"I Shall go straight to Brook Street, and see if I can be a comfort to
Letty," said Mrs. Watton, with a tone and air, however, that seemed to
class her rather with the Sons of Thunder than the Sons of Consolation.
She was standing on the steps of the Ladies' Gallery entrance to the
House of Commons, and Harding, who had just called a cab for her, was
beside her.
"Could you see from the Gallery whether George had left?"
"He was still there when I came down," said Mrs. Watton, ungraciously, as
though she grudged to talk of such a monster. "I saw him near the door
while they hooted him. But, anyway, I should go to Letty--I don't forget
that I am her only relative in town."
As a matter of fact, her eyes had played her false. But the wrath with
which her large face and bonnet were shaking was cause enough for
hallucinations.
"Then I'll go, too," said Harding, who had been hesitating. "No doubt
Tressady'll stay for his thanks! But I daresay we sha'n't find Letty at
home yet. I know she was to go to the Lucys' to-night."
"Poor lamb!" said Mrs. Watton, throwing up her hands.
Harding laughed.
"Oh! Letty won't take it like a lamb--you'll see!"
"What can a woman do?" said his mother, scornfully. "A decent woman, I
mean, whom one can still have in one's house. All she can do is to cry,
and take a district."
When they reached Upper Brook Street, the butler reported that his
mistress had just come in. He made, of course, no difficulty about
admitting Lady Tressady's aunt, and Mrs. Watton sailed up to the
drawing-room, followed by Harding, who carried his head poked forward, as
was usual to him, an opera-hat under his arm, and an eyeglass swinging
from a limp wrist.
As they entered the drawing-room door, Letty, in full evening-dress, was
standing with her back to them. She had the last edition of an evening
paper open before her, so that her small head and shoulders seemed buried
in the sheet. And so eager was her attention to what she was reading that
she had not heard their approach.
"Letty!" said Mrs. Watton.
Her niece turned with a violent start.
"My dear Letty!" The aunt approached, quivering with majestic sympathy,
both hands outstretched.
Letty looked at her a moment, frowning; then recoiled impatiently,
without taking any notice of the hands.
"So I see George has spoken against his party. There has been a scene.
What has happened? What's the end?"
"Only that the Government has won its clause," said Harding, interposing
his smooth falsetto--"won by a substantial majority, too. No chance of
the Lords playing the fool!"
"The Government has won?--the Maxwells have won, that is,--she has won!"
said Letty, still frowning, her voice sharp and tingling.
"If you like to put it so," said Harding, raising his shoulders. "Yes, I
should think that set's pretty jubilant to-night."
"And you mean to say that George did and said nothing to prepare you, my
poor child?" cried Mrs. Watton, in her heaviest manner. She had picked up
the newspaper, and was looking with disgust at the large head-lines with
which the hastily printed sheet strove to eke out the brevity of the few
words in which it announced the speech of the evening: "_Scene in the
House of Commons--Break-down of the Resistance to the Bill--Sir George
Tressady's Speech--Unexampled Excitement_."
Letty breathed fast.
"He said something a day or two ago about a change, but of course I never
believed--He has disgraced himself!"
She began to pace stormily up and down the room, her white skirts
floating behind her, her small hands pulling at her gloves. Harding
Watton stood looking on in an attitude of concern, one pensive finger
laid upon his lip.
"Well, my dear Letty," said Mrs. Watton, impressively, as she laid down
the newspaper, "the only thing to be done is to take him away. Let people
forget it--if they can. And let me tell you, for your comfort, that he is
not the first man, by a long way, that woman has led astray--nor will he
be the last."
Letty's pale cheeks flamed into red. She stopped. She turned upon her
comforter with eyes of hot resentment and dislike.
"And they dare to say that he did it for her! What right has anybody
to say it?"
Mrs. Watton stared. Harding slowly and compassionately shook his head.
"I am afraid the world dares to say a great many unpleasant things--don't
you know? One has to put up with it. Lady Maxwell has a characteristic
way of doing things. It's like a painter: one can't miss the touch."
"No more than one can mistake a saying of Harding Watton's," said a
vibrating voice behind them.
And there in the open doorway stood Tressady, pale, spent, and
hollow-eyed, yet none the less the roused master of the house, determined
to assert himself against a couple of intruders.
Letty looked at him in silence, one foot beating the ground. Harding
started, and turned aside to search for his opera-hat, which he had
deposited upon the sofa. Mrs. Watton was quite unabashed.
"We did not expect you so soon," she said, holding out a chilly hand.
"And I daresay you will misunderstand our being here. I cannot help that.
It seemed to me my duty, as Letty's nearest relative in London, to come
here and condole with her to-night on this deplorable event."
"I don't know what you mean," said Tressady, coolly, his hand on his
side. "Are you speaking of the division?"
Mrs. Watton threw up her hands and her eyebrows. Then, gathering up her
dress, she marched across the room to Letty.
