During this same space of time, which for Miss Sewell's maid ended so
disagreeably, George Tressady was engaged in a curious conversation.
He had excused himself from smoking, on the ground of fatigue,
immediately after his parting from Letty. But he had only nominally gone
to bed. He too found it difficult to tear himself from thinking and the
fire, and had not begun to undress when he heard a knock at his door. On
his reply, Lord Fontenoy entered.
"May I come in, Tressady?"
"By all means."
George, however, stared at his invader in some astonishment. His
relations with Fontenoy were not personally intimate.
"Well, I'm glad to find you still up, for I had a few words on my mind to
say to you before I go off to-morrow. Can you spare me ten minutes?"
"Certainly; do sit down. Only--well, I'm afraid I'm pretty well done. If
it's anything important, I can't promise to take it in."
Lord Fontenoy for a moment made no reply. He stood by the fire, looking
at the cigarette he still held, in silence. George watched him with
repressed annoyance.
"It's been a very hot fight, this," said Fontenoy at last, slowly, "and
you've won it well. All our band have prospered in the matter of
elections. But this contest of yours has been, I think, the most
conspicuous that any of us have fought. Your speeches have made a
mark--one can see that from the way in which the Press has begun to take
them, political beginner though you are. In the House you will be, I
think, our best speaker--of course with time and experience. As for me,
if you give me a fortnight to prepare in, I can make out something.
Otherwise I am no use. _You_ will take a good debating place from the
beginning. Well, it is only what I expected."
The speaker stopped. George, fidgeting in his chair, said nothing; and
presently Fontenoy resumed:
"I trust you will not think what I am going to say an intrusion, but--you
remember my letters to you in India?"
George nodded.
"They put the case strongly, I think," Fontenoy went on, "but, in my
opinion, not strongly enough. This wretched Government is in power by the
help of a tyranny--a tyranny of Labour. They call themselves
Conservatives--they are really State Socialists, and the mere catspaws of
the revolutionary Socialists. You and I are in Parliament to break down
that tyranny, if we can. This year and next will be all-important. If we
can hold Maxwell and his friends in check for a time--if we can put some
backbone into the party of freedom--if we can rally and call up the
forces we have in the country, the thing will be done. We shall have
established the counterpoise--we shall very likely turn the next
election, and liberty--or what still remains of it!--will be saved for a
generation. But to succeed, the effort, the sacrifice, from each one of
us, will have to be _enormous_."
Fontenoy paused, and looked at his companion. George was lying back in
an armchair with his eyes shut. Why on earth--so he was
thinking--should Fontenoy have chosen this particular hour and this
particular night to _débiter_ these very stale things, that he had
already served up in innumerable speeches and almost every letter that
George had received from him?
"I don't suppose it will be child's-play," he said, stifling a
yawn--"hope I shall feel keener after a night's rest!" He looked up
with a smile.
Fontenoy dropped his cigarette into the fender and stood silent a moment,
his hands clasped behind his back.
"Look here, Tressady!" he said at last, turning to his companion; "you
remember how affairs stood with me when you left England? I didn't know
much of you, but I believe, like many of my juniors, you knew a great
deal about me?"
George made the sign of assent expected of him.
"I knew something about you, certainly," he said, smiling; "it was not
difficult."
Fontenoy smiled too, though without geniality. Geniality had become
impossible to a man always overworked and on edge.
"I was a fool," he said quickly--"an open and notorious fool. But I
enjoyed my life. I don't suppose anyone ever enjoyed life more. Every day
of my former existence gave the lie to the good people who tell you that
to be happy you must be virtuous. I was idle, extravagant, and vicious,
and I was one of the happiest of men. As to my racing and my horses, they
were a constant delight to me. I can't think now of those mornings on the
Heath--the gallops of my colts--the change and excitement of it all,
without longing for it to come back again. Yet I have never owned a
horse, or seen a race, or made a bet, for the last three years. I never
go into society, except for political purposes; and I scarcely ever touch
wine. In fact, I have thrown overboard everything that once gave _me_
pleasure and amusement so completely that I have, perhaps, some right to
press upon the party that follows me my conviction that unless each and
all of us give up private ease and comfort as I have done--unless we are
contented, as the Parnellites were, to be bores in the House and
nuisances to ourselves--to peg away in season and out of season--to give
up everything for the cause, we may just as well not go into the fight at
all--for we shall do nothing with it."
