In December and January two historical events caused an excitement into which Julia threw herself so whole-heartedly that for a time she managed to forget her personal life; taking pains to become intimate with every detail, she was obligingly conversed with by some of the important older men at Bosquith, and pronounced by the younger to be “waking up.”

On December 17 the President of the United States, Mr. Cleveland, sent his famous message to Congress concerning the long-standing dispute between England and Venezuela as to the boundaries between that state and British Guiana. The United States had proposed arbitration; Lord Salisbury would have none of it, intimating that England knew what belonged to her without being told. Whereupon Mr. Cleveland hurled his bomb: Congress, after being reminded of the Monroe Doctrine (which accumulates mould from long intervals of disuse), was requested to authorize the President to appoint a boundary commission whose findings would be “imposed upon Great Britain by all the resources of the United States.”

There was a financial panic (in which, incidentally, Mr. Jones lost a great deal of money), the newspapers thundered, Mr. Cleveland, at Bosquith, as elsewhere, was called an “ignorant firebrand,” and “no doubt a well-meaning bourgeois,” everybody tried to understand the Monroe Doctrine that they might despise it, and for nearly a week war between the two countries seemed imminent.

Mr. Cleveland went fishing and was unapproachable until the excitement had subsided. Lord Salisbury consented to the Boundary Commission, with modifications; and the whole matter was forgotten on New Year’s Day in a far more picturesque sensation, and one productive of far graver results: England was electrified with news of the Jameson Raid. Over this episode feeling for and against the impulsive doctor ran so high, before all the facts came to light, that more than one house-party was threatened with disruption; although in the main it was the young people with warm adventurous blood that sympathized, and alarmed older heads that condemned. “Little Englanders,” “Imperialists,” exploded like bombs at every table, even after a hard day with guns or hounds. But although the excitement lasted all through the hunting season (with which it did not interfere in the least), the chief advantage derived from it by Julia was a romantic interest in a new and mighty personality. For long after she kept a scrap book about Cecil Rhodes, followed his testimony before the special committee in Westminster with breathless interest, trying to find it as picturesque as Macaulay’s “Trial of Warren Hastings,” which she read at the time; and, until life became too personal, consoled herself with the belief that he was the man heaven had made for her. This fact would not be worth mentioning save that half the women in England were cherishing the same belief. These liaisons in the air have cheated the divorce court and saved the hearthstone far oftener than man has the least idea of.

The duke returned to London two days before the opening of Parliament, and took his household with him. France, now quite restored to health, bitterly resented leaving the country before the hunting was over, and Julia, who felt her happiest and freest when on a horse, and had proved herself a fine cross-country rider, had no desire to be shut up in a gloomy London house during what for England was still midwinter. But France dared not sulk aloud, and Julia was doing her best to be philosophical. Besides, she was to have a purely feminine compensation.

Mrs. Winstone, accepting the invitation of Mrs. Macmanus, had gone to the Riviera to remain until mid-April, but before she left she had given France several hints on the subject of his wife’s wardrobe for the coming season. In consequence, on the morning after their arrival in London, he entered his wife’s room at seven o’clock, attired for his morning ride, awakened her, and handed over a check for fifty pounds.

“Your aunt says that some of your fine clothes are not worn out and can be remodelled, but that you must have others and hats and all that rot. Women’s things cost too much, anyhow. They ought to make their own things. I’ve seen women do it. You must manage with this now, and as much more six months hence. It’s a bally lot, but you’ve got to have some sort of finery for our ball on the fifteenth. Don’t pay anybody till the last minute. They’re such silly asses it does me good to wring ’em dry. Besides, what are they made for? By and by when you know more about money, you can send me the bills for the same amount. But afraid to trust you now. Know women. By-by.”

He kissed her casually (not being in a mood for love-making) and Julia sat up and blinked at the check, the first she had ever held in her hand; Mrs. Winstone having had charge of her mother’s little wedding present, and the larger sum placed at her disposal by the duke.

She now knew something of the value of money. She also knew that her husband’s income, between his annuity, the rent of his place in Hertfordshire, and the duke’s allowance, was quite two thousand pounds a year. This would have gone a short distance if he had been obliged to set up in London for himself, but, living with the duke, his only expenses were his club dues, his valet, and his clothes, which he didn’t pay for. She had expected no less than two hundred pounds, and wondered at his meanness. There could be no other reason for the smallness of the check: there was no question of his fidelity to her, he pretended to despise cards (Julia already guessed that men would not play with him), and he did not even have to pay for the keep of his horse, as the duke’s mews were at his disposal.

Julia thought upon Mrs. Bode’s immense allowance with a frown, and wished she were an American, sent a fleeting thought to the still faithful Dan, and wondered if he would really come for her one of these long days.