"Good-night, Letty. I should have been glad to have had a quiet talk with
you, but as your husband's come in I shall go. Oh! I'm not the person to
interfere between husband and wife. Get him to tell you, if you can,
_why_ he has disappointed the friends and supporters who got him into
Parliament; why he has broken all his promises, and given everybody the
right to pity his unfortunate young wife! Oh! don't alarm yourself, Sir
George! I say my mind, but I'm going. I know very well that I am
intruding. Good-night. Letty understands that she will always find
sympathy in _my_ house."
And the fierce old lady swept to the door, holding the culprit with her
eyes. Harding, too, stepped up to Letty, who was standing now by the
mantelpiece, with her back to the room. He took the hand hanging by her
side, and folded it ostentatiously in both of his.
"Good-night, dear little cousin," he said, in his most affected voice.
"If you have any need of us, command us."
"Are you going?" said Tressady. His brow was curiously wrinkled.
Harding made him a bow, and walked with rather sidling steps to the door.
Tressady followed him to the landing, called to the butler, who was still
up, and ceremoniously told him to get Mrs. Watton a cab. Then he walked
back to the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him.
"Letty!"
His tone startled her. She looked round hastily.
"Letty! you were defending me as I came in."
He was extraordinarily pale--his blue eyes flashed. Every trace of the
hauteur with which he had treated the Wattons had disappeared.
Letty recovered herself in an instant. The moment he showed softness she
became the tyrant.
"Don't come!--don't touch me!" she said passionately, putting out her
hand as he approached her. "If I defended you, it was just for decency's
sake. You _have_ disgraced us both. It is perfectly true what Aunt Watton
says. I don't suppose we shall ever get over it. Oh! don't try to bully
me"--for Tressady had turned away with an impatient groan. "It's no use.
I know you think me a little fool! _I'm_ not one of your great political
ladies, who pretend to know everything that they may keep men dangling
after them. I don't pose and play the hypocrite, as some--some people do.
But, all the same, I know that you have done for yourself, and that
people will say the most disgraceful things. Of course they will! And you
can't deny them--you know you can't. Why did you never tell me a thing?
_Who_ made you change over? Ah! you can't answer--or you won't!"
Tressady was walking up and down with folded arms. He paused at her
challenge.
"Why didn't I tell you? Do you remember that I wanted to talk to you
yesterday morning--that I suggested you should come and hear my
speech--and you wouldn't have it? You didn't care about politics, you
said, and weren't going to pretend.--What made me go over? Well--I
changed my mind--to some extent," he said slowly.
"To some extent?" She laughed scornfully, mimicking his voice. "_To
some extent_! Are you going to try and make me believe there was
nothing else?"
"No. As I walked home to-night I determined not to conceal the truth
from you. Opinions counted for something. I voted--yes, taking all
things together, I think it may be said that I voted honestly. But I
should never have taken the part I did but--" he hesitated, then went
on deliberately--"but that I had come to have a strong--wish--to give
Lady Maxwell her heart's desire. She has been my friend. I repaid her
what I could."
Letty, half beside herself, flung at him a shower of taunts hysterical
and hardly intelligible. He showed no emotion. "Of course," he said
disdainfully, "if you choose to repeat this to others you will do us both
great damage. I suppose I can't help it. For anybody else in the
world--for Mrs. Watton and her son, for instance--I have a perfectly good
political defence, and I shall defend myself stoutly. I have no intention
whatever of playing the penitent in public."
And what, she asked him, striving with all her might to regain the
self-command which could alone enable her to wound him, to get the
mastery--what was to be her part in this little comedy? Did he expect
_her_ to put up with this charming situation--to take what Marcella
Maxwell left?
"No," he said abruptly. "You have no right to reproach me or her in any
vulgar way. But I recognise that the situation is impossible. I shall
probably leave Parliament and London."
She stared at him in speechless passion, then suddenly gathered up her
fan and gloves and fled past him.
He caught at her, and stopped her, holding her satin skirt.
"My poor child!" he cried in remorse; "bear with me, Letty--and
forgive me!"
"I hate you!" she said fiercely, "and I will never forgive you!"
She wrenched her dress away; he heard her quick steps across the floor
and up the stairs.
Tressady fell into a chair, broken with exhaustion. His day in the House
of Commons alone would have tried any man's nervous strength; this final
scene had left him in a state to shrink from another word, another sound.
He must have dozed as he sat there from pure fatigue, for he found
himself waking suddenly, with a sense of chill, as the August dawn was
penetrating the closed windows and curtains.
He sprang up, and pulled the curtains back with a stealthy hand, so as to
make no noise. Then he opened the window and stepped out upon the
balcony, into a misty haze of sun.
The morning air blew upon him, and he drew it in with delight. How
blessed was the sun, and the silence of the streets, and the dappled sky
there to the east, beyond the Square!
