had widened between
209
00:14:29.539 --> 00:14:34.759
herself and her husband. Without a dissentient word, Without a
210
00:14:34.820 --> 00:14:37.820
single angry look, they had come to be one of
211
00:14:37.879 --> 00:14:43.700
those essentially modern couples whose loveless unions Father Cyprian deplored.
212
00:14:44.340 --> 00:14:47.440
She thought the blame was with Mario Provana. He had
213
00:14:47.480 --> 00:14:50.139
ceased to care for her. Just as she had grown
214
00:14:50.240 --> 00:14:53.330
weary of her troops of friends, her husband had wearied
215
00:14:53.350 --> 00:14:56.509
of the wife he had chosen after a week's courtship.
216
00:14:57.809 --> 00:15:00.009
He thought he was in love, but he could not
217
00:15:00.090 --> 00:15:03.279
really have cared for me, she told herself. His heart
218
00:15:03.360 --> 00:15:05.899
was empty and desolate after the loss of his daughter,
219
00:15:06.279 --> 00:15:08.620
and he took me because I was young and had
220
00:15:08.679 --> 00:15:13.049
been Julia's friend. This was how Vera reasoned, sitting in
221
00:15:13.129 --> 00:15:16.250
her lonely sanctuary while on the other side of the
222
00:15:16.309 --> 00:15:19.169
wall there was a man of mature age, a man
223
00:15:19.230 --> 00:15:22.279
with a proud temper and a passionate heart, a man
224
00:15:22.559 --> 00:15:26.179
who had endured slights in his youth, whose first marriage
225
00:15:26.220 --> 00:15:30.240
had ended in disappointment. The crushing discovery that the beautiful
226
00:15:30.279 --> 00:15:33.019
girl who had been given to him by a noble
227
00:15:33.179 --> 00:15:37.120
and needy father had sacrificed her inclinations for the sake
228
00:15:37.159 --> 00:15:40.610
of her family and had never loved him she had
229
00:15:40.639 --> 00:15:44.169
been faithful and she had endured his love that was
230
00:15:44.330 --> 00:15:48.389
all and in those last years when disease had laid
231
00:15:48.450 --> 00:15:52.269
a withering hand upon her beauty and when the world
232
00:15:52.350 --> 00:15:56.110
seemed far off and when only her husband's love stood
233
00:15:56.149 --> 00:15:59.139
between her and death she had learnt the value of
234
00:15:59.200 --> 00:16:02.360
a good man's devotion and had loved him a little
235
00:16:02.399 --> 00:16:07.000
in return he had suffered the disillusions of that first
236
00:16:07.159 --> 00:16:10.860
union yet again after many years he had staked his
237
00:16:10.879 --> 00:16:14.039
happiness upon a single chance and had taken a girl
238
00:16:14.100 --> 00:16:17.840
of eighteen to his heart in a state of exultation
239
00:16:18.299 --> 00:16:21.980
that was more like a dream than sober reality he
240
00:16:22.019 --> 00:16:25.980
had lavished upon this unsophisticated girl all the force of
241
00:16:26.059 --> 00:16:29.850
strong feelings long held in check at last at last
242
00:16:31.009 --> 00:16:33.909
in the maturity of manhood the love that had been
243
00:16:34.049 --> 00:16:36.509
denied to his youth was being given to him in
244
00:16:36.570 --> 00:16:39.669
full measure he could not doubt that she loved him
245
00:16:40.389 --> 00:16:44.669
that innocent unconscious love trusting as the love of children
246
00:16:45.129 --> 00:16:48.769
revealed itself in tones and looks that he could not
247
00:16:48.830 --> 00:16:52.080
mistake before he asked her to be his wife he
248
00:16:52.120 --> 00:16:54.899
was sure that she loved him but after six years
249
00:16:54.980 --> 00:16:57.940
of marriage he was no longer sure of anything except
250
00:16:57.960 --> 00:17:01.509
that his wife was the fashion and that her disbrow
251
00:17:01.690 --> 00:17:06.130
relations were innumerable. He was sure of nothing about this
252
00:17:06.190 --> 00:17:09.529
girl whom he had clasped to his breast in a
253
00:17:09.589 --> 00:17:13.460
rapture of triumphant love on the hill above the Mediterranean.
