Wharton was sitting alone in the big Mellor drawing-room, after dinner.
He had drawn one of the few easy chairs the room possessed to the fire,
and with his feet on the fender, and one of Mr. Boyce's French novels on
his knee, he was intensely enjoying a moment of physical ease. The work
of these weeks of canvassing and speaking had been arduous, and he was
naturally indolent. Now, beside this fire and at a distance, it amazed
him that any motive whatever, public or private, should ever have been
strong enough to take him out through the mire on these winter nights to
spout himself hoarse to a parcel of rustics. "What did I do it for?" he
asked himself; "what am I going to do it for again to-morrow?"
Ten o'clock. Mr. Boyce was gone to bed. No more entertaining of _him_ to
be done; one might be thankful for that mercy. Miss Boyce and her mother
would, he supposed, be down directly. They had gone up to dress at nine.
It was the night of the Maxwell Court ball, and the carriage had been
ordered for half-past ten. In a few minutes he would see Miss Boyce in
her new dress, wearing Raeburn's pearls. He was extraordinarily
observant, and a number of little incidents and domestic arrangements
bearing on the feminine side of Marcella's life had been apparent to
him from the beginning. He knew, for instance, that the trousseau was
being made at home, and that during the last few weeks the lady for whom
it was destined had shown an indifference to the progress of it which
seemed to excite a dumb annoyance in her mother. Curious woman, Mrs.
Boyce!
He found himself listening to every opening door, and already, as it
were, gazing at Marcella in her white array. He was not asked to this
ball. As he had early explained to Miss Boyce, he and Miss Raeburn had
been "cuts" for years, for what reason he had of course left Marcella to
guess. As if Marcella found any difficulty in guessing--as if the
preposterous bigotries and intolerances of the Ladies' League were not
enough to account for any similar behaviour on the part of any similar
high-bred spinster! As for this occasion, she was far too proud both on
her own behalf and Wharton's to say anything either to Lord Maxwell or
his sister on the subject of an invitation for her father's guest.
It so happened, however, that Wharton was aware of certain other reasons
for his social exclusion from Maxwell Court. There was no necessity, of
course, for enlightening Miss Boyce on the point. But as he sat waiting
for her, Wharton's mind went back to the past connected with those
reasons. In that past Raeburn had had the whip-hand of him; Raeburn had
been the moral superior dictating indignant terms to a young fellow
detected in flagrant misconduct. Wharton did not know that he bore him
any particular grudge. But he had never liked Aldous, as a boy, that he
could remember; naturally he had liked him less since that old affair.
The remembrance of it had made his position at Mellor particularly sweet
to him from the beginning; he was not sure that it had not determined
his original acceptance of the offer made to him by the Liberal
Committee to contest old Dodgson's seat. And during the past few weeks
the exhilaration and interest of the general position--considering all
things--had been very great. Not only was he on the point of ousting the
Maxwell candidate from a seat which he had held securely for
years--Wharton was perfectly well aware by now that he was trespassing
on Aldous Raeburn's preserves in ways far more important, and infinitely
more irritating! He and Raeburn had not met often at Mellor during these
weeks of fight. Each had been too busy. But whenever they had come
across each other Wharton had clearly perceived that his presence in the
house, his growing intimacy with Marcella Boyce, the free-masonry of
opinion between them, the interest she took in his contest, the village
friendships they had in common, were all intensely galling to Aldous
Raeburn.
The course of events, indeed, had lately produced in Wharton a certain
excitement--recklessness even. He had come down into these parts to
court "the joy of eventful living"--politically and personally. But the
situation had proved to be actually far more poignant and personal than
he had expected. This proud, crude, handsome girl--to her certainly it
was largely due that the days had flown as they had. He was perfectly,
one might almost say gleefully, aware that at the present moment it was
he and not Aldous Raeburn who was intellectually her master. His mind
flew back at first with amusement, then with a thrill of something else,
over their talks and quarrels. He smiled gaily as he recalled her fits
of anger with him, her remonstrances, appeals--and then her awkward
inevitable submissions when he had crushed her with sarcasm or with
facts. Ah! she would go to this ball to-night; Aldous Raeburn would
parade her as his possession; but she would go with thoughts, ambitions,
ideals, which, as they developed, would make her more and more difficult
for a Raeburn to deal with. And in those thoughts and ambitions the man
who had been her tormentor, teacher, and companion during six rushing
weeks knew well that he already counted for much. He had cherished in
her all those "divine discontents" which were already there when he
first knew her; taught her to formulate them, given her better reasons
for them; so that by now she was a person with a far more defined and
stormy will than she had been to begin with. Wharton did not
particularly know why he should exult; but he did exult. At any rate, he
was prodigiously tickled--by the whole position.