After those long hours of mental tension in the crowd and heat of the
House of Commons, what joy! what physical relief! He caught eagerly at
the sensation of bodily pleasure, driving away his cares, letting the
morning freshness recall to him a hundred memories--the memories of a
traveller who has seen much, and loved Nature more than man. Blue
surfaces of rippling sea, cool steeps among the mountains, streams
brawling over their stones, a thousand combinations of grass and trees
and sun--these things thronged through his brain, evoked by the wandering
airs of this pale London sunrise and the few dusty plains which he could
see to his right, behind the Park railings. And, like heralds before the
presence, these various images flitted, passed, drew to one side, while
memory in trembling revealed at last the best she had--an English river
flowing through June meadows under a heaven of flame, a woman with a
child, the scents of grass and hawthorn, the plashing of water.
He hung over the balcony, dreaming.
But before long he roused himself, and went back into the house. The
gaudy drawing-room looked singularly comfortless and untidy in the
delicate purity of the morning light. The flowers Letty had worn in her
dress the night before were scattered on the floor, and the evening paper
lay on the chair, where she had flung it down.
He stood in the centre of the room, his head raised, listening. No sound.
Surely she was asleep. In spite of all the violence she had shown in
their after-talk, the memory of her speech to Mrs. Watton lingered in the
young fellow's mind. It astonished him to realise, as he stood there, in
this morning silence, straining to hear if his wife were moving overhead,
how, _pari passu_ with the headlong progress of his act of homage to the
one woman, certain sharp perceptions with regard to the other had been
rising in his mind.
His life had been singularly lacking till now in any conscious moral
strain. That a man's desires should outrun his conscience had always
seemed to him, on the whole, the normal human state. But all sorts of new
standards and ideals had begun to torment him since the beginning of his
friendship with Marcella Maxwell, and a hundred questions that had never
yet troubled him were even now pressing through his mind as to his
relations to his wife, and the inexorableness of his debt towards her.
Moreover, he had hardly left the House of Commons and its uproar--his
veins were still throbbing with the excitement of the division--when a
voice said to him, "This is the end! You have had your 'moment'--now
leave the stage before any mean anti-climax comes to spoil it all. Go.
Break your life across. Don't wait to be dismissed and shaken off--take
her gratitude with you, and go!"
Ah! but not yet--not yet! He sat down before his wife's little
writing-table, and buried his face in his hands, while his heart burnt
with longing. One day--then he would accept his fate, and try and mend
both his own life and Letty's.
Would it be generous to drop out of her ken at once, leave the gift
in her lap, and say nothing? Ah! but he was not capable of it. His
act must have its price. Just one half hour with her--face to face.
Then, shut the door--and, good-bye! What was there to fear? He could
control himself. But after all these weeks, after their conversation
of the night before, to go away without a word would be
discourteous--unkind even--almost a confession to her of the whys and
wherefores of what he had done.
He had a book of hers which he had promised to return. It was a precious
little manuscript book, containing records written out by herself of
lives she had known among the poor. She prized it much, and had begged
him to keep it safe and return it.
He took it out of his pocket, looked at it, and put it carefully back. In
a few hours the little book should pass him into her presence. The
impulse that possessed him barred for the moment all remorse, all regret.
Then he looked for paper and pen and began to write.
He sat for some time, absorbed in his task, doing his very best with it.
It was a letter to his constituents, and it seemed to him he must have
been thinking of it in his sleep, so easily did the sentences run.
No doubt, ill-natured gossip of the Watton type would be humming and
hissing round her name for the next few days. Well, let him write his
letter as well as he could, and publish it as soon as possible! It took
him about an hour and a half, and when he read it over it appeared to him
the best piece of political statement he had yet achieved. Very likely it
would make Fontenoy more savage still. But Fontenoy's tone and attitude
in the House of Commons had been already decisive. The breech between
them was complete.
He put the sheets down at last, groaning within himself. Fustian and
emptiness! What would ever give him back his old self-confidence, the gay
whole-heartedness with which he had entered Parliament? But the thing had
to be done, and he had done it efficiently. Moreover, the brain-exercise
had acted as a tonic; his tension of nerve had returned. He stood beside
the window once more, looking out into a fast-awakening London with an
absent and frowning eye. He was thinking out the next few hours.
* * * * *
A little after eight Letty was roused from a restless sleep by the sound
of a closing door. She rang hastily, and Grier appeared.
"Who was that went out?"
"Sir George, my lady. He's just dressed and left word that he had gone to
take a packet to the 'Pall Mall' office. He said it must be there early,
and he would breakfast at his club."
Letty sat up in bed, and bade Grier draw the curtains, and be quick
in bringing her what she wanted. The maid glanced inquisitively,
first at her mistress's haggard looks, then at the writing-table, as
she passed it on her way to draw the blinds. The table was littered
with writing-materials; some torn sheets had been transferred to the
waste-paper basket, and a sealed letter was lying, address
downwards, on the blotting-book. Letty, however, did not encourage
her to talk. Indeed, she found herself sent away, and her mistress
dressed without her.