254
00:17:14.240 --> 00:17:17.000
Year after year of their married life had carried her
255
00:17:17.119 --> 00:17:21.039
farther away from him. Who could say precisely what made
256
00:17:21.079 --> 00:17:25.059
the separation? He only knew that the years which should
257
00:17:25.099 --> 00:17:28.049
have tightened the bond had loosened it. and that he
258
00:17:28.130 --> 00:17:32.359
could no longer recognize his child-wife of the roman honeymoon
259
00:17:32.960 --> 00:17:37.440
in the fragile ennui whom society had chosen to adore
260
00:17:37.460 --> 00:17:39.059
chapter six
1
00:00:01.070 --> 00:00:05.650
CHAPTER VI. MARIO PROVANA'S WIFE WAS THE FASHION, THE PRESTIGE
2
00:00:05.669 --> 00:00:30.920
FOR WHICH SOME WOMEN STRIVE AND LABOR FOR YEARS. spending
3
00:00:30.960 --> 00:00:35.340
themselves and their husbands fortunes in the strenuous endeavour at
4
00:00:35.359 --> 00:00:39.490
having to confess themselves failures at last had been won
5
00:00:39.670 --> 00:00:43.329
by vera without an effort her husband's wealth had done
6
00:00:43.429 --> 00:00:47.549
much her youth and the something rare and exceptional in
7
00:00:47.630 --> 00:00:51.429
her beauty had done more but the disbrow's had done
8
00:00:51.770 --> 00:00:55.840
the most of all with such material a triple millionaire's
9
00:00:55.939 --> 00:00:59.359
wife in the first bloom of her loveliness the work
10
00:00:59.579 --> 00:01:02.520
had been easy but no one could deny that the
11
00:01:02.560 --> 00:01:08.269
disbrows had worked and might fairly congratulate themselves as well
12
00:01:08.370 --> 00:01:12.370
as their fair young cousin first second or third as
13
00:01:12.450 --> 00:01:15.950
the case might be upon the result of their tactful
14
00:01:16.269 --> 00:01:20.450
efforts all disbrows were supposed to have tact just as
15
00:01:20.530 --> 00:01:25.239
they had arched insteps and long lean hands it was
16
00:01:25.439 --> 00:01:28.849
as much a mark of their race From the day
17
00:01:28.909 --> 00:01:32.689
of Vera's return from her long Italian honeymoon, she found
18
00:01:32.730 --> 00:01:37.650
herself walled round and protected by her mother's kindred. They
19
00:01:37.670 --> 00:01:41.959
came from all the points of the compass. Lord Oakhampton
20
00:01:42.299 --> 00:01:46.939
from his park in North Devon, Lady Balgory from her
21
00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:53.680
castle in Aberdeenshire, Lady Hellstone from the land's end. They
22
00:01:53.719 --> 00:01:58.459
came unbidden. and overflowing with affection, but much too tactful
23
00:01:58.519 --> 00:02:05.019
to be vulgarly demonstrative. Poor Lady Felicia's foolish pride kept
24
00:02:05.099 --> 00:02:08.400
us all at a distance, they told Vera, but now
25
00:02:08.460 --> 00:02:12.060
that you are emancipated and your own mistress, I hope
26
00:02:12.080 --> 00:02:16.139
you will let us be useful. From countesses down to
27
00:02:16.259 --> 00:02:19.810
hard-up spinsters, they all said the same thing, and no
28
00:02:19.930 --> 00:02:24.800
one could accuse them of gush. they all announced themselves
29
00:02:24.919 --> 00:02:29.259
as worldlings pure and simple and they made no professions
30
00:02:30.599 --> 00:02:33.280
you have made a great match my dear said lady
31
00:02:33.319 --> 00:02:36.719
helstone and you have a great career before you if
32
00:02:36.759 --> 00:02:40.020
you are careful in the choice of your friends that
33
00:02:40.139 --> 00:02:43.490
is the essential point one black sheep among your flock
34
00:02:43.560 --> 00:02:46.949
might spoil all your chances there are men about town
35
00:02:46.969 --> 00:02:50.849
that my husband calls oilers they were called tigers when
36
00:02:50.909 --> 00:02:54.139
my mother was young and one of those in a
37
00:02:54.180 --> 00:02:58.770
new woman's visiting list can wreck her the creatures are
38
00:02:58.849 --> 00:03:02.590
intolerably pushing and don't resist till they can pose as
39
