"That lady sitting by Sir George? What! Lady Maxwell? No--the other side?
Oh! that's Lady Leven. Don't you know her? She's tremendous fun!"
And the dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked young man who was sitting beside Letty
nodded and smiled across the table to Betty Leven, merely by way of
reminding her of his existence. They had greeted before dinner--a
greeting of comrades.
Then he turned back, with sudden decorum, to this Lady Tressady, whom he
had been commissioned to take in to dinner. "Quite pretty, but
rather--well, ordinary!" he said to himself, with a critical coolness
bred of much familiarity with the best things of Vanity Fair. He had been
Ancoats's friend at Cambridge, and was now disporting himself in the
Guards, but still more--as Letty of course assumed--in the heart of the
English well-born world. She knew that he was Lord Naseby, and that some
day he would be a marquis. A halo, therefore, shone about him. At the
same time, she had a long experience of young men, and, if she flattered
him, it was only indirectly, by a sort of teasing aggression that did not
allow him to take his attention from her.
"I declare you are better than any peerage!" she said to him presently,
when he had given her a short biography, first of Lord Cathedine, who was
sitting opposite, then of various other members of the company. "I should
like to tie you to my fan when I go out to dinner."
"Would you?" said the young man, drily. "Oh! you will soon know all you
want to know."
"How are poor little people from Yorkshire to find their way about in
this big world? You are all so dreadfully absorbed in each other. In the
first place, you all marry each other."
"Do we?--though I don't quite understand who 'we' means. Well, one
must marry somebody, I suppose, and cousins are less trouble than
other people."
Involuntarily, the young man's eyes travelled along the table to a fair
girl on the opposite side, dazzlingly dressed in black. She was wielding
a large fan of black feathers, which threw both hair and complexion into
amazing relief; and she seemed to be amusing herself in a nervous,
spasmodic way with Sir Frank Leven. Letty noticed his glance.
"Oh! you have not earned your testimonial yet, not by any manner of
means," she said. "That is Lady Madeleine Penley, isn't it? Is she a
relation of Mrs. Allison's?"
"She is a cousin. That is her mother, Lady Kent, sitting beside poor
Ancoats. Such an old character! By the end of dinner she will have got to
the bottom of Ancoats, or know the reason why."
"Is Lord Ancoats such a mystery?" said Letty, running an inquisitive
eye over the black front, sharp nose, and gorgeously bejewelled neck
of a somewhat noisy and forbidding old lady sitting on the right hand
of the host.
Young Naseby's expression in answer rather piqued her. There was a quick
flash of something that was instantly suppressed, and the youth said
composedly,
"Oh! we are all mysteries for Lady Kent."
But Letty noticed that his eyes strayed back to Lord Ancoats, and then
again to Lady Madeleine. He seemed to be observing them, and Letty's
sharpness at once took the hint. No doubt the handsome, large-featured
girl was here to be "looked at." Probably a good many maidens would be
passed in review before this young Sultan made his choice! By the way he
must be a good deal older than George had imagined. Clearly he left
college some time ago. What a curious face he had--a small, crumpled
face, with very prominent blue eyes; curly hair of a reddish colour,
piled high, as though for effect, above his white brow; together with a
sharp chin and pointed moustache, which gave him the air of an old French
portrait. He was short in stature, but at the same time agile and
strongly built. He wore one or two fine old rings, which drew attention
to the delicacy of his hands; and his manner struck her as at once morose
and excitable. Letty regarded him with involuntary respect as the son of
Mrs. Allison--much more as the master of Castle Luton and fifty thousand
a year. But if he had not been the master of Castle Luton she would have
probably thought, and said, that he had a disagreeable Bohemian air.
"Haven't you really made acquaintance with Lady Kent?" said Lord Naseby,
returning to the charge his laziness was somewhat at a loss for
conversation. "I should have thought she was the person one could least
escape knowing in the three kingdoms."
"I have seen her, of course," said Letty, lightly, though, alas! untruly.
"But I am afraid you can hardly realise that I have only been three short
seasons in London--two with an old aunt, who never goes out, in Cavendish
Square, poor dull old dear! and another with Mrs. Watton, of Malford."
"Oh! with Mrs. Watton, of Malford," said Lord Naseby, vaguely. Then he
became suddenly aware that Lady Leven, on the other side of the table,
was beckoning to him. He leant across, and they exchanged a merry war of
words about something of which Letty knew nothing.
Letty, rather incensed, thought him a puppy, drew herself up, and looked
round at the ex-Governor beside her. She saw a fine head, the worn yellow
face and whitened hair of a man who has suffered under a hot climate, and
an agreeable, though somewhat courtly, smile. Sir Philip Wentworth was
not troubled with the boyish fastidiousness of Lord Naseby. He perceived
merely that a pretty young woman wished to make friends with him, and met
her wish at once. Moreover, he identified her as the wife of that
"promising and well-informed fellow, Tressady," with whom he had first
made friends in India, and had now--just before dinner--renewed
acquaintance in the most cordial fashion.
He talked graciously to the wife, then, of Tressady's abilities and
Tressady's career. Letty at first liked it. Then she was seized with a
curious sense of discomfort.