Half an hour later Letty in her hat and cape slipped out of her room. She
looked over the banisters into the hall. No one was to be seen, and she
ran downstairs to the hall-door, which closed softly behind her. Five
minutes later a latch-key turned quietly in the lock, and Letty
reappeared. She went rapidly up to her room, a pale, angry ghost,
glancing from side to side.
"Is Lady Maxwell at home?"
The butler glanced doubtfully at the inquirer.
"Sir George Tressady, I believe, sir? I will go and ask, if you will
kindly wait a moment. Her ladyship does not generally see visitors in
the morning."
"Tell her, please, that I have brought a parcel to return to her."
The butler retired, and shortly appeared at the corner of the stairs
beckoning to the visitor. George mounted.
They passed through the outer drawing-room, and the servant drew aside
the curtain of the inner room. Was it February again? The scent of
hyacinth and narcissus seemed to be floating round him.
There was a hasty movement, and a tall figure came with a springing step
to meet him.
"Sir George! How kind of you to come! I wish Maxwell were in. He would
have enjoyed a chat with you so much. But Lord Ardagh sent him a note at
breakfast-time, and he has just gone over to Downing Street. Hallin,
move your puzzle a little, and make a way for Sir George to pass. Will
you sit there?"
Hallin sprang up readily enough at the sight of his friend Sir George,
put a fat hand into his, and then gave his puzzle-map of Europe a
vigorous push to one side that drove Crete helplessly into the arms of
the United Kingdom.
"Oh! what a muddle!" cried his mother, laughing, and standing to look at
the disarray. "You must try, Hallin, and see if you can straighten it
out--as Sir George straightened out father's Bill for him last night."
She turned to him; but the softness of her eyes was curiously veiled. It
struck George at once that she was not at her ease--that there had been
embarrassment in her very greeting of him.
They began to talk of the debate. She asked him minutely about the
progress of the combination that had defeated Fontenoy. They discussed
this or that man's attitude, or they compared the details of the division
with those of the divisions which had gone before.
All through it seemed to Tressady that the person sitting in his chair
and talking politics was a kind of automaton, with which the real George
Tressady had very little to do. The automaton wore a grey summer suit,
and seemed to be talking shrewdly enough, though with occasional lapses
and languors. The real Tressady sat by, and noted what passed. "_How pale
she is! She is not really happy--or triumphant. How she avoids all
personal talk--nothing to be said_, _or hardly, of my part in it--my
effort. Ah! she praises my speech, but with no warmth--I see! she would
rather not owe such a debt to me. Her mind is troubled--perhaps
Maxwell?--or some vile talk?"_
Meanwhile, all that Marcella perceived was that the man beside her
became gradually more restless and more silent. She sat near him, with
Hallin at her feet, her beautiful head held a little stiffly, her eyes
at once kind and reserved. Nothing could have been simpler than her cool
grey dress, her quiet attitude. Yet it seemed to him he had never felt
her dignity so much--a moral dignity, infinitely subtle and exquisite,
which breathed not only from her face and movements, but from the room
about her--the room which held the pictures she loved, the books she
read, the great pots of wild flowers or branching green it was her joy
to set like jewels in its shady corners. He looked round it from time to
time. It had for him the associations and the scents of a shrine, and he
would never see it again! His heart swelled within him. The strange
double sense died away.
Presently, Hallin, having put his puzzle safely into its box, ran off to
his lessons. His mother looked after him, wistfully. And he had no sooner
shut the door than Tressady bent forward. "You see--I thought it out!"
"Yes indeed!" she said, "and to some purpose."
But her voice was uncertain, and veiled like her eyes. Something in her
reluctance to meet him, to talk it over, both alarmed and stung him. What
was wrong? Had she any grievance against him? Had he so played his part
as to offend her in any way? He searched his memory anxiously, his
self-control, that he had been so sure of, failing him fast.
"It was a strange finish to the session--wasn't it?" he said, looking at
her. "We didn't think it would end so, when we first began to argue. What
a queer game it all is! Well, my turn of it will have been exciting
enough--though short. I can't say, however, that I shall much regret
putting down the cards. I ought never to have taken a hand."
She turned to him, in flushed dismay.
"You _are_ thinking of leaving Parliament? But why--_why_ should you?"
"Oh yes!--I am quite clear about that," he said deliberately. "It was
not yesterday only. I am of no use in Parliament. And the only use it
has been to me, is to show me--that--well!--that I have no party really,
and no convictions. London has been a great mistake. I must get out of
it--if only--lest my private life should drift on a rock and go to
pieces. So far as I know it has brought me one joy only, one happiness
only--to know you!"
He turned very pale. The hand that was lying on her lap suddenly shook.
She raised it hastily, took some flowers out of a jar of poppies and
grass that was standing near, and nervously put them back again. Then she
said gently, almost timidly:
"I owe a great deal to your friendship. My mind--please believe it--is
full of thanks. I lay awake last night, thinking of all the thousands of
people that speech of yours would save--all the lives that hang upon it."
