The following Sunday, somewhere towards five o'clock, George rang the
bell of the Maxwells' house in St. James's Square. It was a very fine
house, and George's eye, as he stood waiting, ran over the facade with an
amused, investigating look.
He allowed himself the same expression once or twice in the hall, as one
mute and splendid person relieved him of his coat, and another, equally
mute and equally unsurpassable, waited for him on the stairs, while
across a passage beyond the hall he saw two red-liveried footmen
carrying tea.
"When one is a friend of the people," he pondered as he went upstairs,
"is one limited in horses but not in flunkeys? These things are obscure."
He was ushered first into a stately outer drawing-room, filled with
old French furniture and fine pictures; then the butler lifted a
velvet curtain, pronounced the visitor's name with a voice and
emphasis as perfectly trained as the rest of him, and stood aside for
George to enter.
He found himself on the threshold of a charming room looking west, and
lit by some last beams of February sun. The pale-green walls were covered
with a medley of prints and sketches. A large writing-table, untidily
heaped with papers, stood conspicuous on the blue self-coloured carpet,
which over a great part of the floor was pleasantly void and bare. Flat
earthenware pans, planted with hyacinths and narcissus, stood here and
there, and filled the air with spring scents. Books ran round the lower
walls, or lay piled where-ever there was a space for them; while about
the fire at the further end was gathered a circle of chintz-covered
chairs--chairs of all shapes and sizes, meant for talking. The whole
impression of the pretty, disorderly place, compared with the stately
drawing-room behind it, was one of intimity and freedom; the room made a
friend of you as you entered.
Half a dozen people were sitting with Lady Maxwell when Tressady was
announced. She rose to meet him with great cordiality, introduced him to
little Lady Leven, an elfish creature in a cloud of fair hair, and with a
pleasant "You know all the rest," offered him a chair beside herself and
the tea-table.
"The rest" were Frank Leven, Edward Watton, Bayle, the Foreign Office
private secretary who had been staying at Malford House at the time of
Tressady's election, and Bennett, the "small, dark man" whom George had
pointed out to Letty in the House as a Labour member, and one of the
Maxwells' particular friends.
"Well?" said Lady Maxwell, turning to her new visitor as she handed him
some tea, "were you as much taken with the grandmother as the grandmother
was taken with you? She told me she had never seen a 'more haffable
gentleman, nor one as she'd a been more willin to ha done for'!"
George laughed. "I see," he said, "that my report has been anticipated."
"Yes--I have been there. I have found a 'case' in them indeed--alack! The
granny--I am afraid she is an unseemly old woman--and the elder girl both
work for the Jew son-in-law on the first floor--homework of the most
abominable kind--that girl will be dead in a year if it goes on."
George was rapidly conscious of two contradictory impressions--one of
pleasure, one of annoyance--pleasure in her tall, slim presence, her
white hand, and all the other flashing points of a beauty not to be
denied--and irritation that she should have talked "shop" to him with her
first breath. Could one never escape this altruistic chatter?
But he was not left to grapple with it alone, for Lady Leven looked
up quickly.
"Mr. Watton, will you please take Lady Maxwell's tea away if she mentions
the word 'case' again? We gave her fair warning."
Lady Maxwell hastily clasped both her hands round her tea-cup.
"Betty, we have discussed the opera for at least twenty minutes."
"Yes--at peril of our lives!" said Lady Leven. "I never talked so fast
before. One felt as though one _must_ say everything one had to say about
Melba and the de Reszkes, all in one breath--before one's poor little
subject was torn from one--one would never have such a chance again."
Lady Maxwell laughed, but coloured too.
"Am I such a nuisance?" she said, dropping her hands on her knee with a
little sigh. Then she turned to Tressady.
"But Lady Leven really makes it out worse than it is. We haven't even
_approached_ a Factory Act all the afternoon."
Lady Leven sprang forward in her chair. "Because! _because_, my dear, we
simply declined to let you. We made a league--didn't we, Mr.