To be sure Ishbel had spent quantities of money, but only to gratify an upstart millionnaire; and although Julia had now met many women with bewildering wardrobes, she knew that they were paid for in divers ways, when paid for at all. Still, she doubted if any of them had a husband as mean as hers, for most men, no matter how selfish, have a certain pride in their wives, and, in the absence of settlements, make them a decent allowance. And she, a future duchess of England, to get along on a hundred pounds a year!

“I should be paid high for living with him,” she thought as she rang for her tea; and had not the least idea that she was voicing the sentiments of thousands of wives, from the topmost branch of the peerage down to the mates of laborers that slaved to make both ends meet and had less to spend than a housemaid; whose rewards for work were her own.

But Julia was not troubling her young head with problems sociological and economic at this time. She knew that she had missed happiness, but she craved enjoyment, pleasure, excitement, and, if the truth must be told, unlimited sweets. The duke disapproved of anything but the heavy puddings of his race, varied only by “tarts” drenched with cream; and Julia had discovered an American “candy store,” and her sweet tooth ached.

As soon as she was dressed, she sought Ishbel and held a consultation with her in the little boudoir above the shop.

Ishbel could not suppress an exclamation at the amount of the check.

“Surely the duke—” she began.

But Julia shook her head. “Aunt Maria said he could not be expected to do more, as we live with him, and he gives Harold a thousand a year. But I know she expected me to have far more than this. She told me she had had a very satisfactory talk with Harold and was sure he would be generous.”

“Perhaps you can talk him over—”

“I’ll never mention the subject of money to him if I can help it. Why doesn’t the law compel every man to settle a part of his income on his wife? It should be automatic.”

“We are not half civilized yet—all laws having been made by men! But every woman of spirit gets the best of them one way or another, although her character often suffers in the process. That was the obscure reason of my strike for liberty. I see it now. There is nothing for you but to practise the time-honored methods. You have been placed in a great position and you must dress it. Get what you want. Your position assures you credit. Dressmakers are used to waiting, poor dears, and so are shopkeepers. Your husband will be forced to pay the bills in time. You will have to be adamant, impervious to rowing, when the days of reckoning come. Tell him that it is clothes or a flat in West Kensington, where nothing will be expected of you—”

“I hate it!” cried Julia, her eyes blazing, and her hair looking redder than flames. “I hate such a life.”

“Of course you do. So do thousands of other women; but as long as society, with all its abominable demands, exists, and men are unreasonable, just so long will we limp along on credit, and gain our ends by devious methods. Now to be practical. I shall make your hats at cost price, and France will not keep me waiting much longer than most people do. This afternoon I’ll go and look over your wardrobe. I know a splendid little dressmaker—Toner, her name is—who remodels last year’s gowns and brings them up to date. She is the only person you will have to pay at once, for she really is badly off. For your new reception gowns, ball gowns and tailor things, you will have to go to the smartest houses. I shall introduce you, but it is hardly necessary; they will fall down before you—”

“I shall feel like a thief!”

“Of course. You will be one, but only temporarily, and it will be much more disagreeable for you than for them. Your husband is not bankrupt, and must pay your bills. I wonder where you get your squeamishness from—at your age? You belong to our class, and from what you have told me of your life at home—”

“I know! Mother thought I didn’t know it, but I did. Children see everything. But it horrifies and disgusts me. I suppose I must be innately middle class!”

“Dear me, no. You are merely ultra-modern. I wonder what has waked you up before your time—and with no outside influences? Odd. Well, I fancy sensitive brains get messages, are played upon by waves of the intense thought that is in operation all the time, trying to solve the problems of existence. Bridgit was right. I thought it would take longer.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“She’ll explain when she gets hold of you! Oh, thank heaven I am my own mistress, and need never accept a penny from a man again,—and am done with the crooked ways of my sex.”

She looked radiant, and Julia exclaimed:—

“Why, you are more beautiful than ever. You haven’t gone off a bit.”

“Why should I?” asked Ishbel, in amazement.

“Well—I made friends with an American last autumn, and he thought it dreadful for women to work.”

“It is a toss-up which women suffer the greatest injustice from their men, the English or the Americans. At least our oppressions have developed us far ahead of them. They’ve only scratched the surface of their minds as yet—those that are known as the ‘fortunate’ ones. Of course there is a big middle class, scrimping hard to make ends meet, and, no doubt, having quite as much trouble with their men as we do. They will catch up with us far sooner than those walking advertisements of millionnaires, who think they are independent and spoiled, and are only slaves of a new sort. It is well, by the way, that I set up when I did. Jimmy not only lost thousands during the panic, but has developed a mania for speculation. I think it is because he has so much less of society than formerly, and wants excitement.”

“Does he blame you?” asked Julia, going to the point as usual. “Of course people don’t want him without you. I hear he wasn’t asked to a single house party.”