00:03:02.669 --> 00:03:07.810
cavalier servante or at least as l'ami de la maison
40
00:03:08.729 --> 00:03:12.770
vera welcomed this army of blood relations with amiability but
41
00:03:12.830 --> 00:03:16.610
without enthusiasm she was ready to love that one kind
42
00:03:16.689 --> 00:03:19.639
lady who had given her the only happy holiday of
43
00:03:19.719 --> 00:03:24.150
her childhood under whose hospitable roof she had known claude
44
00:03:24.289 --> 00:03:28.250
rutherford but the countesses who had been unaware of her
45
00:03:28.389 --> 00:03:32.659
existence while she was a dependent upon poor lady felicia
46
00:03:33.009 --> 00:03:38.060
could have no claim upon her affection yet they and
47
00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:41.759
their belongings were all pleasant people and in that large
48
00:03:41.800 --> 00:03:44.780
and splendid house which was to be her home in
49
00:03:44.860 --> 00:03:48.389
london she found that people were wanted the emptiness of
50
00:03:48.430 --> 00:03:52.409
those spacious rooms during the long hours when her husband
51
00:03:52.469 --> 00:03:55.830
was at his offices in the city soon became appalling
52
00:03:56.270 --> 00:03:58.969
and she was glad of the lively aunts and cousins
53
00:03:59.340 --> 00:04:03.699
and their following who transformed her drawing-rooms into a parrot-house
54
00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:07.039
both for noise and brilliant colour to say nothing of
55
00:04:07.080 --> 00:04:11.639
the aquiline beaks that prevailed among the dowagers and elderly
56
00:04:11.699 --> 00:04:17.430
bachelors once established as her relations the distance of some
57
00:04:17.490 --> 00:04:21.519
of the cousinship being ignored they came as often as
58
00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:24.540
vera cared to ask them and they brought all the
59
00:04:24.600 --> 00:04:28.199
people whom vera ought to know the poets and novelists
60
00:04:28.379 --> 00:04:31.209
and playwrights who were all dying to know the daughter
61
00:04:31.250 --> 00:04:36.069
of launcelot davis that delightful poet whom everybody loved and
62
00:04:36.189 --> 00:04:40.509
nobody envied his fame had increased since he had gone
63
00:04:40.649 --> 00:04:44.439
into the ground and his shade was now crowned with
64
00:04:44.480 --> 00:04:47.879
that belated fame which is the aureola of the dead
65
00:04:48.670 --> 00:04:52.600
they brought the newest painting people and the fashionable actors
66
00:04:52.680 --> 00:04:56.920
and actresses english or american as well as that useful
67
00:04:56.980 --> 00:05:00.779
following of nice boys who are as necessary in every
68
00:05:00.839 --> 00:05:07.180
drawing-room as occasional chairs or tables to hold tea-cups instigated
69
00:05:07.240 --> 00:05:11.959
by the disbrows and with mario provana's approval vera soon
70
00:05:12.019 --> 00:05:15.610
began that grand business of entertaining to which a triple
71
00:05:15.670 --> 00:05:21.680
millionaire's wife should indubitably devote the greater part of her time, talent,
72
00:05:21.740 --> 00:05:27.110
and energy. Countesses and countess dowagers gave their mornings to her,
73
00:05:27.519 --> 00:05:31.269
advising whom she should invite and how she should entertain.
74
00:05:31.930 --> 00:05:35.149
They instructed her in the table of precedence as solemnly
75
00:05:35.230 --> 00:05:38.930
as if it had been the church catechism, showing her how,
76
00:05:39.269 --> 00:05:44.329
in some rare concatenation, a rule might be broken, as
77
00:05:44.389 --> 00:05:48.360
a past master of harmony might, on occasion allow himself
78
00:05:48.399 --> 00:05:52.189
the use of consecutive fifths. They were never tired of
79
00:05:52.290 --> 00:05:56.449
extending Madame Provena's knowledge of life as it is lived
80
00:05:56.670 --> 00:05:59.350
in the London that is bounded on the south by
81
00:05:59.449 --> 00:06:02.930
Queen Anne's Gate and by Portland Place on the north.