Her eyes wandered towards the head of the table, where George was
talking--why! actually talking earnestly, and as though he were enjoying
himself, to Lady Maxwell, whose noble head and neck, rising from a silver
white dress, challenged a great Genoese Vandyck of a Marehesa Balbi which
was hanging just behind her, and challenged it victoriously.
So other people thought and said these things of George? Letty
was for a moment sharply conscious that they had not occupied much
place in her mind since her marriage, or, for the matter of that,
since her engagement. She had taken it for granted that he was
"distinguished"--that was part of the bargain. Only, she never seemed as
yet to have had either time or thought to give to those parts and
elements in his life which led people to talk of him as this old Indian
was doing.
Curtains, carpets, gowns, cabinets; additions to Ferth; her own effect in
society; how to keep Lady Tressady in her place--of all these things she
had thought, and thought much. But George's honourable ambitions, the
esteem in which he was held, the place he was to make for himself in the
world of men--in thinking of _these_ her mind was all stiff and
unpractised. She was conscious first of a moral prick, then of a certain
irritation with other people.
Yet she could not help watching George wistfully. He looked tired and
pale, in spite of the animation of his talk. Well! no doubt she looked
pale too. Some of the words and phrases of their quarrel flashed across
her. In this beautiful room, with its famous pictures and its historical
associations, amid this accumulated art and wealth, the whole thing was
peculiarly odious to remember. Under the eyes of Vandyck's Marchesa one
would have liked to think of oneself as always dignified and refined,
always elegant and calm.
Then Letty had a revulsion, and laughed at herself.
"As if these people didn't have tempers, and quarrel about money! Of
course they do! And if they don't--well, we all know how easy it is to be
amiable on fifty thousand a year."
* * * * *
After dinner Mrs. Allison led the way to the "Green Drawing-room." This
room, hung with Gainsborough portraits, was one of the sights of the
house, and tonight Marcella Maxwell especially looked round her on
entering it, with enchantment.
"You happy people!" she said to Mrs. Allison. "I never come into this
room without anxiously asking myself whether I am fit to make one of the
company. I look at my dress, or I am doubtful about my manners, or I wish
someone had taught me to dance the minuet!"
"Yes," said Betty Leven, running up to a vast picture, a life-size family
group, which covered the greater part of the farther wall of the room.
"What a vulgar, insignificant chit one feels oneself without cap or
powder!--without those ruffles, or those tippets, or those quilted
petticoats! Mrs. Allison, _may_ my maid come down to-morrow while we are
at dinner and take the pattern of those ruffles? No--no! she sha'n't!
Sacrilege! You pretty thing!" she said, addressing a figure--the figure
of a girl in white with thin virginal arms and bust, who seemed to be
coming out of the picture, almost to be already out of it and in the
room. "Come and talk to me. Don't think any more of your father and
mother there. You have been curtsying to them for a hundred years; and
they are rather dull, stupid people, after all. Come and tell us secrets.
Tell us what you have seen in this room--all the foolish people making
love, and the sad people saying good-bye."
Betty was kneeling on a carved chair, her pretty arms leaning on the back
of it, her eyes fixed half-in laughter, half in sentiment, on the figure
in the picture.
Lady Maxwell suddenly moved closer to her, and Letty heard her say in a
low voice, as she put her hand on Lady Leven's arm:
"Don't, Betty! _don't!_ It was in this room he proposed to her, and
it was in this room he said goodbye. Maxwell has often told me. I
believe she never comes in here alone--only for ceremony and when
there is a crowd."
A look of consternation crossed Lady Leven's lively little face. She
glanced shyly towards Mrs. Allison. That lady had moved hastily away from
the group in front of the picture. She was sitting by herself, looking
straight before her, with a certain stiffness, her thin hands crossed on
her knee. Betty impetuously went towards her, and was soon sitting on a
stool beside her, chattering to her and amusing her.
Meanwhile Marcella invited Lady Tressady to come and sit with her on a
sofa beneath the great picture.
Letty followed her, settled her satin skirts in their most graceful
folds, put one little foot on a Louis Quinze footstool which seemed
to invite it, and then began to inform herself about the house and
the family.
At the beginning of their talk it was clear that Lady Maxwell wished to
ingratiate herself. A friendly observer would have thought that she was
trying to make a stranger feel more at ease in this house and circle,
where she herself was a familiar guest. Betty Leven, catching sight of
the pair from the other side of the room, said to herself, with inward
amusement, that Marcella was "realising the wife."
At any rate, for some time Lady Maxwell talked with sympathy, with
effusion even, to her companion. In the first place she told her the
story of their hostess.
Thirty years before, Mrs. Allison, the daughter and heiress of a
Leicestershire squire, had married Henry Allison, old Lord Ancoats's
second son, a young captain in the Guards. They enjoyed three years of
life together; then the chances of a soldier's career, as interpreted by
two high-minded people, took Henry Allison out to an obscure African
coast, to fight one of the innumerable "little wars" of his country. He
fell, struck by a spear, in a single-file march through some nameless
swamp; and a few days afterwards the words of a Foreign Office telegram
broke a pining woman's heart.