George clasped his hands round his knee, and stared stubbornly into the
fire. Sermonising was all very well, but Fontenoy did too much of it;
nobody need suppose that he would have done what he had done, unless, on
the whole, it had given him more pleasure to do it than not to do it.
"Well," he said, looking up at last with a laugh, "I wonder what you
_mean_--really. Do you mean, for instance, that I oughtn't to get
myself married?"
His offhand manner covered a good deal of irritation. He made a shrewd
guess at the idea in Fontenoy's mind, and meant to show that he would not
be dictated to.
Fontenoy also laughed, with as little geniality as before. Then he
applied himself to a deliberate answer.
"_This_ is what I mean. If you, just elected--at the beginning of this
critical session--were to give your best mind to anything else in the
world than the fight before us, I should regard you as, for the time, at
any rate, lost to us--as, so far, betraying us."
The colour rushed into George's cheeks.
"Upon my word!" he said, springing up--"upon my word, you are a
taskmaster!"
Fontenoy hastened to reply, in a different tone, "I only want to keep the
machine in order."
George paced up and down for a few moments without speaking. Presently
he paused.
"Look here, Fontenoy! I cannot look at the matter as you do, and we may
as well understand each other. To me, this election of mine is, after
all, an ordinary affair. I take it, and what is to come after it, just as
other men do. I have accepted your party and your programme, and I mean
to stick to them. I see that the political situation is difficult and
exciting, and I don't intend to shirk. But I am no more going to slay my
private life and interests at the altar of politics than my father did
when he was in Parliament. If the revolution is coming, it will come in
spite of you and me. And, moreover--if you will let me say so--I am
convinced that your modes of procedure are not even profitable to the
cause in the long run. No man can work as you do, without rest and
without distraction. You will break down, and then, where will the
'cause' be?"
Lord Fontenoy surveyed the speaker with a curious, calculating look. It
was as though, with as much rapidity as his mind was capable of, he
balanced a number of pros and cons against each other, and finally
decided to let the matter drop, perhaps not without some regret for
having raised it.
"Ah! well," he said, "I have no doubt that what I have said appears to
you mere meddlesomeness. If so, you will change your view, and you will
forgive me. I must trust the compulsion of the situation. You will
realise it, as I have done, when you get well into the fight. There is
something in this Labour tyranny which rouses all a man's passions, bad
and good. If it does not rouse yours, I have been much mistaken in my
estimate of you. As for me, don't waste your concern. There are few
stronger men than I. You forget, too--"
There was a pause. Of late years, since his transformation in fact, Lord
Fontenoy's stiff reserve about himself had been rarely broken through. At
this moment, however, George, looking up, saw that his companion was in
some way moved by a kind of sombre and personal emotion.
"You forget," the speaker resumed, "that I learnt nothing either at
school or college, and that a man who wants to lead a party must, some
time or other, pay for that precious privilege. When you left England,
the only financial statement I could understand was a betting-book. I
knew no history except what one gets from living among people who have
been making it, and even that I was too lazy to profit by. I couldn't
understand the simplest economical argument, and I _hated_ trouble of all
kinds. Nothing but the toil of a galley-slave could have enabled me to do
what I have done. You would be astonished sometimes if you could look in
upon me at night and see what I am doing--what I am obliged to do to keep
up the most elementary appearances."
George was touched. The tone of the speaker had passed suddenly into one
of plain dignity, in spite of, perhaps because of, the half-bitter
humility that mingled with it.
"I know you make one ashamed," he said sincerely, though awkwardly.
"Well, don't distrust me; I'll do my best."
"Good-night," said Lord Fontenoy, and held out his hand. He had gained no
promises, and George had shown and felt annoyance. Yet the friendship
between the two men had sensibly advanced.
* * * * *
George shut the door upon him, and came back to the fire to ponder this
odd quarter of an hour.
