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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/9634-8.txt b/9634-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..94af692 --- /dev/null +++ b/9634-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10501 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Sir George Tressady, Vol. II, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Sir George Tressady, Vol. II + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Posting Date: December 10, 2011 [EBook #9634] +Release Date: January, 2006 +First Posted: October 11, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR GEORGE TRESSADY, VOL. II *** + + + + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Mary +Meehan, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + + +SIR GEORGE TRESSADY, VOLUME II + +IN TWO VOLUMES + +BY + +MRS. HUMPHRY WARD + +AUTHOR OF "MARCELLA," "THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE," +"ROBERT ELSMERE," ETC. + + + + + + + +VOLUME II. + + + + +PART II + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +On a hot morning at the end of June, some four weeks after the Castle +Luton visit, George Tressady walked from Brook Street to Warwick Square, +that he might obtain his mother's signature to a document connected with +the Shapetsky negotiations, and go on from there to the House of Commons. + +She was not in the drawing-room, and George amused himself during his +minutes of waiting by inspecting the various new photographs of the +Fullerton family that were generally to be found on her table. What a +characteristic table it was, littered with notes and bills, with patterns +from every London draper, with fashion-books and ladies' journals +innumerable! And what a characteristic room, with its tortured +decorations and crowded furniture, and the flattered portraits of Lady +Tressady, in every caprice of costume, which covered the walls! George +looked round it all with an habitual distaste; yet not without the secret +admission that his own drawing-room was very like it. + +His mother might, he feared, have a scene in preparation for him. + +For Letty, under cover of some lame excuse or other, had persisted in +putting off the visit which Lady Tressady had intended to pay them at +Ferth during the Whitsuntide recess, and since their return to town +there had been no meeting whatever between the two ladies. George, +indeed, had seen his mother two or three times. But even he had just let +ten days pass without visiting her. He supposed he should find her in a +mood of angry complaint; nor could he deny that there would be some +grounds for it. + +"Good morning, George," said a sharp voice, which startled him as he was +replacing a photograph of the latest Fullerton baby. "I thought you had +forgotten your way here by now." + +"Why, mother, I am very sorry," he said, as he kissed her. "But I +have really been terribly busy, what with two Committees and this +important debate." + +"Oh! don't make excuses, pray. And of course--for Letty--you won't even +attempt it. I wouldn't if I were you." + +Lady Tressady settled herself on a chair with her back to the light, and +straightened the ribbons on her dress with hasty fingers. Something in +her voice struck George. He looked at her closely. + +"Is there anything wrong, mother? You don't look very well." + +Lady Tressady got up hurriedly, and began to move about the room, picking +up a letter here, straightening a picture there. George felt a sudden +prick of alarm. Were there some new revelations in store for him? But +before he could speak she interrupted him. + +"I should be very well if it weren't for this heat," she said pettishly. +"Do put that photograph down, George!--you do fidget so! Haven't you got +any news for me--anything to amuse me? Oh! those horrid papers!--I see. +Well! they'll wait a little. By the way, the 'Morning Post' says that +young scamp, Lord Ancoats, has gone abroad. I suppose that girl was +bought off." + +She sat down again in a shady corner, fanning herself vigorously. + +"I am afraid I can't tell you any secrets," said George, smiling, "for I +don't know any. But it looks as though Mrs. Allison and Maxwell between +them had somehow found a way out." + +"How's the mother?" + +"You see, she has gone abroad, too--to Bad Wildheim. In fact, Lord +Ancoats has taken her." + +"That's the place for heart, isn't it?" said his mother, abruptly. +"There's a man there that cures everybody." + +"I believe so," said George. "May we come to business, mother? I have +brought these papers for you to sign, and I must get to the House in +good time." + +Lady Tressady seemed to take no notice. She got up again, restlessly, and +walked to the window. + +"How do you like my dress, George? Now, don't imagine anything absurd! +Justine made it, and it was quite cheap." + +George could not help smiling--all the more that he was conscious of +relief. She would not be asking him to admire her dress if there were +fresh debts to confess to him. + +"It makes you look wonderfully young," he said, turning a critical eye, +first upon the elegant gown of some soft pinky stuff in which his mother +had arrayed herself, then upon the subtly rouged and powdered face above +it. "You are a marvellous person, mother! All the same, I think the heat +must have been getting hold of you, for your eyes are tired. Don't racket +too much!" + +He spoke with his usual careless kindness, laying a hand upon her arm. + +Lady Tressady drew herself away, and, turning her back upon him, looked +out of the window. + +"Have you seen any more of the Maxwells?" she said, over her shoulders. + +George gave a slight involuntary start. Then it occurred to him that his +mother was making conversation in an odd way. + +"Once or twice," he said, reluctantly, in reply. "They were at the +Ardaghs' the other night, of course." + +"Oh! you were there?"--Lady Tressady's voice was sharp again. "Well, of +course. Letty went as your wife, and you're a member of Parliament. Lady +Ardagh knows _me_ quite well--but I don't count now; she used to be glad +enough to ask me." + +"It was a great crush, and very hot," said George, not knowing +what to say. + +Lady Tressady frowned as she looked out of the window. + +"Well!--and Lady Maxwell--is she as absurd as ever?" + +"That depends upon one's point of view," said George, smiling. "She +seemed as convinced as ever." + +"Who sent Mrs. Allison to that place? Barham, I suppose. He always sends +his patients there. They say he's in league with the hotel-keepers." + +George stared. What was the matter with her? What made her throw out +these jerky sentences with this short, hurried breath. + +Suddenly Lady Tressady turned. + +"George!" + +"Yes, mother." He stepped nearer to her. She caught his sleeve. + +"George "--there was something like a sob in her voice--"you were quite +right. I am ill. There, don't talk about it. The doctors are all fools. +And if you tell Letty anything about it, I'll never forgive you." + +George put his arm round her, but was not, in truth, much disturbed. Lady +Tressady's repertory, alas! had many _rôles_. He had known her play that +of the invalid at least as effectively as any other. + +"You are just overdone with London and the heat," he said. "I saw it at +once. You ought to go away." + +She looked up in his face. + +"You don't believe it?" she said. + +Then she seemed to stagger. He saw a terrible drawn look in her face, +and, putting out all his strength, he held her, and helped her to a sofa. + +"Mother!" he exclaimed, kneeling beside her, "what is the matter?" + +Voice and tone were those of another man, and Lady Tressady quailed +under the change. She pointed to a small bag on a table near her. He +opened it, and she took out a box, from which she swallowed something. +Gradually breath and colour returned, and she began to move restlessly. + +"That was nothing," she said, as though to herself--"nothing--and it +yielded at once. Well, George, I knew you thought me a humbug!" + +Her eyes glanced at him with a kind of miserable triumph. He looked down +upon her, still kneeling, horror-struck against his will. After a life of +acting, was this the truth--this terror, which spoke in every movement, +and in some strange way had seized upon and infected himself? + +He urgently asked her to be frank with him. And with a sob she poured +herself out. It was the tragic, familiar story that every household +knows. Grave symptoms, suddenly observed--the hurried visit to a +specialist--his verdict and his warnings. + +"Of course, he said at first I ought to give up everything and go +abroad--to this very same place--Bad-what-do-you-call-it? But I told him +straight out I couldn't and wouldn't do anything of the sort. I am just +eaten up with engagements. And as to staying at home and lying-up, that's +nonsense--I should die of that in a fortnight. So I told him to give me +something to take, and that was all I could do. And in the end he quite +came round--they always do if you take your own line--and said I had +much better do what suited me, and take care. Besides, what do any of +them know? They all confess they're just fumbling about. Now, surgery, +of course--that's different. Battye"--Battye was Lady Tressady's ordinary +medical adviser--"doesn't believe all the other man said. I knew he +wouldn't. And as for making an invalid of me, he sees, of course, that it +would kill me at once. There, my dear George, don't make too much of it. +I think I was a fool to tell you." + +And Lady Tressady struggled to a sitting position, looking at her son +with a certain hostility. The frown on her white face showed that she was +already angry with him for his emotion--this rare emotion, that she had +never yet been able to rouse in him. + +He could only implore her to be guided by her doctor--to rest, to give up +at least some of the mill-round of her London life, if she would not go +abroad. Lady Tressady listened to him with increasing obstinacy and +excitability. + +"I tell you I know best!" she said, passionately, at last. "Don't go on +like this--it worries me. Now, look here--" + +She turned upon him with emphasis. + +"Promise me not to tell Letty a word of this. Nobody shall know--she +least of all. I shall do just as usual. In fact, I expect a very gay +season. Three 'drums' this afternoon and a dinner-party--it doesn't +look as though I were quite forgotten yet, though Letty does think me +an old fogey!" + +She smiled at him with a ghastly mixture of defiance and conceit. The old +age in her pinched face, fighting with the rouged cheeks and the gaiety +of her fanciful dress, was pitiful. + +"Promise," she said. "Not a word--to her!" + +George promised, in much distress. While he was speaking she had a slight +return of pain, and was obliged to submit to lie down again. + +"At least," he urged, "don't go out to-day. Give yourself a rest. Shall I +go back, and ask Letty to come round to tea?" + +Lady Tressady made a face like a spoilt child. + +"I don't think she'll come," she said. "Of course, I know from the first +she took an ungodly dislike to me. Though, if it hadn't been for +me--Well, never mind! Yes, you can ask her, George--do! I'll wait and see +if she comes. If she comes, perhaps I'll stay in. It would amuse me to +hear what she has been doing. I'll behave quite nicely--there!" + +And, taking up her fan, Lady Tressady lightly tapped her son's hand with +it in her most characteristic manner. + +He rose, seeing from the clock that he should only just have time to +drive quickly back to Letty if he was to be at the House in time for an +appointment with a constituent, which had been arranged for one o'clock. + +"I will send Justine to you as I go out," he said, taking up his hat, +"and I shall hear of you from Letty this evening." + +Lady Tressady said nothing. Her eyes, bright with some inner +excitement, watched him as he looked for his stick. Suddenly she said, +"George! kiss me!" + +Her tone was unsteady. Infinitely touched and bewildered, the young man +approached her, and, kneeling down again beside her, took her in his +arms. He felt a quick sobbing breath pass through her; then she pushed +him lightly away, and, putting up the slim, pink-nailed hand of which she +was so proud, she patted him on the cheek. + +"There--go along! I don't like that coat of yours, you know. I told you +so the other day. If your figure weren't so good, you'd positively look +badly dressed in it. You should try another man." + +Tressady hailed a hansom outside, and drove back to Brook Street. On the +way his eyes saw little of the crowded streets. So far, he had had no +personal experience of death. His father had died suddenly while he was +at Oxford, and he had lost no other near relation or friend. Strange! +this grave, sudden sense that all was changed, that his careless, +half-contemptuous affection for his mother could never again be what it +had been. Supposing, indeed, her story was all true! But in the case of a +character like Lady Tressady's, there are for long, recurrent, +involuntary scepticisms on the part of the bystander. It seems +impossible, unfitting, to grant to such persons _le beau rôle_ they +claim. It outrages a certain ideal instinct, even, to be asked to believe +that they too can yield, in their measure, precisely the same tragic +stuff as the hero or the saint. + +Letty was at home, just about to share her lunch with Harding Watton, who +had dropped in. Hearing her husband's voice, she came out to the +stairhead to speak to him. + +But after a minute or two George dashed down again to his study, that he +might write a hurried note to a middle-aged cousin of his mother's, +asking her to go round to Warwick Square early in the afternoon, and +making excuses for Letty, who was "very much engaged." + +For Letty had met his request with a smiling disdain. Why, she was simply +"crowded up" with engagements of all sorts and kinds! + +"Mother is really unwell," said George, standing with his hands on his +sides, looking down upon her. He was fuming with irritation and hurry, +and had to put a force on himself to speak persuasively. + +"My dear old boy!"--she rose on tiptoe and twisted his moustache for +him--"don't we know all about your mother's ailments by this time? I +suppose she wants to give me a scolding, or to hear about the Ardaghs, or +to tell me all about the smart parties _she_ has been to--or something of +the sort. No, really, it's quite impossible--this afternoon. I know I +must go and see her some time--of course I will." + +She said this with the air of someone making a great concession. It was, +indeed, her first formal condonement of the offence offered her just +before the Castle Luton visit. + +George attempted a little more argument and entreaty, but in vain. Letty +was rather puzzled by his urgency, but quite obdurate. And as he ran down +the stairs, he heard her laugh in the drawing-room mingled with Harding +Watton's. No doubt they were making merry over the "discipline" which +Letty found it necessary to apply to her mother-in-law. + +In the House of Commons the afternoon was once more given up to the +adjourned debate on the second reading of the Maxwell Bill. The House was +full, and showing itself to advantage. On the whole, the animation and +competence of the speeches reflected the general rise in combative energy +and the wide kindling of social passions which the Bill had so far +brought about, both in and out of Parliament. Those who figured as the +defenders of industries harassed beyond bearing by the Socialist meddlers +spoke with more fire, with more semblance, at any rate, of putting their +hearts into it than any men of their kind had been able to attain since +the "giant" days of the first Factory debates. Those, on the other hand, +who were urging the House to a yet sterner vigilance in protecting the +worker--even the grown man--from his own helplessness and need, who +believed that law spells freedom, and that the experience of half a +century was wholly on their side--these friends of a strong cause were +also at their best, on their mettle. Owing to the widespread flow of a +great reaction, the fight had become a representative contest between two +liberties--a true battle of ideas. + +Yet George, sitting below the Gangway beside his leader, his eyes staring +at the ceiling, and his hands in his pockets, listened to it all in much +languor and revolt. He himself had made his speech on the third day of +the debate. It had cost him endless labour, only to seem to him in the +end--by contrast with the vast majority of speeches made in the course of +the debate, even those by men clearly inferior to himself in mind and +training--to be a hollow and hypocritical performance. What did he +really think and believe? What did he really desire? He vowed to himself +once more, as he had vowed at Ferth, that his mind was a chaos, without +convictions, either intellectual or moral; that he had begun what he was +not able to finish; and that he was doomed to make a failure of his +parliamentary career, as he was already making a failure of coal-owning +and a failure-- + +He curbed something bitter and springing that haunted his most inmost +mind. But his effort could not prevent his dwelling angrily for a minute +on the thought of Letty laughing with Harding Watton--laughing because he +had asked her a small kindness, and she had most unkindly refused it. + +Yet she _must_ help him with his poor mother. How softened were all his +thoughts about that difficult and troublesome lady! As it happened, he +had a good deal of desultory medical knowledge, for the problems and +perils of the body had always attracted his pessimist sense. Yet it did +not help him much at this juncture. At one moment he said to himself, +"eighteen months--she will live eighteen months," and at another, "Battye +was probably right; Barham took an unnecessarily gloomy view--she may +quite well last as long as the rest of us." + + * * * * * + +Suddenly he was startled by a movement beside him. + +"The honourable member has totally misunderstood me," cried Fontenoy, +springing to his feet and looking eagerly towards the Speaker. + +The member who was speaking on the Government side smiled, put on his +hat, and sat down. Fontenoy flung out a few stinging sentences, was hotly +cheered both by his own supporters and from a certain area of the Liberal +benches, and sat down again triumphant, having scored an excellent point. + +George turned round to his companion. + +"Good!" he said, with emphasis. "That rubbed it in!" + +But when the man opposite was once more on his legs, labouring to undo +the impression which had been made, George found himself wondering +whether, after all, the point had been so good, and why he had been so +quick to praise. _She_ would have said, of course, that it was a point +scored against common-sense, against humanity. He began to fancy the +play of her scornful eyes, the eloquence of her white hand moving and +quivering as she spoke. + +How long was it--one hurried month only--since he had walked with her +along the river at Castle Luton? While the crowded House about him was +again listening with attention to the speech which had just brought the +protesting Fontenoy to his legs; while his leader was fidgeting and +muttering beside him; while to his left the crowd of members round the +door was constantly melting, constantly reassembling, Tressady's mind +withdrew itself from its surroundings, saw nothing, heard nothing, but +the scenes of a far-off London and a figure that moved among them. + +How often had he been with her since Castle Luton? Once or twice a week, +certainly, either at St. James's Square or in the East End, in spite of +Parliament, and Fontenoy, and his many engagements as Letty's husband. +Strange phenomenon--that little _salon_ of hers in the far East! For it +was practically a _salon_, though it existed for purposes the Hôtel +Rambouillet knew nothing of. He found himself one of many there. And, +like all _salons_, it had an inner circle. Charles Naseby, Edward Watton, +Lady Madeleine Penley, the Levens--some or all of these were generally to +be found in Lady Maxwell's neighbourhood, rendering homage or help in one +way or another. It was touching to see that girl, Lady Madeleine, looking +at the docker or the shirtmaker, with her restless greenish eyes, as +though she realised for the first time what hideous bond it is--the one +true commonalty--that crushes the human family together! + +Well!