"I never thought of them at all," he said abruptly. His heart seemed to
be beating in his throat.
She shrank a little. Evidently her presence of mind failed her, and he
took advantage.
"I never thought of them," he repeated, "or, at least, they weighed with
me as nothing compared with another motive. As for the thing itself, by
the time yesterday arrived I had given up my judgment to yours--I had
simply come to think that what you wished was good. A force I no longer
questioned drove me on to help you to your end. That was the whole secret
of last night. The rest was only means to a goal."
But he paused. He saw that she was trembling--that the tears were
in her eyes.
"I have been afraid," she said, trying hard for composure--"it has been
weighing upon me all through these hours--that--I had been putting a
claim--a claim of my own forward." It seemed hardly possible for her to
find the words. "And I have been realising the issues for _you_, feeling
bitterly that I had done a great wrong--if it were not a matter of
conviction--in--in wringing so much from a friend. This morning
everything,--the victory, the joy of seeing hard work bear fruit,--it has
all been blurred to me."
He gazed at her a moment--fixing every feature, every line upon
his memory.
"Don't let it be," he said quietly, at last. "I have had my great moment.
It does not fall to many to feel as I felt for about an hour last night.
I had seen you in trouble and anxiety for many weeks. I was able to
brush them away, to give you relief and joy,--at least, I thought I
was"--he drew himself up with a half-impatient smile. "Sometimes I
suspected that--that your kindness might be troubled about me; but I said
to myself, 'that will pass away, and the solid thing--the fact--will
remain. She longed for this particular thing. She shall have it. And if
the truth is as she supposes it,--why not?--there are good men and keen
brains with her--what has been done will go on gladdening and satisfying
her year by year. As for me, I shall have acknowledged, shall have
repaid--'"
He hesitated--paused--looked up.
A sudden terror seized her--her lips parted.
"Don't--don't say these things!" she said, imploring, lifting her hand.
It was like a child flinching from a punishment.
He smiled unsteadily, trying to master himself, to find a way through the
tumult of feeling.
"Won't you listen to me?" he said at last, "I sha'n't ever trouble
you again."
She could make no reply. Intolerable gratitude and pain held her, and he
went on speaking, gazing straight into her shrinking face.
"It seems to me," he said slowly, "the people who grow up in the dry and
mean habit of mind that I grew up in, break through in all sorts of
different ways. Art and religion--I suppose they change and broaden a
man. I don't know. I am not an artist--and religion talks to me of
something I don't understand. To me, to know you has broken down the
walls, opened the windows. It always used to come natural to me--well!
to think little of people, to look for the mean, ugly things in them,
especially in women. The only people I admired were men of
action--soldiers, administrators; and it often seemed to me that women
hampered and belittled them. I said to myself, one mustn't let women
count for too much in one's life. And the idea of women troubling their
heads with politics, or social difficulties, half amused, half disgusted
me. At the same time I was all with Fontenoy in hating the usual
philanthropic talk about the poor. It seemed to be leading us to
mischief--I thought the greater part of it insincere. Then I came to know
you.--And, after all, it seemed a woman could talk of public things, and
still be real--the humanity didn't rub off, the colour stood! It was
easy, of course, to say that you had a personal motive--other people said
it, and I should have liked to echo it. But from the beginning I knew
that didn't explain it. All the women,"--he checked himself,--"most of
the women I had ever known judged everything by some petty personal
standard. They talked magnificently, perhaps, but there was always
something selfish and greedy at bottom. Well, I was always looking for it
in you! Then instead--suddenly--I found myself anxious lest what I said
should displease or hurt you--lest you should refuse to be my friend. I
longed, desperately, to make you understand me--and then, after our
talks, I hated myself for posing, and going further than was sincere. It
was so strange to me not to be scoffing and despising."
Marcella woke from her trance of pain--looked at him with amazement.
But the sight of him--a man, with the perspiration on his brow,
struggling now to tell the bare truth about himself and his
plight--silenced her. She hung towards him again, as pale as he, bearing
what fate had sent her.
"And ever since that day," he went on, putting his hand over his eyes,
"when you walked home with me along the river, to be with you, to watch
you, to puzzle over you, has built up a new self in me, that strains
against and tears the old one. So these things--these heavenly, exquisite
things that some men talk of--this sympathy, and purity, and
sweetness--were true! They were true because you existed--because I had
come to know something of your nature--had come to realise what it might
be--for a man to have the right--"
He broke off, and buried his face in his hands, murmuring incoherent
things. Marcella rose hurriedly, then stood motionless, her head turned
from him, that she might not hear. She felt herself stifled with rising
tears. Once or twice she began to speak, and the words died away again.
At last she said, bending towards him:
"I have done very ill--very, _very_ ill. I have been thinking all through
of my personal want--of personal victory."