His experience certainly contained no more extraordinary fact than this
conversion of a gambler and a spendthrift into the passionate leader of
an arduous cause. Only one quality linked the man he remembered with the
politician he had now pledged himself to follow--the quality of
intensity. Dicky Fontenoy in his follies had been neither gay nor
lovable, but his fierce will, his extravagant and reckless force, had
given him the command of men softer than himself. That will and that
force were still there, steeled and concentrated. But George Tressady was
sometimes restlessly doubtful as to how far he himself was prepared to
submit to them.
His personal acquaintance with Fontenoy was of comparatively recent date.
He himself had been for some four years away from England, to which he
had only returned about three months before the Market Malford election.
A letter from Fontenoy had been the immediate cause of his return; but
before it arrived the two men had been in no direct communication.
The circumstances of Tressady's long absence concern his later story, and
were on this wise. His father, Sir William, the owner of Ferth Place, in
West Mercia, died in the year that George, his only surviving child and
the son of his old age, left college. The son, finding his father's debts
considerable and his own distaste for the law, to which he had been
destined, amazingly increased by his newly acquired freedom to do what he
liked with himself, turned his mind at once towards travelling. Travel he
must if he was ever to take up public and parliamentary life, and for no
other profession--so he announced--did he feel the smallest vocation.
Moreover, economy was absolutely necessary. During his absence the London
house could be let, and Lady Tressady could live quietly at Ferth upon an
allowance, while his uncles looked after the colliery property.
Lady Tressady made no difficulty, except as to the figure first named for
the proposed allowance, which she declared was absurd. The uncles,
elderly business men, could not understand why the younger generation
should not go into harness at once without indulgences, as they
themselves had done; but George got his way, and had much reason to show
for it. He had not been idle at college, though perhaps at no time
industrious enough. Influenced by natural ambition and an able tutor, he
had won some distinction, and he was now a man full of odds and ends of
ideas, of nascent interests, curiosities, and opinions, strongly
influenced moreover already, though he said less about it than about
other things, by the desire for political distinction. While still at
college he had been especially attracted--owing mainly to the chances of
an undergraduate friendship--by a group of Eastern problems bearing upon
England's future in Asia; and he was no sooner free to govern himself and
his moderate income than there flamed up in him the Englishman's passion
to see, to touch, to handle, coupled with the young man's natural desire
to go where it was dangerous to go, and where other men were not going.
His friend--the son of an eminent geographer, possessed by inheritance of
the explorer's instincts--was just leaving England for Asia Minor,
Armenia, and Persia. George made up his mind, hastily but firmly, to go
with him, and his family had to put up with it.
The year, however, for which the young fellow had stipulated went by; two
others were added to it; and a fourth began to run its course--still
George showed but faint signs of returning. According to his letters
home, he had wandered through Persia, India, and Ceylon; had found
friends and amusement everywhere; and in the latter colony had even
served eight months as private secretary to the Governor, who had taken
a fancy to him, and had been suddenly bereft by a boating accident of the
indispensable young man who was accustomed to direct the hospitalities of
Government House before Tressady's advent. Thence he went to China and
Japan, made a trip from Pekin into Mongolia, landed on Formosa, fell in
with some French naval officers at Saigon, spending with them some of the
gayest and maddest weeks of his life; explored Siam, and finally returned
by way of Burmah to Calcutta, with the dim intention this time of some
day, before long, taking ship for home.
Meanwhile during the last months of his stay in Ceylon he had written
some signed articles for an important English newspaper, which, together
with the natural liking felt by the many important persons he had come to
know in the East for an intelligent and promising young fellow, endowed
with brains, family, and good manners, served to bring him considerably
into notice. The tone of the articles was strongly English and
Imperialist. The first of them came out immediately before his visit to
Saigon, and Tressady thanked his lucky stars that the foreign reading of
his French friends was, perhaps, not so extensive as their practical
acquaintance with life. He was, however, proud of his first literary
achievement, and it served to crystallise in him a number of ideas and
sentiments which had previously represented rather the prejudices of a
traveller accustomed to find his race in the ascendant, and to be well
received by its official class than any reasoned political theory. As he
went on writing, conviction, grew with statement, became a faith,
ultimately a passion--till, as he turned homewards, he seemed to himself
to have attained a philosophy sufficient to steer the rest of life by. It
was the common philosophy of the educated and fastidious observer; and it
rested on ideas of the greatness of England and the infinity of England's
mission, on the rights of ability to govern as contrasted with the
squalid possibilities of democracy, on the natural kingship of the higher
races, and on a profound personal admiration for the virtues of the
administrator and the soldier.