Old Lord Ancoats's death, which followed within a month or two, was
hastened by the shock of his son's loss; and before the year was out the
eldest son, who was sickly and unmarried, also died, and Mrs. Allison's
boy, a child of two, became the owner of Castle Luton. The mother saw
herself called upon to fight down her grief, to relinquish the
quasi-religious life she had entered upon, and instead to take her boy to
the kingdom he was to rule, and bring him up there.
"And for twenty-two years she has lived a wonderful life here," said
Marcella; "she has been practically the queen of a whole countryside,
doing whatever she pleased, the mother and friend and saint of everybody.
It has been all very paternal and beautiful, and--abominably Tory and
tyrannous! Many people, I suppose, think it perfect. Perhaps I don't. But
then, I know very well I can't possibly disagree with her a tenth part as
strongly as she disagrees with me."
"Oh! but she admires you so much," cried Letty, with effusion; "she
thinks you mean so nobly!"
Marcella opened her eyes, involuntarily wondering a little what Lady
Tressady might know about it.
"Oh! we don't hate each other," she said, rather drily, "in spite of
politics. And my husband was Ancoats's guardian."
"Dear me!" said Letty. "I should think it wasn't easy to be guardian to
fifty thousand a year."
Marcella did not answer--did not, indeed, hear. Her look had stolen
across to Mrs. Allison--a sad, affectionate look, in no way meant for
Lady Tressady. But Letty noticed it.
"I suppose she adores him," she said.
Marcella sighed.
"There was never anything like it. It frightens one to see."
"And that, of course, is why she won't marry Lord Fontenoy?"
Marcella started, and drew away from her companion.
"I don't know," she said stiffly; "and I am sure that no one ever dared
to ask her."
"Oh! but of course it's what everyone says," said Letty, gay and
unabashed. "That's what makes it so exciting to come here, when one knows
Lord Fontenoy so very well."
Marcella met this remark with a discouraging silence.
Letty, however, was determined this time to make her impression. She
plunged into a lively and often audacious gossip about every person in
the room in turn, asking a number of intimate or impertinent questions,
and yet very seldom waiting for Marcella's reply, so anxious was she to
show off her own information and make her own comments. She let Marcella
understand that she suspected a great deal, in the matter of that
handsome Lady Madeleine. It was _immensely_ interesting, of course; but
wasn't Lord Ancoats a trifle wild?--she bent over and whispered in
Marcella's ears; was it likely that he would settle himself so
soon?--didn't one hear sad tales of his theatrical friends and the rest?
And what could one expect! As if a young man in such a position was not
certain to have his fling! And his mother would have to put up with it.
After all, men quieted down at last. Look at Lord Cathedine!
And with an air of boundless knowledge she touched upon the incidents of
Lord Cathedine's career, hashing up, with skilful deductions of her own,
all that Lord Naseby had said or hinted to her at dinner. Poor Lady
Cathedine! didn't she look a walking skeleton, with her strange,
melancholy face, and every bone showing? Well, who could wonder! And when
one thought of their money difficulties, too!
Lady Tressady lifted her white shoulders in compassion.
By this time Marcella's black eyes were wandering insistently round the
room, searching for means of escape. Betty, far away, noticed her air,
and concluded that the "realisation" was making rapid, too rapid,
progress. Presently, with a smiling shake of her little head, she left
her own seat and went to her friend's assistance.
At the same moment Mrs. Allison, driven by her conscience as a hostess,
got up for the purpose of introducing Lady Tressady to a lady in grey who
had been sitting quiet, and, as Mrs. Allison feared, lonely, in a corner,
looking over some photographs. Marcella, who had also risen, put out a
hand to Betty, and the two moved away together.
* * * * *
They stopped on the threshold of a large window at the side of the room,
which stood wide open to the night. Outside, beyond a broad flight of
steps, stretched a formal Dutch garden. Its numberless small beds,
forming stiff scrolls and circles on a ground of white gravel, lay in
bright moonlight. Even the colours of the hyacinths and tulips with which
they were planted could be seen, and the strong scent from them filled
the still air. At the far end of this flat-patterned place a group of
tall cypress and ilex, black against the sky, struck a note of Italy and
the South; while, through the yew hedges which closed in the little
garden, broad archways pierced at intervals revealed far breadths of
silvery English lawn and the distant gleam of the river.
"Well, my dear," said Betty, laughing, and slipping her arm through
Marcella's as they stood in the opening of the window, "I see you have
been doing your duty for once. Let me pat you on the back. All the more
that I gather you are not exactly enchanted with Lady Tressady. You
really should keep your face in order. From the other end of the room I
know exactly what you think of the person you are talking to."
"Do you?" said Marcella, penitently. "I wish you didn't."
"Well you may wish it, for it doesn't help the political lady to get what
she wants. However, I don't think that Lady Tressady has found out yet
that you don't like her. She isn't thin-skinned. If you had looked like
that when you were talking to me, I would have paid you out somehow. What
is the matter with her?"
"Oh! I don't know," said Marcella, impatiently, raising her shoulders.
"But she jarred. I pined to get away--I don't think I ever want to talk
to her again."
"No," said Betty, ruminating; "I'll tell you what it is--she isn't a
gentleman! Don't interrupt me! I mean exactly what I say--_she isn't a
gentleman_. She would do and say all the things that a nice man squirms
at. I always have the oddest fancy about that kind of person. I see them
as they must be at night--all the fine clothes gone--just a little black
soul scrawled between the bedclothes!"