82
00:06:03.629 --> 00:06:07.089
They called it opening her mind and praised her for
83
00:06:07.129 --> 00:06:11.629
the intelligence with which she mastered the social problems. Her
84
00:06:11.689 --> 00:06:15.519
husband was pleased to see her admired and cherished, above
85
00:06:15.930 --> 00:06:18.629
all to see her happy yet he could not but
86
00:06:18.870 --> 00:06:22.250
feel some touch of disappointment when he looked back upon
87
00:06:22.310 --> 00:06:26.269
those quiet afternoons in the olive woods at san marco
88
00:06:26.689 --> 00:06:30.750
and the tea-parties of three in lady felicia's sitting-room and
89
00:06:30.810 --> 00:06:33.790
remembered how he had thought he was marrying a friendless
90
00:06:33.930 --> 00:06:37.730
and unappreciated girl who would be all the world to
91
00:06:37.790 --> 00:06:40.540
him and for whom he must be all the world
92
00:06:40.939 --> 00:06:44.459
and a long future of wedded love He thought he
93
00:06:44.500 --> 00:06:49.069
was marrying a friendless orphan, whose divine inheritance was poetry
94
00:06:49.129 --> 00:06:52.310
and beauty, and he found that he had married the Desperows.
95
00:06:53.649 --> 00:06:57.050
They were all terribly friendly. They never hinted at his
96
00:06:57.149 --> 00:07:01.699
inferior social status, his vulgar level as a tradesman, only
97
00:07:01.759 --> 00:07:06.120
trading in money instead of goods. They behaved as if,
98
00:07:06.800 --> 00:07:12.040
by marrying their cousin, he had become a Desperow. Lady Helstone,
99
00:07:12.319 --> 00:07:16.540
Lady Balgary, lord and lady okehampton treated him with affection
100
00:07:16.699 --> 00:07:21.560
without arrire pensee the most that okehampton as a man
101
00:07:21.600 --> 00:07:24.639
of the world wanted from the great financier was his
102
00:07:24.720 --> 00:07:28.819
advice about the investment of his paltry surplus so trifling
103
00:07:29.019 --> 00:07:31.759
an amount that he blushed to allude to the desire
104
00:07:32.120 --> 00:07:35.620
in such exalted company but now a time had come
105
00:07:36.199 --> 00:07:39.319
when vera needed no counsel from the d'esprows and when
106
00:07:39.360 --> 00:07:43.939
she was beginning to treat those social obligations about which she,
107
00:07:44.279 --> 00:07:48.560
as a tyro, had labored diligently with a royal carelessness.
108
00:07:49.360 --> 00:07:52.399
Her aunts complained that she had grown casual, and that
109
00:07:52.439 --> 00:07:56.230
she had even gone very near offending some of their
110
00:07:56.290 --> 00:08:00.529
particular friends, people whom to have on her visiting list
111
00:08:00.730 --> 00:08:04.930
ought to have been the crown of her life. Vera apologized.
112
00:08:05.750 --> 00:08:08.699
I know far too many people, she said. My house
113
00:08:08.779 --> 00:08:14.560
is becoming a caravanserai. she said my house unconsciously with
114
00:08:14.620 --> 00:08:18.009
a deep-seated knowledge that all those splendid rooms and the
115
00:08:18.069 --> 00:08:21.329
splendid crowds that filled them meant very little in her
116
00:08:21.370 --> 00:08:25.769
husband's life six years of the too much had changed
117
00:08:25.949 --> 00:08:29.610
lady felicia's granddaughter the things that money can buy had
118
00:08:29.649 --> 00:08:32.570
ceased to charm the people whom in her first season
119
00:08:32.929 --> 00:08:35.750
she had thought it a privilege to know had sunk
120