Now, no man in whom these perceptions take strong root early, need expect
to love popular government. Tressady read his English newspapers with
increasing disgust. On that little England in those far seas all
depended, and England meant the English working-man with his flatteries
of either party. He blundered and blustered at home, while the Empire,
its services and its defences, by which alone all this pullulating
"street folk" existed for a day, were in danger of starvation and
hindrance abroad, to meet the unreasonable fancies of a degenerate race.
A deep hatred of mob-rule rooted itself in Tressady, passing gradually,
during his last three months in India, into a growing inclination to
return and take his place in the fight--to have his say. "Government to
the competent--_not_ to the many," might have been the summary of his
three years' experience.
Nor were private influences wanting. He was a West Mercian landowner in a
coal-mining district, and owned a group of pits on the borders of his
estate. His uncles, who had shares in the property, reported to him
periodically during his absence. With every quarter it seemed to Tressady
that the reports grew worse and the dividends less. His uncles' letters,
indeed, were full of anxieties and complaints. After a long period of
peace in the coal-trade, it looked as though a time of hot war between
masters and men was approaching. "We have to thrash them every fifteen
years," wrote one of the uncles, "and the time is nearly up."
The unreason, brutality, and extravagance of the men; the tyranny of the
Union; the growing insolence of the Union officials--Tressady's letters
from home after a time spoke of little else. And Tressady's bankbook
meanwhile formed a disagreeable comment on the correspondence. The pits
were almost running at a loss; yet neither party had made up their minds
to the trial of strength.
Tressady was still lingering in Bombay--though supposed to be on his way
home--when Lord Fontenoy's letter reached him.
The writer referred slightly to their previous acquaintance, and to a
remote family connection between himself and Tressady; dwelt in
flattering terms on the reports which had reached him from many quarters
of Tressady's opinions and abilities; described the genesis and aims of
the new Parliamentary party, of which the writer was the founder and
head; and finally urged him to come home at once, and to stand for
Parliament as a candidate for the Market Malford division, where the
influence of Fontenoy's family was considerable. Since the general
election, which had taken place in June, and had returned a moderate
Conservative Government to power, the member for Market Malford had
become incurably ill. The seat might be vacant at any moment. Fontenoy
asked for a telegram, and urged the next steamer.
Tressady had already--partly from private talk, partly from the
newspapers--learnt the main outlines of Lord Fontenoy's later story. The
first political speech of Fontenoy's he had ever read made a
half-farcical impression on him--let Dicky stick to his two-year-olds!
The second he read twice over, and alike in it, in certain party
manifestoes from the same hand printed in the newspapers, and in the
letter he had now received, there spoke something for which it seemed to
him he had been waiting. The style was rough and halting, but Tressady
felt in it the note and power of a leader.
He took an hour's walk through the streets of Bombay to think it
over, then sent his telegram, and booked his passage on his way home
to luncheon.
Such, in brief outline, had been the origin of the two men's
acquaintance. Since George's return they had been constantly together.
Fontenoy had thrown his whole colossal power of work into the struggle
for the Market Malford seat, and George owed him much.
* * * * *
After he was left to himself on this particular night, Tressady was for
long restless and wakeful. In spite of resistance, Fontenoy's talk and
Fontenoy's personality had nevertheless restored for the moment an
earlier balance of mind. The interests of ambition and the intellect
returned in force. Letty Sewell had, no doubt, made life very agreeable
to him during the past three weeks; but, after all--was it worth while?
Her little figure danced before the inward eye as his fire sank into
darkness; fragments of her chatter ran through his mind. He began to be
rather ashamed of himself. Fontenoy was right. It was not the moment. No
doubt he must marry some day; he had come home, indeed, with the vague
intention of marrying; but the world was wide, and women many. That he
had very little romance in his temperament was probably due to his
mother. His childish experiences of her character, and of her relations
to his father, had left him no room, alas! for the natural childish
opinion that all grown-ups, and especially all mothers, are saints. In
India he had amused himself a good deal; but his adventures had, on the
whole, confirmed his boyish bias. If he had been forced to put his inmost
opinions about women into words, the result would have been
crude--perhaps brutal; which did not prevent him from holding a very
strong and vivid conviction of the pleasure to be got from their society.