"_You_ to call me censorious!" said Marcella, laughing, and pinching her
friend's arm.
"My dear, as I have often before remarked to you, _I_ am not a great
lady, with a political campaign to tight. If you knew your business, you
would make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness in the shape of
Lady Tressadys. _I_ may do what I please--I have only a husband to
manage!" and Betty's light voice dropped into a sigh.
"Poor Betty!" said Marcella, patting her hand. "Is Frank as
discontented as ever?"
"He told me yesterday he hated his existence, and thought he would try
whether the Serpentine would drown him. I said I was agreeable, only he
would never achieve it without me. I should have to 'tice away the police
while he looked for the right spot. So he has promised to take me into
partnership, and it's all right so far."
Then Betty fell to sighing in earnest.
"It's all very well 'chaffing,' but I am a miserable woman. Frank says
I have ruined his life; that it's all my ambition; that he might have
made a decent country gentleman if I hadn't sown the seed of every vice
in him by driving him into politics. Pleasant, isn't it, for a model
wife like me?"
"You'll have to let him give it up," said Marcella, smiling; "I don't
believe he'll ever reconcile himself to the grind and the town life."
Betty clenched her small hands.
"My dear! I never promised to marry a sporting boor, and I can't yet
make up my mind to sink to it. Don't let's talk of it! I only hope he'll
vote straight in the next few months. But the thought of being kept
through August drives him desperate already. Ah! here they are--plagues
of the human race!--" and she waved an accusing hand towards the incoming
stream of gentlemen. "Now, I'll prophesy, and you watch. Lady Tressady
will make two friends here--Harding Watton--oh! I forgot, he's her
cousin!--and Lord Cathedine. Mark my words. By the way--" Betty caught
Marcella's arm and spoke eagerly into her friend's ear. Her eyes
meanwhile glanced over her shoulder towards Lady Madeleine and her
mother, who were seated on the further side of the room.
Marcella's look followed Betty's, but she showed no readiness to answer
Betty's questions. When Letty had made her astonishing remarks on the
subject of Madeleine Penley, Lady Maxwell had tried to stop her with a
hauteur which would have abashed most women, though it had but small
effect on the bride. And now, even to Betty, who was Madeleine Penley's
friend, Marcella was not communicative; although when Betty was carried
off by Lord Naseby who came in search of her as soon as he entered the
drawing-room, the elder woman stood for a moment by the window, watching
the girl they had been talking of with a soft serious look.
But the softness passed. A slight incident disturbed it. For the
spectator saw Lady Kent, who was sitting beside her daughter, raise a
gigantic fan and beckon to Lord Ancoats. He came unwillingly, and she
made some bantering remark. Lady Madeleine meanwhile was bending over a
book of photographs, with a flushed cheek and a look of constraint.
Ancoats stood near her for a moment uneasily, frowning and pulling at his
moustache. Then with an abrupt word to Lady Kent, he turned away and
threw himself on a sofa beside Lord Cathedine. Lady Madeleine bent lower
over her book, her beautiful hair making a spot of fire in the room.
Marcella caught the expression of her profile, and her own face took a
look of pain. She would have liked to go instantly to the girl's side,
with some tenderness, some caress. But that gorgon Lady Kent, now looking
extremely fierce, was in the way, and moreover other young men had
arrived to take the place Ancoats had apparently refused.
Meanwhile Letty saw the arrival of the gentlemen with delight. She had
found but small entertainment in the lady to whom Mrs. Allison had
introduced her. Miss Paston, the sister of Lord Ancoats's agent, was a
pleasant-looking spinster of thirty-five in a Quakerish dress of grey
silk. Her face bore witness that she was capable and refined. But Letty
felt no desire whatever to explore capability and refinement. She had not
come to Castle Luton to make herself agreeable to Miss Paston.
So the conversation languished. Letty yawned a little, and flourished her
fan a great deal, till the appearance of the men brought back the flush
to her cheek and animation to her eye. She drew herself up at once,
hungry for notice and success. Mrs. Hawkins, the vicar's wife at
Malford, would have been avenged could she have watched her old tyrant
under these chastening circumstances.
Harding Watton crossed the room when he saw his cousin, and took the
corner of the sofa beside her. Letty received him graciously, though she
was perhaps disappointed that it was not Lord Ancoats or Lord Cathedine.
Looking round before she gave herself to conversation with him, she saw
that George was standing near the open window with Lord Maxwell and Sir
Philip Wentworth, the ex-Governor. They were talking of India, and Sir
Philip had his hand on George's arm.
"Yes, I saw Dalliousie go," he said eagerly. "I was only a lad of twenty,
but I can't think of it now without a lump in my throat. When he limped
on to the Hooghly landing-stage on his crutches we couldn't cheer him--I
shall never forget that sudden silence! In eight years he had made a new
India, and there we saw him,--our little hero,--dying of his work at
forty-six before our eyes! ... Well, I couldn't have imagined that a
young man like you would have known or cared so much about that time.
What a talk we have had! Thank you!"
And the veteran tightened his grip cordially for a moment on Tressady's
arm, then dropped it and walked away.