--and what had he seen? Nothing, certainly, of which he had not had +ample information before. Under the fresh spur of the talk that occupied +the Maxwell circle he had made one or two rounds through some dismal +regions in Whitechapel, Mile End, and Hackney, where some of the worst of +the home industries to which, at last, after long hesitation on the part +of successive Governments, Maxwell's Bill was intended to put an end, +crowded every house and yard. He saw some of it in the company of a lady +rent-collector, an old friend of the Maxwells, who had charge of several +tenement blocks where the trouser and vest trade was largely carried on; +and he welcomed the chance of one or two walks in quest of law-breaking +workshops with a young inspector, who could not say enough in praise of +the Bill. But if it had been only a question of fact, George would have +felt when the rounds were done merely an added respect for Fontenoy, +perhaps even for his own party as a whole. Not a point raised by his +guides but had been abundantly discussed and realised--on paper, at any +rate--by Fontenoy and his friends. The young inspector, himself a hot +partisan, and knowing with whom he had to deal, would have liked to +convict his companion of sheer and simple ignorance; but, on the +contrary, Tressady was not to be caught napping. As far as the trade +details and statistics of this gruesome slopwork of East London went, he +knew all that could be shown him. + +Nevertheless, cool and impassive as his manner was throughout, the +experience in the main did mean the exchange of a personal for a paper +and hearsay knowledge. When, indeed, had he, or Fontenoy, or anyone else +ever denied that the life of the poor was an odious and miserable +struggle, a scandal to gods and men? What then? Did they make the world +and its iron conditions? And yet this long succession of hot and smelling +dens, this series of pale, stooping figures, toiling hour after hour, at +fever pace, in these stifling backyards, while the June sun shone +outside, reminding one of English meadows and the ripple of English +grass; these panting, dishevelled women, slaving beside their husbands +and brothers, amid the rattle of the machines and the steam of the +pressers' irons, with the sick or the dying, perhaps, in the bed beside +them, and their blanched children at their feet--sights of this sort, +thus translated from the commonplace of reports and newspapers into a +poignant, unsavoury truth, had at least this effect--they vastly +quickened the personal melancholy of the spectator, they raised and drove +home a number of piercing questions which, probably, George Tressady +would never have raised, and would have lived happily without raising, if +it had not been for a woman, and a woman's charm. + +For that woman's _solutions_ remained as doubtful to him as ever. He +would go back to that strange little house where she kept her strange +court, meet her eager eyes, and be roused at once to battle. How they had +argued! He knew that she had less hope than ever of persuading him even +to modify his view of the points at issue between the Government and his +own group. She could not hope for a moment that any act of his would be +likely to stand between Maxwell and defeat. He had not talked of his +adventures to Fontenoy--would rather, indeed, that Fontenoy knew nothing +of them. But he and she knew that Fontenoy, so far, had little to fear +from them. + +And yet she had not turned from him. To her personal mood, to her wifely +affection even, he must appear more plainly than ever as the callous and +selfish citizen, ready and glad to take his own ease while his brethren +perished. He had been sceptical and sarcastic; he had declined to accept +her evidence; he had shown a persistent preference for the drier and more +brutal estimate of things. Yet she had never parted from him without +gentleness, without a look in her beautiful eyes that had often +tormented his curiosity. What did it mean? Pity? Or some unspoken comment +of a personal kind she could not persuade her womanly reticence to put +into words? + +Or, rather: had she some distant inkling of the real truth--that he was +beginning to hate his own convictions--to feel that to be right with +Fontenoy was nothing, but to be wrong with her would be delight? + +What absurdity! With a strong effort, he pulled himself +together--steadied his rushing pulse. It was like someone waking at night +in a nervous terror, and feeling the pressure of some iron dilemma, from +which he cannot free himself--cold vacancy and want on the one side, +calamity on the other. + +For that cool power of judgment in his own case which he had always +possessed did not fail him now. He saw everything nakedly and coldly. His +marriage was not three months old, but no spectator could have discussed +its results more frankly than he was now prepared to discuss them with +himself. It was monstrous, no doubt. He felt his whole position to be as +ugly as it was abnormal. Who could feel any sympathy with it or him? He +himself had been throughout the architect of his own misfortune. Had he +not rushed upon his marriage with less care--relatively to the weight of +the human interest in such a matter--than an animal shows when it mates? + +Letty's personal idiosyncrasies even--her way of entering a room, her +mean little devices for attracting social notice, the stubborn +extravagance of her dress and personal habits, her manner to her +servants, her sharp voice as she retailed some scrap of slanderous +gossip--her husband had by now ceased to be blind or deaf to any of +them. Indeed, his senses in relation to many things she said and did were +far more irritable at this moment--possibly far less just--than a +stranger's would have been. Often and often he would try to recall to +himself the old sense of charm, of piquancy. In vain. It was all gone--he +could only miserably wonder at the past. Was it that he knew now what +charm might mean, and what divinity may breathe around a woman! + + * * * * * + +"I say, where are you off to?" + +Tressady looked up with a start as Fontenoy rose beside him. + +"Good opportunity for dinner, I think," said Fontenoy, with a motion of +the head towards the man who had just caught the Speaker's eye. "Are you +coming? I should like a word with you." + +George followed him into the Lobby. As the swing-door closed behind him, +they plunged into a whirlpool of talk and movement. All the approaches to +the House were full of folk; everybody was either giving news or getting +it. For the excitement of a coming crisis was in the air. This was +Friday, and the division on the second reading was expected on the +following Monday. + +"What a crowd, and what a temperature!" said Fontenoy. "Come on to the +Terrace a moment." + +They made their way into the air, and as they walked up and down Fontenoy +talked in his hoarse, hurried voice of the latest aspect of affairs. The +Government would get their second reading, of course that had never been +really doubtful; though Fontenoy was certain that the normal majority +would be a good deal reduced. But all the hopes of the heterogeneous +coalition which had been slowly forming throughout the spring hung upon +the Committee stage, and Fontenoy's mind was now full of the closest +calculations as to the voting on particular amendments. + +For him the Bill fell into three parts. The first part, which was mainly +confined to small amendments and extensions of former Acts, would be +sharply criticised, but would probably pass without much change. The +second part contained the famous clause by which it became penal to +practise certain trades, such as tailoring, boot-finishing, and +shirt-making, in a man's or woman's own home--in the same place, that is +to say, as the worker uses for eating and sleeping. This clause, which +represented the climax of a long series of restrictions upon the right of +a man to stitch even his own life away, still more upon his right to +force his children or bribe his neighbour to a like waste of the nation's +force, was by now stirring the industrial mind of England far and wide. + +And not the mind of England only. Ireland and Scotland, town and country, +talked of it, seethed with it. The new law, if it passed, was to be +tried, indeed, at first, in London only. But every provincial town and +every country district knew that, if it succeeded, there was not a corner +of the land that would not ultimately feel the yoke, or the deliverance, +of it Every workman's club, every trade-union meeting, every mechanics' +institute was ringing with it. Organised labour, dragged down at every +point--in London, at any rate--by the competition of the starving and +struggling crew of home-workers, clamoured for the Bill. The starving and +struggling crew themselves were partly voiceless, partly bewildered; now +drawn by the eloquence of their trade-union fellows to shout for the +revolution that threatened them, now surging tumultuously against it. + +On this vital clause, in Fontenoy's belief, the Government would go down. +But if, by amazing good-fortune and good generalship, they should get +through with it, then the fight would but rage the more fiercely round +the last two sections of the Bill. + +The third section dealt with the hours of labour in the new workshops +that were to be. For the first time it became directly penal for a man, +as well as a woman, to work more than the accepted factory-day of ten and +a half hours, with a few exceptions and exemptions in the matter of +overtime. On this clause, if it were ever reached, the Socialist vote, +were it given solidly for the Government, might, no doubt, pull them +through. "But if we have any luck--damn it! they won't get the chance!" +Fontenoy would say, with that grim, sudden reddening which revealed from +moment to moment the feverish tension of the man. + +In the last section of the Bill the Government, having made its +revolution, looked round for a class on which to lay the burden of +carrying it into action, and found it in the landlords. The landlords +were to be the policemen of the new Act. To every owner of every tenement +or other house in London the Bill said: _You_ are responsible. If, after +a certain date, you allow certain trades to be carried on within your +walls at all, even by the single man or the single woman working in their +own room, penalty and punishment shall follow. + +Of this clause in the Bill Fontenoy could never speak with calmness. One +might see his heart thumping in his breast as he denounced it. At bottom +it was to him the last and vilest step in a long and slanderous campaign +against the class to which he belonged, against property,--against the +existing social order. He fell upon the subject to-night _à propos_ of a +Socialist letter in the morning papers; and George, who was mostly +conscious at the moment of a sick fatigue with Fontenoy and Fontenoy's +arguments, had to bear it as best he might. Presently he interrupted: + +"One assumption you make I should like to contest. You imagine, I think, +that if they carry the prohibition and the hours clauses we shall be able +to whip up a still fiercer attack on the 'landlords' clause. Now, that +isn't my view." + +Fontenoy turned upon him, startled. + +"Why isn't it your view?" he said abruptly. + +"Because there are always waverers who will accept a _fait accompli_; and +you know how opposition has a trick of cooling towards the end of a Bill. +Maxwell has carried his main point, they will say; this is a question of +machinery. Besides, many of those Liberals who will be with us on the +main point don't love the landlords. No! don't flatter yourself that, if +we lose the main engagement, there will be any Prussians to bring up. The +thing will be done." + +"Well, thank God!" grumbled Fontenoy, "we don't mean to lose the main +engagement. But if one of _our_ men were to argue in that way, I should +know what to say to him." + +George made no reply. + +They walked on in silence, the summer twilight falling softly over the +river and the Hospital, over the Terrace with its groups, and the +towering pile of buildings beside them. + +Presently Fontenoy said, in another voice: + +"I have really never had the courage to talk to you of the matter, +Tressady, but didn't you see something of that lad Ancoats before he went +off abroad?" + +"Yes, I saw him several times, first at the club; then he came and dined +with me here one night." + +"And did he confide in you?" + +"More or less," said George, smiling rather queerly at the recollection. + +Fontenoy made a sound between a growl and a sigh. + +"Really, it's rather too much to have to think out that young +man's affairs as well as one's own. And the situation is so +extraordinary!--Maxwell and I have to be in constant consultation. I went +to see him in his room in the House of Lords the other night, and met a +man coming out, who stopped, and stared as though he were shot. Luckily I +knew him, and could say a word to him, or there would have been all sorts +of cock-and-bull stories abroad." + +"Well, and what are you and Maxwell doing?" + +"Trying to get at the young woman. One can't buy her off, of course. +Ancoats is his own master, and could outbid us. But Maxwell has found a +brother--a decent sort of fellow--a country solicitor. And there is a +Ritualist curate, a Father somebody,"--Fontenoy raised his +shoulders,--"who seems to have an intermittent hold on the girl. When +she has fits of virtue she goes to confess to him. Maxwell has got hold +of _him_." + +"And meanwhile Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim?" + +"Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim, and behaving himself, as I hear from his +poor mother." Fontenoy sighed. "But the boy was frightened, of course, +when they went abroad. Now she is getting better, and one can't tell--" + +"No, one can't tell," said George. + +"I wish I knew what the thing really _meant_," said Fontenoy, presently, +in a tone of perplexed reverie. "What do you think? Is it a passion--?" + +"Or a pose?" + +George pondered. + +"H'm," he said at last--"more of a pose, I think, than a passion. Ancoats +always seems to me the _jeune premier_ in his own play. He sees his life +in scenes, and plays them according to all the rules." + +"Intolerable!" said Fontenoy, in exasperation. "And at least he might +refrain from dragging a girl into it! We weren't saints in my day, but we +weren't in the habit of choosing well-brought-up maidens of twenty in our +own set for our confidantes. You know, I suppose, what broke up the party +at Castle Luton?" + +"Ancoats told me nothing. I have heard some gossip from Harding Watton," +said George, unwillingly. It was one of his strongest characteristics, +this fastidious and even haughty dislike of chatter about other people's +private affairs, a dislike which, in the present case, had been +strengthened by his growing antipathy to Harding. + +"How should he know?" said Fontenoy, angrily. He was glad enough to use +Watton as a political tool, but had never yet admitted him to the +smallest social intimacy. + +Yet with Tressady he felt no difficulty in talking over these private +affairs; and he did, in fact, report the whole story--that same story +with which Marcella had startled Betty Leven on the night in question: +how Ancoats on this Sunday evening had decoyed this handsome, +impressionable girl, to whom throughout the winter he had been paying +decided and even ostentatious court, into a _tête-à-tête_--had poured out +to her frantic confessions of his attachment to the theatrical lady--a +woman he could never marry, whom his mother could never meet, but with +whom, nevertheless, come what might, he was determined to live and die. +She--Madeleine--was his friend, his good angel. Would she go to his +mother and break it to her? Would she understand, and forgive him? There +must be no opposition, or he would shoot himself. And so on, till the +poor girl, worn out with excitement and grief, tottered into Mrs. +Allison's room more dead than alive. + +But at that point Fontenoy stopped abruptly. + +George agreed that the story was almost incredible, and added the inward +and natural comment of the public-school man--that if people will keep +their boys at home, and defraud them of the kickings that are their due, +they may look out for something unwholesome in the finished product. +Then, aloud, he said: + +"I should imagine that Ancoats was acting through the greater part of +that. He had said to himself that such a scene would be effective--and +would be new." + +"Good heavens!--why, that makes it ten thousand times more abominable +than before!" + +"I daresay," said George, coolly. "But it also makes the future, perhaps, +a little more hopeful--throws some light on the passion or pose +alternative. My impression is, that if we can only find an effective exit +for Ancoats,--a last act that he would consider worthy of him,--he will +bow himself out of the business willingly enough." + +Fontenoy smiled rather gloomily, and the two walked on in silence. + +Once or twice, as they paced the Terrace, George glanced sidelong at his +leader. A corner of Fontenoy's nightly letter to Mrs. Allison was, he +saw, sticking out of the great man's coat-pocket. Every night he wrote a +crowded sheet upon his knee, under the shelter of a Blue Book, and on one +or two nights George's quick eyes had not been able to escape from the +pencilled address on the envelope to which it was ultimately consigned. +The sheet was written with the regularity and devotion of a Prime +Minister reporting to the Sovereign. + +Well! it was all very touching and very remarkable. But George had some +sympathy with Ancoats. To be virtually saddled with a stepfather, with +whom your minutest affairs are confidentially discussed, and yet to have +it said by all the world that your poor mother is too unselfish and too +devoted to her son to marry again--the situation is not without its +pricks. And that Ancoats was acutely conscious of them George had good +reason to know. + +"I say, Tressady, will you pair till eleven?" cried a man, swinging +bareheaded along the Terrace with his hat in his hand. "I want an hour or +two off badly, and there will be no big guns on till eleven or so." + +George exchanged a word or two with Fontenoy, then stood still, and +thought a moment. A sudden animation flushed into his face. Why not? + +"All right!" he said; "till eleven." + +Then he and Fontenoy went back to dine. As they mounted the dark +staircase leading from the Terrace another man caught Tressady by the +arm. + +"The strike notices are out," he said. "I have just had a wire. Everyone +leaves work to-night." + +George shrugged his shoulders. He had been expecting the news at any +moment, and was glad that the long shilly-shallying on both sides was at +last over. + +"Good luck to them!" he said. "I'm glad. The fight had to come." + +"Oh! we shall be in the middle of arbitration before a fortnight's up. +The men won't stand." + +George shook his head. He himself believed that the struggle would last +on through the autumn. + +"Well, to be sure, there's Burrows," said his informant, himself a large +coal-owner in the Ferth district; "if Burrows keeps sober, and if +somebody doesn't buy him, Burrows will do his worst." + +"That we always knew," said George, laughing, and passed on. He had but +just time to catch his train. + +He walked across to the Underground station, and by the time he reached +it he had clean forgotten his pits and the strike, though as he passed +the post-office in the House a sheaf of letters and telegrams had been +put into his hands. Rather, he was full of a boy's eagerness and +exultation. He had never supposed he could be let off to-night, till the +offer of Dudley's pair tempted him. And now, in half an hour he would be +in that queer Mile End room, watching her--quarrelling with her. + +A little later, however, as he was sitting quietly in the train, quick +composite thoughts of Letty, of his miners, and his money difficulties +began to clutch at him again. Perhaps, now that the strike was a reality, +it might even be a help to him and a bridle to his wife. Preposterous, +what she was doing and planning at Perth! His face flushed and hardened +as he thought of their many wrangles during the past fortnight, her +constant drag upon his purse, his own weakness, the annoyance and +contempt that made him yield rather than argue. + +What was that fellow, Harding Watton, doing in the house at all hours, +and beguiling Letty, by his collector's airs, into a hundred foolish +wants and whims? And that brute Cathedine! Was it decent, was it +bearable, that a bride of three months should take no more notice of her +husband's wishes and dislikes in such a matter than Letty had shown with +regard to her growing friendship with that disreputable person? It seemed +to George that he called most afternoons. Letty laughed, excused herself, +or abused her visitor as soon as he had departed; but the rebuff which +George's pride would not let him ask of her directly, while yet his +whole manner demanded it, was never given. + +He sat solitary in his brilliantly lit carriage, staring at the +advertisements opposite, his long chin thrust forward, his head, with its +fair curls, thrown moodily back. And all the time his mind was working +with an appalling clearness. This cold light, in which he was beginning +to see his wife and all she did--it was already a tragedy. + +What was he flying to, what was he in search of--there in the East End? +His whole being flung the answer. A little sympathy, a little heart, a +little tenderness and delicacy of soul!