00:08:35.879 --> 00:08:41.200
into the dismal category of bores almost all almost everybody
121
00:08:41.299 --> 00:08:44.340
was a boor except a few men of letters who
122
00:08:44.379 --> 00:08:48.440
had known her father or who loved his verses for
123
00:08:48.500 --> 00:08:51.789
those she had always a welcome and she was proud
124
00:08:51.830 --> 00:08:54.370
when they told her that she was her father's daughter
125
00:08:55.110 --> 00:08:59.450
her eyes her voice were his these enthusiasts told her
126
00:08:59.909 --> 00:09:02.220
she was a creature of fire and light as he
127
00:09:02.289 --> 00:09:06.059
was after three or four years of pleasure in trivial
128
00:09:06.120 --> 00:09:10.279
things she had grown disdainful of all delights except those
129
00:09:10.460 --> 00:09:14.659
of the mind and the imagination. The opera or the theatre,
130
00:09:14.779 --> 00:09:18.409
when Shakespeare was acted, always charmed her, but for the
131
00:09:18.649 --> 00:09:23.889
olopoldrilla of music and nonsense that most people cared for,
132
00:09:24.110 --> 00:09:27.230
she had nothing but scorn. She never missed a fine
133
00:09:27.289 --> 00:09:30.409
concert or a picture show, but she broke half her
134
00:09:30.500 --> 00:09:34.899
engagements to evening parties or appeared for a quarter of
135
00:09:34.960 --> 00:09:38.299
an hour and vanished before her hostess had time to
136
00:09:38.440 --> 00:09:43.039
introduce the new arrivals american or continental who were dying
137
00:09:43.100 --> 00:09:46.370
to know her the general impression was that she gave
138
00:09:46.419 --> 00:09:50.269
herself airs but they were airs that harmonized with her
139
00:09:50.289 --> 00:09:54.389
fragile beauty the something ethereal that distinguished her from other
140
00:09:54.450 --> 00:09:58.870
women if any stout florid creature were to behave like
141
00:09:58.990 --> 00:10:02.850
madame Provena, she would be cut dead, people told Vera's
142
00:10:02.950 --> 00:10:08.879
familiar friend, Lady Susan Amflet. Lady Susan pleaded her friend's
143
00:10:09.029 --> 00:10:14.009
frail constitution as an excuse for casual behavior. She is
144
00:10:14.120 --> 00:10:18.549
all nerves and suffers agonies from ennui. Her father was consumptive,
145
00:10:18.649 --> 00:10:21.429
and her mother was a fragile creature who faded away
146
00:10:21.590 --> 00:10:24.690
after three years of a happy married life. It was
147
00:10:24.710 --> 00:10:28.500
a marriage of romance and beauty. Davis and his wife
148
00:10:28.580 --> 00:10:32.259
were both lovely, but they had no stamina. Vera has
149
00:10:32.360 --> 00:10:36.460
no stamina. Lady Felicia had been lying more than a
150
00:10:36.500 --> 00:10:40.360
year in the family vault in Warwickshire. Her last years
151
00:10:40.419 --> 00:10:43.610
had been the most prosperous and comfortable years of her life.
152
00:10:44.139 --> 00:10:46.600
and the vision of the future that had smiled upon
153
00:10:46.639 --> 00:10:49.840
her in the golden light above the jutting cliff of
154
00:10:49.980 --> 00:10:54.860
Porta Guerra had been amply realized by the unmeasured liberality
155
00:10:54.940 --> 00:11:00.100
of her granddaughter's husband. Before Vera's honeymoon was over, the
156
00:11:00.139 --> 00:11:04.169
shabby lodgings in the dull, unlovely street had been exchanged
157
00:11:04.210 --> 00:11:09.690
for a spacious flat in a red-brick skyscraper overlooking Regent's Park.