Tressady threw his wife a bright glance, as though to ask her how she
fared. Letty smiled graciously in reply, feeling a sudden softening
pleasure in being so thought of. As her eyes met her husband's she saw
Marcella Maxwell, who was still standing by the window, turn towards
George and call to him. George moved forward with alacrity. Then he and
Lady Maxwell slowly walked down the steps to the garden, and disappeared
through one of the archways to the left.
"That great lady and George seem at last to have made friends," said
Harding Watton to Letty, in a laughing undertone. "I have no doubt she is
trying to win him over. Well she may! Before the next few weeks are over
the Government will be in a fix with this Bill; and not even their
'beautiful lady' will help them out. Maxwell looks as glum as an owl
to-night."
Letty laughed. The situation pleased her vanity a good deal. The
thought of Lady Maxwell humiliated and defeated--partly by George's
means--was decidedly agreeable to her. Which would seem to show that
she was, after all, more sensitive or more quick-eyed than Betty Leven
had been ready to allow.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Marcella and George Tressady were strolling slowly towards the
river, along a path that crossed the great lawns. In front of them the
stretches of grass, bathed in silvery light and air, ran into far
distances of shade under majestic trees just thickening to a June wealth
of foliage. Below, these distant tree-masses made sharp capes and
promontories on the white grass; above, their rounded tops rose dark
against a blue, light-breathing sky. At one point the river pierced the
blackness of the wood, and in the space thus made the spire of a noble
church shot heavenward. Swans floated dimly along the stream and under
the bridge. The air was fresh, but the rawness of spring was gone. It was
the last week of May; the "high midsummer pomps" were near--a heavenly
prophecy in wood and field.
And not even Tressady's prejudice--which, indeed, was already
vanishing--could fail to see in the beautiful woman beside him the
fitting voice and spirit of such a scene.
To-night he said to himself that one must needs believe her simple, in
spite of report. During their companionship this evening she had shown
him more and more plainly that she liked his society; her manner towards
him, indeed, had by now a soft surrender and friendliness that no man
could possibly have met with roughness, least of all a man young and
ambitious. But at the same time he noticed again, as he had once noticed
with anger, that she was curiously free from the usual feminine arts and
wiles. After their long talk at dinner, indeed, he began, in spite of
himself, to feel her not merely an intellectual comrade,--that he had
been conscious of from the first,--but rather a most winning and
attaching companion. It was a sentiment of friendly ease, that seemed to
bring with it a great relief from tension. The sordid cares and frictions
of the last few weeks, and the degrading memories of the day itself,
alike ceased to wear him.
Yet all the time he said to himself, with inward amusement, that he must
take care! They had not talked directly of the Bill at dinner, but they
had talked round and about it incessantly. It was clear that the Maxwells
were personally very anxious; and George knew well that the public
position of the Ministry was daily becoming more difficult. There had
been a marked cooling on the subject of the Bill among their own
supporters; one or two London members originally pledged to it were even
believed to be wavering; and this campaign lately started by Fontenoy and
Watton against two of the leading clauses of the measure, in a London
"daily," bought for the purpose, had been so far extremely damaging. The
situation was threatening indeed, and Maxwell might well look harassed.
Yet Tressady had detected no bitterness in Lady Maxwell's mood. Her
temper rather seemed to him very strenuous, very eager, and a little sad.
Altogether, he had been touched, he knew not exactly why, by his
conversation with her. "We are going to win," he said to himself, "and
she knows it." Yet to think thus gave him, for the first time, no
particular pleasure.
As they strolled along they talked a little of some of the topics that
had been started at dinner, topics semi-political and semi-social, till
suddenly Lady Maxwell said, with a change of voice:
"I heard some of your conversation with Sir Philip just now. How
differently you talk when you talk of India!"
"I wonder what that means," said George, smiling. "It means, at any rate,
that when I am not talking of India, but of English labour, or the poor,
you think I talk like a brute."
"I shouldn't put it like that," she said quietly. "But when you talk of
India, and people like the Lawrences or Lord Dalhousie, then it is that
one sees what you really admire--what stirs you--what makes you feel."
"Well, ought I not to feel? Is there to be no gratitude towards the
people that have made one's country?"
He looked down, upon her gaily, perfectly conscious of his own
tickled vanity. To be observed and analysed by such a critic was in
itself flattery.
"That have made one's country?" she repeated, not without a touch of
irony. Then suddenly she became silent.
George thrust his hands into his pockets and waited a little.
"Well?" he said presently. "Well? I am waiting to hear you prove that
the Dalhousies and the Lawrences have done nothing for the country,
compared to--what shall we say?--some trade-union secretary whom you
particularly admire."
She laughed, but he did not immediately draw his answer. They had reached
the river-bank and the steps of the little bridge. Marcella mounted the
bridge and paused midway across it, hanging over the parapet. He followed
her, and both stood gazing at the house. It rose from the grass like some
fabric of yellowish ivory cut and scrolled and fretted by its Tudor
architect, who had been also a goldsmith. There were lights like jewels
in its latticed windows; the dark fulness of the trees, disposed by an
artist-hand, enwrapped or fell away from it as the eye required; and on
the dazzling lawns, crossed by soft bands of shadow, scattered forms
moved up and down--women in trailing dresses, and black-coated men.
There were occasional sallies of talk and laughter, and from the open
window of the drawing-room came the notes of a violin.