Bennett?--even you joined it."
Bennett smiled.
"Lady Maxwell overworks herself--we all know that," he said, his look, at
once kind, honest, and perennially embarrassed, passing from Lady Leven
to his hostess.
"Oh, don't sympathise, for Heaven's sake!" cried Betty. "Wage war upon
her--it's our only hope."
"Don't you think Sunday at least ought to be frivolous?" said Tressady,
smiling, to Lady Maxwell.
"Well, personally, I like to talk about what interests me on Sunday as
well as on other days," she said with a frank simplicity; "but I know I
ought to be kept in order--I become a terrible bore."
Frank Leven roused himself from the sofa on which he had languidly
subsided.
"Bores?" he said indignantly, "we're all bores. We all have been bores
since people began to think about what they're pleased to call 'social
work.' Why should I love my neighbour?--I'd much rather hate him. I
generally do."
"Doesn't it all depend," said Tressady, "on whether he happens to be able
to make it disagreeable for you in return?"
"That's just it," said Betty Leven, eagerly. "I agree with Frank--it's
all so stupid, this 'loving' everybody. It makes one positively hot. We
sit under a clergyman, Frank and I, who talks of nothing every Sunday but
love--_love_--like that, long-drawn-out--how our politics should be
'love,' and our shopping should be 'love'--till we long simply to
bastinado somebody. I want to have a little real nice cruelty--something
sharp and interesting. I should like to stick pins into my maid, only
unfortunately, as she has more than once pointed out to me, it would be
so much easier for her to stick them into me!"
"You want the time of Miss Austen's novels back again," said young Bayle,
stooping to her, with his measured and agreeable smile--"before even the
clergy had a mission."
"Ah! but it would be no good," said Lady Leven, sighing, "if _she_
were there!"
She threw out her small hand towards her hostess, and everybody laughed.
Up to the moment of the laugh, Lady Maxwell had been lying back in her
chair listening, the beautiful mouth absently merry, and the eyes
speaking--Tressady thought--of quite other things, of some hidden
converse of her own, going on in the brain behind the eyes. A certain
prophetess-air seemed natural to her. Nevertheless, that first impression
of her he had carried away from the hospital scene was being somehow
blurred and broken up.
She joined in the laugh against herself; then, with a little nod towards
her assailant, she said to Edward Watton, who was sitting on her right
hand. "_You're_ not taken in, I know."
"Oh, if you mean that I go in for 'cases' and 'causes' too," cried Lady
Leven, interrupting, "of course I do--I can't be left alone. I must dance
as my generation pipes."
"Which means," said her husband, drily, "that she went for two days
filling soda-water bottles the week before last, and a day's shirt-making
last week. From the first, I was told that she would probably return to
me with an eye knocked out, she being totally inexperienced and absurdly
rash. As to the second, to judge from the description she gave me of the
den she had been sitting in when she came home, and the headache she had
next day, I still expect typhoid. The fortnight isn't up till Wednesday."
There was a shout of mingled laughter and inquiry.
"How did you do it?--and whom did you bribe?" said Bayle to Lady Leven.
"I didn't bribe anybody," she said indignantly. "You don't understand. My
friends introduced me."
Then, drawn out by him, she plunged into a lively account of her workshop
experiences, interrupted every now and then by the sarcastic comments of
her husband and the amusement of the two younger men who had brought
their chairs close to her. Betty Leven ranked high among the lively
chatterboxes of her day and set.
Lady Maxwell, however, had not laughed at Frank Leven's speech. Rather,
as he spoke of his wife's experiences, her face had clouded, as though
the blight of some too familiar image, some sad ever-present vision, had
descended upon her.
Beimett also did not laugh. He watched the Levens indulgently for a few
minutes, then insensibly he, Lady Maxwell, Edward Watton, and Tressady
drew together into a circle of their own.