Accordingly, he woke up next morning precisely in the mood that Letty,
for her own reasons, had foreseen. It worried him to think that for two
or three days more he and Letty Sewell must still be thrown together in
close relations. He and his mother were waiting on at Malford for a day
or two till some workmen should be out of his own house, which lay
twenty miles away, at the farther edge of the Market Malford division.
Meanwhile a couple of shooting-parties had been arranged, mainly for
his entertainment. Still, was there no urgent business that required
him in town?
He sauntered in to breakfast a little before ten. Only Evelyn Watton and
her mother were visible, most of the men having already gone off to a
distant meet.
"Now sit down and entertain us, Sir George," said Mrs. Watton, holding
out her hand to him with an odd expression. "We're as dull as ditch
water--the men have all gone--Florrie's in bed with a chill--and Letty
departed by the 9.30 train."
George's start, as he took his coffee from her, did not escape her.
"Miss Sewell gone? But why this suddenness?" he inquired. "I thought Miss
Letty was to be here to the end of the week."
Mrs. Watton raised her shoulders. "She sent a note in to me at half-past
eight to say her mother wasn't well, and she was wanted at home. She just
rushed in to say good-bye to me, chattered a great deal, kissed everybody
a great deal--and I know no more. I hear she had breakfast and a fly,
which is all I troubled myself about. I never interfere with the modern
young woman."
Then she raised her eyeglass, and looked hard and curiously at Tressady.
His face told her nothing, however, and as she was the least sympathetic
of women, she soon forgot her own curiosity.
Evelyn Watton, a vision of fresh girlhood in her morning frock, glanced
shyly at him once or twice as she gave him scones and mustard. She was
passing through a moment of poetry and happy dreams. All human beings
walked glorified in her eyes, especially if they were young. Letty was
not wholly to her taste, and had never been a particular friend. But she
thought ill of no one, and her little heart must needs flutter tenderly
in the presence of anything that suggested love and marriage. It had
delighted her to watch George and Letty together. Now, why had Letty
rushed away like this? _She_ thought with concern, thrilling all the
time, that Sir George looked grave and depressed.
George, however, was not depressed--or thought he was not. He walked into
the library after breakfast, whistling, and quoting to himself:
And there be they
Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday,
And thank his wings to-day that he is flown.
He prided himself on his memory of some modern poets, and the lines
pleased him particularly.
He had no sooner done quoting, however, than his mother peered into the
room, claiming the business talk that had been promised. From that talk
George emerged irritable and silent. His mother's extravagance was really
preposterous!--not to be borne. For four years now he had been free from
the constant daily friction of money troubles which had spoilt his youth
and robbed him of all power of respecting his mother. And he had hugged
his freedom. But all the time it seemed he had been hugging illusion, and
the troubles had been merely piling up for his return! Her present
claims--and he knew very well that they were not the whole--would exhaust
all his available balance at his bankers'.
Lady Tressady, for her part, thought, with indignant despair, that he had
not behaved at all as an only son should--especially an only son just
returned to a widowed mother after four years' absence. How could anyone
suppose that in four years there would be no debts--on such a pittance of
an income? Some money, indeed, he had promised her; but not nearly
enough, and not immediately. He "must look into things at home." Lady
Tressady was enraged with herself and him that she had not succeeded
better in making him understand how pressing, how _urgent_, matters were.
She _must_, indeed, bring it home to him that there might be a scandal at
any moment. That odious livery-stable man, two or three dressmakers--in
these directions every phase and shift of the debtor's long _finesse_ had
been exhausted long ago. Even _she_ was at her wits' end.
As for other matters--But from these her thoughts turned hurriedly away.
Luck would change, of course, sometime; it must change! No need to say
anything about _that_ just yet, especially while George's temper was in
such a queer state.
It was very odd--most annoying! As a baby even he had never been
caressing or sweet like other people's babies. And now, really!--why
_her_ son should have such unattractive ways!
But, manoeuvre as she would, George would not be drawn into further
discussion. She could only show him offended airs, and rack her brains
morning and night as to how best to help herself.