"Brahms!" said Marcella, with delight. "Nothing but music and he could
express this night--or the river--or the rising glow and bloom of
everything."
As she spoke George felt a quick gust of pleasure and romance sweep
across him. It was as though senses that had been for long on the
defensive, tired, or teased merely by the world, gave way in a moment to
joy and poetry. He looked from the face beside him to the pictured scene
in which they stood--the soft air filled his lungs--what ailed him?--he
only knew that after many weeks he was, somehow, happy and buoyant again!
Lady Maxwell, however, soon forgot the music and the moonlight.
"That have made one's country?" she repeated, pausing on the words.
"And of course that house appeals to you in the same way? Famous people
have lived in it--people who belong to history. But for _me_, the real
making of one's country is done out of sight, in garrets and workshops
and coalpits, by people who die every minute--forgotten--swept into
heaps like autumn leaves, their lives mere soil and foothold for the
generation that comes after them. All yesterday morning, for instance,
I spent trying to feed a woman I know. She is a shirtmaker; she has
four children, and her husband is a docker out of work. She had sewed
herself sick and blind. She couldn't eat, and she couldn't sleep. But
she had kept the children alive--and the man. Her life will flicker
out in a month or two; but the children's lives will have taken root,
and the man will be eating and earning again. What use would your
Dalhousies and Lawrences be to England without her and the hundreds of
thousands like her?"
"And yet it is you," cried George, unable to forbear the chance she gave
him, "who would take away from this very woman the power of feeding her
children and saving her husband--who would spoil all the lives in the
clumsy attempt to mend one of them. How can you quote me such an
instance! It amazes me."
"Not at all. I have only to use my instance for another purpose, in
another way. You are thinking of the Bill, of course? But all we do is to
say to some of these victims, 'Your sacrifice, as it stands, is _too_
costly; the State in its own interest cannot go on exacting or allowing
it. We will help you to serve the community in ways that shall exhaust
and wound it less.'"
"And as a first step, drive you all comfortably into the workhouse!" said
George. "Don't omit that."
"Many individuals must suffer," she said steadily. "But there will be
friends to help--friends that will strain every nerve to help."
All her heart showed itself in voice and emphasis. Almost for the first
time in their evening's talk her natural passionateness came to
sight--the Southern, impulsive temper, that so often made people laugh at
or dislike her. Under the lace shawl she had thrown round her on coming
out he saw the quick rise and fall of the breast, the nervous clasp of
the hands lying on the stonework of the bridge. These were her prophetess
airs again. To-night they still amused him, but in a gentler and more
friendly way.
"And so, according to your own account, you will protect your tailoress
and unmake your country. I am sorry for your dilemma," he said, laughing.
"Ah! well,"--she shrugged her shoulders with a sigh,--"don't let's talk
of it. It's all too pressing--and sore--and hot. And to think of the
weeks that are just coming on!"
George, hanging over the parapet beside her, felt reply a little
awkward, and said nothing. For a minute or two the night made itself
heard, the gentle slipping of the river, the fitful breathings from the
trees. A swan passed and repassed below them, and an owl called from the
distant woods.
Presently Marcella lifted a white finger and pointed to the house.
"One wouldn't want a better parable," she said. "It's like the State as
you see it--magnificent, inspiring, a thing of pomp and dignity. But we
women, who have to drive and keep going a house like that--_we_ know what
it all rests upon. It rests upon a few tired kitchen-maids and boot-boys
and scullery-girls, hurrying, panting creatures, whom a guest never sees,
who really run it all. I know, for I have tried to unearth them, to
organise them, to make sure that no one was fainting while we were
feasting. But it is incredibly hard; half the human race believes itself
born to make things easy for the other half. It comes natural to them to
ache and toil while we sit in easy chairs. What they resent is that we
should try to change it."
"Goodness!" said George, pulling at his moustaches. "I don't recognise my
own experience of the ordinary domestic polity in that summary."
"I daresay. You have to do with the upper servant, who is always a
greater tyrant than his master," she retorted, her voice expressing a
curious medley of laughter and feeling. "I am speaking of the people
that are not seen, like the tailoress and shirtmaker, in your
drum-and-trumpet State."
"Well, you may be right," said George, drily. "But I confess--if I may
be quite frank--that I don't altogether trust you to judge. I want at
least, before I strike the balance between my Dalhousie and your
tailoress, to hear what those people have to say who have not crippled
their minds--by pity!"
"Pity!" she said, her lip trembling in spite of herself. "Pity!--you
count pity a disease?"
"As you--and others--practise it," he replied coolly, turning round upon
her. "It is no good; the world can't be run by pity. At least, living
always seems to me a great brutal, rushing, rough-and-tumble business,
which has to be carried on whether we like it or no. To be too careful,
too gingerly over the separate life, brings it all to a standstill.
Meddle too much, and the Demiurge who set the machine going turns sulky
and stops working. Then the nation goes to pieces--till some strong
ruffian without a scruple puts it together again."
"What do you mean by the Demiurge?"
He laughed.
"Why do you make me explain my flights? Well, I suppose, the natural
daimonic power in things, which keeps them going and set them off; which
is not us, or like us, and cares nothing for us."
His light voice developed a sudden energy during his little speech.