--nothing else. He had once taken +it for granted that every woman possessed them in some degree. Or, was it +only since he had found them in this unexampled fulness and wealth that +he had begun to thirst for them in this way? He made himself face the +question. "One needn't lie to oneself!" + +At Aldgate, as he was making his way out of the station, he stumbled upon +Edward Watton. + +"Hullo! You bound for No. 20, too?" + +"No; there is no function to-night. Lady Maxwell is at a meeting. It has +grown rather suddenly from small beginnings, and two days ago they made +her promise to speak. I came down because I am afraid of a row. Things +are beginning to look ugly down here, and I don't think she has much idea +of it. Will you come?" + +"Of course." + +Watton looked at him with an amused and friendly eye. + +It was another instance of her power--that she had been able to bind +even this young enemy to her chariot-wheels. He hoped Letty had the sense +to approve! As a matter of fact, Watton had never, by his own choice, +become well acquainted with his cousin Letty, and had always secretly +marvelled at Tressady's sudden marriage. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +The two men were soon on the top of the Mile End Road tramcar, on their +way eastward. It was a hot, dull evening. The setting sun behind them was +already swallowed up in mist, and the heavy air held down and made +palpable all the unsavoury odours of street and shop. Before them +stretched the wide, interminable road which was once the highway from the +great city to Colchester and East Anglia. A broad and comely thoroughfare +on the whole, save that from end to end it has now the dyed and patched +look that an old village street inevitably puts on when it has been +swallowed up by the bricks and mortar of an overtaking town. + +Tressady looked round him in a reverie, interested in the place and the +streets because _she_ cared for them, and had struck one of her roots +here. Strange medley everywhere--in this main street, at all events--of +old and new! Here were the Trinity almshouses, with their Jacobean gables +and their low, spreading quadrangle behind the fine ironwork that +shelters them from the street--a poetic fragment from the days of Wren +and Dryden, sore threatened now by an ever-advancing London, hungry for +ground and space. Here was a vast mission-hall, there a still vaster +brewery; on the right, the quiet entrance to the oldworld quiet of +Stepney-Green; and to the left a huge flame-ringed gin-palace, with shops +on either side, hung to the roof with carpets, or brooms, or umbrellas, +plastered with advertisements, and blazing with gas. While in the street +between streamed the ever-moving crowd of East London folk, jostling, +chattering, loafing, doing their business or their pleasure, and made +perpetually interesting, partly by their frank preoccupation with the +simplest realities of life: with eating, drinking, earning, marrying, +child-rearing; still more, perhaps, by the constant presence among them +of that "leisured class" which, alike at the bottom and the top of +things, has time to be gay, curious, and witty. + +As he rolled along, watching the scene, Tressady thought to himself, as +he had often thought before, that the East End, in many of its aspects, +is a very decentish sort of place, about which many people talk much +nonsense. He made the remark, carelessly, to Watton. + +Watton shrugged his shoulders, and pointed silently to the entrances, +right and left, of two side-streets, the typical streets of the East End: +long lines of low houses,--two storeys always, or two storeys and a +basement,--all of the same yellowish brick, all begrimed by the same +smoke, every door-knocker of the same pattern, every window-blind hung in +the same way, and the same corner "public" on either side, flaming in the +hazy distance. + +Watton hardly put his comment into words; but Tressady, who knew him +well, understood, and nodded over his cigarette. Watton meant, of course, +to suggest the old commonplace of the mean and dull monotony that weighs +like a nightmare upon this vast East London and its human hive, which +hums and toils, drones and feeds, by night and day, in these numberless +featureless boxes of wood and stone, on this flat, interminable earth +that stretches eastward to Essex marshes and southward to the river, and +bears yellow brick and cemeteries for corn. Well! Tressady knew that the +thought of this monotony, and of the thousands under its yoke, was to +Watton a constant sting and oppression; he knew, too, or guessed, the +religious effects it produced in him. For Watton was a religious man, and +the action of the dream within showed itself in him and all he did. But +why should everyone make a grief of East London? He was in the mood again +to-night to feel it a kind of impertinence, this endless, peering anxiety +about a world you never planned and cannot mend. Whose duty is it to cry +for the moon? + +"Better get down here, I think," said Watton, signalling to the +tram-conductor, "and find out whether they have really gone, or not." + +They stopped, half-way down the Mile End Road, before a piece of wall +with a door in it. A trim maiden of fifteen in a spotless cotton frock +and white apron opened to them. + +Inside was a small flagged courtyard and the old-fashioned house that +Marcella Maxwell, a year before,--some time after their first lodging had +been given up,--had rescued from demolition and the builder, to make an +East End home out of it. Somewhere about 1750 some City tradesman had +built it among fields, and taken his rest there; while somewhat later, in +a time of Evangelical revival, a pious widow had thrown out a low room to +one side for class-meetings. In this room Marietta now held her +gatherings, and both Tressady and Watton knew it well. + +The little handmaid bubbled over with willing talk. Oh, yes, there was a +meeting up Manx Road, and her Ladyship had gone with Lord Naseby, and +Lady Madeleine, and Mr. Everard, the inspector, and, she thought, one or +two besides. She expected the ladies back about ten, and they were to +stay the night. + +"An they do say, sir," she said eagerly, looking up at Watton, whom she +knew, "as there'll be a lot o' rough people at the meetin." + +"Oh! I daresay," said Watton. "Well, we're going up, too, to look +after her." + +As they walked on they talked over the general situation in the district, +and Watton explained what he knew of this particular meeting. In the +first place, he repeated, he could not see that Lady Maxwell understood +as yet the sort of opposition that the Bill was rousing, especially in +these East End districts. The middle-class and parliamentary resistance +she had always appreciated; but the sort of rage that might be awakened +among a degraded class of workers by proposals that seemed to threaten +their immediate means of living, he believed she had not yet realised, in +anything like its full measure and degree. And he feared that this +meeting might be a disagreeable experience. + +For it was the direct fruit of an agitation that, as Tressady knew, was +in particular Fontenoy's agitation. The Free Workers' League, which had +called upon the trade-unionist of Mile End to summon the meeting, and to +hear therein what both sides had to say, was, in fact, Fontenoy's +creation. It had succeeded especially in organising the women +home-workers of Mile End and Poplar. Two or three lady-speakers employed +by the League had been active to the point of frenzy in denouncing the +Bill and shrieking "Liberty!" in the frightened ear of Mile End. Watton +could not find a good word for any of them--was sure that what mostly +attracted them was the notoriety of the position, involving, as it did, +a sort of personal antagonism to Lady Maxwell, who had, so to speak, +made Mile End her own. And to be Lady Maxwell's enemy was, Watton +opined, the next best thing, from the point of view of advertisement, to +being her friend. + +"Excellent women, I daresay," said Tressady, laughing--"talking excellent +sense. But, tell me, what is this about Naseby--why Naseby?--on all these +occasions?" + +"Why not, indeed?" said Watton. "Ah! you don't know? It seems to be +Naseby that's going to get the egg out of the hat for us." + +And he plunged eagerly into the description of certain schemes wherewith +Naseby had lately astonished the Maxwell circle. Tressady listened, +languidly at first, then with a kind of jealous annoyance that +scandalised himself. How well he could understand the attraction of such +things for her quick mind! Life was made too easy for these "golden +lads." People attributed too much importance to their fancies. + +Naseby, in fact,--but so much George already knew,--had been for some +months now the comrade and helper of both the Maxwells. His friends still +supposed him to be merely the agreeable and fashionable idler. In +reality, Naseby for some years past had been spending all the varied +leisure that his commission in the Life Guards allowed him upon the work +of a social and economic student. He had joined the staff of a well-known +sociologist, who was at the time engaged in an inquiry into certain +typical East London trades. The inquiry had made a noise, and the +evidence collected under it had already been largely used in the debates +on the Maxwell Bill. Tressady, for instance, had much of it by heart, +although he never knew, until he became a haunter of Lady Maxwell's +circle, that Naseby had played any part in the gathering of it. + +At the same time, as George had soon observed, Naseby was no blind +follower of the Maxwells. In truth, under his young gaiety and coolness +he had the temper of the student, who was more in love with his problem +itself than with any suggested solution of it. As he had told Lady +Betty, he had "no opinions"--would himself rather leave the sweated +trades alone, and trust to much slower and less violent things than +law-making. All this the Maxwells knew perfectly, and liked and trusted +him none the less. + +Now, however, it seemed there was a new development. If the Bill passed, +Naseby had a plan. He was already a rich man, independently of the +marquisate to come. His grandmother had left him a large preliminary +fortune, and through his friends and connections besides he seemed to +command as much money as he desired. And of this money, supposing the +Bill passed, he proposed to make original and startling use. He had +worked out the idea of a syndicate furnished with, say, a quarter of a +million of money, which should come down upon a given district of the +East End, map it out, buy up all the existing businesses in its typical +trade, and start a system of new workshops proportioned to the +population, supplying it with work just as the Board schools supply it +with education. The new scheme was to have a profit-sharing element: the +workers were to be represented on the syndicate, and every nerve was to +be strained to secure the best business management. The existing +middlemen would be either liberally bought out, or absorbed into the new +machine. It was by no means certain that they would show it any strong +resistance. + +Tressady made a number of unfriendly comments on the scheme as Watton +detailed it. A bit of amateur economics, which would only help the Bill +to ruin a few more people than would otherwise have gone down! + +"Ah! well," said Watton, "if this thing passes there are bound to be +experiments, and Naseby means to be in 'em. So do I, only I haven't got a +quarter of a million. Here's our road! We're late, of course--the +meeting's begun. I say, just look at this!" + +For Manx Road, as they turned into it, was already held by another big +meeting of its own. The room in the Board school which crossed the end of +the street must be full, and this crowd represented, apparently, those +who had been turned away. + +As the two friends pushed their way through, Tressady's quick eye +recognised in the throng a number of familiar types. Well-to-do +"pressers" and machinists, factory-girls of different sorts, hundreds of +sallow women, representing the home-workers of Mile End, Bow, and +Stepney--poor souls bowed by toil and maternity, whose marred fingers +labour day and night to clothe the Colonies and the army; their husbands +and brothers, too, English slop-tailors for the most part, of the humbler +sort--the short side-street was packed with them. It was an anxious, +sensitive crowd, Tressady thought, as he elbowed his passage through it. +A small thing might inflame it; and he saw a number of rough lads on the +skirts of it. + +Jews, too, there were in plenty. For the stress of this Bill had brought +Jew and Gentile together in a new comradeship that amazed the East End. +Here were groups representing the thrifty, hard-working London Jew of +the second generation,--small masters for the most part, pale with the +confinement and "drive" of the workshop,--men who are expelling and +conquering the Gentile East Ender, because their inherited passion for +business is not neutralised by any of the common English passions for +spending--above all by the passion for drink. Here, too, were men of a +far lower type and grade--the waste and refuse of the vast industrial +mill. Tressady knew a good many of them by sight--sullen, quick-eyed +folk, who buy their "greeners" at the docks, and work them day and night +at any time of pressure; whose workshops are still flaring at two +o'clock in the morning, and alive again by the winter dawn; who fight +and flout the law by a hundred arts, and yet, brutal and shifty as many +of them are, have a curious way of winning the Gentile inspector's +sympathy, even while he fines and harasses them, so clearly are they and +their "hands" alike the victims of a huge world-struggle that does but +toss them on its surge. + +These gentry, however, were hard hit by more than one clause of the +Maxwell Bill, and they were here to-night to protest, as they had been +already protesting at many meetings, large and small, all over the East +End. And they had their slaves with them,--ragged, hollow-eyed creatures, +newly arrived from Russian Poland, Austria, or Romania, and ready to +shout or howl in Yiddish as they were told,--men whose strange faces and +eyes under their matted shocks of black or reddish hair suggested every +here and there the typical history and tragic destiny of the race which, +in other parts of the crowd, was seen under its softer and more +cosmopolitan aspects. + +As the two men neared the door of the school, where the press was +densest, they were recognised as probably belonging to the Maxwell party, +and found themselves a good deal jeered and hustled, and could hardly +make any way at all. However, a friendly policeman came to their aid. +They were passed into a lobby, and at last, with much elbowing and +pushing, found themselves inside the schoolroom. + +So crowded was the place and so steaming the atmosphere, that it was +some minutes before Tressady could make out what was going on. Then he +saw that Naseby was speaking--Naseby, looking remarkably handsome and +well curled, and much at his ease, besides, in the production of a string +of Laodicean comments on the Bill, his own workshop scheme, and the +general prospects of East End labour. He described the scheme, but in +such a way as rather to damn it than praise it; and as for the Bill +itself, which he had undertaken to compare with former Factory Bills, +when he sat down he left it, indeed, in a parlous case--a poor, limping, +doubtful thing, quite as likely to ruin the East End as to do it a hand's +turn of good. + +Just as the speaker was coming to his peroration Tressady suddenly caught +sight of a delicate upraised profile on the platform, behind Naseby. The +repressed smile on it set him smiling, too. + +"What on earth do they make Naseby speak for!" said Watton, indignantly. +"Idiocy! He spoils everything he touches. Let him give the money, and +other people do the talking. You can see the people here don't know what +to make of him in the least. Look at their faces.--Who's he talking to?" + +"Lady Madeleine, I think," said Tressady. "What amazing red hair that +girl has! and what queer, scared eyes! It is like an animal--one wants to +stroke her." + +"Well, Naseby strokes her," said Watton, laughing. "Look at her; she +brightens up directly he comes near." + +Tressady thought of the tale Fontenoy had just told him, and wondered. +Consolation seemed to come easy to maidens of quality. + +Meanwhile various trade-unionists--sturdy, capable men, in black +coats--were moving and seconding resolutions; flinging resentful +comments, too, at Naseby whenever occasion offered. Tressady heard very +little of what they had to say. His eyes and thoughts were busy with the +beautiful figure to the left of the chair. Its dignity and charm worked +upon him like a spell--infused a kind of restless happiness. + +When he woke from his trance of watching, it was to turn upon Watton +with impatience. How long was this thing going on? The British workman +spoke with deplorable fluency. Couldn't they push their way through to +the platform? + +Watton looked at the crowd, and shrugged his shoulders. + +"Not yet--I say! who's this they've put up. Come, my dear fellow, that +looks like the real thing!" + +Tressady turned, and saw an old man, a Jew, with a long greyish beard, +coming slowly to the front of the platform. His eyes were black and deep, +sunk under white brows; he was decently but poorly dressed; and he began +to speak with a slight German accent, in an even, melancholy voice, +rather under-pitched, which soon provoked the meeting. He was +vociferously invited to speak up or sit down; and at the first +interruption he stopped timorously, and looked towards the Chair. + +An elderly, grey-haired woman was presiding--no doubt to mark the +immense importance of the Bill for the women of the East End. She came +forward at the man's appeal. + +"My friends," she said quietly, "you let this man speak, and don't you be +hard on him. He's got a sad story to tell you, and he won't be long about +it. You give him his chance. Some of you shall have yours soon." + +Up. The speaker was the paid secretary of one of the women's unions; but +she had been a tailoress for years, and had known a tragic life. Once, at +a meeting where some flippant speaker had compared the reality and +frequency of "starvation" in London to the reality and frequency of the +sea serpent, Tressady had seen her get up and, with a sudden passion, +describe the death of her own daughter from hardship and want, with the +tears running down her cheeks. Her appeal to the justice of the meeting +succeeded, and the old man was allowed to go on. It soon appeared that he +had been put up by one of the tailoring unions to denounce the long hours +worked in some of the Whitechapel and Spitalfields workshops. His H facts +were appalling. But he put them badly, with a dull, stumbling voice, and +he got no hold on the meeting at all till suddenly he stepped forward, +paused,--his miserable face working, his head turning from if side to +side,--and finally said, with a sharp change of note: + +"And now, if you please, I will tell you how it was about Isaac--my +brother Isaac. It was Mr. Jacobs "--he looked round, and pointed to the +tradeunion secretary who had been speaking before him--"Mr. Jacobs it +was that put it in my mind to come here and tell you about Isaac. For the +way Isaac died was like this. He and I were born in Spitalfields; he +wasn't one of your greeners--he was a reg'lar good worker, first-rate +general coat-hand, same as me. But he got with a hard master. And last +winter season but one there came a rush. And Isaac must be working six +days a week--and he must be working fourteen hours a day--and, more'n +that, he must be doing his bastes overtime, two hours one time, and an +hour or so, perhaps, another; anyway, they made it up to half a +day--eight hours and more in the week. _You_ know how they reckon it." + +He stopped, grinning feebly. The trade-unionists about the platform +shouted or groaned in response. The masters round the door, with their +"greeners," stood silent. + +"And about Wednesday in the third week," he went on, "he come to the +master, and he says--Isaac was older than me, and his chest it would be +beginning to trouble him pretty bad, so he says: 'I'm done,' he says; 'I +must go home. You can get another chap to do my bastes to-night--will +you?' And the master says to Isaac: 'If you don't do your bastes +overtime, if you're too high and mighty,' he says, 'why, there's plenty +as will, and you don't need to come to-morrow neither.' And Isaac had his +wife Judith at home, and four little uns; and he stopped and done his +bastes, of _course_. And next night he couldn't well see, and he'd been +dreadful sick all day, and he says to the master again, he says as he +must go home. And the master, he says the same to him--and Isaac stops. +And on Friday afternoon he come home. And the shop had been steamin hot, +but outside it was a wind to cut yer through. And his wife Judith says to +him, 'Isaac, you look starved!' and she set him by the fire. And he sat +by the fire, and he didn't say nothing. Then his hands fell down sudden +like that--" + +The old man let his hands drop heavily by his side with a simple dramatic +gesture. By this time there was not a sound in the crowded room. Even the +wildest and most wolfish of the greeners were staring silently, craning +brown necks forward. + +"And his wife ran to him, and he falls against her; and he says, 'Lay me +down, Judith, and don't you let em wake me--not the young uns,' he says +'not for nothing and nobody. For if it was the trump of the Most High,' +he says--and Isaac was a religious man, and careful in his speech--'I +must have my sleep.' And she laid him down, and the children and she +watched--and by midnight Isaac turned himself over. He just opened his +eyes once, and groaned. And he never spoke no more--he was gone before +mornin.