A step, a rustle outside--he hastily shut his book and listened.
The door opened, and Marcella came in--a white vision against the heavy
blue of the walls. With her came, too, a sudden strong scent of flowers,
for she carried a marvellous bunch of hot-house roses, Aldous's gift,
which had just arrived by special messenger.
Wharton sprang up and placed a chair for her.
"I had begun to believe the ball only existed in my own imagination!"
he said gaily. "Surely you are very late."
Then he saw that she looked disturbed.
"It was papa," she said, coming to the fire, and looking down into it.
"It has been another attack of pain--not serious, mamma says; she is
coming down directly. But I wonder why they come, and why he thinks
himself so ill--do you know?" she added abruptly, turning to her
companion.
Wharton hesitated, taken by surprise. During the past weeks, what with
Mr. Boyce's confidence and his own acuteness, he had arrived at a very
shrewd notion of what was wrong with his host. But he was not going to
enlighten the daughter.
"I should say your father wants a great deal of care--and is nervous
about himself," he said quietly. "But he will get the care--and your
mother knows the whole state of the case."
"Yes, she knows," said Marcella. "I wish I did."
And a sudden painful expression--of moral worry, remorse--passed across
the girl's face. Wharton knew that she had often been impatient of late
with her father, and incredulous of his complaints. He thought he
understood.
"One can often be of more use to a sick person if one is not too well
acquainted with what ails them," he said. "Hope and cheerfulness are
everything in a case like your father's. He will do well."
"If he does he won't owe any of it--"
She stopped as impulsively as she had begun. "To me," she meant to have
said; then had retreated hastily, before her own sense of something
unduly intimate and personal. Wharton stood quietly beside her, saying
nothing, but receiving and soothing her self-reproach just as surely as
though she had put it into words.
"You are crushing your flowers, I think," he said suddenly.
And indeed her roses were dangling against her dress, as if she had
forgotten all about them.
She raised them carelessly, but he bent to smell them, and she held them
out.
"Summer!" he said, plunging his face into them with a long breath of
sensuous enjoyment. "How the year sweeps round in an instant! And all
the effect of a little heat and a little money. Will you allow me a
philosopher's remark?"
He drew back from her. His quick inquisitive but still respectful eye
took in every delightful detail.
"If I don't give you leave, my experience is that you will take it!" she
said, half laughing, half resentful, as though she had old aggressions
in mind.
"You admit the strength of the temptation? It is very simple, no one
could help making it. To be spectator of the _height_ of anything--the
best, the climax--makes any mortal's pulses run. Beauty, success,
happiness, for instance?"
He paused smiling. She leant a thin hand on the mantelpiece and looked
away; Aldous's pearls slipped backwards along her white arm.
"Do you suppose to-night will be the height of happiness?" she said at
last with a little scorn. "These functions don't present themselves to
_me_ in such a light."
Wharton could have laughed out--her pedantry was so young and
unconscious. But he restrained himself.
"I shall be with the majority to-night," he said demurely. "I may as
well warn you."
Her colour rose. No other man had ever dared to speak to her with this
assurance, this cool scrutinising air. She told herself to be indignant;
the next moment she _was_ indignant, but with herself for remembering
conventionalities.
"Tell me one thing," said Wharton, changing his tone wholly. "I know you
went down hurriedly to the village before dinner. Was anything wrong?"
"Old Patton is very ill," she said, sighing. "I went to ask after him;
he may die any moment. And the Hurds' boy too."
He leant against the mantelpiece, talking to her about both cases with a
quick incisive common-sense--not unkind, but without a touch of
unnecessary sentiment, still less of the superior person--which
represented one of the moods she liked best in him. In speaking of the
poor he always took the tone of comradeship, of a plain equality, and
the tone was, in fact, genuine.
"Do you know," he said presently, "I did not tell you before, but I am
certain that Hurd's wife is afraid of you, that she has a secret from
you?"
"From me! how could she? I know every detail of their affairs."