"Ah!" said Marcella, wistfully. "Yes, if one thought that, I could
understand. But, even so, if the power behind things cares nothing for
us, I should only regard it as challenging us to care more for each
other. Do you mind my asking you a few plain questions? Do you know
anything personally of the London poor? I mean, have you any real friends
among them, whose lives you know?"
"Well, I sit with Fontenoy while he receives deputations from all those
tailoresses and shirtmakers and fur-sewers that _you_ want to put in
order. The harassed widow streams through his room perpetually--wailing
to be let alone!"
Marcella made a sound of amused scorn.
"Oh! you think that nothing," said George, indignant. "I vow I could draw
every type of widow that London contains--I know them intimately."
She shook her head.
"I give up London. Then, in the North, aren't you a coal-owner? Do you
know your miners?"
"Yes, and I detest them!" said George, shortly; "pig-headed brutes! They
will be on strike next month, and I shall be defrauded of my lawful
income till their lordships choose to go back. Pity _me_, if you
please--not them!"
"So I do," she said with spirit--"if you hate the men by whom you live!"
There was silence. Then suddenly George said, in another tone:
"But sometimes, I don't deny, the beggars wring it out of one--your pity.
I saw a mother last week--Suppose we stroll on a little. I want to see
how the river gets out of the wood."
They descended the bridge, and turned again into the river-path. George
told the story of Mary Batchelor in his half-ironic way, yet so that here
and there Marcella shivered. Then gradually, as though it were a relief
to him to talk, he slipped into a half-humorous, half-serious discussion
of his mine-owner's position and its difficulties. Incidentally and
unconsciously a good deal of his history betrayed itself in his talk: his
bringing-up, his mother; the various problems started in his mind since
his return from India; even his relations to his wife. Once or twice it
flashed across him that he was confessing himself with an extraordinary
frankness to a woman he had made up his mind to dislike. But the
reflection did not stop him. The balmy night, the solitude, this
loveliness that walked beside him so willingly and kindly--with every
step they struck his defences from him; they drew; they penetrated.
With her, too, everything was simple and natural. She had felt his
attraction at their first meeting; she had determined to make a friend of
him; and she was succeeding. As he disclosed himself she felt a strange
compassion for him. It was plain to her woman's instinct that he was at
heart lonely and uncompanioned. Well, what wonder with that hard, mean
little being for a wife! Had she captured him, or had he thrown himself
away upon her in mere wantonness, out of that defiance of sentiment which
appeared to be his favourite _parti-pris?_ In any case, it seemed to this
happy wife that he had done the one fatal and irreparable thing; and she
was genuinely sorry for him. She felt him very young, too. As far as she
could gather, he was about two years her junior; but her feeling made the
gap much greater.
Yet, of course, the situation,--Maxwell, Fontenoy,--all that those names
implied to him and her, made a thrilling under-note in both their minds.
She never forgot her husband and his straits; and in George's mind
Fontenoy's rugged figure stood sentinel. Given the circumstances, both
her temperament and her affections drove her inevitably into trying,
first to attract, then to move and influence her companion. And given the
circumstances, he could but yield himself bit by bit to her woman's
charm; while full all the time of a confident scorn for her politics.
Insensibly, the stress upon them drew them back to London and to current
affairs, and at last she said to him, with vehemence:
"You _must_ see these people in the flesh--and not in your house, but in
theirs. Or, first come and meet them in mine?"
"Why, please, should you think St. James's Square a palace of truth
compared to Carlton House Terrace?" he asked her, with amusement.
Fontenoy lived in Carlton House Terrace.
"I am not inviting you to St. James's Square," she said quietly. "That
house is only my home for one set of purposes. Just now my true home is
not there at all. It is in the Mile End Road."
George asked to be informed, and opened his eyes at her account of the
way in which she still divided her time between the West End and the
East, spending always one or two nights a week among the trades and the
work-people she had come to know so intimately, whose cause she was
fighting with such persistence.
"Maxwell doesn't come now," she said. "He is too busy, and his work there
is done. But I go because I love the people, and to talk with them and
live with them part of every week keeps one's mind clear as to what one
wants, and why. Well,"--her voice showed that she smiled,--"will you
come? My old maid shall give you coffee, and you shall meet a roomful of
tailors and shirtmakers. You shall see what people look like in the
flesh--not on paper--after working fourteen hours at a stretch, in a room
where you and I could not breathe!"
"Charming!"--he bowed ironically. "Of course I will come."
They had paused under the shadow of a grove of beech-trees, and were
looking back towards the moonlit garden and the house. Suddenly George
said, in an odd voice:
"Do you mind my saying it? You know, nobody is ever
converted--politically--nowadays."
In the darkness her flush could not be seen. But he felt the mingled
pride and soreness in her voice, under its forced brightness.
"I know. How long is it since a speech turned a vote in the House of
Commons! One wonders why people take the trouble to speak. Shall we go
back? Ah! there is someone pursuing us--my husband and Ancoats!"
And two figures, dark for an instant against the brightness of the lawns,
plunged into the shadow of the wood.
"You wanderers!" said Maxwell, as he distinguished his wife's white
dress. "Is this path quite safe in this darkness? Suppose we get
out of it."