--And his master gave Judith five shillings towards the coffin, +and the men in the shop, they raised the rest." + +The old man paused. He stood considering a moment, his face and ragged +beard thrown out--a spot of greyish white--against the figures behind, +his eyes blinking painfully under the gas. + +"Well, we've tried many things," he said at last. "We've tried strikes +and unions, and it isn't no good. There's always one treading on +another, and if you don't do it, someone else will. It's the _law_ as'll +have to do it. You may take that and smoke it!--you won't get nothing +else. Why!"--his hoarse voice trembled--"why, they use us up cruel in the +sort of shop I work for. Ten or twelve years, and a man's all to pieces. +It's the irons, and the heat, and the sitting--_you_ know what it is. +I've lasted fifteen year, but I'm breaking up now. If my master give me +the sack for speaking here I'll have nothing but the Jewish Board of +Guardians to look to. All the same, I made up my mind as I'd come and say +how they served Isaac." + +He stopped abruptly, and stood quite still a moment, fronting the +meeting, as though appealing to them, through the mere squalid physical +weakness he could find no more words to express. Then, with a sort of +shambling bow, he turned away, and the main body of the meeting clapped +excitedly, while at the back some of the "sweaters" grinned, and chatted +sarcastic things in Yiddish with their neighbours. Tressady saw Lady +Maxwell rise eagerly as the old man passed her, take his hand, and find +him a seat. + +"That, I suppose, was an emotion," said Tressady, looking down upon his +companion. + +"Or an argument," said Watton--"as you like!" + +One other "emotion" of the same kind--the human reality at its simplest +and cruellest--Tressady afterwards remembered. + +A "working-woman" was put up to second an amendment condemning the +workshops clause, which had been moved in an angry speech by one of +"Fontenoy's ladies," a shrill-voiced, fashionable person, the secretary +to the local branch of the Free Workers' League. Tressady had yawned +impatiently through the speech, which had seemed to him a violent and +impertinent performance. But as the speaker sat down he was roused by an +exclamation from a man beside him. + +"_That_ woman!" cried a tall curate, straining on tiptoe to see. "No! +They ought to be ashamed of themselves!" + +Tressady wondered who and why; but all that he saw was that a thin, tall +woman was being handed along the bench in front of him, while her +neighbours and friends clapped her on the back as she passed, laughing +and urging her on. Then, presently, there she stood on the platform, a +thin, wand-like creature, with her battered bonnet sideways on her head, +a woollen crossover on her shoulders, in spite of July, her hands clasped +across her chest, her queer light eyes wandering and smiling hither and +thither. In her emaciation, her weird cheerfulness, she was like a figure +from a Dance of Death. But what was amazing was her self-possession. + +"Now yer laffin' at me," she began in a conversational tone, nodding +towards the group of women she had just left. "You go 'long! I told the +lidy I'd speak, an I will. Well, they comes to me, an they ses, Mrs. +Dickson, yer not to work at 'ome no longer--they'll put yer in prison if +yer do't, they ses; yer to go out ter work, same as the shop 'ands, they +ses; and what's more, if they cotch Mr. Butterford--that's my landlord; +p'raps yer dunno 'im--" + +She looked down at the meeting with a whimsical grin, her eyes screwed up +and her crooked brows lifted, so that the room roared merely to look at +her. The trim lady-secretary, however, bent forward with an air of +annoyance. She had not, perhaps, realised that Mrs. Dickson was so much +of a character. + +"If they cotch Mr. Butterford, they'll make 'im pay up smart for lettin +yer do such a thing as make knickers in 'is 'ouse. So I asks the lidy, +Wot's ter become o' me an the little uns? An she says she done know, but +yer mus come and speak Tuesday night, she says--Manx Road Schools, she +says--if yer want to perwent em making a law ov it. Which I'm a doin +of--aint I?" + +Fresh laughter and response from the room. She went on satisfied. + +"An, yer know, if I can't make the knickers at 'ome, I can't make 'em +awy from 'ome. For ther aint no shops as want kids squallin round, as +fer as I can make out. An Jimmy's a limb, as boys mos'ly are in my +egsperience. Larst week 'e give the biby a 'alfpenny and two o' my +biggest buttons to swaller, an I ony jest smacked 'em out of 'er in +time. Ther'd be murder done if I was to leave 'em. An 'ow 'ud I be able +to pay anyone fer lookin' after em? I can't git much, yer know, shop or +no shop. I aint wot I was." + +She stopped, and pointed significantly to her chest. Tressady shuddered +as the curate whispered to him. + +"I've been in orspital--cut about fearful. I can't go at the pace them +shops works at. They'd give me the sack, double-quick, if I was to go try +in 'em. No, it's _settin_ as does it--settin an settin. I'm at it by +seven, an my 'usband--yer can see im there--e'll tell yer." + +She stopped, and pointed to a burly ruffian standing amid a group of +"pals" round the door. This gentleman had his arms folded, and was +alternately frowning and grinning at this novel spectacle of his wife as +a public performer. Bribes had probably been necessary to bring him to +consent to the spectacle at all. But he was not happy, and when his wife +pointed at him, and the meeting turned to look, he suddenly took a dive +head-foremost into the crowd about him; so that when the laughter and +horse-play that followed had subsided, it was seen that Mr. Tom Dickson's +place knew him no more. + +Meanwhile Mrs. Dickson stood grinning--grinning wide and visibly. It was +the strangest mirth, as though hollow pain and laughter strove with each +other for the one poor indomitable face. + +"Well, ee _could_ 'a told yer, if e'd ad the mind," she said, nodding, +"for ee knows. Ee's been out o' work this twelve an a arf year--well, +come, I'll bet yer, anyway, as ee 'asn't done a 'and's turn this three +year--an I don't blime im. Fust, there isn't the work to be got, and +then yer git out of the way o' wantin it. An beside, I'm used to im. +When Janey--no, it were Sue!--were seven month old, he come in one +night from the public, an after ee'd broke up most o' the things, he +says to me, 'Clear out, will yer!' An I cleared out, and Sue and me +set on the doorstep till mornin. And when mornin come, Tom opened the +door, an ee says, 'What are you doin there, mother? Why aint yer got my +breakfast?' An I went in an got it. But, bless yer, nowadays--the +_women won't do it_!--" + +Another roar went up from the meeting. Mrs. Dickson still grinned. + +"An so there's nothink but _settin_', as I said before--settin' till yer +can't set no more. If I begin o' seven, I gets Mr. Dickson to put the +teathings an the loaf andy, so as I don't 'ave to get up more'n jes to +fetch the kettle; and the chillen gets the same as me--tea an bread, and +a red 'erring Sundays; an Mr. Dickson, 'e gets 'is meals out. I gives +'im the needful, and 'e don't make no trouble; an the children is +dreadful frackshus sometimes, and gets in my way fearful. But there, if +I can _set_--set till I 'ear Stepney Church goin twelve--I can earn my +ten shillin a week, an keep the lot of 'em. Wot does any lidy or +genelman want, a comin' meddlin down 'ere? Now, that's the middle an +both ends on it. Done? Well, I dessay I is done. Lor, I ses to em in the +orspital it do seem rummy to me to be layin abed like that. If Tom was +'ere, why, 'e'd--" + +She made a queer, significant grimace. But the audience laughed no +longer. They stared silently at the gaunt creature, and with their +silence her own mood changed. + +Suddenly she whipped up her apron. She drew it across her eyes, and flung +it away again passionately. + +"I dessay we shall be lyin abed in Kingdom Come," she said defiantly, yet +piteously. "But we've got to git there fust. An I don't want no shops, +thank yer!" + +She rambled on a little longer, then, at a sign from the lady-secretary, +made a grinning curtsy to the audience and departed. + +"What do they get out of that?" said Watton, in Tressady's ear--"Poor +galley-slave in praise of servitude!" + +"Her slavery keeps her alive, please." + +"Yes--and drags down the standard of a whole class!" + +"You'll admit she seemed content?" + +"It's that content we want to kill.--Ah! _at last!_" and Watton clapped +loudly, followed by about half the meeting, while the rest sat silent. +Then Tressady perceived that the chair-woman had called upon Lady Maxwell +to move the next resolution, and that the tall figure had risen. + +She came forward slowly, glancing from side to side, as though doubtful +where to look for her friends. She was in black, and her head was covered +with a little black lace bonnet, in the strings of which, at her throat, +shone a small diamond brooch. The delicate whiteness of her face and +hands, and this sparkle of light on her breast, that moved as she moved, +struck a thrill of pleasure through Tressady's senses. The squalid +monotony and physical defect of the crowd about him passed from his mind. +Her beauty redressed the balance. "'Loveliness, magic, and grace--they +are here; they are set in the world!'--and ugliness and pain have not +conquered while this face still looks and breathes." This, and nothing +less, was the cry of the young man's heart and imagination as he +strained forward, waiting for her voice. + +Then he settled himself to listen--only to pass gradually from +expectation to nervousness, from nervousness to dismay. + +What was happening? She had once told him that she was not a speaker, and +he had not believed her. She had begun well, he thought, though with a +hesitation he had not expected. But now--had she lost her thread--or +what? Incredible! when one remembered her in private life, in +conversation. Yet these stumbling sentences, this evident distress! + +Tressady found himself fidgeting in sympathetic misery. He and Watton +looked at each other. + +A little more, and she would have lost her audience. She _had_ lost it. +At first there had been eager listening, for she had plunged +straightway into a set explanation and defence of the Bill point by +point, and half the room knew that she was Lord Maxwell's wife. But by +the end of ten minutes their attention was gone. They were only staring +at her because she was handsome and a great lady. Otherwise, they +seemed not to know what to make of her. She grew white; she wavered. +Tressady saw that she was making great efforts, and all in vain. The +division between her and her audience widened with every sentence, and +Fontenoy's lady-organiser, in the background, sat smilingly erect. +Tressady, who had been at first inclined to hate the thought of her +success in this Inferno, grew hot with wrath and irritation. His own +vanity suffered in her lack of triumph. + +Amazing! How _could_ her personal magic--so famous on so many +fields--have deserted her like this in an East End schoolroom, before +people whose lives she knew, whose griefs she carried in her heart? + +Then an idea struck him. The thought was an illumination--he understood. +He shut his eyes and listened. Maxwell's sentences, Maxwell's +manner--even, at times, Maxwell's voice! He had been rehearsing to her +his coming speech in the House of Lords, and she was painfully repeating +it! To his disgust, Tressady saw the reporters scribbling away--no doubt +they knew their business! Aye, there was the secret. The wife's adoration +showed through her very failure--through this strange conversion of all +that was manly, solid, and effective in Maxwell, into a confused mass of +facts and figures, pedantic, colourless, and cold! + +Edward Watton began to look desperately unhappy. "Too long," he said, +whispering in Tressady's ear, "and too technical. They can't follow." + +And he looked at a group of rough factory-girls beginning to scuffle with +the young men near them, at the restless crowd of "greeners," at the +women in the centre of the hall lifting puzzled faces to the speaker, as +though in a pain of listening. + +Tressady nodded. In the struggle of devotion with a half-laughing +annoyance he could only crave that the thing should be over. + +But the next instant his face altered. He pushed forward instinctively, +turning his back on Watton, hating the noisy room, that would hardly +let him hear. + +Ah!--those few last sentences, that voice, that quiver of passion--they +were her own--herself, not Maxwell. The words were very simple, and a +little tremulous--words of personal reminiscence and experience. But for +one listener there they changed everything. The room, the crowd, the +speaker--he saw them for a moment under another aspect: that poetic, +eternal aspect, which is always there, behind the veil of common things, +ready to flash out on mortal eyes. He _felt_ the woman's heart, oppressed +with a pity too great for it; the delicate, trembling consciousness, like +a point in space, weighed on by the burden of the world; he stood, as it +were, beside her, hearing with her ears, seeing the earth-spectacle as +she saw it, with that terrible second sight of hers: the all-environing +woe and tragedy of human things--the creeping hunger and pain--the +struggle that leads no whither--the life that hates to live and yet +dreads to die--the death that cuts all short, and does but add one more +hideous question to the great pile that hems the path of man. + +A hard, reluctant tear rose in his eyes. Is it starved tailoresses and +shirtmakers alone who suffer? Is there no hunger of the heart, that +matches and overweighs the physical? Is it not as easy for the rich as +the poor to miss the one thing needful, the one thing that matters and +saves? Angrily, and in a kind of protest, he put out his hand, as it +were, to claim his own share of the common pain. + +"Make way there! make way!" cried a police-sergeant, holding back the +crowd, "and let the lady pass." + +Tressady did his best to push through with Lady Maxwell on his arm. But +there was an angry hum of voices in front of him, an angry pressure round +the doors. + +"We shall soon get a cab," he said, bending over her. "You are very +tired, I fear. Please lean upon me." + +Yet he could but feel grateful to the crowd. It gave him this joy of +protecting and supporting her. Nevertheless, as he looked ahead, he +wished that they were safely off, and that there were more police! + +For this meeting, which had been only mildly disorderly and inattentive +while Marcella was speaking, had suddenly flamed, after she sat down, +into a fierce confusion and tumult--why, Tressady hardly now understood. +A man had sprung up to speak as she sat down who was apparently in bad +repute with most of the unions of the district. At any rate, there had +been immediate uproar and protest. The trade-unionists would not hear +him--hurled names at him--"thief," "blackleg"--as he attempted to speak. +Then the Free Workers, for whom this dubious person had been lately +acting, rose in a mass and booed at the unionists; and finally some of +the dark-eyed, black-bearded "greeners" near the door, urged on, +probably, by the masters, whose slaves they were, had leaped the benches +near them, shouting strange tongues, and making for the hostile throng +around the platform. + +Then it had been time for Naseby and the police to clear the platform and +open a passage for the Maxwell party. Unfortunately, there was no outlet +to the back, no chance of escaping the shouting crowd in Manx Road. +Tressady, joining his friends at last by dint of his height and a free +play of elbows, found himself suddenly alone with Lady Maxwell, Naseby +and Lady Madeleine borne along far behind, and no chance but to follow +the current, with such occasional help as the police stationed along the +banks of it might be able to give. + +Outside, Tressady strained his eyes for a cab. + +"Here, sir!" cried the sergeant in front, carving a passage by dint of +using his own stalwart frame as a ram. + +They hurried on, for some rough lads on the edges of the crowd had +already begun stone-throwing. The faces about them seemed to be partly +indifferent, partly hostile. "Look at the bloomin bloats!" cried a wild +factory-girl with a touzled head as Lady Maxwell passed. "Let 'em stop at +'ome and mind their own 'usbands--yah!" + +"Garn! who paid for your bonnet?" shouted another, until a third girl +pulled her back, panting, "If you say that any more I'll scrag yer!" For +this third girl had spent a fortnight in the Mile End Road house, getting +fed and strengthened before an operation. + +But here was the cab! Lady Maxwell's foot was already on the step, when +Tressady felt something fly past him. + +There was a slight cry. The form in front of him seemed to waver a +moment. Then Tressady himself mounted, caught her, and in another moment, +after a few plunges from the excited horse, they were off down Manx +Road, followed by a shouting crowd that gradually thinned. + +"You are hurt!" he said. + +"Yes," she said faintly, "but not much. Will you tell him to drive first +to Mile End Road?" + +"I have told him. Can I do anything to stop the bleeding?" + +He looked at her in despair. The handkerchief, and the delicate hand +itself that she was holding to her brow, were dabbled in blood. + +"Have you a silk handkerchief to spare?" she asked him, smiling slightly +and suddenly through her pallor, as though at their common predicament. + +By good fortune he had one. She took off her hat, and gave him a few +business-like directions. His fingers trembled as he tried to obey her; +but he had the practical sense that the small vicissitudes and hardships +of travel often develop in a man, and between them they adjusted a rough +but tolerable bandage. + +Then she leant against the side of the cab, and he thought she would +have swooned. There was a pause, during which he watched the quivering +lines of the lips and nostrils and the pallor of the cheeks with a +feeling of dismay. + +But she did not mean to faint, and little by little her will answered to +her call upon it. Presently she said, with eyes shut and brow contracted: + +"I _trust_ the others are safe. Oh! what a failure--what a failure! I am +afraid I have done Aldous harm!" + +The tone of the last words touched Tressady deeply. Evidently she could +hardly restrain her tears. + +"They were not worthy you should go and speak to them," he said quickly. +"Besides, it was only a noisy minority." + +She did not speak again till they drew up before the house in the Mile +End Road. Then she turned to him. + +"I was to have stayed here for the night, but I think I must go home. +Aldous might hear that there had been a disturbance. I will leave a +message here, and drive home." + +"I trust you will let me go with you. We should none of us be happy to +think of you as alone just yet. And I am due at the House by eleven." + +She smiled, assenting, then descended, leaning heavily upon him in +her weakness. + +When she reappeared, attended by her two little servants, all frightened +and round-eyed at their mistress's mishap, she had thrown a thick lace +scarf round her head, which hid the bandage and gave to her pale beauty a +singularly touching, appealing air. + +"I wish I could see Madeleine," she said anxiously, standing beside the +cab and looking up the road. "Ah!" + +For she had suddenly caught sight of a cab in the distance driving +smartly up. As it approached, Naseby and Lady Madeleine were plainly to +be seen inside it. The latter jumped out almost at Marcella's feet, +looking more scared than ever as she saw the bandage and the black scarf +twisted round the white face. But in a few moments Marcella had soothed +her, and given her over, apparently, to the care of another lady staying +in the house. Then she waved her hand to Naseby, who, with his usual +coolness, asked no questions and made no remarks, and she and Tressady +drove off. + +"Madeleine will stay the night," Marcella explained as they sped towards +Aldgate. "That was our plan. My secretary will look after her. She has +been often here with me lately, and has things of her own to do. But I +ought not to have taken her to-night. Lady Kent would never have forgiven +me if she had been hurt. Oh! it was all a mistake--all a great mistake! I +suppose I imagined--that is one's folly--that I could really do some +good--make an effect." + +She bit her lip, and the furrow reappeared in the white brow. + +Tressady felt by sympathy that her heart was all sore, her moral being +shaken and vibrating. After these long months of labour and sympathy and +emotion, the sudden touch of personal brutality had unnerved her. + +Mere longing to comfort, to "make-up," overcame him. + +"You wouldn't talk of mistake--of failing--if you knew how to be near +you, to listen to you, to see you, touches and illuminates some of us!" + +His cheek burnt, but he turned a manly, eager look upon her. + +Her cheek, too, flushed, and he thought he saw her bosom heave. + +"Oh no!