"No matter. I listened to what she said that day in the cottage when I
had the boy on my knee. I noticed her face, and I am quite certain. She
has a secret, and above all a secret from you."
Marcella looked disturbed for a moment, then she laughed.
"Oh, no!" she said, with a little superior air. "I assure you I know her
better than you."
Wharton said no more.
"Marcella!" called a distant voice from the hall.
The girl gathered up her white skirts and her flowers in haste.
"Good-night!"
"Good-night! I shall hear you come home and wonder how you have sped.
One word, if I may! Take your _rôle_ and play it. There is nothing
subjects dislike so much as to see royalty decline its part."
She laughed, blushed, a little proudly and uncertainly, and went without
reply. As she shut the door behind her, a sudden flatness fell upon her.
She walked through the dark Stone Parlour outside, seeing still the
firmly-knit lightly-made figure--boyish, middle-sized, yet never
insignificant--the tumbled waves of fair hair, the eyes so keenly blue,
the face with its sharp mocking lines, its powers of sudden charm. Then
self-reproach leapt, and possessed her. She quickened her pace, hurrying
into the hall, as though from something she was ashamed or afraid of.
In the hall a new sensation awaited her. Her mother, fully dressed,
stood waiting by the old billiard-table for her maid, who had gone to
fetch her a cloak.
Marcella stopped an instant in surprise and delight, then ran up to her.
"Mamma, how _lovely_ you look! I haven't seen you like that, not since I
was a child. I remember you then once, in a low dress, a white dress,
with flowers, coming into the nursery. But that black becomes you so
well, and Deacon has done your hair beautifully!"
She took her mother's hand and kissed her cheek, touched by an emotion
which had many roots. There was infinite relief in this tender natural
outlet; she seemed to recover possession of herself.
Mrs. Boyce bore the kiss quietly. Her face was a little pinched and
white. But the unusual display Deacon had been allowed to make of her
pale golden hair, still long and abundant; the unveiling of the shapely
shoulders and neck, little less beautiful than her daughter's; the
elegant lines of the velvet dress, all these things, had very nobly
transformed her. Marcella could not restrain her admiration and delight.
Mrs. Boyce winced, and, looking upward to the gallery, which ran round
the hall, called Deacon impatiently.
"Only, mamma," said Marcella, discontentedly, "I don't like that little
chain round your neck. It is not equal to the rest, not worthy of it."
"I have nothing else, my dear," said Mrs. Boyce, drily. "Now, Deacon,
don't be all night!"
Nothing else? Yet, if she shut her eyes, Marcella could perfectly recall
the diamonds on the neck and arms of that white figure of her
childhood--could see herself as a baby playing with the treasures of her
mother's jewel-box.
Nowadays, Mrs. Boyce was very secretive and reserved about her personal
possessions. Marcella never went into her room unless she was asked, and
would never have thought of treating it or its contents with any
freedom.
The mean chain which went so ill with the costly hoarded dress--it
recalled to Marcella all the inexorable silent miseries of her mother's
past life, and all the sordid disadvantages and troubles of her own
youth. She followed Mrs. Boyce out to the carriage in silence--once more
in a tumult of sore pride and doubtful feeling.
* * * * *
Four weeks to her wedding-day! The words dinned in her ears as they
drove along. Yet they sounded strange to her, incredible almost. How
much did she know of Aldous, of her life that was to be--above all, how
much of herself? She was not happy--had not been happy or at ease for
many days. Yet in her restlessness she could think nothing out.
Moreover, the chain that galled and curbed her was a chain of character.
In spite of her modernness, and the complexity of many of her motives,
there was certain inherited simplicities of nature at the bottom of her.
In her wild demonic childhood you could always trust Marcie Boyce, if
she had given you her word--her schoolfellows knew that. If her passions
were half-civilised and southern, her way of understanding the point of
honour was curiously English, sober, tenacious. So now. Her sense of
bond to Aldous had never been in the least touched by any of her
dissatisfactions and revolts. Yet it rushed upon her to-night with
amazement, and that in four weeks she was going to marry him! Why?
how?--what would it really _mean_ for him and for her? It was as though
in mid-stream, she were trying to pit herself for an instant against the
current which had so far carried them all on, to see what it might be
like to retrace a step, and could only realise with dismay the force
and rapidity of the water.
