HOW "THAT GIRL" WAS "SEEN" BY THE DOWAGER LADY RYLTON; AND HOW TITA
HELD HER SMALL HEAD VERY HIGH, AND FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT WITH THE
ENEMY.
There is scarcely time for Lady Rylton to make arrangements for a
private interview with her daughter-in-law, as Mrs. Bethune has
scarcely left her room before that small person knocks at the door.
And there is, perhaps, a slight touch of confusion on the older
woman's face as Tita enters. She had not had time to prepare the
little bitter barbs she had meant to fling against the girl's heart,
and is now slightly taken aback.
However, Nature, the All-Mother, has been generous to Tessie in the
way of venom, and after a moment or two she tells herself that she
will be able to get through this interview with honour.
"My dear Tita. You! So glad! Pray come and sit down."
"I just came," says Tita smiling, but hesitating on the threshold,
as if desirous of an excuse to run away again as quickly as
possible, "to see if you were quite comfortable--quite happy."
"Ah, _happy!"_ says Lady Rylton in a peculiar tone. "Do come in,
Tita. It is a fad of mine--a silly one, no doubt--but I cannot bear
to look at an open door. Besides, I wish to speak to you."
Tita closes the door and comes well into the room. She does not seat
herself, however; she remains standing near the chimney-piece.
"About what?" asks she promptly.
"About many things." Perhaps the girl's bluntness has daunted her a
little, because, as she says this, she moves uneasily, and finally
changes her seat for a low lounge that brings the light on the back
of her head. "I am sorry to say I have heard several unpleasant
things about you of late."
Tita stares at her.
"I don't understand you," says she.
"Then it must be my unhappy task to have to explain myself," says
Tessie, who has now recovered herself, and is beginning to revel in
the situation. The merriest game of all, to _some_ people, is that
of hurting the feelings of others. "For one thing, I am grieved to
hear that you have made my son far from happy in his married life."
A quick red dyes Tita's face. It lasts for a moment only. She
controls herself admirably, and, going to a chair, pulls it a little
forward in a perfectly self-possessed fashion, pausing a little over
the exact position of it, after which she seats herself amongst the
cushions.
"Has Maurice told you that?" asks she.
"Maurice? _No!"_ haughtily. "In _our_ set husbands do not complain
of their wives."
"No?" says Tita. She looks amused. "Then who else could it be in
'our set' who has said nasty little things about me? Mrs. Bethune?"
"All this is beside the question," says the dowager, with a wave of
her hand. "There is something else I must speak of--painful though
it is to me!" She unfurls the everlasting fan, and wafts it
delicately to and fro, as if to blow away from her the hideous aroma
of the thing she is forced to say. "I hear you have established
a--er--a far too friendly relationship with a--er--a cousin of your
own."
If Tita had grown red before, she is very white now.
"I am sure you are not aware of it," says she, setting her small
teeth, but speaking quite calmly, "but you are very impertinent."
"I--_I?"_ says Lady Rylton. In all her long, tyrannical life she has
met with so few people to show her defiance, that now this girl's
contemptuous reply daunts her. "You forget yourself," says she, with
ill-suppressed fury.
"No, indeed," says Tita, "it is because I remember myself that I
spoke like that. And I think it will save time," says she quietly,
"and perhaps a good deal of temper too--mine," smiling coldly, "is
not good, you know--if you understand at once that I shall not allow
you to say insolent things like that to me."
_ "You_ allow _me!"_ Tessie gets up from her chair and stares at her
opponent, who remains seated, looking back at her. "I see you have
made up your mind to ruin my son," says she, changing her tone to
one of tearful indignation. "You accepted him, you married him, but
you have never made even an effort to love him."
Here Tessie sinks back in her chair and covers her eyes with her
handkerchief. This is her way of telling people she is crying; it
saves the rouge and the powder, and leaves the eye-lashes as black
as before.
"It is not always easy to love someone who is in love with someone
else," says Tita.
"Someone else! What do you mean?"
"There is one fault, at all events, that you cannot find with me,"
says Tita; "I have not got a bad memory. As if it were only
yesterday, I remember how you enlightened me about Maurice's
affection"--she would have said "love," but somehow she
cannot--"for--for Mrs. Bethune."
"Pouf!" says the dowager. _"That!_ I don't see how that can
influence your conduct. You married my son, and you ought to do your
duty by him. As for Marian, if you had been a good wife you should
have taught him to forget all that long ago. It seems you have not."
She darts this barbed arrow with much joy, and watches for the pain
it ought to have caused, but watches in vain. "The fact of your
remembering it all this time only shows," says Tessie vindictively,
angry at the failure of her dart, "what a malicious spirit you have.
You are not only malicious, but silly! People of the world _never_
remember unpleasant things."
"Well, I am not of them; I remember," says Tita. She pauses. "People
of the world seem to me to do strange things."