Meanwhile George had never been so little pleased with living as
during these few days. He was overwhelmed with congratulations; and,
to judge from the newspapers, "all England," as Lady Tressady said,
"was talking of him." It seemed to him ridiculous that a man should
derive so little entertainment from such a fact. Nevertheless, his
dulness remained, and refused to be got rid of. He discussed with
himself, of course, for a new set of reasons, the possibility of
evading the shooting-parties, and departing. But he was deeply pledged
to stay; and he was under considerable obligations to the Wattons. So
he stayed; but he shot so as to increase his own dissatisfaction with
the universe, and to make the other men in the house wonder what might
be the general value of an Indian sporting reputation when it came to
dealing with the British pheasant.
Then he turned to business. He tried to read some Parliamentary reports
bearing on a coming measure, and full of notes by Fontenoy, which
Fontenoy had left with him. But it only ended in his putting them hastily
aside, lest in the mood of obscure contradiction that possessed him he
should destroy his opinions before he had taken his seat.
On the day before the last "shoot," among the letters his servant brought
him in the early morning, was one that he tore open in a hurry, tossing
the rest aside.
It was from Miss Sewell, requesting, prettily, in as few words as
possible, that he would return her a book she had lent him.
"My mother," she wrote, "has almost recovered from her sudden attack of
chill. I trust the shooting-parties have amused you, and that you have
read _all_ Lord Fontenoy's Blue Books."
George wrote a reply before he went down to breakfast--a piece of
ordinary small-talk, that seemed to him the most wretched stuff
conceivable. But he pulled two pens to pieces before he achieved it.
Then he went out for a long walk alone, pondering what was the matter
with him. Had that little witch dropped the old familiar poison into his
veins after all? Certainly some women made life vivacity and pleasure,
while others--his mother or Mrs. Watton, for instance--made it fatigue
or tedium.
Ever since his boyhood Tressady had been conscious of intermittent
assaults of melancholy, fits of some inner disgust, which hung the world
in black, crippled his will, made him hate himself and despise his
neighbours. It was, possibly, some half-conscious dread lest this morbid
speck in his nature should gain upon the rest that made him so hungry for
travel and change of scene after he left college. It explained many
surprises, many apparent ficklenesses in his life. During the three weeks
that he had spent in the same house with Letty Sewell he had never once
been conscious of this lurking element of his life. And now, after four
days, he found himself positively pining for her voice, the rustle of her
delicate dress, her defiant, provocative ways that kept a man on the
alert--still more, her smiling silences that seemed to challenge all his
powers, the touch of her small cool hand that crushed so easily in his.
What had she left the house for in that wilful way? He did not believe
her excuses. Yet he was mystified. Did she realise that things were
becoming serious, and did she not mean them to be serious? If so, who or
what hindered?
As for Fontenoy--
Tressady quickened his step impatiently as he recalled that harassed and
toiling figure. Politics or no politics, _he_ would live his life!
Besides, it was obviously to his profit to marry. How could he ever make
a common household with his mother? He meant to do his duty by her, but
she annoyed and abashed him twenty times a day. He would be far happier
married, far better able to do his work. He was not passionately in
love--not at all. But--for it was no good fencing with himself any
longer--he desired Letty Sewell's companionship more than he had desired
anything for a long time. He wanted the right to carry off the little
musical box, with all its tunes, and set it playing in his own house, to
keep him gay. Why not? He could house it prettily, and reward it well.
As for the rest, he decided, without thinking about it, that Letty Sewell
was well born and bred. She had, of course, all the little refinements a
fastidious taste might desire in a woman. She would never discredit a man
in society. On the contrary, she would be a great strength to him there.
And she must be sweet-tempered, or that pretty child Evelyn Watton would
not be so fond of her.
That pretty child, meanwhile, was absorbed in the excitement of her own
small _rôle_. Tressady, who had only made duty-conversation with her
before, had found out somehow that she was sympathetic--that she would
talk to him charmingly about Letty. After a very little pretending, he
let himself go; and Evelyn dreamt at night of his confidences, her heart,
without knowing it, leaping forward to the time when a man would look at
her so, for her own sake--not another's. She forgot that she had ever
criticised Letty, thought her vain or selfish. Nay, she made a heroine of
her forthwith; she remembered all sorts of delightful things to say of
her, simply that she might keep the young member talking in a corner,
that she might still enjoy the delicious pride of feeling that she
knew--she was helping it on.