Yet all the time another side of her was well aware that she was at that
moment the envy of half a county, that in another ten minutes hundreds
of eager and critical eyes would be upon her; and her pride was rising
to her part. The little incident of the chain had somehow for the moment
made the ball and her place in it more attractive to her.
* * * * *
They had no sooner stepped from their carriage than Aldous, who was
waiting in the outer hall, joyously discovered them. Till then he had
been walking aimlessly amid the crowd of his own guests, wondering when
she would come, how she would like it. This splendid function had been
his grandfather's idea; it would never have entered his own head for a
moment. Yet he understood his grandfather's wish to present his heir's
promised bride in this public ceremonious way to the society of which
she would some day be the natural leader. He understood, too, that there
was more in the wish than met the ear; that the occasion meant to Lord
Maxwell, whether Dick Boyce were there or no, the final condoning of
things past and done with, a final throwing of the Maxwell shield over
the Boyce weakness, and full adoption of Marcella into her new family.
All this he understood and was grateful for. But how would _she_
respond? How would she like it--this parade that was to be made of
her--these people that must be introduced to her? He was full of
anxieties.
Yet in many ways his mind had been easier of late. During the last week
she had been very gentle and good to him--even Miss Raeburn had been
pleased with her. There had been no quoting of Wharton when they met;
and he had done his philosopher's best to forget him. He trusted her
proudly, intensely; and in four weeks she would be his wife.
"Can you bear it?" he said to her in a laughing whisper as she and her
mother emerged from the cloak-room.
"Tell me what to do," she said, flushing. "I will do my best. What a
crowd! Must we stay very long?"
"Ah, my dear Mrs. Boyce," cried Lord Maxwell, meeting them on the steps
of the inner quadrangular corridor--"Welcome indeed! Let me take you in.
Marcella! with Aldous's permission!" he stooped his white head gallantly
and kissed her on the cheek--"Remember I am an old man; if I choose to
pay you compliments, you will have to put up with them!"
Then he offered Mrs. Boyce his arm, a stately figure in his ribbon and
cross of the Bath. A delicate red had risen to that lady's thin cheek in
spite of her self-possession. "Poor thing," said Lord Maxwell to himself
as he led her along--"poor thing!--how distinguished and charming still!
One sees to-night what she was like as a girl."
Aldous and Marcella followed. They had to pass along the great corridor
which ran round the quadrangle of the house. The antique marbles which
lined it were to-night masked in flowers, and seats covered in red had
been fitted in wherever it was possible, and were now crowded with
dancers "sitting out." From the ball-room ahead came waves of
waltz-music; the ancient house was alive with colour and perfume, with
the sounds of laughter and talk, lightly fretting, and breaking the
swaying rhythms of the band. Beyond the windows of the corridor, which
had been left uncurtained because of the beauty of the night, the stiff
Tudor garden with its fountains, which filled up the quadrangle, was
gaily illuminated under a bright moon; and amid all the varied colour of
lamps, drapery, dresses, faces, the antique heads ranged along the walls
of the corridor--here Marcus Aurelius, there Trajan, there Seneca--and
the marble sarcophagi which broke the line at intervals, stood in cold,
whitish relief.
Marcella passed along on Aldous's arm, conscious that people were
streaming into the corridor from all the rooms opening upon it, and that
every eye was fixed upon her and her mother. "Look, there she is," she
heard in an excited girl's voice as they passed Lord Maxwell's library,
now abandoned to the crowd like all the rest. "Come, quick! There--I
told you she was lovely!"
Every now and then some old friend, man or woman, rose smiling from the
seats along the side, and Aldous introduced his bride.
"On her dignity!" said an old hunting squire to his daughter when they
had passed. "Shy, no doubt--very natural! But nowadays girls, when
they're shy, don't giggle and blush as they used to in _my_ young days;
they look as if you meant to insult them, and they weren't going to
allow it! Oh, very handsome--very handsome--of course. But you can see
she's advanced--peculiar--or what d'ye call it?--woman's rights, I
suppose, and all that kind of thing? Like to see you go in for it,
Nettie, eh!"
"She's _awfully_ handsome," sighed his pink-cheeked, insignificant
little daughter, still craning her neck to look--"very simply dressed
too, except for those lovely pearls. She does her hair very oddly, so
low down--in those plaits. Nobody does it like that nowadays."
"That's because nobody has such a head," said her brother, a young
Hussar lieutenant, beside her, in the tone of connoisseurship. "By
George, she's ripping--she's the best-looking girl I've seen for a good
long time. But she's a Tartar, I'll swear--looks it, anyway."