--no!" she cried. "How _impossible!_--when one feels oneself so +helpless, so clumsy, so useless. Why couldn't I do better? But perhaps it +is as well. It all prepares one--braces one--against--" + +She paused and leaned forward, looking out at the maze of figures and +carriages on the Mansion House crossing, her tight-pressed lips trembling +against her will. + +"Against the last inevitable disappointment." That, no doubt, was what +she meant. + +"If you only understood how loth some of us are to differ from you," he +cried,--"how hard it seems to have to press another view,--to be +already pledged." + +"Oh yes!--_please_--I know that you are pledged," she said, in +hasty distress, her delicacy shrinking as before from the direct +personal argument. + +They were silent a little. Tressady looked out at the houses in Queen +Victoria Street, at the lamplit summer night, grudging the progress of +the cab, the approach of the river, of the Embankment, where there would +be less traffic to bar their way--clinging to the minutes as they passed. + +"Oh! how could they put up that woman?" she said presently, her eyes +still shut, her hand shaking, as it rested on the door. "How _could_ +they? It is the thought of women like that--the hundreds and thousands of +them--that goads one on. A clergyman who knows the East End well said to +me the other day, 'The difference between now and twenty years ago is +that the women work much more, the men less.' I can never get away from +the thought of the women! Their lives come to seem to me the mere refuse, +the rags and shreds, that are thrown every day into the mill and ground +to nothing--without a thought--without a word of pity, an hour of +happiness! Cancer--three children left out of nine--and barely forty, +though she looked sixty! They tell me she may live eighteen months. Then, +when the parish has buried her, the man has only to hold up his finger to +find someone else to use up in the same way. And she is just one of +thousands." + +"I can only reply by the old, stale question," said Tressady, sturdily. +"Did we make the mill? Can we stop its grinding? And if not, is it fair +even to the race that has something to gain from courage and gaiety--is +it _reasonable_ to take all our own poor little joy and drench it in +this horrible pain of sympathy, as you do! But we have said all these +things before." + +He bent over to her, smiling. But she did not look up. And he saw a tear +which her weakness, born of shock and fatigue, could not restrain, steal +from the lashes on the cheek. Then he added, still leaning towards her: + +"Only, what I never have said--I think--is what is true to-night. At last +you have made one person feel--if that matters anything!--the things you +feel. I don't know that I am particularly grateful to you! And, +practically, we may be as far apart as ever. But I was without a sense +when I went into this game of politics; and now--" + +His heart beat. What would he not have said, mad youth!--within the +limits imposed by her nature and his own dread--to make her look at him, +to soften this preposterous sadness! + +But it needed no more. She opened her eyes, and looked at him with a wild +sweetness and gratitude which dazzled him, and struck his memory with the +thought of the Southern, romantic strain in her. + +"You are very kind and comforting!" she said; "but then, from the +first--somehow--I knew you were a friend to us. One felt it--through all +difference." + +The little sentences were steeped in emotion--emotion springing from +many sources, fed by a score of collateral thoughts and memories--with +which Tressady had, in truth, nothing to do. Yet the young man gulped +inwardly. She had been a tremulous woman till the words were said. +Now--strange!--through her very gentleness and gratefulness, a barrier +had risen between them. Something stern and quick told him this was +the very utmost of what she could ever say to him--the farthest limit +of it all. + +They passed under Charing Cross railway bridge. Beside them, as they +emerged, the moon shone out above the darks and silvers of the river, and +in front, the towers of Westminster rose purplish grey against a west +still golden. + +"How were things going in the House this afternoon?" she asked, looking +at the towers. "Oh! I forgot. You see, the clock says close on eleven. +Please let me drop you here. I can manage by myself quite well." + +He protested, and she yielded, with a patient kindness that made him +sore. Then he gave his account, and they talked a little of Monday's +division and of the next critical votes in Committee--each of them, so he +felt in his exaltation, a blow dealt to her--that he must help to deal. +Yet there was a fascination in the topic. Neither could get away from it. + +Presently, Pall Mall being very full of traffic, they had to wait a +moment at the corner of the street that turns into St. James's Square. In +the pause Tressady caught sight of a man on the pavement. The man smiled, +looked astonished, and took off his hat. Lady Maxwell bowed coldly, and +immediately looked away. Tressady recognised Harding Watton. But neither +he nor she mentioned his name. + +In another minute he had seen her vanish within the doors of her own +house. Her hand had rested gently, willingly, in his. + +"I am so grateful!" she had said; "so will Maxwell be. We shall meet +soon, and laugh over our troubles!" + +And then she was gone, and he was left standing a moment, bewildered. + +Eleven? What had he to do? + +Then he remembered his pair, and that he had promised to call for Letty +at a certain house, and take her on to a late ball. The evening, in fact, +instead of ending, was just beginning. He could have laughed, as he got +back into his cab. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile Marcella had sped through the outer hall into the inner, where +one solitary light, still burning, made a rather desolate dark-in-light +through the broad, pillared space. A door opened at the farther side. + +"Aldous!" + +"You!" + +He came out, and she flew to him. He felt her trembling as she touched +him. In ten words she told him something of what had happened. Then +he saw the bandage round her temple. His countenance fell. She knew +that he turned white, and loved him for it. How few things had power +to move him so! + +He wanted to lead her back into his library, where he was at work. But +she resisted. + +"Let me go up to Annette," she said. "The little wound--oh! it is not +much, I _know_ it is not much--ought to be properly seen to. We will do +it between us in a moment. Then come--I will send her down for you. I +want to tell you." + +But in her heart of hearts she was just a little afraid of telling him. +What if an exaggerated version should get into the papers--if it should +really do him harm--at this critical moment! She was always tormented by +this dread, a dread born of long-past indiscretions and mistakes. + +He acquiesced, but first he insisted on half leading, half carrying her +upstairs; and she permitted it, delighting in his strong arm. + +Half an hour later she sent for him. The maid found him pacing up and +down the hall, waiting. + +When he entered her room she was lying on her sofa in a white wrapper of +some silky stuff. The black lace had been drawn again round her head, and +he saw nothing but a very pale face and her eager, timid eyes--timid for +no one in the world but him. As he caught sight of her, she produced in +him that exquisite mingled impression of grace, passion, self-yielding, +which in all its infinite variations and repetitions made up for him the +constant poem of her beauty. But though she knew it, she glanced at him +anxiously as he approached her. It had been to her a kind of luxury of +feeling, in the few moments that she had been waiting for him, to cherish +a little fear of him--of his displeasure. + +"Now describe exactly what you have been doing," he said, sitting down by +her with a troubled face and taking her hand, as soon as he had assured +himself that the cut was slight and would leave no scar. + +She told her tale, and was thrilled to see that he frowned. She laid her +hand on his shoulder. + +"It is the first public thing I have done without consulting you. I meant +to have asked you yesterday, but we were both so busy. The meeting was +got up rather hurriedly, and they pressed me to speak, after all the +arrangements were made." + +"We are both of us too busy," he said, rather sadly; "we glance, and nod, +and bustle by--" + +He did not finish the quotation, but she could. Her eyes scanned his +face. "Do you think I ought to have avoided such a thing at such a time? +Will it do harm?" + +His brow cleared. He considered the matter. + +"I think you may expect some of the newspapers to make a good deal of +it," he said, smiling. + +And, in fact, his own inherited tastes and instincts were all chafed by +her story. His wife--the wife of a Cabinet Minister--pleading for her +husband's Bill, or, as the enemy might say, for his political existence, +with an East End meeting, and incidentally with the whole +public--exposing herself, in a time of agitation, to the rowdyism and +the stone-throwing that wait on such things! The notion set the +fastidious old-world temper of the man all on edge. But he would never +have dreamed of arguing the matter so with her. A sort of high chivalry +forbade it. In marrying her he had not made a single condition--would +have suffered tortures rather than lay the smallest fetter upon her. In +consequence, he had been often thought a weak, uxorious person. Maxwell +knew that he was merely consistent. No sane man lays his heart at the +feet of a Marcella without counting the cost. + +She did not answer his last remark. But he saw that she was wistful and +uneasy, and presently she laid her fingers lightly on his. + +"Tell me if I am too much away from you--too much occupied with +other people." + +He sighed,--the slightest sigh,--but she winced. "I had just an hour +before dinner," he said; "you were not here, and the house seemed very +empty. I would have come down to fetch you, but there were some important +papers to read before to-morrow." A Cabinet meeting was fixed, as she +knew, for the following day. "Then, I have been making Saunders draw up a +statement for the newspapers in answer to Watton's last attack, and it +would have been a help to talk to you before we sent it off. Above all, +if I had known of the meeting I should have begged you not to go. I ought +to have warned you yesterday, for I knew that there was some ugly +agitation developing down there. But I never thought of you as likely to +face a mob. Will you please reflect"--he pressed her hand almost roughly +against his lips--"that if that stone had been a little heavier, and +flung a little straighter--" + +He paused. A dew came to her eyes, a happy glow to her cheek. As for her, +she was grateful to the stone that had raised such heart-beats. + +Perhaps some instinct told him not to please her in this way too much, +for he rose and walked away a moment. + +"There! don't let's think of it, or I shall turn tyrant after all, and +plunge into 'shalls' and 'sha'n'ts'! You _know_ you carry two lives, and +all the plans that either of us care about, in your hand. You say that +Tressady brought you home?" + +He turned and looked at her. + +"Yes. Edward Watton brought him to the meeting." + +"But he has been down to see you there several times before, as well as +coming here?" + +"Oh yes! almost every week since we met at Castle Luton." + +"It is curious," said Maxwell, thoughtfully; "for he will certainly vote +steadily with Fontenoy all through. His election speeches pledged him +head over ears." + +"Oh! of course he will vote," said Marcella, moving a little uneasily; +"but one cannot help trying to modify his way of looking at things. And +his tone _is_ changed." + +Maxwell stood at the foot of her sofa, considering, a host of perplexed +and unwelcome notions flitting across his mind. In spite of his idealist +absorption in his work, his political aims, and the one love of his +life, he had the training of a man of the world, and could summon the +shrewdness of one when he pleased. He had liked this young Tressady, for +the first time, at Castle Luton, and had seen him fall under Marcella's +charm with some amusement. But this haunting of their camp in the East +End, at such a marked and critical moment, was strange, to say the least +of it. It must point, one would think, to some sudden and remarkable +strength of personal influence. + +Had she any real consciousness of the power she wielded? Once or twice, +in the years since they had been married, Maxwell had watched this spell +of his wife's at work, and had known a moment of trouble. "If I were the +fellow she had talked and walked with so," he had once said to himself, +"I must have fallen in love with her had she been twenty times another +man's wife!" Yet no harm had happened; he had only reproached himself for +a gross mind without daring to breathe a word to her. + +And he dared not now. Besides, how absurd! The young man was just +married, and, to Maxwell's absent, incurious eyes, the bride had seemed a +lively, pretty little person enough. No doubt it was the nervous strain +of his political life that made such fancies possible to him. Let him not +cumber her ears with them! + +Then gradually, as he stood at her feet, the sight of her, breathing +weakness, submission, loveliness, her eyes raised to his, banished every +other thought from his happy heart, and drew him like a magnet. + +Meanwhile she began to smile. He knelt down beside her, and she put both +hands on his shoulders. + +"Dear!" she said, half laughing and half crying, "I did speak so badly; +you would have been ashamed of me. I couldn't hold the meeting. I didn't +persuade a soul. Lord Fontenoy's ladies had it all their own way. And +first I was dreadfully sorry I couldn't do such a thing decently--sorry +because of one's vanity, and sorry because I couldn't help you. And now I +think I'm rather glad." + +"Are you?" said Maxwell, drily; "as for me, I'm enchanted! There!--so +much penalty you _shall_ have." + +She pressed his lips with her hand. + +"Don't spoil my pretty speech. I am only glad because--because public +life and public success make one stand separate--alone. I have gone +far enough to know how it might be. A new passion would come in, and +creep through one like a poison. I should win you votes--and our +hearts would burn dry! There! take me--scold me--despise me. I am a +poor thing--but yours!" + +With such a humbleness might Diana have wooed her shepherd, stooping her +goddess head to him on the Latmian steep. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +George went back to the House, and stayed for half an hour or so, +listening to a fine speech from a member of a former Liberal Cabinet. The +speech was one more sign of the new cleavage of parties that was being +everywhere brought about by the pressure of the new Collectivism. + +"We always knew," said the speaker, referring to a Ministry in which +he had served seven years before, "that we should be fighting +Socialism in good earnest before many years were over; and we knew, +too, that we should be fighting it as put forward by a Conservative +Government. The hands are the hands of the English Tory, the voice is +the voice of Karl Marx." + +The Socialists sent forth mocking cheers, while the Government benches +sat silent. The rank-and-file of the Conservative party already hated the +Bill. The second reading must go through. But if only some rearrangement +were possible without rushing the country into the arms of +revolutionists--if it were only conceivable that Fontenoy, or even the +old Liberal gang, should form a Government, and win the country, the +Committee stage would probably not trouble the House long. + +Meanwhile in the smoking-rooms and lobbies the uncertainties of the +coming division kept up an endless hum of gossip and conjecture. Tressady +wandered about it all like a ghost, indifferent and preoccupied, careful +above all to avoid any more talk with Fontenoy. While he was in the House +itself he stood at the door or sat in the cross-benches, so as to keep a +space between him and his leader. + +A little before twelve he drove home, dressed hastily, and went off to a +house in Berkeley Square, where he was to meet Letty. He found her +waiting for him, a little inclined to be reproachful, and eager for her +ball. As they drove towards Queen's Gate she chattered to him of her +evening, and of the people and dresses she had seen. + +"And, you foolish boy!" she broke out, laughing, and tapping him on the +hand with her fan--"you looked so glum this morning when I couldn't go +and see Lady Tressady--and--what do you think? Why, she has been at a +party to-night--at a party, my dear!--and _dressed_! Mrs. Willy Smith +told me she had seen her at the Webers'." + +"I daresay," said George, rather shortly; "all the same, this morning she +was very unwell." + +Letty shrugged her shoulders, but she did not want to be disagreeable and +argue the point. She was much pleased with her dress--with the last +glance of herself that she had caught in the cloak-room looking-glass +before leaving Berkeley Square--and, finally, with this well-set-up, +well-dressed husband beside her. She glanced at him every now and then as +she put on a fresh pair of gloves. He had been very much absorbed in this +tiresome Parliament lately, and she thought herself a very good and +forbearing wife not to make more fuss. Nor had she made any fuss about +his going down to see Lady Maxwell at the East End. It did not seem to +have made the smallest difference to his opinions. + +The thought of Lady Maxwell brought a laugh to her lips. + +"Oh! do you know, Harding was so amusing about the Maxwells to-day!" she +said, turning to Tressady in her most good-humoured and confiding mood. +"He says people are getting so tired of her,--of her meddling, and her +preaching, and all the rest of it,--and that everybody thinks him so +absurd not to put a stop to it. And Harding says that it doesn't succeed +even--that Englishmen will never stand petticoat government. It's all +very well--they have to stand it in some forms!" + +And, stretching her slim neck, she turned and gave her husband a tiny +flying kiss on the cheek. Mechanically grateful, George took her hand in +his, but he did not make her the pretty speech she expected. Just before +she spoke he was about to tell her of his evening--of the meeting, and of +his drive home with Lady Maxwell. He had been far too proud hitherto, and +far too confident in himself, to make any secret to Letty of what he did. +And, luckily, she had raised no difficulties. In truth, she had been too +well provided with amusements and flatteries of her own since their +return from the country to leave her time or opportunities for jealousy. +Perhaps, secretly, the young husband would have been more flattered if +she had been more exacting. + +But as she quoted Harding something stiffened in him. Later, after the +ball, when they were alone, he would tell her--he would try and make her +understand what sort of a woman Marcella Maxwell was. In his trouble of +mind a confused plan crossed his thoughts of trying to induce Lady +Maxwell to make friends with Letty. But a touch of that charm, that +poetry!