After the big "shoot," for instance, when all the other gentlemen were
stiff and sleepy, George spent the whole evening in chattering to Evelyn,
or, rather, in making her chatter. Lady Tressady loitered near them once
or twice. She heard the names "Letty," "Miss Sewell," passing and
repassing--one talker catching up the other. Over any topic that included
Miss Sewell they lingered; when anything was begun that did not concern
her, it dropped at once, like a ball ill thrown. The mother went away
smiling rather sourly.
She watched her son, indeed, cat-like all these days, trying to discover
what had happened--what his real mind was. She did not wish for a
daughter-in-law at all, and she had even a secret fear of Letty Sewell
in that capacity. But somehow George must be managed, her own needs must
be met. She felt that she might be undoing the future; but the present
drove her on.
On the following morning, from one of Mrs. Watton's numerous letters
there dropped out the fact that Letty Sewell was expected immediately at
a country house in North Mercia whereof a certain Mrs. Corfield was
mistress--a house only distant some twenty miles from the Tressadys'
estate of Ferth Place.
"My sister-in-law has recovered with remarkable rapidity," said Mrs.
Watton, raising a sarcastic eye. "Do you know anything of the Corfields,
Sir George?"
"Nothing at all," said George. "One hears of them sometimes from
neighbours. They are said to be very lively folk. Miss Sewell will have a
gay time."
"Corfield?" said Lady Tressady, her head on one side and her cup balanced
in two jewelled hands. "What! _Aspasia Corfield_! Why, my dear
George--one of my oldest friends!"
George laughed--the short, grating laugh his mother so often evoked.
"Beg pardon, mother; I can only answer for myself. To the best of my
belief I never saw her, either at Ferth or anywhere else."
"Why, Aspasia Corfield and I," said Lady Tressady with languid
reflectiveness--"Aspasia Corfield and I copied each other's dresses,
and bought our hats at the same place, when we were eighteen. I haven't
seen her for an eternity. But Aspasia used to be a _dear_ girl--and so
fond of me!"
She put down her cup with a sigh, intended as a reproach to George.
George only buried himself the deeper in his morning's letters.
Mrs. Watton, behind her newspaper, glanced grimly from the mother
to the son.
"I wonder if that woman has a single real old friend in the world. How
is George Tressady going to put up with her?"
The Wattons themselves had been on friendly terms with Tressady's father
for many years. Since Sir William's death and George's absence, however,
Mrs. Watton had not troubled herself much about Lady Tressady, in which
she believed she was only following suit with the rest of West Mercia.
But now that George had reappeared as a promising politician, his
mother--till he married--had to be to some extent accepted along with
him. Mrs. Watton accordingly had thought it her duty to invite her for
the election, not without an active sense of martyrdom. "She always has
bored me to tears since I first saw Sir William trailing her about," she
would remark to Letty. "Where did he pick her up? The marvel is that she
has kept respectable. She has never looked it. I always feel inclined to
ask her at breakfast why she dresses for dinner twelve hours too soon!"
Very soon after the little conversation about the Corfields Lady Tressady
withdrew to her room, sat thoughtful for a while, with her writing-block
on her knee, then wrote a letter. She was perfectly aware of the fact
that since George had come back to her she was likely to be welcome once
more in many houses that for years had shown no particular desire to
receive her. She took the situation very easily. It was seldom her way to
be bitter. She was only determined to amuse herself, to enjoy her life in
her own way. If people disapproved of her, she thought them fools, but it
did not prevent her from trying to make it up with them next day, if she
saw an opening and it seemed worth while.
"There!" she said to herself as she sealed the letter, and looked at it
with admiration, "I really have a knack for doing those things. I should
think Aspasia Corfield would ask him by return--me, too, if she has any
decency, though she _has_ dropped me for fifteen years. She has a tribe
of daughters.--_Why_ I should play Miss Sewell's game like this I don't
know! Well, one must try something."
That same afternoon mother and son took their departure for Ferth Place.