"Every one says she has the most extraordinary opinions," said the girl,
eagerly. "She'll manage him, don't you think? I'm sure he's very meek
and mild."
"Don't know that," said the young man, twisting his moustache with the
air of exhaustive information. "Raeburn's a very good fellow--excellent
fellow--see him shooting, you know--that kind of thing. I expect he's
got a will when he wants it. The mother's handsome, too, and looks a
lady. The father's kept out of the way, I see. Rather a blessing for the
Raeburns. Can't be pleasant, you know, to get a man like that in the
family. Look after your spoons--that kind of thing."
Meanwhile Marcella was standing beside Miss Raeburn, at the head of the
long ball-room, and doing her best to behave prettily. One after
another she bowed to, or shook hands with, half the magnates of the
county--the men in pink, the women in the new London dresses, for which
this brilliant and long-expected ball had given so welcome an excuse.
They knew little or nothing of her, except that she was clearly
good-looking, that she was that fellow Dick Boyce's daughter and was
reported to be "odd." Some, mostly men, who said their conventional few
words to her, felt an amused admiration for the skill and rapidity with
which she had captured the _parti_ of the county; some, mostly women,
were already jealous of her. A few of the older people here and there,
both men and women--but after all they shook hands like the rest!--knew
perfectly well that the girl must be going through an ordeal, were
touched by the signs of thought and storm in the face, and looked back
at her with kind eyes.
But of these last Marcella realised nothing. What she was saying to
herself was that, if they knew little of her, she knew a great deal of
many of them. In their talks over the Stone Parlour fire she and Wharton
had gone through most of the properties, large and small, of his
division, and indeed of the divisions round, by the help of the
knowledge he had gained in his canvass, together with a blue-book--one
of the numberless!--recently issued, on the state of the midland
labourer. He had abounded in anecdote, sarcasm, reflection, based partly
on his own experiences, partly on his endless talks with the
working-folk, now in the public-house, now at their own chimney-corner.
Marcella, indeed, had a large unsuspected acquaintance with the county
before she met it in the flesh. She knew that a great many of these men
who came and spoke to her were doing their best according to their
lights, that improvements were going on, that times were mending. But
there were abuses enough still, and the abuses were far more vividly
present to her than the improvements. In general, the people who
thronged these splendid rooms were to her merely the incompetent members
of a useless class. The nation would do away with them in time!
Meanwhile it might at least be asked of them that they should practise
their profession of landowning, such as it was, with greater conscience
and intelligence--that they should not shirk its opportunities or idle
them away. And she could point out those who did both--scandalously,
intolerably. Once or twice she thought passionately of Minta Hurd,
washing and mending all day, in her damp cottage; or of the Pattons in
"the parish house," thankful after sixty years of toil for a hovel where
the rain came through the thatch, and where the smoke choked you,
unless, with the thermometer below freezing-point, you opened the door
to the blast. Why should _these_ people have all the gay clothes, the
flowers, the jewels, the delicate food--all the delight and all the
leisure? And those, nothing! Her soul rose against what she saw as she
stood there, going through her part. Wharton's very words, every
inflection of his voice was in her ears, playing chorus to the scene.
But when these first introductions, these little empty talks of three or
four phrases apiece, and all of them alike, were nearly done with,
Marcella looked eagerly round for Mary Harden. There she was, sitting
quietly against the wall in a remote corner, her plain face all smiles,
her little feet dancing under the white muslin frock which she had
fashioned for herself with so much pain under Marcella's directions.
Miss Raeburn was called away to find an arm-chair for some dowager of
importance; Marcella took advantage of the break and of the end of a
dance to hurry down the room to Mary. Aldous, who was talking to old Sir
Charles Leven, Frank's father, a few steps off, nodded and smiled to her
as he saw her move.
"Have you been dancing, Mary?" she said severely.
"I wouldn't for worlds! I never was so much amused in my life. Look at
those girls--those sisters--in the huge velvet sleeves, like coloured
balloons!--and that old lady in the pink tulle and diamonds.--I do so
want to get her her cloak! _And_ those Lancers!--I never could have
imagined people danced like that. They didn't dance them--they romped
them! It wasn't beautiful--was it?"
"Why do you expect an English crowd to do anything beautiful? If we
could do it, we should be too ashamed."