158
00:11:11.200 --> 00:11:15.419
large windows lofty ceilings a southern aspect and the very
159
00:11:15.639 --> 00:11:20.139
newest note in decoration and upholstery had replaced the sunless
160
00:11:20.200 --> 00:11:25.059
drawing-room and the philistine walnut furniture and for those last
161
00:11:25.120 --> 00:11:28.960
years the disbrowed clan ceased to talk of captain cunningham's
162
00:11:29.019 --> 00:11:33.840
widow as poor lady felicia what more could any woman
163
00:11:33.960 --> 00:11:36.659
want of wealth than to be able to draw upon
164
00:11:36.740 --> 00:11:40.889
the purse of a troubled millionaire as everything in Lady
165
00:11:40.960 --> 00:11:45.580
Felicia's former surroundings. Her shifting camp of nearly twenty years
166
00:11:45.899 --> 00:11:49.419
had been marked with the broad arrow of poverty. Every
167
00:11:49.460 --> 00:11:53.299
detail of this richly feathered nest of her old age
168
00:11:53.720 --> 00:11:56.919
bore the stamp of riches, and the disbrows, who knew
169
00:11:56.980 --> 00:12:00.200
the price of things, could see that Mario Provana had
170
00:12:00.299 --> 00:12:04.919
treated his wife's relation with princely generosity. Once more, Lady
171
00:12:04.960 --> 00:12:08.679
Felicia's diamonds, those last relics of her youth, to which
172
00:12:08.740 --> 00:12:12.179
she had held through all her necessitous years were to
173
00:12:12.220 --> 00:12:15.440
be met in the houses of the fashionable and the
174
00:12:15.500 --> 00:12:19.899
great and lady felicia herself in a sumptuous velvet gown
175
00:12:20.259 --> 00:12:25.250
silvery hair dressed by a fashionable artist emerged from retirement
176
00:12:25.330 --> 00:12:28.529
in a perfect state of preservation having the advantage by
177
00:12:28.570 --> 00:12:31.789
a decade of giddy dowagers who had never missed a
178
00:12:31.830 --> 00:12:36.049
season the giddy dowagers looked at her through their fausse
179
00:12:36.070 --> 00:12:41.769
main and laughed about lady felicia's resurrection she looks as
180
00:12:41.870 --> 00:12:44.269
if she had been kept in cotton wool and put
181
00:12:44.309 --> 00:12:48.870
to bed at ten o'clock every night they said granny
182
00:12:48.970 --> 00:12:52.389
enjoyed that indian summer of her life and was grateful
183
00:12:53.470 --> 00:12:56.490
you have married a prince she told vera and if
184
00:12:56.529 --> 00:13:00.230
you ever slight him or behave badly you will deserve
185
00:13:00.269 --> 00:13:03.620
to come to a bad end vera protested that she
186
00:13:03.700 --> 00:13:07.809
knew her husband's value and was not ungrateful i want
187
00:13:07.870 --> 00:13:11.460
to make him happy she said that is easy enough
188
00:13:11.840 --> 00:13:14.779
retorted granny you have only to love him as he
189
00:13:14.840 --> 00:13:19.559
deserves to be loved was that so easy vera wondered
190
00:13:19.820 --> 00:13:22.879
sadly it seemed to her that by no fault of
191
00:13:22.960 --> 00:13:26.289
hers there had come a difference in her relations with
192
00:13:26.330 --> 00:13:29.309
her husband he was always kind to her but he
193
00:13:29.330 --> 00:13:32.190
was farther from her than in the first year the
194
00:13:32.309 --> 00:13:35.879
italian year which to look back upon was still the
195
00:13:35.919 --> 00:13:39.679
happiest of her married life he was absorbed in a
196
00:13:40.220 --> 00:13:45.039
business that needed strenuous labour and unflagging care he had
197
00:13:45.120 --> 00:13:48.269
told her that it was not his own interests alone
198
00:13:48.690 --> 00:13:51.169
that he had to guard but the interests of other
199
00:13:51.230 --> 00:13:54.889
people there were thousands of helpless people who would suffer
200
00:13:54.970 --> 00:13:58.269
by his loss of fortune or his loss of prestige
201
00:13:58.620 --> 00:14:01.700
the pinnacle upon which the house of provana stood was
202
00:14:01.779 --> 00:14:05.879
the strong rock of a multitude A certain anxiety was
203
00:14:05.919 --> 00:14:10.080
therefore inevitable throughout his business life. He could never be
204
00:14:10.100 --> 00:14:14.879
the holiday husband, sharing all a wife's trivial pleasures, interested
205
00:14:14.960 --> 00:14:17.240
in all the nothings that make the sum of an
206
00:14:17.460 --> 00:14:22.440
idle woman's existence. Vera accepted the inevitable, and it was
207
00:14:22.679 --> 00:14:25.470
only when she began to think the best people rather
208
00:14:25.590 --> 00:14:29.490
boring that she discovered how the distance had widened between
209
00:14:29.539 --> 00:14:34.759
herself and her husband. Without a dissentient word, Without a
210
00:14:34.820 --> 00:14:37.820
single angry look, they had come to be one of
211
00:14:37.879 --> 00:14:43.700
those essentially modern couples whose loveless unions Father Cyprian deplored.
212
00:14:44.340 --> 00:14:47.440
She thought the blame was with Mario Provana. He had
213
00:14:47.480 --> 00:14:50.139
ceased to care for her. Just as she had grown
214
00:14:50.240 --> 00:14:53.330
weary of her troops of friends, her husband had wearied
215
00:14:53.350 --> 00:14:56.509
of the wife he had chosen after a week's courtship.