He shook his head, protesting. And she hardly knew how to go on. But
suddenly the word of nature, of truth, came; though in the speaking it
startled them both.
"Sir George!"--she put out her hand timidly and touched him--"may I tell
you what I am thinking of? Not of you, nor of me--of another person
altogether!"
He looked up.
"My wife?" he said, almost in his usual voice.
She said nothing; she was struggling with herself. He got up abruptly,
walked to the open window, stood there a few seconds, and came back.
"It has to be all thought out again," he said, looking at her
appealingly. "I must go away, perhaps--and realise--what can be done. I
took marriage as carelessly as I took everything else. I must try and do
better with it."
A sudden perception leapt in Marcella, revealing strange worlds. How she
could have hated--with what fierceness, what flame!--the woman who taught
ideal truths to Maxwell! She thought of the little self-complacent being
in the white satin wedding-dress, that had sat beside her at Castle
Luton--thought of her with overwhelming soreness and pain. Stepping
quickly, her tears driven back, she went across the room to Tressady.
"I don't know what to say," she began, stopping suddenly beside him, and
leaning her hand for support on a table while her head drooped. "I have
been very selfish--very blind. But--mayn't it be the beginning--of
something quite--quite--different? I was thinking only of Maxwell--or
myself. But I ought to have thought of you--of my friend. I ought to have
seen--but oh! how _could_ I!" She broke off, wrestling with this amazing
difficulty of choosing, amid all the thoughts that thronged to her lips,
something that might be said--and if said, might heal.
But before he could interrupt her, she went on: "The harm was, in acting
all through--by myself--as if only you and I, and Maxwell's work--were
concerned. If I had made you known to _him_--if I had remembered--had
thought--"
But she stopped again, in a kind of bewilderment. In truth she did not
yet understand what had happened to her--how it could have happened to
her--to _her_, whose life, soul, and body, to the red ripe of its inmost
heart, was all Maxwell's, his possession, his chattel.
Tressady looked at her with a little sad smile.
"It was your unconsciousness," he said, in a low trembling voice, "of
what you are--and have--that was so beautiful."
Somehow the words recalled her natural dignity, her noble pride as
Maxwell's wife. She stood erect, composure and self-command returning.
She was not her own, to humble herself as she pleased.
"We must never talk to each other like this again," she said gently,
after a little pause. "We must try and understand each other--the _real_
things in each other's lives.--Don't lay a great remorse on me, Sir
George!--don't spoil your future, and your wife's--don't give up
Parliament! You have great, great gifts! All this will seem just a
passing misunderstanding--both to you--and me--by and by. We shall learn
to be--real friends--you and we--together?"
She looked at him appealing--her face one prayer.
But he, flushing, shook his head.
"I must not come into your world," he said huskily. "I must go."
The wave of grief rolled upon her again. She turned away, looking
across the room with wide dim eyes, as though asking for some help that
did not come.
Tressady walked quickly back to the chair where he had been sitting, and
took up his hat and gloves. Suddenly, as he looked back to her, he struck
one of the gloves across his hand.
"What a _coward_--what a mean whining wretch I was to come to you this
morning! I said to myself--like a hypocrite--that I could come--and
go--without a word. My God--if I had!"--the low hoarse voice became a cry
of pain--"I might still have taken some joy--"
He wrestled with himself.
"It was mad selfishness," he said at last, recovering himself by a fierce
effort. "Mad it must have been--or I could never have come here to give
you pain. Some demon drove me. Oh, forgive me!--forgive me! Good-bye! I
shall bless you while I live. But you--you must never think of me, never
speak of me--again."
She felt his grasp upon her fingers. He stooped, passionately kissed her
hand and a fold of her dress. She rose hurriedly; but the door had
closed upon him before she had found her voice or choked down the sob in
her throat.
She could only drop back into her chair, weeping silently, her face
hidden in her hands.
A few minutes passed. There was a step outside. She sprang up and
listened, ready to fly to the window and hide herself among the curtains.
Then the colour flooded into her cheek. She waited. Maxwell came in. He,
too, looked disturbed, and as he entered the room he thrust a letter into
his pocket, almost with violence. But when his eyes fell on his wife a
pang seized him. He hurried to her, and she leant against him, saying in
a sobbing voice:
"George Tressady has been here. I seem to have done him a wrong--and his
wife. I am not fit to help you, Aldous. I do such rushing, blind, foolish
things--and all that one hoped and worked for turns to mere selfishness
and misery. Whom shall I hurt next? You, perhaps--_you_!"
And she clung to him in despair.
* * * * *
A few minutes later the husband and wife were in conference together,
Marcella sitting, Maxwell standing beside her. Marcella's tears had
ceased; but never had Maxwell seen her so overwhelmed, so sad, and he
felt half ashamed of his own burning irritation and annoyance with the
whole matter.