"But it _is_ beautiful, all the same, you scornful person!" cried Mary,
dragging her friend down beside her. "How pretty the girls are! And as
for the diamonds, I never saw anything so wonderful. I wish I could have
made Charles come!"
"Wouldn't he?"
"No"--she looked a little troubled--"he couldn't think it would be
quite right. But I don't know--a sight like this takes me off my feet,
shakes me up, and does _me_ a world of good!"
"You dear, simple thing!" said Marcella, slipping her hand into Mary's
as it lay on the bench.
"Oh, you needn't be so superior!" cried Mary,--"not for another year at
least. I don't believe you are much more used to it than I am!"
"If you mean," said Marcella, "that I was never at anything so big and
splendid as this before, you are quite right."
And she looked round the room with that curious, cold air of personal
detachment from all she saw, which had often struck Mary, and to-night
made her indignant.
"Then enjoy it!" she said, laughing and frowning at the same time.
"That's a much more plain duty for _you_ than it was for Charles to stay
at home--there! Haven't you been dancing?"
"No, Mr. Raeburn doesn't dance. But he thinks he can get through the
next Lancers if I will steer him."
"Then I shall find a seat where I can look at you," said Mary,
decidedly. "Ah, there is Mr. Raeburn coming to introduce somebody to
you. I knew they wouldn't let you sit here long."
Aldous brought up a young Guardsman, who boldly asked Miss Boyce for the
pleasure of a dance. Marcella consented; and off they swept into a room
which was only just beginning to fill for the new dance, and where,
therefore, for the moment the young grace of both had free play.
Marcella had been an indefatigable dancer in the old London days at
those students' parties, with their dyed gloves and lemonade suppers,
which were running in her head now, as she swayed to the rhythm of this
perfect band. The mere delight in movement came back to her; and while
they danced, she danced with all her heart. Then in the pauses she would
lean against the wall beside her partner, and rack her brain to find a
word to say to him. As for anything that _he_ said, every word--whether
of Ascot, or the last Academy, or the new plays, or the hunting and the
elections--sounded to her more vapid than the last.
Meanwhile Aldous stood near Mary Harden and watched the dancing figure.
He had never seen her dance before. Mary shyly stole a look at him from
time to time.
"Well," he said at last, stooping to his neighbour, "what are you
thinking of?"
"I think she is a dream!" said Mary, flushing with the pleasure of being
able to say it. They were great friends, he and she, and to-night
somehow she was not a bit afraid of him.
Aldous's eye sparkled a moment; then he looked down at her with a kind
smile.
"If you suppose I am going to let you sit here all night, you are very
much mistaken. Marcella gave me precise instructions. I am going off
this moment to find somebody."
"Mr. Raeburn--don't!" cried Mary, catching at him. But he was gone, and
she was left in trepidation, imagining the sort of formidable young man
who was soon to be presented to her, and shaking at the thought of him.
When the dance was over Marcella returned to Miss Raeburn, who was
standing at the door into the corridor and had beckoned to her. She went
through a number of new introductions, and declared to herself that she
was doing all she could. Miss Raeburn was not so well satisfied.
"Why can't she smile and chatter like other girls?" thought Aunt Neta,
impatiently. "It's her 'ideas,' I suppose. What rubbish! There,
now--just see the difference!"
For at the moment Lady Winterbourne came up, and instantly Marcella was
all smiles and talk, holding her friend by both hands, clinging to her
almost.
"Oh, do come here!" she said, leading her into a corner. "There's such a
crowd, and I say all the wrong things. There!" with a sigh of relief.
"Now I feel myself protected."
"I mustn't keep you," said Lady Winterbourne, a little taken aback by
her effusion. "Everybody is wanting to talk to you."
"Oh, I know! There is Miss Raeburn looking at me severely already. But I
must do as I like a little."
"You ought to do as Aldous likes," said Lady Winterbourne, suddenly, in
her deepest and most tragic voice. It seemed to her a moment had come
for admonition, and she seized it hastily.
Marcella stared at her in surprise. She knew by now that when Lady
Winterbourne looked most forbidding she was in reality most shy. But
still she was taken aback.
"Why do you say that, I wonder?" she asked, half reproachfully. "I have
been behaving myself quite nicely--I have indeed; at least, as nicely as
I knew how."
Lady Winterbourne's tragic air yielded to a slow smile.