The river, indeed, beneath a steep bank, ran close beside them, and
the trees meeting overhead all but shut out the moon. Maxwell, in some
anxiety, caught his wife's arm, and made her pause till his eye should
be once more certain of the path. Meanwhile Ancoats and Tressady
walked quickly back to the lawn, Ancoats talking and laughing with
unusual vigour.
* * * * *
The Maxwells did not hurry themselves. As they emerged from the wood
Marcella slipped her hand into her husband's. It was her characteristic
caress. The slim, strong hand loved to feel itself in the shelter of
his; while to him that seeking touch was the symbol of all that she
brought him--the inventive, inexhaustible arts of a passion which was a
kind of genius.
"Don't go in!" she pleaded. "Why should we?"
"No!--why should we?" he repeated, sighing. "Why are we here at
all?--that is what I have been asking myself all the evening. And now
more than ever since my walk with that boy Ancoats."
"Tell me about it," she said eagerly. "Could you get nothing out of
him?"
Maxwell shrugged his shoulders.
"Nothing. He vows that everything is all right; that he knows a pack of
slanderers have been 'yelping at him,' and he wishes both they and his
mother would let him alone."
"His mother!" cried Marcella, outraged.
"Well, I suppose I said to him the kind of thing you would evidently like
to say. But with no result. He merely laughed, and chattered about
everything under the sun--his race-horses, new plays, politics--Heaven
knows what! He is in an excited state--feverish, restless, and, I should
think, unhappy. But he would tell nothing--to me."
"How much do you think she knows?"
"His mother? Nothing, I should say. Every now and then I detect a note of
extra anxiety when she talks to him; and there is evidently something in
her mind, some impression from his manner, perhaps, which is driving her
more keenly than ever towards this marriage. But I don't believe a single
one of the stories that have reached us has reached her. And now--here is
this poor girl--and even my dull eyes have noticed that to-night he has
purposely, markedly, avoided her."
Marcella felt her cheek flame.
"And when one thinks of his behaviour in the winter!" she cried.
They wandered on along a path that skirted the wood, talking anxiously
about the matter which had in truth brought them to Castle Luton. In
spite of the comparative gentleness of English political relations,
neither Maxwell nor Marcella, perhaps, would willingly have become
Charlotte Allison's guests at a moment when her house was actually the
headquarters of a violent and effective opposition to Maxwell's policy,
when moreover the leader of that opposition was likely to be of the
party. But about a fortnight before Whitsuntide some tales of young
Ancoats had suddenly reached Maxwell's ears, with such effect that on his
next meeting with Ancoats's mother he practically invited himself and
Marcella--greatly to Mrs. Allison's surprise--to Castle Luton for
Whitsuntide.
For the boy had been Maxwell's ward, and Henry Allison had been the
intimate friend and comrade of Maxwell's father. And Maxwell's feeling
for his father, and for his father's friends, was of such a kind that his
guardian's duties had gone deep with him. He had done his best for the
boy, and since Ancoats had reached his majority his ex-guardian had still
kept him anxiously in mind.
Of late indeed Ancoats had troubled himself very little about his
guardian, or his guardian's anxieties. He seemed to have been devoting a
large share of his mind to the avoidance of his mother's old friends; and
the Maxwells, for months, in spite of many efforts on their part, had
seen little or nothing of him. Maxwell for various reasons had begun to
suspect a number of uncomfortable things with regard to the young
fellow's friends and pleasures. Yet nothing could be taken hold of till
this sudden emergence of a particular group of stories, coupling
Ancoats's name with that of a notorious little actress whose adventures
had already provided a certain class of newspaper with abundant copy.
Then Maxwell, who cared personally very little for the red-haired youth
himself, took alarm for the mother's sake. For in the case of Mrs.
Allison a scandal of the kind suggested meant a tragedy. Her passion for
her son was almost a tragedy already, so closely mingled in it were the
feelings of the mother and those of the Christian, to whom "vice" is not
an amusement, but an agony.
* * * * *
Yet, as Marcella said and felt, it was a hard fate that had forced
Maxwell to concern himself with Ancoats's love-affairs at this
particular moment.
"Don't think of it," she said at last, urgently, as they walked along.
"It is too bad; as if there were not enough!"
Maxwell stood still, with a little smile, and put his arm round her
shoulders.
"Dear, I shall soon have time enough, probably, to think about Ancoats's
affairs or anything else. Do you know that I was planning this morning
what we would do when we go out? Shall we slip over to the Australian
colonies in the autumn? I would give a good deal to see them for myself."
She gave a low cry of pain.
"Why are you so depressed to-night? Is there any fresh news?"
"Yes. And, altogether, things look increasingly bad for us, and
increasingly well for them. It will be extraordinarily close
anyway--probably a matter of a vote or two." And he gave her a summary
of his after-dinner conversation with Lord Cathedine, a keen ally of
Fontenoy's in the Lords, and none the less a shrewd fellow because he
happened to be also a detestable person.
Marcella heard the news of one or two fresh defections from the
Government with amazement and indignation. She stood there in the
darkness, leaning against the man she loved, her heart beating fast and
stormily. How could the world thus misconceive and thwart him? And what
could she do? Her mind ran passionately through a hundred schemes,
refusing to submit--to see him baffled and defeated.