Clearly, what he had dimly foreseen on the night of her return from the
Mile End meeting had happened. This young man, ill-balanced, ill-mated,
yet full of a sensitive ability and perception, had fallen in love with
her; and Maxwell owed his political salvation to his wife's charm.
The more he loved her, the more odious the situation was to him. That any
rational being should have even the shred of an excuse for regarding her
as the political coquette, using her beauty for a personal end, struck
him as a kind of sacrilege, and made him rage inwardly. Nevertheless, the
idea struck him--struck and kindled him all at once that the very
perfectness of this tie that bound them together weakened her somewhat as
a woman in her dealing with the outside world. It withdrew from her some
of a woman's ordinary intuitions with regard to the men around her. The
heart had no wants, and therefore no fears. To any man she liked she was
always ready, as she came to know him, to show her true self with a
freedom and loveliness that were like the freedom and loveliness of a
noble child. To have supposed that such a man could have any feelings
towards her other than those she gave to her friends would have seemed to
her a piece of ill-bred vanity. Such contingencies lay outside her ken;
she would have brushed them away with a laughing contempt had they been
presented to her. Her life was at once too happy and too busy for such
things. How could anyone fall in love with Aldous's wife? Why should
they?--if one was to ask the simplest question of all.
Yet Maxwell, as he stood looking down upon her, conscious of a certain
letter in his inner pocket, felt with growing yet most unwilling
determination that he must somehow try and make her turn her eyes upon
this dingy world and see it as it is.
For it was not the case merely of a spiritual drama in which a few souls,
all equally sincere and void of offence, were concerned. That, in
Maxwell's eyes, would have been already disagreeable and tragic enough.
But here was this keen, spiteful crowd of London society watching for
what it might devour--those hateful newspapers!--not to speak of the
ordinary fool of everyday life.
There had not been wanting a number of small signs and warnings. The
whole course of the previous day's debate, the hour of Tressady's speech,
while Maxwell sat listening in the Speaker's Gallery overhead, had been
for him--for her, too--poisoned by a growing uneasiness, a growing
distaste for the triumph laid at their feet. She had come down to him
from the Ladies' Gallery pale and nervous, shrinking almost from the
grasp of his hand.
"What will happen? Has he made his position in Parliament impossible?"
she had said to him as they stood together for a moment in the Home
Secretary's room; and he understood, of course, that she was speaking of
Tressady. In the throng that presently overwhelmed them he had no time to
answer her; but he believed that she, too, had been conscious of the
peculiar note in some of the congratulations showered upon them on their
way through the crowded corridors and lobbies. On the steps of St.
Stephen's entrance an old white-haired gentleman, the friend and
connection of Maxwell's father, had clapped the successful Minister on
the back, with a laughing word in his ear: "Upon my word, Aldous, your
beautiful lady is a wife to conjure with! I hear she has done the whole
thing--educated the young man, brought him to his bearings, spoilt all
Fontenoy's plans, broken up the group, in fact. Glorious!" and the old
man looked with eyes half sarcastic, half admiring at the form of Lady
Maxwell standing beside the carriage-door.
"I imagine the group has broken itself up," said Maxwell, shortly,
shaking off his tormentor. But as he glanced back from, the
carriage-window to the crowded doorway, and the faces looking after them,
the thought of the talk that was probably passing amid the throng set
every nerve on edge.
Meanwhile she sat beside him, unconsciously a little more stately than
usual, but curiously silent--till at last, as they were nearing Trafalgar
Square, she threw out her hand to him, almost timidly:
"You _do_ rejoice?"
"I do," he said, with a long breath, pressing the hand. "I suppose
nothing ever happens as one has foreseen it. How strange, when one looks
back to that Sunday!"
She made no reply, and since then Tressady's name had been hardly
mentioned between them. They had discussed every speech but his--even
when the morning papers came, reflecting the astonishment and
excitement of the public. The pang in Marcella's mind was--"Aldous
thinks I asked a personal favour--_Did_ I?" And memory would fall back
into anxious recapitulation of the scene with Tressady. Had she indeed
pressed her influence with him too much--taken advantage of his
Parliamentary youth and inexperience? In the hours of the night that
followed the division, merely to ask the question tormented a
conscience as proud as it was delicate.
And now!--this visit--this incredible declaration--this eagerness for his
reward! Maxwell's contempt and indignation were rising fast. Mere
chivalry, mere decent manners even, he thought, might have deterred a man
from such an act. Meanwhile, in rapid flashes of thought he began to
debate with himself how he should use this letter in his pocket--this
besmirching, degrading letter.
But Marcella had much more to say. Presently she roused herself from her
trance and looked at her husband.
"Aldous!"--she touched him on the arm, and he turned to her
gravely--"There was one moment at Mile End, when--when I did play upon
his pity--his friendship. He came down to Mile End on Thursday night. I
told you. I saw he was unhappy--unhappy at home. He wanted sympathy
desperately. I gave it him. Then I urged him to throw himself into his
public work--to think out this vote he was to give. Oh! I don't know!--I
don't know--" she broke off, in a depressed voice, shaking her head
slowly--"I believe I threw myself upon his feelings--I felt that he was
very sympathetic, that I had a power over him--it was a kind of bribery."