"You look very well, my dear. That white becomes you charmingly; so do
the pearls. I don't wonder that Aldous always knows where you are."
Marcella raised her eyes and caught those of Aldous fixed upon her from
the other side of the room. She blushed, smiled slightly, and looked
away.
"Who is that tall man just gone up to speak to him?" she asked of her
companion.
"That is Lord Wandle," said Lady Winterbourne, "and his plain second
wife behind him. Edward always scolds me for not admiring him. He says
women know nothing at all about men's looks, and that Lard Wandle was
the most splendid man of his time. But I always think it an unpleasant
face."
"Lord Wandle!" exclaimed Marcella, frowning. "Oh, _please_ come with me,
dear Lady Winterbourne! I know he is asking Aldous to introduce him, and
I won't--no I will _not_--be introduced to him."
And laying hold of her astonished companion, she drew her hastily
through a doorway near, walked quickly, still gripping her, through two
connected rooms beyond, and finally landed her and herself on a sofa in
Lord Maxwell's library, pursued meanwhile through all her hurried course
by the curious looks of an observant throng.
"That man!--no, that would really have been _too_ much!" said Marcella,
using her large feather fan with stormy energy.
"What _is_ the matter with you, my dear?" said Lady Winterbourne in her
amazement; "and what is the matter with Lord Wandle?"
"You must know!" said Marcella, indignantly. "Oh, you _must_ have seen
that case in the paper last week--that _shocking_ case! A woman and two
children died in one of his cottages of blood-poisoning--nothing in the
world but his neglect--his _brutal_ neglect!" Her breast heaved; she
seemed almost on the point of weeping. "The agent was appealed to--did
nothing. Then the clergyman wrote to him direct, and got an answer. The
answer was published. For cruel insolence I never saw anything like it!
He ought to be in prison for manslaughter--and he comes _here_! And
people laugh and talk with him!"
She stopped, almost choked by her own passion. But the incident, after
all, was only the spark to the mine.
Lady Winterbourne stared at her helplessly.
"Perhaps it isn't true," she suggested. "The newspapers put in so many
lies, especially about _us_--the landlords. Edward says one ought never
to believe them. Ah, here comes Aldous."
Aldous, indeed, with some perplexity on his brow, was to be seen
approaching, looking for his betrothed. Marcella dropped her fan and sat
erect, her angry colour fading into whiteness.
"My darling! I couldn't think what had become of you. May I bring Lord
Wandle and introduce him to you? He is an old friend here, and my
godfather. Not that I am particularly proud of the relationship," he
said, dropping his voice as he stooped over her. "He is a soured,
disagreeable fellow, and I hate many of the things he does. But it is an
old tie, and my grandfather is tender of such things. Only a word or
two; then I will get rid of him."
"Aldous, I _can't_," said Marcella, looking up at him. "How could I? I
saw that case. I must be rude to him."
Aldous looked considerably disturbed.
"It was very bad," he said slowly. "I didn't know you had seen it. What
shall I do? I promised to go back for him."
"Lord Wandle--Miss Boyce!" said Miss Raeburn's sharp little voice behind
Aldous. Aldous, moving aside in hasty dismay, saw his aunt, looking very
determined, presenting her tall neighbour, who bowed with old-fashioned
deference to the girl on the sofa.
Lady Winterbourne looked with trepidation at Marcella. But the social
instinct held, to some extent. Ninety-nine women can threaten a scene of
the kind Lady Winterbourne dreaded, for one that can carry it through.
Marcella wavered; then, with her most forbidding air, she made a
scarcely perceptible return of Lord Wandle's bow.
"Did you escape in here out of the heat?" he asked her. "But I am afraid
no one lets you escape to-night. The occasion is too interesting."
Marcella made no reply. Lady Winterbourne threw in a nervous remark on
the crowd.
"Oh, yes, a great crush," said Lord Wandle. "Of course, we all come to
see Aldous happy. How long is it, Miss Boyce, since you settled at
Mellor?"
"Six months."
She looked straight before her and not at him as she answered, and her
tone made Miss Raeburn's blood boil.
Lord Wandle--a battered, coarsened, but still magnificent-looking man of
sixty--examined the speaker an instant from half-shut eyes, then put up
his hand to his moustache with a half-smile.
"You like the country?"
"Yes."
As she spoke her reluctant monosyllable, the girl had really no
conception of the degree of hostility expressed in her manner. Instead
she was hating herself for her own pusillanimity.