“Yes, he blames me. My conscience hurt me for a time, but I talked it out with Bridgit, and we both came to the same conclusion: during those five years I paid him back with interest. If he can’t take care of himself now, it is his own lookout. I am living to repay him what I borrowed, for he has thrown it at my head more than once, his losses not having improved his temper. That is the reason I am not going out at all this year.”

Julia, twirling her check, stared at her. The immense amount of reading she had done had set her mind in active motion, developing natural powers of reason and analysis. And unconsciously, during the last six months, at least, she had been studying and classifying the many types she had met. She knew that Ishbel, as she uttered her apparently heartless and unfeminine sentiments, should have looked hard, sharp, or, at the best, superintellectualized and businesslike. But never had she looked prettier, more piquant, more feminine. Her liquid brown eyes were full of laughter, her pink lips were as softly curved as those of a child that has never whined, and her rich voice had no edge on it. Charm radiated from her. In a flash of intuition Julia understood.

“It is because you like men—that you don’t change,” she said. “You never will. But how do you reconcile it? You despise them—”

“Oh, dear me, no. I adore them. No charming man’s magnetism is ever lost on me, and I am in love with three at the present moment. That is all, besides my work, that I have time for. Only—I don’t have to marry any of them, and find out all their little absurdities. I idealize them, sentimentalize over them, and that pleasant process would color the grayest of lives.”

“Suppose you should really fall in love?”

“Oh, I am quite safe until thirty, then again until forty; then again I shall have a respite until fifty. Perhaps by that time we shall carry over till sixty. It would be rather jolly. And the certainty of falling in love once in ten years is not only something to look forward to, but ought to satisfy any reasonable woman.”

“I wonder if you are what my American friend called bluffing.”

Ishbel blushed, dimpled, looked the most lovable creature in the world and the most temperamental. But she laughed outright.

“Of course I bluff, my dearest girl. I bluff every moment of my life; I bluffed myself, poor Jimmy, and the world for five years. Now I bluff myself into thinking I am radiantly happy because I am independent, whereas as a matter of fact, I am often tired to death, hate the people I have to be nice to—it is not so vastly different from matrimonial servility and management, except that you are more easily rid of them, and they are always changing. But I stick to this, shall stick to it until I have made enough to invest and give me an independent income; no matter how much I may long to be lazy or frivolous, to dance, to flirt week in and out at house parties—partly because I now enjoy that supreme form of egoism known as self-respect, partly because the spirit of the times, the great world-tides urge me on, partly because, when all is said and done, work fills up your time more satisfactorily than anything else. I had exhausted pleasure, was on the verge of satiety. That would have been hideous. But I purpose to bluff myself one way and another to the end of my days. I am convinced it is the only form of happiness.”

Julia drank all this in. She knew that although Ishbel spoke in her lightest and sweetest tones, she uttered the precise truth, and that she was deliberately being presented with a window out of which she should be expected to look occasionally, instead of remaining smugly within the conventional early Victorian walls of her present destiny. Julia was used to these little lessons in life from her older friends and liked them, but she sighed, nevertheless. She was proud to develop so much more quickly than most young women of her too sheltered type, but on the other hand she longed at times for youth and freedom and an utter indifference to the serious side of life. For the moment she regretted her reading, wished ardently that she could have been a girl in London for two seasons. Being put into training for a duchess at the age of eighteen may gratify the vanity, but, given certain circumstances, it extracts the juices from life.

Ishbel, as if she had received a flash from that highly charged brain, leaned over and kissed her impulsively. “Oh, you poor little duchess!” she exclaimed.

But Julia was shy of demonstrations and asked hastily:—

“How is Bridgit? It is nearly a year since I saw her, and she only sends me a line occasionally like a telegram.”

“Not as happy as she would be if she were earning her bread, but she is rapidly finding her mÉtier. All this last year, inspired in the first place by Nigel’s book, she has been investigating the poor and the poor laws, visiting settlements, hospitals, factories, laundries—you know her energy and thoroughness. The result is that she is close to being a Socialist—of an intelligent sort, of course—pays her bills as soon as they are presented, despises charities, and is convinced that women should become enfranchised and have full control of the poor laws.”

“She must be rather terrifying!”

“She has succeeded in terrifying Geoffrey, and I fancy with no regrets. He is having a tremendous flirtation with Molly Cardiff and is little at home.”

“And Nigel?”

“Still on a Swiss mountain top, writing another book. Of course he is in love with you still, poor dear!”

Julia was not displeased, but replied philosophically: “It’s well he’s not here, for I should want to talk to him, and I never could. Harold is insanely jealous.”

“Oh, that will wear off. They are all like that at first. Englishmen of our class are not provincial, whatever else they may be.”

But as Julia followed her downstairs to try on the newest models in hats, she felt that she had got no cheer out of the last observation. She had a foreboding that Harold would become worse instead of better.