--he asked no more. + +He glanced at his wife. She looked pretty and young as she sat beside +him, lost in a pleasant pondering of social successes. But he wondered, +uncomfortably, why she must use such a thickness of powder on her still +unspoilt complexion; and her dress seemed to him fantastic, and not +over-modest. He had begun to have the strangest feeling about their +relation, as though he possessed a double personality, and were looking +on at himself and her, wondering how it would end. It was characteristic, +perhaps, of his half-developed moral life that his sense of ordinary +husbandly responsibility towards her was not strong. He always thought of +her as he thought of himself--as a perfectly free agent, dealing with him +and their common life on equal terms. + +The house to which they were going belonged to very wealthy people, and +Letty was looking forward feverishly to the cotillon. + +"They say, at the last dance they gave, the cotillon gifts cost eight +hundred pounds," she said gleefully, to George. "They always do things +extraordinarily well." + +No doubt it was the prospect of the cotillon that had brought such a +throng together. The night was stifling; the stairs and the supper-room +were filled with a struggling mob; and George spent an hour of purgatory +wondering at the gaieties of his class. + +He had barely more than two glimpses of Letty after they had fought their +way into the room. On the first occasion, by stretching himself to his +full height so as to look over the intervening crowd, he saw her seated +in a chair of state, a mirror in one hand and a lace handkerchief in the +other. Young men were being brought up behind her to look into the glass +over her shoulder, and she was merrily brushing their images away. +Presently a tall, dark fellow advanced, with jet-black moustache and red +cheeks. Letty kept her handkerchief suspended a moment over the +reflection in the glass. George could see the corners of her lips +twitching with amusement. Then she quietly handed the mirror to the +leader of the cotillon, rose, gathered up her white skirt a little, the +music struck up joyously, and she and Lord Cathedine spun round the room +together, followed by the rest of the dancers. + +George meanwhile found few people to talk to. He danced a few dances, +mostly with young girls in the white frocks of their first season--a +species of partner for which, as a rule, he had no affinity at all. But +on the whole he passed the time leaning against the wall in a corner, +lost in a reverie which was a vague compound of this and that, there and +here; of the Manx Road schoolroom, its odours and heats, its pale, +uncleanly crowd absorbed in the things of daily bread, with these gay, +scented rooms, and this extravagance of decoration, that made even +flowers a vulgarity, with these costly cotillon gifts--pins, bracelets, +rings--that were being handed round and wondered over by people who had +already more of such things than they could wear; of these rustling +women, in their silks and diamonds, with that gaunt stooping image of the +loafer's wife, smiling her queer defiance at pain and fate, and letting +meddling "lidies" know that without sixteen hours' "settin" she could not +keep her husband and children alive. Stale commonplace, that all the +world knows by heart!--the squalor of the _pauperum tabernae_ dimming the +glory of the _regum turres_. Yet there are only a few men and women in +each generation who really pass into the eclipsing shadow of it. Others +talk--_they_ feel and struggle. There were many elements in Tressady's +nature that might seem destined to force him into their company. Yet +hitherto he had resolutely escaped his destiny--and enjoyed his life. + +About supper-time he found himself near Lady Cathedine, a thin-faced, +silent creature, whose eyes suddenly attracted him. He took her down to +supper, and spent an exceedingly dull time. She had the air of one pining +to talk, to confide herself. Yet in practice it was apparently impossible +for her to do it. She fell back into monosyllables or gentle banalities; +and George noticed that she was always restlessly conscious of the +movements in the room--who came in, who went out--and throwing little +frightened glances towards the door. + +He was glad indeed when his task was over. On their way to the +drawing-rooms they passed a broad landing, which on one side led out to a +balcony, and had been made into a decorated bower for sitting-out. At +the farther end he saw Letty sitting beside Harding Watton. Letty was +looking straight before her, with a flushed and rather frowning face. +Harding was talking to her, and, to judge from his laughing manner, was +amusing himself, if not her. + +George duly found Lady Cathedine a seat, and returned himself to ask +Letty whether it was not time to go. He found, however, that she had been +carried off by another partner, and could only resign himself to a fresh +twenty minutes of boredom. He leant, yawning, against the wall, feeling +the evening interminable. + +Then a Harrow and Oxford acquaintance came up to him, and they chatted +for a time behind a stand of flowers that stood between them and one of +the doorways to the ballroom. At the end of the dance George saw Lady +Cathedine hurrying up to this door with the quick, furtive step that was +characteristic of her. She passed on the other side of the flowers, and +George heard her say to someone just inside the room: + +"Robert, the carriage has come!" + +A pause; then a thick voice said, in an emphatic undertone: + +"Damn the carriage!--go away!" + +"But, Robert, you know we _promised_ to look in at Lady Tuam's on the +way home." + +The thick voice dropped a note lower. + +"Damn Lady Tuam! I shall come when it suits me." + +Lady Cathedine fell back, and George saw her cross the landing, and drop +into a chair beside an old general, who was snoozing in a peaceful corner +till his daughters should see fit to take him home. The old general took +no notice of her, and she sat there, playing with her fan, her rather +prominent grey eyes staring out of her white face. + +Both George and his friend, as it happened, had heard the conversation. +The friend raised his eyebrows in disgust. + +"What a brute that fellow is! They have been married four months. +However, she was amply warned." + +"Who was she?" + +"The daughter of old Wickens, the banker. He married her for her money, +and lives upon it religiously. By now, I should think, he has dragged her +through every torture that marriage admits of." + +"So soon?" said George, drily. + +"Well," said the friend, laughing, "no doubt it admits of a great many." + +"I am ready to go home," said a voice at Tressady's elbow. + +Something in the intonation surprised him, and he turned quickly. + +"By all means," he said, throwing an astonished look at his wife, who had +come up to him on Lord Cathedine's arm. "I will go and look for the +carriage." + +What was the matter, he asked himself as he ran downstairs--what was the +meaning of Letty's manner and expression? + +But by the time he had sent for the carriage the answer had suggested +itself. No doubt Harding Watton had given Letty news of that hansom in +Pall Mall, and no doubt, also--He shrugged his shoulders in annoyance. +The notion of having to explain and excuse himself was particularly +unpalatable. What a fool he had been not to tell Letty of his East End +adventure on their way to Queen's Gate. + +He was standing in a little crowd at the foot of the stairs when Letty +swept past him in search of her wraps. He smiled at her, but she held her +head erect as though she did not see him. + +So there was to be a scene. George felt the rise of a certain inner +excitement. Perhaps it was as well. There were a good many things he +wanted to say. + +At the same time, the Cathedine episode had filled him with a new disgust +for the violences and brutalities to which the very intimacy of the +marriage relation may lead. If a scene there was to be, he meant to be +more or less frank, and at the same time to keep both himself and her +within bounds. + + * * * * * + +"You can't deny that you made a secret of it from me," cried Letty, +angrily. "I asked you what had been doing in the House, and you never let +me suspect that you had been anywhere else the whole evening." + +"I daresay," said George, quietly. "But I never meant to make any +mystery. Something you said about Lady Maxwell put me off telling +you--then. I thought I would wait till we got home." + +They were in George's study--the usual back-room on the ground-floor, +which George could not find time to make comfortable, while Letty had +never turned her attention to it. Tressady was leaning against the +mantelpiece. He had turned up a solitary electric light, and in the cold +glare of it Letty was sitting opposite to him, angrily upright. The ugly +light had effaced the half-tones of the face and deepened the lines of +it, while it had taken all the grace from her extravagant dress and +tumbled flowers. She seemed to have lost her prettiness. + +"Something I said about Lady Maxwell?" she repeated scornfully. "Why +shouldn't I say what I like about Lady Maxwell? What does she matter +either to you or to me that I should not laugh at her if I please? +Everybody laughs at her." + +"I don't think so," said Tressady, quietly. "I have seen her to-night in +a curious and touching scene--in a meeting of very poor people. She tried +to make a speech, by the way, and spoke badly. She did not carry the +meeting with her, and towards the end it got noisy. As we came out she +was struck with a stone, and I got a hansom for her, and drove her home +to St. James's Square. We were just turning into the Square when Harding +saw us. I happened to be with her in the crowd when the stone hit her. +What do you suppose I could do but bring her home?" + +"Why did you go? and why didn't you tell me at once?" + +"Why did I go?" Tressady hesitated, then looked down upon his wife. +"Well!--I suppose I went because Lady Maxwell is very interesting to +watch--because she is sympathetic and generous, and it stirs one's mind +to talk to her." + +"Not at all!" cried Letty, passionately. "You went because she is +handsome--because she is just a superior kind of flirt. She is always +making women anxious about their husbands under this pretence of +politics. Heaps of women hate her, and are afraid of her." + +She was very white, and could hardly save herself from the tears of +excitement. Yet what was working in her was not so much Harding Watton's +story as this new and strange manner of her husband's. She had sat +haughtily silent in the carriage on their way home, fully expecting him +to question her--to explain, entreat, excuse himself, as he had generally +been ready to do whenever she chose to make a quarrel. But he, too, said +nothing, and she could not make up her mind how to begin. Then, as soon +as they were shut into his room her anger had broken out, and he had not +yet begun to caress and appease her. Her surprise had brought with it a +kind of shock. What was the matter? Why was she not mistress as usual? + +As she made her remark about Marcella, Tressady smiled a little, and +played with a cigarette he had taken up. + +"Whom do you mean?" he asked her. "One often hears these things said of +her in the vague, and never with any details. I myself don't believe it. +Harding, of course, believes anything to her disadvantage." + +Letty hesitated; then, remembering all she could of Harding's ill-natured +gossip, she flung out some names, exaggerating and inventing freely. The +emphasis with which she spoke reddened all the small face again--made it +hot and common. + +Tressady raised his shoulders as she came to the end of her tirade. + +"Well, you know I don't believe all that--and I don't think Harding +believes it. Lady Maxwell, as you once said yourself, is not, I suppose, +a woman's woman. She gets on better, no doubt, with men than with women. +These men you speak of are all personal and party friends. They support +Maxwell, and they like her. But if anybody is jealous, I should think +they might remember that there is safety in numbers." + +"Oh, that's all very well! But she wants _power_, and she doesn't care a +rap how she gets it. She is a dangerous, intriguing woman--and she just +trades upon her beauty!" + +Tressady, who had been leaning with his face averted from her, turned +round with sparkling eyes. + +"You foolish child!" he said slowly--"you foolish child!" + +Her lips twitched. She put out a shaking hand to her cloak, that had +fallen from her arms. + +"Oh! very well. I sha'n't stay here to be talked to like that, so +good-night." + +He took no notice. He walked up to her and put his hands on her +shoulders. + +"Don't you know what it is"--he spoke with a curious imperiousness--"that +protects any woman--or any man either for the matter of that--from +Marcella Maxwell's beauty? Don't you know that she adores her husband?" + +"That's a pose, of course, like everything else," cried Letty, trying to +move herself away; "you once said it was." + +"Before I knew her. It's not a pose--it's the secret of her whole life." + +He walked back to the mantelpiece, conscious of a sudden rise of inward +bitterness. + +"Well, I shall go to bed," said Letty, again half rising. "You might, I +think, have had the kindness and the good taste to say you were sorry I +should have the humiliation of finding out where my husband spends his +evenings, from Harding Watton!" + +Tressady was stung. + +"When have I ever concealed what I did from you?" he asked her hotly. + +Letty, who was standing stiff and scornful, tossed her head +without speaking. + +"That means," said Tressady after a pause, "that you don't take my word +for it--that you suspect me of deceiving you before to-night?" + +Letty still said nothing. His eyes flashed. Then a pang of conscience +smote him. He took up his cigarette again with a laugh. + +"I think we are both a pair of babies," he said, as he pretended to look +for matches. "You know very well that you don't really think I tell you +mean lies. And let me assure you, my dear child, that fate did not mean +Lady Maxwell to have lovers--and that she never will have them. But when +that's said there's something else to say." + +He went up to her again, and touched her arm. + +"You and I couldn't have this kind of scene, Letty, could we, if +everything was all right?" + +Her breast rose and fell hurriedly. + +"Oh! I supposed you would want to retaliate--to complain on your side!" + +"Yes," he said deliberately, "I think I do want to complain. Why is it +that--I began to like going down to see Lady Maxwell--why did I like +talking to her at Castle Luton? Well! of course it's pleasant to be with +a beautiful person--I don't deny that in the least. But she might have +been as beautiful as an angel, and I mightn't have cared twopence about +her. She has something much less common than beauty. It's very simple, +too--I suppose it's only _sympathy_--just that. Everybody feels the same. +When you talk to her she seems to care about it; she throws her mind into +yours. And there's a charm about it--there's no doubt of that." + +He had begun his little speech meaning to be perfectly frank and +honest--to appeal to her better nature and his own. But something +stopped him abruptly, perhaps the sudden perception that he was after +playing the hypocrite--perhaps the consciousness that he was only making +matters worse. + +"It's a pity you didn't say all these things before," she said, with +a hard laugh, "instead of denouncing the political woman, as you +used to do." + +He sat down on the arm of the chair beside her, balancing lightly, with +his hands in his pockets. + +"Did I denounce the political woman? Well, the Lord knows I'm not in love +with her now! It isn't politics, my dear, that are attaching--it's the +kind of human being. Ah! well, don't let's talk of it. Let's go back to +that point of sympathy. There's more in it than I used to think. Suppose, +for instance, you were to try and take a little more interest in my +political work than you do? Suppose you were to try and see money matters +from my point of view, instead of driving us"--he paused a moment, then +went on coolly, lifting his thin, long-chinned face to her as she stood +quivering beside him--"driving us into expenses that will, sooner or +later, be the ruin of us--that rob us, too, of self-respect. Suppose you +were to take a little more account, also, of my taste in people? I am +afraid I don't like Harding, though he is your cousin, and I don't +certainly see why he should furnish our drawing-rooms and empty our purse +for us as he has been doing. Then, as to Lord Cathedine, I'm really not +over-particular, but when I hear that fellow's in the house, my impulse +is to catch the nearest hansom and drive away from it. I heard him speak +to his wife to-night in a way for which he ought to be kicked down Oxford +Street--and, in general, I should say that it takes the shine off a +person to be much seen with Cathedine." + +The calm attitude--the voice, just a shade interrogative, exasperated +Letty still more. She, too, sat down, her cheeks flaming. + +"I am _extremely_ obliged to you! You really couldn't have been more +frank. I am sorry that _nothing_ I do pleases you. You must be quite +sorry by now you married me--but really I didn't force you! Why should I +give up my friends? You know very well you won't give up Lady Maxwell." + +She looked at him keenly, her little foot beating the ground. +George started. + +"But what is there to give up?" he cried. "Come and see her +yourself--come with me, and make friends with her. You would be +quite welcome." + +But as he spoke he knew that he was talking absurdly, and that Letty had +reason for her laugh. + +"Thank you! Lady Maxwell made it _quite_ plain to me at Castle Luton that +she didn't want _my_ acquaintance. I certainly sha'n't force myself upon +her any more. But if you'll give up going to see her--well, perhaps I'll +see what can be done to meet your wishes; though, of course, I think all +you say about Harding and Lord Cathedine is just unreasonable prejudice!" + +George was silent. His mind was torn between the pricks of a conscience +that told him Letty had in truth, as far as he was concerned, a far more +real grievance than she imagined, and a passionate intellectual contempt +for the person who could even distantly imagine that Marcella Maxwell +belonged to the same category as other women, and was to be won by the +same arts as they. At last he broke out impatiently: + +"I cannot possibly show discourtesy to one who has been nothing but +kindness to me, as she is to scores of others--to old friends like Edward +Watton, or new ones like--" + +"She wants your vote, of course!" threw in Letty, with an excited laugh. +"_Either_ she is a flirt--_or_ she wants your vote. Why should she take +so much notice of you? She isn't your side--she wants to get hold of +you--and it makes you ridiculous. People just laugh at you and her!" She +turned upon him passionately. A little more, and the wish to say the +wounding, venomous thing would have grown like a madness upon her. But +George kept his self-possession. + +"Well, they may laugh," he said, with a strong effort to speak +good-humouredly. "But politics aren't managed like that, as you and they +will find out. Votes are not so simple as they sound." + +He got up and walked away from her as he spoke. As usual, his mood was +beginning to cool. He saw no way out. They must both accept the _status +quo_. No radical change was possible. It is character that makes +circumstance, and character is inexorable. + +"Well, of course I didn't altogether believe that you would really be +such a fool, and wreck all your prospects!" said