"Do you gather that Lord Fontenoy's speech on Friday has been much
taken up in the country?" said Bennett, bending forward and addressing
Lady Maxwell. Tressady, who was observing him, noticed that his dress
was precisely the "Sunday best" of the respectable workman, and was,
moreover, reminded by the expression of the eyes and brow that Bennett
was said to have been a well-known "local preacher" in his
north-country youth.
Lady Maxwell smiled, and pointed to Tressady.
"Here," she said, "is Lord Fontenoy's first-lieutenant."
Bennett looked at George.
"I should be glad," he said, "to know what Sir George thinks?"
"Why, certainly--we think it has been very warmly taken up," said George,
promptly--"to judge from the newspapers, the letters that have been
pouring in, and the petitions that seem to be preparing."
Lady Maxwell's eyes gleamed. She looked at Bennett silently a moment,
then she said:
"Isn't it amazing to you how strong an impossible case can be made to
look?"
"It is inevitable," said Bennett, with a little shrug, "quite
inevitable. These social experiments of ours are so young--there is
always a strong case to be made out against any of them, and there will
be for years to come."
"Well and good," said George; "then we cavillers are inevitable too.
Don't attack us--praise us rather; by your own confession, we are as much
a part of the game as you are."
Bennett smiled slightly, but did not in reality quite follow. Lady
Maxwell bent forward.
"Do you know whether Lord Fontenoy has any _personal_ knowledge of the
trades he was speaking about?" she said, in her rich eager voice; "that
is what I want so much to find out."
George was nettled by both the question and the manner.
"I regard Fontenoy as a very competent person," he said drily. "I imagine
he did his best to inform himself. But there was not much need; the
persons concerned--whom you think you are protecting--were so very eager
to inform us!"
Lady Maxwell flushed.
"And you think that settles it--the eagerness of the cheap life to be
allowed to maim and waste itself? But again and again English law has
stepped in to prevent it--and again and again everybody has been
thankful."
"It is all a question of balance, of course," said George. "Must a
few unwise people be allowed to kill themselves--or thousands lose
their liberty?"
His blue eyes scanned her beautiful impetuous face with a certain cool
hardness. Internally he was more and more in revolt against a "monstrous
regiment of women" and the influence upon the most complex economic
problems of such a personality as that before him.
But his word "liberty" pricked her. The look of feeling passed away. Her
eyes kindled as sharply and drily as his own.
"Freedom?--let me quote you Cromwell! 'Every sectary saith, "O give me
liberty!" But give it him, and to the best of his power he will yield it
to no one else.' So with your careless or brutal employer--give him
liberty, and no one else shall get it."
"Only by metaphor--not legally," said George, stubbornly. "So long as men
are not slaves by law there is always a chance for freedom. Any way _we_
stand for freedom--as an end, not a means. It is not the business of the
State to make people happy--not at all!--at least that is our view--but
it _is_ the business of the State to keep them free."
"Ah!" said Bennett, with a long breath, "there you've hit the nail--the
whole difference between you and us."
George nodded. Lady Maxwell did not speak immediately. But George was
conscious that he was being observed, closely considered. Their glances
crossed an instant, in antagonism, certainly, if not in dislike.
"How long is it since you came home from India?" she asked him suddenly.
"About six months."
"And you were, I think, a long time abroad?"
"Nearly four years. Does that make you think I have not had much time to
get up the things I am going to vote about?" said the young man,
laughing. "I don't know! On the broadest issues of politics, one makes up
one's mind as well in Asia as in Europe--better perhaps."
"On the Empire, I suppose--and England's place in the world? That's a
side which--I know--I remember much too little. You think our life
depends on a governing class--and that _we_ and democracy are weakening
that class too much?"
"That's about it. And for democracy it is all right. But _you_--you are
the traitors!"
His thrust, however, did not rouse her to any corresponding rhetoric. She
smiled merely, and began to question him about his travels. She did it
with great deftness, so that after an answer or two both his temper and
manner insensibly softened, and he found himself talking with ease and
success. His mixed personality revealed itself--his capacity for certain
veiled enthusiasms, his respect for power, for knowledge, his pessimist
beliefs as to the average lot of men.