216
00:14:57.809 --> 00:15:00.009
He thought he was in love, but he could not
217
00:15:00.090 --> 00:15:03.279
really have cared for me, she told herself. His heart
218
00:15:03.360 --> 00:15:05.899
was empty and desolate after the loss of his daughter,
219
00:15:06.279 --> 00:15:08.620
and he took me because I was young and had
220
00:15:08.679 --> 00:15:13.049
been Julia's friend. This was how Vera reasoned, sitting in
221
00:15:13.129 --> 00:15:16.250
her lonely sanctuary while on the other side of the
222
00:15:16.309 --> 00:15:19.169
wall there was a man of mature age, a man
223
00:15:19.230 --> 00:15:22.279
with a proud temper and a passionate heart, a man
224
00:15:22.559 --> 00:15:26.179
who had endured slights in his youth, whose first marriage
225
00:15:26.220 --> 00:15:30.240
had ended in disappointment. The crushing discovery that the beautiful
226
00:15:30.279 --> 00:15:33.019
girl who had been given to him by a noble
227
00:15:33.179 --> 00:15:37.120
and needy father had sacrificed her inclinations for the sake
228
00:15:37.159 --> 00:15:40.610
of her family and had never loved him she had
229
00:15:40.639 --> 00:15:44.169
been faithful and she had endured his love that was
230
00:15:44.330 --> 00:15:48.389
all and in those last years when disease had laid
231
00:15:48.450 --> 00:15:52.269
a withering hand upon her beauty and when the world
232
00:15:52.350 --> 00:15:56.110
seemed far off and when only her husband's love stood
233
00:15:56.149 --> 00:15:59.139
between her and death she had learnt the value of
234
00:15:59.200 --> 00:16:02.360
a good man's devotion and had loved him a little
235
00:16:02.399 --> 00:16:07.000
in return he had suffered the disillusions of that first
236
00:16:07.159 --> 00:16:10.860
union yet again after many years he had staked his
237
00:16:10.879 --> 00:16:14.039
happiness upon a single chance and had taken a girl
238
00:16:14.100 --> 00:16:17.840
of eighteen to his heart in a state of exultation
239
00:16:18.299 --> 00:16:21.980
that was more like a dream than sober reality he
240
00:16:22.019 --> 00:16:25.980
had lavished upon this unsophisticated girl all the force of
241
00:16:26.059 --> 00:16:29.850
strong feelings long held in check at last at last
242
00:16:31.009 --> 00:16:33.909
in the maturity of manhood the love that had been
243
00:16:34.049 --> 00:16:36.509
denied to his youth was being given to him in
244
00:16:36.570 --> 00:16:39.669
full measure he could not doubt that she loved him
245
00:16:40.389 --> 00:16:44.669
that innocent unconscious love trusting as the love of children
246
00:16:45.129 --> 00:16:48.769
revealed itself in tones and looks that he could not
247
00:16:48.830 --> 00:16:52.080
mistake before he asked her to be his wife he
248
00:16:52.120 --> 00:16:54.899
was sure that she loved him but after six years
249
00:16:54.980 --> 00:16:57.940
of marriage he was no longer sure of anything except
250
00:16:57.960 --> 00:17:01.509
that his wife was the fashion and that her disbrow
251
00:17:01.690 --> 00:17:06.130
relations were innumerable. He was sure of nothing about this
252
00:17:06.190 --> 00:17:09.529
girl whom he had clasped to his breast in a
253
00:17:09.589 --> 00:17:13.460
rapture of triumphant love on the hill above the Mediterranean.
254
00:17:14.240 --> 00:17:17.000
Year after year of their married life had carried her
255
00:17:17.119 --> 00:17:21.039
farther away from him. Who could say precisely what made
256
00:17:21.079 --> 00:17:25.059
the separation? He only knew that the years which should
257
00:17:25.099 --> 00:17:28.049
have tightened the bond had loosened it. and that he
258
00:17:28.130 --> 00:17:32.359
could no longer recognize his child-wife of the roman honeymoon
259
00:17:32.960 --> 00:17:37.440
in the fragile ennui whom society had chosen to adore
260
00:17:37.460 --> 00:17:39.059
chapter six