Her brow drooped under his eye.
"I believe you are quite unjust to yourself," he said unwillingly. "Of
course, if any man chooses to misinterpret a confidence--"
"No," she said steadily. "I knew. It was quite different from any other
time. I remember how uncomfortable I felt afterwards. I did try to
influence him--just through, being a woman. There!--it is quite true."
He could not withdraw his eyes from hers--from the mingling of pride,
humility, passion, under the dark lashes.
"And if you did, do you suppose that _I_ can blame you?" he said slowly.
He saw that she was holding an inquisition in her own heart, and looking
to him as judge. How could he judge?--whatever there might be to judge.
He adored her.
For the moment she did not answer him. She clasped her hands round her
knees, thinking aloud.
"From the beginning, I remember I thought of him as somebody quite new
and fresh to what he was doing--somebody who would certainly be
influenced--who ought to be influenced. And then"--she raised her eyes
again, half shrinking--"there was the feeling, I suppose, of personal
antagonism to Lord Fontenoy! One could not be sorry to detach one of his
chief men. Besides, after Castle Luton, George Tressady was so
attractive! You did not know him, Aldous; but to talk to him stirred all
one's energies; it was a perpetual battle--one took it up again and
again, enjoying it always. As we got deeper in the fight I tried never to
think of him as a member of Parliament--often I stopped myself from
saying things that might have persuaded him, as far as the House was
concerned. And yet, of course"--her face, in its nobility, took a curious
look of hardness--"I _did_ know all the time that he was coming to think
more and more of me--to depend on me. He disliked me at first--afterwards
he seemed to avoid me--then I felt a change. Now I see I thought of him
all along; just in one capacity--in relation to what I wanted--whether I
tried to persuade him or no. And all the time--"
A cloud of pain effaced the frown. She leant her head against her
husband's arm.
"Aldous!"--her voice was low and miserable,--"what can his wife have
felt towards me? I never thought of her after Castle Luton--she seemed to
me such a vulgar, common little being. Surely, surely!--if they are so
unhappy, it can't be--_my_ doing; there was cause enough--"
Nothing could have been more piteous than the tone. It was laden with the
remorse that only such a nature could feel for such a cause. Maxwell's
hand touched her head tenderly. A variety of expressions crossed his
face, then a sharp flash of decision.
"Dear! I think you ought to know--she has written to me."
Marcella sprang up. Face and neck flushed crimson. She threw him an
uncertain look, the nostrils quivering.
"Will you show me the letter?"
He hesitated. On his first reading of it he had vowed to himself that she
should never see it. But since her confessions had begun to make the
matter clearer to him a moral weight had pressed upon him. She must
realise her power, her responsibility! Moreover, they two, with
conscience and good sense to guide them, had got to find a way out of
this matter. He did not feel that he could hide the letter from her if
there was to be common action and common understanding.
So he gave it to her.
She read it pacing up and down, unconscious sounds of pain and protest
forcing themselves to her lips from time to time, which made it very
difficult for him to stand quietly where he was. On that effusion of gall
and bitterness poor Letty had spent her sleepless night. Every charge
that malice could bring, every distortion that jealousy could apply to
the simplest incident, every insinuation that, judged by her own
standard, had seemed to her most likely to work upon a husband--Letty had
crowded them all into the mean, ill-written letter--the letter of a
shopgirl trying to rescue her young man from the clutches of a rival.
But every sentence in it was a stab to Marcella. When she had finished it
she stood with it in her hand beside her writing-table, looking absently
through the window, pale, and deep in thought. Maxwell watched her.
When her moment of consideration broke her look swept round to him.
"I shall go to her," she said simply. "I must see her!"
Maxwell pondered.
"I think," he said reluctantly, "she would only repulse and insult you."
"Then it must be borne. It cannot end so."
She walked up to him and let him draw his arm about her. They stood in
silence for a minute or two. When she raised her head again, her eyes
sought his beseechingly.
"Aldous, help me! If we cannot repair this mischief,--you and I,--what
are we worth? I will tell you my plan--"
There was a sound at the door. Husband and wife moved away from each
other as the butler entered.
"My lord, Mrs. Allison and Lord Fontenoy are in the library. They asked
me to say that they wish to consult your lordship on something very
urgent. I told them I thought your lordship was engaged, but I would
come and see."
Marcella and Maxwell looked at each other. Ancoats! No doubt the
catastrophe so long staved off had at last arrived. Maxwell's stifled
exclamation was the groan of the overworked man who hardly knows how to
find mind enough for another anxiety. But a new and sudden light shone in
his wife's face. She turned to the servant almost with eagerness:
"Please tell Mrs. Allison and Lord Fontenoy to come up."