Bennett, who listened easily, was glad to help her make her guest talk.
Frank Leven left the group near the sofa and came to listen, too.
Tressady was more and more spurred, carried out of himself. Lady
Maxwell's fine eyes and stately ways were humanised after all by a quick
responsiveness, which for most people, however critical, made
conversation with her draw like a magnet. Her intelligence, too, was
competent, left the mere feminine behind in these connections that
Tressady offered her, no less than in others. She had not lived in the
world of high politics for nearly five years for nothing; so that
unconsciously, and indeed quite against his will, Tressady found himself
talking to her, after a while, as though she had been a man and an equal,
while at the same time taking more pains than he would ever have taken
for a man.
"Well, you _have_ seen a lot!" said Frank Leven at last, with a rather
envious sigh.
Bennett's modest face suddenly reddened.
"If only Sir George will use his eyes to as good purpose at home--" he
said involuntarily, then stopped. Few men were more unready and awkward
in conversation; yet when roused he was one of the best platform speakers
of his day.
George laughed.
"One sees best what appeals to one, I am afraid," he said, only to be
instantly conscious that he had made a rather stupid admission in face of
the enemy.
Lady Maxwell's lip twitched; he saw the flash of some quick thought cross
her face. But she said nothing.
Only when he got up to go, she bade him notice that she was always at
home on Sundays, and would be glad that he should remember it. He made a
rather cold and perfunctory reply. Inwardly he said to himself, "Why does
she say nothing of Letty, whom she knows--and of our marriage--if she
wants to make friends?"
Nevertheless, he left the house with the feeling of one who has passed
an hour not of the common sort. He had done himself justice, made his
mark. And as for her--in spite of his flashes of dislike he carried
away a strong impression of something passionate and vivid that clung
to the memory. Or was it merely eyes and pose, that astonishingly
beautiful colour, and touch of classic dignity which she got--so the
world said--from some remote strain of Italian blood? Most probably!
All the same, she had fewer of the ordinary womanly arts than he had
imagined. How easy it would have been to send that message to Letty she
had not sent! He thought simply that for a clever woman she might have
been more adroit.
* * * * *
The door had no sooner closed behind Tressady than Betty Leven, with
a quick look after him, bent across to her hostess, and said in a
stage whisper:
"Who? Post me up, please."
"One of Fontenoy's gang," said her husband, before Lady Maxwell could
answer. "A new member, and as sharp as needles. He's been exactly to all
the places where I want to go, Betty, and you won't let me."
He glanced at his wife with a certain sharpness. For Tressady had spoken
in passing of nilghai-shooting in the Himalayas, and the remark had
brought the flush of an habitual discontent to the young man's cheek.
Betty merely held out a white child's wrist.
"Button my glove, please, and don't talk. I have got ever so many
questions to ask Marcella."
Leven applied himself rather sulkily to his task while Betty pursued her
inquiries.
"Isn't he going to marry Letty Sewell?"
"Yes," said Lady Maxwell, opening her eyes rather wide. "Do you
know her?"
"Why, my dear, she's Mr. Watton's cousin--isn't she?" said Betty, turning
towards that young man. "I saw her once at your mother's."
"Certainly she is my cousin," said that young man, smiling, "and she is
going to marry Tressady at Easter. So much I can vouch for, though I
don't know her so well, perhaps, as the rest of my family do."
"Oh!" said Betty, drily, releasing her husband and crossing her small
hands across her knee. "That means--Miss Sewell isn't one of Mr. Watton's
_favourite_ cousins. You don't mind talking about your cousins, do you?
You may blacken the character of all mine. Is she nice?"
"Who--Letty? Why, of course she is nice," said Edward Watton, laughing.
"All young ladies are."
"Oh goodness!" said Betty, shaking her halo of gold hair. "Commend me to
cousins for letting one down easy."