Letty, violently, her +feverish eyes intent the while on her husband and on the thin fingers +once more busied with the cigarette. "There now! I think we have had +enough of this! It doesn't seem to have led to much, does it?" + +"No," said George, coolly; "but perhaps we shall come to see more alike +in time. I don't want to tyrannise--only to show you what I think. Shall +I carry up your cloak for you?" + +He approached her punctiliously. Letty gathered her wraps upon her arm in +a disdainful silence, warding him off with a gesture. As he opened the +door for her she turned upon him: + +"You talk of my extravagance, but you never seem to consider what you +might do to make up to me for the burden of being your mother's relation! +You expect me to put up with the annoyance and ridicule of belonging to +her--and to let her spend all your money besides. I give you fair warning +that I sha'n't do it! I shall try and spend it on my side, that she +sha'n't get it." + +She was perfectly conscious that she was behaving like a vixenish child, +but she could not restrain herself. This strange new sense that she could +neither bend nor conquer him was becoming more than she could bear. + +George looked at her, half inclined to shake her first, and then insist +on making friends. He was conscious that he could probably assert himself +with success if he tried. But the impulse failed him. He merely said, +without any apparent temper, "Then I shall have to see if I can invent +some way of protecting both myself and you." + +She flung through the door, and almost ran through the long passage to +the stairs, in a sobbing excitement. A sudden thought struck George as he +stood looking after her. He pursued her, caught her at the foot of the +stairs, and held her arm strongly. + +"Letty! I wasn't to tell you, but I choose to break my promise. Don't be +too cruel, my dear, or too angry. My mother is dying!" + +She scanned him deliberately, the flushed face--the signs of strongly +felt yet strongly suppressed emotion. The momentary consciousness flew +through her that he was at bottom a very human, impressionable +creature--that if she could but have broken down and thrown herself on +his neck, this miserable evening might open for both of them a new way. +But her white-heat of passion was too strong. She pushed him away. + +"She made you believe that this morning? Then I'd better hurry up at +Ferth; for of course it only means that there will be a fresh list of +debts directly!" + +He let her go, and she heard him walk quickly back to his study and +shut the door. She stared after him triumphantly for a moment, then +rushed upstairs. + +In her room her maid was waiting for her. Grier's sallow face and gloomy +eyes showed considerable annoyance at being kept up so late. But she said +nothing, and Letty, who in general was only too ready to admit the woman +to a vulgar familiarity, for once held her tongue. Her state of +excitement and exhaustion, however, was evident, and Grier bestowed many +furtive, examining glances upon her mistress in the course of the +undressing. She thought she had heard "them" quarrelling on the stairs. +What a pity she had been too tired and cross to listen! + +Of course they must come to quarrelling! Grier's sympathies were +tolerably impartial. She had no affection for her mistress, and she +cordially disliked Sir George, knowing perfectly well that he thought ill +of her. But she had a good place, and meant to keep it if she could. To +which end she had done her best to strengthen a mean hold on Letty. Now, +as she was brushing out Letty's brown hair, and silently putting two and +two together the while, an idea occurred to her which pleased her. + +After Grier had left her, Letty could not make up her mind to go to bed. +She was still pacing up and down the room in her dressing-gown, when she +heard a knock--Grier's knock. + +"Come in!" + +"Please, my lady," said Grier, appearing with something in her hand, +"doesn't this belong to your photograph box? I found it on the floor in +Sir George's dressing-room this morning." + +Letty hastily took it from her, and, in spite of an instant effort to +control herself, the red flushed again into a cheek that had been very +pale when Grier came in. + +"Where did you find it?" + +"It had tumbled off Sir George's table, I think," said Grier, with +elaborate innocence; "someone must have took it out of your photo-box." + +"Thank you," said Letty, shortly. "You may go, Grier." + +The maid went, and Letty was left standing with the photograph in +her hands. + +Two days before Tressady had been in Edward Watton's room in St. +James's Street, and had seen this amateur photograph of Marcella +Maxwell and her boy on Watton's table. The poetic charm of it had +struck him so forcibly that he had calmly put it in his pocket, telling +the protesting owner that he in his _rôle_ of great friend could easily +procure another, and must beware of a grudging spirit. Watton had +laughed and submitted, and Tressady had carried off the picture, +honestly meaning to present it to Letty for a collection of +contemporary "beauties" she had just begun to make. + +Later in the day, as he was taking off his coat in the evening to dress +for dinner, Tressady drew out the photograph. A sudden instinct, which he +himself could hardly have explained, made him delay handing it over to +Letty. He thrust it into the top tray of his collar-and-shirt wardrobe. +Two days later the butler, coming in a hurry before breakfast to put out +his master's clothes, shook the photograph out of the folds of the shirt, +where it had hidden itself, without noticing what he had done. The +picture slipped between the wardrobe and the wall of the recess in which +it stood, was discovered later in the day by the housemaid, and given to +Lady Tressady's maid. + +Letty laid the photograph down on the dressing-table, and stood leaning +upon her hands, looking at it. Marcella was sitting under one of the +cedars of Maxwell Court with her boy beside her. A fine corner of the old +house made a background, and the photographer had so dealt with his +picture as to make it a whole, full of significance, and culminating in +the two faces--the sensitive, speaking beauty of the mother, the sturdy +strength of the child. Marcella had never looked more wistful, more +attaching. It was the expression of a woman at rest, in the golden moment +of her life, yet conscious--as all happiness is conscious--of the common +human doom that nothing escapes. Meanwhile the fine, lightly furrowed +brow above the eyes spoke action and power; so did the strong waves of +black hair blown back by the breeze. A noble, strenuous creature, yet +quivering through and through with the simplest, most human instincts. So +one must needs read her, as one looked from the eyes to the eager clasp +of the arm about the boy. + +Letty studied it, as though she would pierce and stab it with looking. +Then, with a sudden wild movement, she took up the picture, and tore it +into twenty pieces. The pieces she left strewn on the floor, so that they +must necessarily strike the eye of anyone coming into the room. And in a +few more minutes she was in bed, lying still and wakeful, with her face +turned away from the door. + +About an hour afterwards there was a gentle knock at her door. She made +no answer, and Tressady came in. He stepped softly, thinking she was +asleep, and presently she heard him stop, with a stifled exclamation. She +made no sound, but from his movement she guessed that he was picking up +the litter on the floor. Then she heard it thrown into the basket under +her writing-table, and she waited, holding her breath. + +Tressady walked to a far window, drew a curtain back softly, and stood +looking out at the starlight over the deserted street. Once, finding him +so still, she ventured a hasty glance at him over the edge of the sheet. +But she could see nothing. And after a time he turned and came to his +accustomed place beside her. In twenty minutes at latest, she knew, much +to her chagrin, that he was asleep. + +She herself had no sleep. She was stung to wakefulness by that recurrent +sense of the irrevocable which makes us say to ourselves in wonder, "How +can it have happened? Two hours ago--such a little while--it had not +happened!" And the mind clutches at the bygone hour, so near, so +eternally distant--clutches at its ghost, in vain. + +Yet it seemed to her now that she had been jealous from the first moment +when she and George had come into contact with Marcella Maxwell. During +the long hours of this night her jealousy burnt through her like a hot +pain--jealousy, mixed with reluctant memory. Half consciously she had +always assumed that it had been a piece of kindness on her part to marry +George Tressady at all. She had almost condescended to him. After all, +she had played with ambitions so much higher! At any rate, she had taken +for granted that he would always admire and be grateful to her--that in +return for her pretty self she might at least dispose of him and his as +she pleased. + +And now, what galled her intolerably was this discernment of the way in +which--at least since their honeymoon--he must have been criticising +and judging her--judging her by comparison with another woman. She +seemed to see at a glance, the whole process of his mind, and her +vanity writhed under it. + +How much else than vanity? As she turned restlessly from side to side, +possessed by plans for punishing George, for humiliating Lady Maxwell, +and avenging herself, she said to herself that she did not care,--that it +was not worth caring about,--that she would either bring George to his +senses, or manage to amuse herself without him. + +But in reality she was held tortured and struggling all the time in the +first grip of that masterful hold wherewith the potter lifts his clay +when he lays it on the eternal whirring of the wheel. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +The newspapers of the morning following these events--that is to say, +of Saturday, July 5--gave very lively accounts of the East End meeting, +at which, as some put it, Lady Maxwell "had got her answer" from the +East End mob. The stone-throwing, the blow, the woman, and the cause +were widely discussed that same day throughout the clubs and +drawing-rooms of Mayfair and Belgravia, no less than among the clubs and +"publics" of the East End; and the guests at country-house parties as +they hurried out of town for the Sunday, carried the gossip of the +matter far and wide. The Maxwells went down alone to Brookshire, and the +curious visitors who called in St. James's Square "to inquire" came away +with nothing to report. + +"A put-up thing, the whole business," said Mrs. Watton, indignantly, to +her son Harding, as she handed him the "Observer," on the Sunday morning, +in the dining-room of the family house in Tilney Street. "Of course, a +little martyrdom just now suits her book excellently. How that man _can_ +let her make him a laughing-stock in this way--" + +"A laughing-stock?" said Harding, smiling. "Not at all. Don't spoil your +first remark, mother. For, of course, it is all practical politics. The +handsomest woman in England doesn't give her temple to be gashed for +nothing. You will see what her friends will make out of it!--and out of +the brutal violence of our mob." + +"Disgusting!" said Mrs. Watton, playing severely with the lid of the +mustard-pot that stood beside her. + +She and Harding were enjoying a late breakfast _tête-à-tête._ The old +Squire had finished long before, and was already doing his duty with a +volume of sermons in the library upstairs, preparatory to going to +church. Mrs. Watton and Harding, however, would accompany him thither +presently; for Harding was a great supporter of the Establishment. + +The son raised his shoulders at his mother's adjective. + +"What I want to know," he said, "is whether Lady Maxwell is going to bag +George Tressady, or not. He brought her home from the meeting on Friday." + +"Brought her home from the meeting?--_George Tressady?_" + +Mrs. Watton raised her masculine head and frowned at her son, as though +he were, in some sense, personally responsible for this unseemly fact. + +"He has been haunting her in the East End for weeks. I got that out of +Edward. But, of course, one knew that was going to happen as soon as +one saw them together at Castle Luton. She throws her flies cleverly, +that woman!" + +"All I can say is," observed Mrs. Watton, ponderously, "that in any +decent state of society such a woman would be banned!" + +Harding rose, and stood by the open window caressing his moustache. It +was a perception of long standing with him, that life would have been +better worth living had his mother possessed a sense of humour. + +"It seems to me," his mother resumed after a pause, "that someone at +least should give Letty a hint." + +"Oh! Letty can take care of herself," said Watton, laughing. He might +have said, if he had thought it worth while, that somebody had already +given Letty a hint. Tressady, it appeared, disliked him. Well, people +that disliked you were fair game. However, in spite of Tressady's +dislike, he had been able to amuse himself a good deal with Letty and +Letty's furnishing during the last few months. Harding, who prided +himself on the finest of tastes, liked to be consulted; he liked +anything, also, that gave him importance, if it were only with the master +of a curiosity shop, and, under cover of Letty's large dealings, he had +carried off various spoils of his own for his rooms in the Temple--spoils +which were not to be despised--at a very moderate price indeed. + +"Who could have thought George Tressady would turn out such a weak +creature," said his mother, rising, "when one remembers how Lord Fontenoy +believed in him?" + +"And does still believe in him, more or less," said Harding; "but +Fontenoy will have to be warned." + +He looked at the clock, to see if there was time for a cigarette before +church, lit it, and, leaning against the window, gazed towards the hazy +park with a meditative air. + +"Do you mean there is any question of his ratting?" said his mother. + +Harding raised his eyebrows. + +"Well, no--hardly anything so gross as that. But you can see all the +spirit has gone out of him. He does no work for us. The party gets +nothing out of him." + +Harding spoke as if he had the party in his pocket. His mother looked at +him with a severely concealed admiration. There were few limits to her +belief in Harding. But it was not her habit to flatter her sons. + +"What makes one so mad," she said, as she sailed towards the door in a +stiff rustle of Sunday brocade, "is the way in which the people who +admire her talk of her. When one thinks that all this 'slumming,' and all +this stuff about the poor, only means keeping her husband in office and +surrounding herself with a court of young men, it turns one sick!" + +"My dear mother, we keep all our little hypocrisies," said Harding, +indulgently. "Don't forget that Lady Maxwell provides me with a deal of +good copy." + +And after his mother had left him he smoked on, thinking with pleasure of +an article of his on "The Woman of the Slums," packed with allusions to +Marcella Maxwell, which was to appear in the next number of the +"Haymarket Reporter," the paper that he and Fontenoy were now running. +Harding was not the editor. He disliked drudgery and office-hours; and +his father was good for enough to live upon. But he was a powerful +adviser in the conduct of the new journal, and wrote, perhaps, the +smartest articles. + +The paper, indeed, was written by the smartest people conceivable, and +had achieved the smartest combinations. "Liberty" was its catchword; but +the employer must be absolute. To care or think about religion was +absurd; but whoso threw a stone at the Established Church, let him die +the death. Christianity must be steadily, even ferociously supported; in +the policing of an unruly world it was indispensable. But the perennial +butt of the paper was the fool who "went about doing good." The young men +who lived in "settlements," for instance, and gave University Extension +Lectures--the paper pursued all such with a hungry malice, only less +biting than that wherewith day by day it attacked Lord Maxwell, the arch +offender of all the philanthropic tribe. To help a man who had toiled his +ten or twelve hours in the workshop or the mine to read Homer or Dante in +the evening,--well! in the language of Hedda Gabler "people don't do +these things,"--not people with any sense of the humorous or the seemly. +Harding and his crew had required a good deal of help in their time +towards the reading of those authors; that, however, was only their due, +and in the order of the universe. The same universe had sent the miner +below to dig coals for his betters, while Harding Watton went to college. + +But the last and worst demerit in the eyes of Harding and his set was +that old primitive offence that Cain already found so hard to bear. Half +the violence which the new paper had been lavishing on Maxwell--apart +from passionate conviction of the Fontenoy type, which also spoke through +it--sprang from this source. Maxwell, in spite of his obvious drawbacks, +threatened to succeed, to be accepted, to take a large place in English +political life. And his wife, too, reigned, and had her way without the +help of clever young men who write. There was the sting. Harding at any +rate found it intolerable. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile, in spite of newspapers to right of it and newspapers to left +of it, the political coach clattered on. + +The following day--Monday--was a day of early arrivals, packed benches, +and much excitement in the House of Commons; for the division on the +second reading was to be taken after the Home Secretary's reply on the +debate. Dowson was expected to get up about ten o'clock, and it was +thought that the division would be over by eleven. + +On this afternoon and evening Fontenoy was ubiquitous. At least so it +seemed to Tressady. Whenever one put one's head into the Smoking-room or +the Library, whenever one passed through the Lobby, or rushed on to the +Terrace for ten minutes' fresh air, Fontenoy's great brow and rugged face +were always to be seen, and always in fresh company. + +The heterogeneous character of the Opposition with which the Government +was confronted, the conflicting groups and interests into which it was +split up, offered large scope for the intriguing, contriving genius of +the man. And he was spending it lavishly. The small eyes were more +invisible, the circles round them more saucer-like than ever. + +Meanwhile George Tressady had never been so keenly conscious as on +this critical afternoon that his party had begun to drop him out of +its reckonings. Consultations that would once have included him as a +matter of course were going on without him. During the whole of this +busy day Fontenoy even had hardly spoken to him; the battle was +leaving him on one side. + +Well, what room for bitterness?