"And the people?"
"Some of them."
And straightway she raised her fierce black eyes to his, and the man
before her understood, as plainly as any one need understand, that,
whoever else Miss Boyce might like, she did not like Lord Wandle, and
wished for no more conversation with him.
Her interrogator turned to Aldous with smiling _aplomb_.
"Thank you, my dear Aldous. Now let me retire. No one must _monopolise_
your charming lady."
And again he bowed low to her, this time with an ironical emphasis not
to be mistaken, and walked away.
Lady Winterbourne saw him go up to his wife, who had followed him at a
distance, and speak to her roughly with a frown. They left the room, and
presently, through the other door of the library which opened on the
corridor, she saw them pass, as though they were going to their
carriage.
Marcella rose. She looked first at Miss Raeburn--then at Aldous.
"Will you take me away?" she said, going up to him; "I am tired--take me
to your room."
He put her hand inside his arm, and they pushed their way through the
crowd. Outside in the passage they met Hallin. He had not seen her
before, and he put out his hand. But there was something distant in his
gentle greeting which struck at this moment like a bruise on Marcella's
quivering nerves. It came across her that for some time past he had made
no further advances to her; that his first eager talk of friendship
between himself and her had dropped; that his _acceptance_ of her into
his world and Aldous's was somehow suspended--in abeyance. She bit her
lip tightly and hurried Aldous along. Again the same lines of gay,
chatting people along the corridor, and on either side of the wide
staircase--greetings, introduction--a nightmare of publicity.
"Rather pronounced--to carry him off like that," said a clergyman to his
wife with a kindly smile, as the two tall figures disappeared along the
upper gallery. "She will have him all to herself before long."
* * * * *
Aldous shut the door of his sitting-room behind them. Marcella quickly
drew her hand out of his arm, and going forward to the mantelpiece
rested both elbows upon it and hid her face.
He looked at her a moment in distress and astonishment, standing a
little apart. Then he saw that she was crying. The colour flooded into
his face, and going up to her he took her hand, which was all she would
yield him, and, holding it to his lips, said in her ear every soothing
tender word that love's tutoring could bring to mind. In his emotion he
told himself and her that he admired and loved her the more for the
incident downstairs, for the temper she had shown! She alone among them
all had had the courage to strike the true stern Christian note. As to
the annoyance such courage might bring upon him and her in the
future--even as to the trouble it might cause his own dear folk--what
real matter? In these things she should lead.
What could love have asked better than such a moment? Yet Marcella's
weeping was in truth the weeping of despair. This man's very sweetness
to her, his very assumption of the right to comfort and approve her,
roused in her a desperate stifled sense of bonds that should never have
been made, and that now could not be broken. It was all plain to her at
last. His touch had no thrill for her; his frown no terror. She had
accepted him without loving him, coveting what he could give her. And
now it seemed to her that she cared nothing for anything he could
give!--that the life before her was to be one series of petty conflicts
between her and a surrounding circumstance which must inevitably in the
end be too strong for her, conflicts from which neither heart nor
ambition could gain anything. She had desired a great position for what
she might do with it. But could she do with it! She would be
subdued--oh! very quickly!--to great houses and great people, and all
the vapid pomp and idle toil of wealth. All that picture of herself,
stooping from place and power, to bind up the wounds of the people, in
which she had once delighted, was to her now a mere flimsy vulgarity.
She had been shown other ideals--other ways--and her pulses were still
swaying under the audacity--the virile inventive force of the showman.
Everything she had once desired looked flat to her; everything she was
not to have, glowed and shone. Poverty, adventure, passion, the joys of
self-realisation--these she gave up. She would become Lady Maxwell, make
friends with Miss Raeburn, and wear the family diamonds!
Then, in the midst of her rage with herself and fate, she drew herself
away, looked up, and caught full the eyes of Aldous Raeburn. Conscience
stung and burned. What was this life she had dared to trifle with--this
man she had dared to treat as a mere pawn in her own game? She gave way
utterly, appalled at her own misdoing, and behaved like a penitent
child. Aldous, astonished and alarmed by her emotions and by the wild
incoherent things she said, won his way at last to some moments of
divine happiness, when, leaving her trembling hand in his, she sat
submissively beside him, gradually quieting down, summoning back her
smiles and her beauty, and letting him call her all the fond names he
would.