"Too bad, Lady Leven!" said Watton, getting up to escape. "Why not ask
Bayle? He knows all things. Let me hand you over to him. He will sing you
all my cousin's charms."
"Delighted!" said Bayle as he, too, rose--"only unfortunately I ought at
this moment to be at Wimbledon."
He had the air of a typical official, well dressed, suave, and infinitely
self-possessed, as he held out his hand--deprecatingly--to Lady Leven.
"Oh! you private secretaries!" said Betty, pouting and turning
away from him.
"Don't abolish us," he said, pleading. "We must live."
"_Je n'en vois pas la nécessité!_" said Betty, over her shoulder.
"Betty, what a babe you are!" cried her husband, as Bayle, Watton, and
Bennett all disappeared together.
"Not at all!" cried Betty. "I wanted to get some truth out of somebody.
For, of course, the real truth is that this Miss Sewell is--"
"Is what?" said Leven, lost in admiration all the time, as Lady Maxwell
saw, of his wife's dainty grace and rose-leaf colour.
"Well--a--_minx!_" said Betty, with innocent slowness,
opening her blue eyes very wide; "a mischievous--rather
pretty--hard-hearted--flirting--little minx!"
"Really, Betty!" cried Lady Maxwell. "Where have you seen her?"
"Oh, I saw her last year several times at the Wattons' and other places,"
said Betty, composedly. "And so did you too, please, madam. I remember
very well one day Mrs. Watton brought her into the Winterbournes' when
you and I were there, and she chattered a great deal."
"Oh yes!--I had forgotten."
"Well, my dear, you'll soon have to remember her! so you needn't talk
in that lofty tone. For they're going to be married at Easter, and if
you want to make friends with the young man, you'll have to realise
the wife!"
"Married at Easter? How do you know?"
"In the first place Mr. Watton said so, in the next there are such
things as newspapers. But of course you didn't notice such trifles, you
never do."
"Betty, you're very cross with me to-day!" Lady Maxwell looked up at her
friend with a little pleading air.
"Oh no! only for your good. I know you're thinking of nothing in the
world but how to make that man take a reasonable view of Maxwell's Bill.
And I want to impress upon you that _he's_ probably thinking a great deal
more about getting married than about Factory Bills. You see, _your_
getting married was a kind of accident. But other people are different.
And oh, dear, you do know so little about them when they don't live hi
four pair backs! There, don't defend yourself--you sha'n't!"
And, stooping, Betty stifled her friend's possible protest by
kissing her.
"Now then, come along, Frank--you've got your speech to write--and I've
got to copy it out. Don't swear! you know you're going to have two whole
days' golfing next week. Good-bye, Marcella! My love to Aldous--and tell
him not to be so late next time I come to tea. Good-bye!"
And off she swept, pausing, however, on the landing to open the door
again and put in an eager face.
"Oh! and, by the way, the young man has a mother--Frank reminded me. His
womenkind don't seem to be his strong point--but as she doesn't earn
_even_ four-and-sixpence a week--very sadly the contrary--I won't tell
you any more now, or you'll forget. Next time!"
When Marcella Maxwell was at last left alone, she began to pace slowly up
and down the large bare room, as it was very much her wont to do.
She was thinking of George Tressady, and of the personality his talk had
seemed to reveal.
"His heart is all in _power_--in what he takes for magnificence." she
said to herself. "He talks as if he had no humanity, and did not care a
rap for anybody. But it is a pose--I _think_ it is a pose. He is
interesting--he will develop. One would like--to show him things."
After another pensive turn or two she stopped beside a photograph that
stood upon her writing-table. It was a photograph of her husband--a tall,
smoothfaced man, with pleasant eyes, features of no particular emphasis,
and the free carriage of the country-bred Englishman. As she looked at it
her face relaxed unconsciously, inevitably; under the stimulus of some
habitual and secret joy. It was for his sake, for his sake only that she
was still thinking of George Tressady, still pondering the young man's
character and remarks.