George, who had only spent a few weeks at Ferth since his return from
India, should have found plenty to do both indoors and out. The house
struck him as singularly dingy and out of order. Changes were
imperatively demanded in the garden and in the estate. His business as a
colliery-owner was in a tangled and critical condition. And meanwhile
Fontenoy plied him incessantly with a political correspondence which of
itself made large demands upon intelligence and energy.
Nevertheless he shuffled out of everything, unless it were the
correspondence with Fontenoy. As to the notion that all the languor could
be due merely to an unsatisfied craving for Letty Sewell's society, when
it presented itself he still fought with it. The Indian climate might
have somehow affected him. An English winter is soon forgotten, and has
to be re-learnt like a distasteful lesson.
About a week after their arrival at Ferth George was sitting at his
solitary breakfast when his mother came floating into the room, preceded
by a rattle of bangles, a flutter of streamers, and the barking of
little dogs.
She held various newly opened letters, and, running up to him, she laid
her hands on his shoulders.
"Now"--thought George to himself with annoyance, "she is going to be
arch!"
"Oh! you silly boy!" she said, holding him, with her head on one side.
"Who's been cross and nasty to his poor old mammy? Who wants cheering up
a bit before he settles down to his horrid work? Who would take his
mammy to a nice party at a nice house, if he were prettily asked--eh?
who would?"
She pinched his cheek before he could escape.
"Well, mother, of course you will do what you like," said George, walking
off to supply himself with ham. "I shall not leave home again, just yet."
Lady Tressady smiled.
"Well, anyhow, you can read Aspasia Corfield's letter," she said, holding
it out to him. "You know, really, that house isn't bad. They took over
the Dryburghs' _chef_, and Aspasia knows how to pick her people."
"Aspasia!" The tone of patronising intimacy! George blushed, if his
mother did not.
Yet he took the letter. He read it, then put it down, and walked to the
window to look at a crowd of birds that had been collecting round a plate
of food he had just put out upon the snow.
"Well, will you go?" said his mother.
"If you particularly wish it," he said, after a pause, in an
embarrassed voice.
Lady Tressady's dimples were in full play as she settled herself into her
seat and began to gather a supply of provisions. But as he returned to
his place, and she glanced at him, she saw that he was not in a mood to
be bantered, and understood that he was not going to let her force his
confidence, however shrewdly she might guess at his affairs. So she
controlled herself, and began to chatter about the Corfields and their
party. He responded, and by the end of breakfast they were on much better
terms than they had been for some weeks.
That morning also he wrote a cheque for her immediate necessities, which
made her--for the time--a happy woman; and she overwhelmed him with
grateful tears and embraces, which he did his best to bear.
Early in December he and she became the Corfields' guests. They found a
large party collected, and Letty Sewell happily established as the spoilt
child of the house. At the first touch of her hand, the first glance of
her eyes, George's cloud dispersed.
"Why did you run away?" George asked her on the first possible occasion.
Letty laughed, fenced with the question for four days, during which
George was never dull for a single instant, and then capitulated. She
allowed him to propose to her, and was graciously pleased to accept him.
The following week Tressady went down with Letty to her home at Helbeck.
He found an invalid father, a remarkably foolish, inconsequent mother,
and a younger sister, Elsie, on whom, as it seemed to him, the burdens of
the house mainly rested.
The father, who was suffering from a slow but incurable disease, had the
remains of much natural ability and acuteness. He was well content with
Tressady as a son-in-law; though in the few interviews that Tressady was
able to have with him on the question of settlements the young man took
pains to state his money affairs as carefully and modestly as possible.
Letty was not often in her father's room, and Mr. Sewell treated her,
when she did come, rather like an agreeable guest than a daughter. But he
was evidently extremely proud of her--as also was the mother--and he
would talk much to George, when his health allowed it, of her good looks
and her social success.
With the younger sister Tressady did not find it easy to make friends.
She was plain, sickly, and rather silent. She seemed to have scientific
tastes and to be a great reader. And, so far as he could judge, the two
sisters were not intimate.
"Don't hate me for taking her away!" he said, as he was bidding good-bye
to Elsie, and glancing over her shoulder at Letty on the stairs.
The girl's quiet eyes were crossed by a momentary look of amusement. Then
she controlled herself, and said gently:
"We didn't expect to keep her! Good-bye."