"On the contrary," with a sneer, "it is people who are not in
society who do strange things."
"Meaning me?" flushing and frowning. Tita's temper is beginning to
give way. "What have I done now?" asks she.
"That is what I have been trying to explain," says Lady Rylton, "but
your temper is so frightful that I am afraid to go into anything.
Temper, my dear Tita, should always be one's slave; it should never
be given liberty except in one's room, with one's own maid or one's
own husband."
"Or one's own mother-in-law!"
"Well, yes! Quite so!" says Tessie with a fine shrug. "If you _will_
make me one apart, so be it. I hate scenes; but when one has a
son--a precious, _only_ child--one must make sacrifices."
"I beg you will make none for _me."_
"I have made one already, however. I have permitted my son to marry
you."
"Lady Rylton----"
"Be silent!" says Tessie, in a low but terrible voice. "How _dare_
you interrupt me, or speak to me at all, until I ask for a reply?
_You,_ whom I have brought from the very depths, to a decent
position in society! You--whom I have raised!"
"Raised!"
"Yes--you! I tell you you owe me a debt you never can repay."
"I do indeed," says Tita, in a low voice; her small firm hands are
clasped in front of her--they are tightly clenched.
"You married him for ambition," goes on Tessie, with cold hatred in
her voice and eye, "and----"
"And he?" The girl has risen now, and is clinging with both hands to
the arms of her chair. She is very pale.
"Pshaw!" says the dowager, laughing cruelly. "He married you for
your money. What else do you think he would marry _you_ for? Are you
to learn that now?"
"No." Tita throws up her head. _"That_ pleasure is denied you. He
told me he was marrying me for my money, long before our marriage."
Lady Rylton laughs.
"What! He had the audacity?"
"The honesty!" Somehow this answer, coming straight from Tita's
heart, goes to her soul, and in some queer, indescribable way
soothes her--comforts her--gives her deep compensation for all the
agony she has been enduring. Later on she wonders why the agony
_was_ so great! Why had she cared or suffered? Maurice and she? What
are they to each other? A mere name--no more! And yet--and yet!
"At all events," goes on Tessie, "when you made up your mind to
marry my son, you----"
"It was your son who married me," says Tita, with a touch of hauteur
that sits very prettily on her. She feels suddenly stronger--more
equal to the fight.
"Was it? I quite forget"--Tessie shrugs her shoulders--"these
_little_ points," says she. "Well, I give you that! Oh! he was
honest!" says she. "But, after all, not quite honest enough."
"I think he was honest," says Tita.
Her heart is beginning to beat to suffocation. There is a horror in
her mind--the horror of hearing again that he--he had loved Marian.
But how to stop it?
"You seem to admire honesty," says Lady Rylton, with a sneering
laugh. "It is a pity you do not emulate _his!_ If Maurice is as true
to you as you"--with a slight laugh--"imagine him, why, you should,
in common generosity, be true to him. And this flirtation, with this
Mr. Hescott----"
"Don't go on!" says Tita passionately; "I cannot bear it. Whoever
has told you that I ever---- Oh!" She covers her eyes suddenly with
her pretty hands. "Oh! it is a lie!" cries she.
"No one has told me a lie," says Lady Rylton implacably.
The sight of the girl's distress is very pleasant to her. She gloats
over it.
"Then you have invented the whole thing," cries Tita wildly, who is
so angry, so agitated, that she forgets the commonest decencies of
life. We all do occasionally!
"To be rude is not to be forcible," says Tessie, who is now a fury,
"and I believe all that I have heard about you!" She makes a quick
movement towards Tita, her colour showing even through the washes
that try to make her skin look young. "How _dare_ you insult me?"
cries she furiously. Tessie in a rage is almost the vulgarest thing
that anyone could see. "I wish my son had never seen you--or your
money. I wish now he had married the woman he loved, instead of the
woman whom----"
"He hated," puts in Tita very softly.
She smiles in a sort of last defiance, but every hope she has seems
lying dead. In a second, as it were, she seems to _care_ for
nothing. What _is_ there to care for? It is so odd. But it is true!
How blank the whole thing is!
"Yes. _Hated!"_ says Tessie in a cold fury. "I tell you he wanted to
marry Marian, and her only. He would have given his soul for her,
but she would not marry him! And then, when hope was at an end,
he--destroyed self--he married _you!"_
"You are very plain! You leave nothing to be said." Tita has
compelled herself to this answer, but her voice is faint. Her poor
little face, beautiful even in its distress, is as white as death.
"I am sorry----"
"For Maurice? So you _ought_ to be," says Lady Rylton, unmoved even
by that pathetic face before her.
Tita turns upon her. All at once the old spirit springs to life
within the poor child's breast.
"No, _for myself!"_ cries she, with a bitterness hardly to be
described.