So much at least was true--no other member of Fontenoy's party had as
yet given her even the chance of arguing with him. Once or twice in
society she had tried to approach Fontenoy himself, to get somehow into
touch with him. But she had made no way. Lord Fontenoy had simply turned
his square-jawed face and red-rimmed eyes upon her with a stupid
irresponsive air, which Marcella knew perfectly well to be a mask, while
it protected him none the less effectively for that against both her
eloquence and her charm. The other members of the party were young
aristocrats, either of the ultra-exclusive or of the sporting type. She
had made her attempts here and there among them, but with no more
success. And once or twice, when she had pushed her attack to close
quarters, she had been suddenly conscious of an underlying insolence in
her opponent--a quick glance of bold or sensual eyes which seemed to
relegate the mere woman to her place.
But this young Tressady, for all his narrowness and bitterness, was of a
different stamp--or she thought so.
She began to pace up and down again, lost in reverie, till after a few
minutes she came slowly to a stop before a long Louis Quinze
mirror--her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes half consciously
studying what she saw.
Her own beauty invariably gave her pleasure--though very seldom for the
reasons that would have affected other women. She felt instinctively that
it made life easier for her than it could otherwise have been; that it
provided her with a natural and profitable "opening" in any game she
might wish to play; and that even among the workmen, unionist leaders,
and officials of the East End it had helped her again and again to score
the points that she wanted to make. She was accustomed to be looked at,
to be the centre, to feel things yielding before her; and without
thinking it out, she knew perfectly well what it was she gained by this
"fair seeming show" of eye and lip and form. Somehow it made nothing seem
impossible to her; it gave her a dazzling self-confidence.
The handle of the door turned. She looked round with a smiling start,
and waited.
A tall man in a grey suit came in, crossed the room quickly, and put his
arms round her. She leant back against his shoulder, putting up one hand
to touch his cheek caressingly.
"Why, how late you are! Betty left reproaches for you."
"I had a walk with Dowson. Then two or three people caught me on the
way back--Rashdell among others." (Lord Rashdell was Foreign
Secretary.) "There are some interesting telegrams from Paris--I copied
them out for you."
The country happened to be at the moment in the midst of one of its
periodical difficulties with France. There had been a good deal of
diplomatic friction, and a certain amount of anxiety at the Foreign
Office. Marcella lit the silver kettle again and made her man some fresh
tea, while he told her the news, and they discussed the various points of
the telegrams he had copied for her, with a comrade's freedom and
vivacity. Then she said:
"Well, I have had an interesting time too! That young Tressady has
been to tea."
"Oh! has he? They say there is a lot of stuff in him, and he may do us a
great deal of mischief. How did you find him?"
"Oh, very clever, very limited--and a mass of prejudices," she said,
laughing. "I never saw an odder mixture of knowledge and ignorance."
"What? Knowledge of India and the East?--that kind of thing?"
She nodded.
"Knowledge of everything except the subject he has come home to fight
about! Do you know, Aldous--"
She paused. She was sitting on a stool beside him, her arm upon his knee.
"What do I know?" he said, his hand seeking hers.
"Well, I can't help feeling that that man might live and learn. He isn't
a mere obstructive block--like the rest."
Maxwell laughed.
"Then Fontenoy is not as shrewd as usual. They say he regards him as
their best recruit."
"Never mind. I rather wish you'd try to make friends with him."
Maxwell, however, helped himself to cake and made no response. On the two
or three occasions on which he had met George Tressady, he had been
conscious, if the truth were told, of a certain vague antipathy to the
young man.
Marcella pondered.
"No," she said, "no--I don't think after all he's your sort. Suppose _I_
see what can be done!"
And she got up with her flashing smile--half love, half fun--and
crossed the room to summon her little boy, Hallin, for his evening
play. Maxwell looked after her, not heeding at all what she was saying,
heeding only herself, her voice, the atmosphere of charm and life she
carried with her.