--though, with the unreason that no man +escapes, he was not without bitterness. He had disappointed them as a +debater--and, in other ways, what had he done for them since Whitsuntide? +No doubt also the mention of his name in the reports of the Mile End +meeting had not been without its effect. He believed that Fontenoy's +personal regard for him still held. Otherwise, he was beginning to feel +himself placed in a tacit isolation. + +What wonder, good Lord! During the dinner-hour he found himself in a +corner of the library, dreaming over a biography of Lord Melbourne. Poor +Melbourne! in those last tragic years of waiting and pining, every day +expecting the proffer of office that never came and the familiar +recognition that would be his no more. But Melbourne was old, and had +had his day. + +"I wanted to speak to you," said a hoarse voice, over his shoulder. + +"Say on, and sit down," said George, smiling, and pushing forward a chair +beside him. "I should think you'll want a week's sleep after this." + +"Have you got some time to spare this week," said Fontenoy, abruptly, as +he sat down. + +George hesitated. + +"Well, no. I ought to go down to the country immediately, and see after +my own affairs and the strike, before Committee begins. There is a +meeting of coal-owners on Wednesday." + +"What I want wouldn't take long," said Fontenoy, persistently, after a +pause. "I hear you have been going round workshops lately?" + +His keen, peremptory eyes fixed his companion. + +"I had a round or two with Everard," said George. "We saw a fair +representative lot." + +The thought that flashed through Fontenoy's mind was, "Why the deuce +didn't you speak of it to me?" Aloud, he said with impatience: + +"Representing what Everard chose to show, I should think. However, what I +want is this. You know the series of extracts from reports that has been +going on lately in the 'Chronicle.'" + +George nodded. + +"We want something done to correct the impression that has been made. You +and I know perfectly well that the vast majority of workshops work +factory-hours and an average of four and a half days a week. You have +just had personal experience, and you can write. Will you do three or +four signed articles for the 'Reporter' this week or next? Of course the +office will give you every help." + +George considered. + +"I think not," he said presently, looking up. "I shouldn't do it well. +Perhaps I have become too conscious of the exceptions--the worst cases. +Frankly, the whole thing has become more of a problem to me than it was." + +Fontenoy moved, and grunted uneasily. + +"Does that mean," he said at last, in his harshest manner, "that you +will feel any difficulty in--?" + +"In voting? No. I shall vote right enough. I am all for delay. This +particular Bill doesn't convince me any more than it did. But I don't +want to take a strong public part just at present." + +The two men eyed each other in silence. + +"I thought there was something brewing," said Fontenoy at last. + +"Well, I'm not sorry to have had these few words," was George's reply, +after a pause. "I wanted to tell you that, though I shall vote, I don't +think I shall speak much more. I don't believe I'm the stuff people in +Parliament ought to be made of. I shall be remorseful presently for +having led you into a mistake!" He forced a smile. + +"I made no mistake," said Fontenoy, grimly, and departed. Then, as he +walked down the corridor, he completed his sentence--"except in not +seeing that you were the kind of man to be made a fool of by women!" + +First of all, a hasty marriage with a silly girl who could be no help to +him or to the cause; now, according to Watton--who had called upon +Fontenoy that morning, at his private house, to discuss various matters +of business--the Lady-Maxwell fever in a pronounced form. Most likely. It +was the best explanation. + +The leader's own sense of annoyance and disappointment was considerable. +There was no man for whom he had felt so much personal liking as for +Tressady since the fight began. + +Somewhere before midnight the division on the second reading was taken, +amid all those accompaniments of crowd, expectation, and commotion, that +are usually evoked by the critical points of a contested measure. The +majority for Government was forty-four--less by twenty-four votes than +its normal figure. + +As the cheers and counter-cheers subsided, George found himself borne +into the Lobby with the crowd pouring out of the House. As he approached +the door leading to the outer lobby, a lady in front of him turned. +George received a lightning impression of beauty, of a kind of anxious +joy, and recognised Marcella Maxwell. + +She held out her hand. + +"Well, the first stage is over!" she said. + +"Yes, and well over," he said, smiling. "But you have shed a great many +men already." + +"Oh! I know--I know. The next few weeks will be intolerable; one will +feel sure of nobody." Then her voice changed--took a certain shyness. "A +good many people from here are coming down to us at Mile End during the +next few weeks--will you come some time, and bring Lady Tressady?" + +"Thank you," said George, rather formally. "It is very kind of you." +Then, in another voice: "And you are really none the worse?" + +His eyes sought the injured temple, and she instinctively put up her +hand to the black wave of hair that had been drawn forward so as to +conceal the mark. + +"Oh no! That boy was not an expert, luckily. How absurd the papers +have been!" + +George shook his head. + +"I don't know what else one could expect," he said, laughing. + +"Not at all!"--the flush mounted in the delicate hollow of the cheek. +"Why should there be any more fuss about a woman's being struck than a +man? We don't want any of this extra pity and talk." + +"Human nature, I am afraid," said George, raising his shoulders. Did she +really suppose that women could mix in the political fight on the same +terms as men--could excite no more emotion there than men? Folly! + +Then Maxwell, who was standing behind her, came forward, greeted Tressady +kindly, and they talked for a few minutes about the evening's debate. The +keen look of the elder scanned the younger's face and manner the while +with some minuteness. As for George, his dialogue with the Minister, at +which more than one passer-by threw looks of interest and amusement, gave +him no particular pleasure. Maxwell's qualities were not of the kind that +specially appealed to him; nor was he likely to attract Maxwell. +Nevertheless, he could have wished their ten minutes' talk to last +interminably, merely because of the excuse it gave him to be near +her!--played upon by her movements and her tones. He talked to Maxwell of +speeches, and votes, and little incidents of the day. And all the time he +knew how she was surrounded; how the crowd that was always gathering +about her came and went; with whom she talked; above all, how that eager, +sensitive charm which she had shown in its fulness to him--perhaps to +him only, beside her husband, of all this throng--played through her +look, her voice, her congratulations, and her dismays. For had he not +seen her in distress and confusion--seen her in tears, wrestling with +herself? His heart caressed the thought like a sacred thing, all the time +that he was conscious of her as the centre of this political throng--the +adored, detested, famous woman, typical in so many ways of changing +custom and of an expanding world. + +Then, in a flash, as it were, the crowd had thinned, the Maxwells had +gone, and George was running down the steps of the members' entrance, +into the rain outside. He seemed to carry with him the scent of a +rose,--the rose she had worn on her breast,--and his mind was tormented +with the question he had already asked himself: "How is it going to end?" + +He pushed on through the wet streets, lost in a hundred miseries and +exaltations. The sensation was that of a man struggling with a rising +tide, carried helplessly in the rush and swirl of it. Yet conscience had +very little to say, and, when it did speak, got little but contempt for +its pains. What had any clumsy code, social or moral, to do with it? When +would Marcella Maxwell, by word or look or thought, betray the man she +loved? Not till + +A' the seas gang dry, my dear, +An the rocks melt wi' the sun! + +How he found his way home he hardly knew; for it was a moment of blind +crisis with him. All that crowded, dramatic scene of the House--its +lights, its faces, its combinations--had vanished from his mind. What +remained was a group of three people, contemplated in a kind of +terror--terror of what this thing might grow to! Once, in St. James's +Street, the late hour, the soft, gusty night, suddenly reminded him of +that other gusty night in February when he had walked home after his +parting with Letty, so well content with himself and the future, and +had spoken to Marcella Maxwell for the first time amid that little +crowd in the Mall. Nothing had been irreparable then. He had his life +in his hands. + +As for this passion, that was creeping into all his veins, poisoning and +crippling all his vitalities, he was still independent enough of it to be +able to handle it with the irony it deserved. For it was almost as +ludicrous as it was pitiable. He did not want any man of the world, any +Harding Watton, to tell him that. + +What amazed him was the revelation of his own nature that was coming out +of it. He had always been rather proud to think of himself as an +easygoing fellow with no particular depths. Other men were proud of a +"storm period"--of feasting and drinking deep--made a pose of it. +Tressady's pose had been the very opposite. Out of a kind of good taste, +he had wished to take life lightly, with no great emotion. And marriage +with Letty had seemed to satisfy this particular canon. + +Now, for the first time, certain veils were drawn aside, and he knew what +this hunger for love, and love's response, can do with a man--could do +with _him_, were it allowed its scope! + +Had Marcella Maxwell been another woman, less innocent, less secure! + +As it was, Tressady no sooner dared to give a sensuous thought to her +beauty than his own passion smote him back--bade him beware lest he +should be no longer fit to speak and talk with her, actually or +spiritually. For in this hopeless dearth of all the ordinary rewards and +encouragements of love he had begun to cultivate a sort of second, or +spiritual, life, in which she reigned. Whenever he was alone he walked +with her, consulted her, watched her dear eyes, and the soul playing +through them. And so long as he could maintain this dream he was +conscious of a sort of dignity, of reconciliation with himself; for the +passions and tragedies of the soul always carry with them this dignity, +as Dante, of all mortals, knew first and best. + +But with the turn into Upper Brook Street, the dream suddenly and +painfully gave way. He saw his own house, and could forget Letty and the +problem of his married life no more. What was he going to do with her and +it? What relation was he going to establish with his wife, through all +these years that stretched so interminably before them? Remorse mingled +with the question. But perhaps impatience, still more--impatience of his +own misery, of this maze of emotion in which he felt himself entangled, +as it were against his will. + +During the three days which had passed since his quarrel with Letty, +their common life had been such a mere confusion of jars and discomforts +that George's hedonist temper was almost at the end of its patience; yet +so far, he thought, he had not done badly in the way of forbearance. +After the first moment of angry disgust, he had said to himself that the +tearing up of the photograph was a jealous freak, which Letty had a right +to if it pleased her. At any rate, he had made no comment whatever upon +it, and had done his best to resume his normal manner with her the next +day. She had been, apparently, only the more enraged; and, although there +had been no open quarrelling since, her cutting, contemptuous little airs +had been very hard to bear. Nor was it possible for George to ignore her +exasperated determination to have her own way in the matter both of +friends and expenses. + +As he took his latch-key out of the lock, and turned up the electric +light, he saw two handsome marqueterie chairs standing in the hall. He +went to look at them in some perplexity. Ah! no doubt they had been sent +as specimens. Letty had grown dissatisfied with the chairs originally +bought for the dining-room. He remembered to have heard her say something +about a costly set at a certain Asher's, that Harding had found. + +He studied them for a few moments, his mouth tightening. Then, instead of +going upstairs, he went into his study, and sat down to his table to +write a letter. + +Yes--he had better go off to Staffordshire by the early train; and this +letter, which he would put upon her writing-desk in the drawing-room, +should explain him to Letty. + +The letter was long and candid, yet by no means without tenderness. "I +have written to Asher," it said, "to direct him to send in the morning +for the chairs I found in the hall. They are too expensive for us, and I +have told him that I will not buy them, I need not say that in writing to +him I have avoided every word that could be annoying to you. If you would +only trust me, and consult me a little about such things,--trifles as +they be,--life just now would be easier than it is." + +Then he passed to a very frank statement of their financial position, and +of his own steady resolve not to allow himself to drift into hopeless +debt. The words were clear and sharp, but not more so than the course of +the preceding six weeks made absolutely necessary. And their very +sharpness led him to much repentant kindness at the end. No doubt she was +disappointed both in him and in his circumstances; and, certainly, +differences had developed between them that they had never foreseen at +the time of their engagement. But to "make a good thing" of living +together was never easy. He asked her not to despair, not to judge him +hardly. He would do his best--let her only give him back her confidence +and affection. + +He closed the letter, and then paced restlessly about the little room for +a time. It seemed to him that he was caught in a vice--that neither +happiness, nor decent daily comfort, nor even the satisfactions of +ambition, were ever to be his. + +Next day he was off to Euston before Letty was properly awake. She found +his letter waiting for her when she descended, and spent the day in a +pale excitement. Yet by the end of it she had pretty well made up her +mind. She would have to give in on the money question. George's figures +and her natural shrewdness convinced her that the ultimate results of +fighting him in this matter could only be more uncomfortable for herself +than for him. But as to her freedom in choosing her own friends, or as +to her jealousy of Lady Maxwell, she would never give in. If George had +ceased to court his wife, then he could have nothing to say if she +looked for the amusement and admiration that were her due from other +people. There was no harm in that. Everybody else did it; and she was +not going to be pretty and young for nothing. Whereupon she sat down and +wrote a line to Lord Cathedine to tell him that she and "Tully" would be +at the Opera on the following night, and to beg him to make sure that +she got her "cards for Clarence House." Moreover, she meant to make use +of him to procure her a card for a very smart ball, the last of the +season, which was coming off in a fortnight. That could be arranged, no +doubt, at the Opera. + + * * * * * + +George returned from the North in a few days looking, if possible, +thinner and more careworn than when he went. He had found the strike a +very stubborn business. Burrows was riding the storm triumphantly; and +while upon his own side Tressady looked in vain for a "man," there was a +dogged determination to win among the masters. George's pugnacity shared +it fully. But he was beginning to ask himself a number of questions about +these labour disputes which, apparently, his co-employers did not ask +themselves. Was it that here, no less than in matters that concerned the +Bill before Parliament, _her_ influence, helped by the power of an +expanding mind, had developed in him that fatal capacity for sympathy, +for the double-seeing of compromise, which takes from a man all the joy +of battle. + +Letty, at any rate, was not troubled by anything of the sort. When he +came back he found that she was ready to be on fairly amicable terms with +him. Moreover, she had postponed the more expensive improvements and +changes she had begun to make at Perth against his will; nor was there +any sign of the various new purchases for the London house with which she +had threatened him. On the other hand, she ceased to consult him about +her own engagements; and she let him know, though without any words on +the subject, that she had entirely broken with his mother--would neither +see her nor receive her. As her attitude on this point involved--or, +apparently, must involve--a refusal to accept her husband's statement +made solemnly under strong emotion, George's pride took it in absolute +silence. No doubt it was her revenge upon him for their crippled +income--and for Lady Maxwell. + +The effect of her behaviour on this point was to increase his own pity +for his mother. He told her frankly that Letty could not get over the +inroads upon their income and the shortening of their resources produced +by the Shapetsky debt, just at a time when they should have been able to +spend, and were already hampered by the state of the coal trade. It would +be better that she and Letty should not meet for a time. He would do his +best to make it up. + +Lady Tressady took his news with a curious equanimity. + +"Well, she always hated me!" she said--"I don't exactly know why--and was +a little jealous of my gowns, too, I think. Don't mind, George. I must +say it out. You know, she doesn't really dress very well--Letty doesn't. +Though, my goodness, the bills! Wait till you see them before you call +_me_ extravagant. You should make her go to that new woman--what do they +call her? She's a _darling_, and such a style! Never mind about Letty; +you needn't bother. I daresay she isn't very nice to _you_ about it. But +if you don't come and see me, I shall cut my throat, and leave a note on +the dressing-table. It would spoil your career dreadfully, so you'd +better take care." + +But, indeed, George came, without any pressing, almost every day. He saw +her in her bursts of gaiety and affectation, when the habits of a +lifetime asserted themselves as strongly as ever; and he saw her in her +moments of pain and collapse, when she could hide the omens of inexorable +physical ill neither from herself nor him. By the doctor's advice, he +ceased to press her to give in, to resign herself to bed and invalidism. +It was best, even physically, to let her struggle on. And he was both +astonished and touched by her pluck. She had never been so repellent to +him as on those many occasions in the past when she had feigned illness +to get her way. Now that Death was really knocking, the half-gay, +half-frightened defiance with which she walked the palace of life, one +moment listening to the sounds at the gate, the next throwing herself +passionately into the revelry within, revealed to the son a new fact +about her--a fact of poetry unutterably welcome. + +Even her fawning dependents, the Fullertons, ceased to annoy him. They +were poor parasites, but she thought for them, and they professed to love +her in return. She had emptied her life of finer things, but this +relation of patron and flatterer, such as it was, did something to fill +the vacancy; and George made no further effort to disturb it. + +It was surprising, indeed, how easily, as the weeks went on, he came +to bear many of those ways of hers which had once set him most on +edge--even her absurd outbursts of affection towards him, and +preposterous praise of him in public. In time he submitted even to +being flown at and kissed before the Fullertons. Amazing into what new +relations that simple perspective of _the end_ will throw all the +stuff of life! + + * * * * * + +In Parliament the weeks rushed by. The first and comparatively +non-contentious sections of the Bill passed with a good deal of talk and +delay. George spoke once or twice, without expecting to speak, +instinctively pleasing Fontenoy where he could. They had now but little +direct intercourse. But George did not feel that his leader had become +his enemy, and was not slow to recognise a magnanimity he had not +foreseen. Yet, after all, he had not offered the worst affront to party +discipline. Fontenoy could still count on his vote. As to the rest of +his party, he saw that he was to be finally reckoned as a "crank," and +let alone. It was not, he found, altogether to be regretted. The position +gave him a new freedom of speech. + +Meanwhile he and Marcella Maxwell rarely met. Week after week passed, and +still Tressady avoided those gatherings at the Mile End house, of which +he heard full accounts from Edward Watton. He once formally asked Letty +if she would go with him to one of Lady Maxwell's East End "evenings," +and she, with equal formality, refused. But he did not take advantage of +her refusal to go himself. Was it fear of his own weakness, or +compunction towards Letty, or the mere dread of being betrayed into +something at once ridiculous and irreparable? + +At the same time, it was surprising how often during these weeks he had +occasion to pass through St. James's Square. Once or twice he saw her go +out or come in, and sometimes was near enough to catch the sudden smile +and look which surely must be the smile and look she gave her friends, +and not to every passing stranger! Once or twice, also, he met her for a +few minutes in the Lobby, or on the Terrace, but always in a crowd. She +never repeated her invitation. He divined that she was, perhaps, vexed +with herself for having seemed to press the point on the night of the +second reading. + + * * * * * + +July drew to an end. The famous "workshop clause" had been debated for +nearly ten days, the whole country, as it were, joining in. One evening +in the last week of the month Naseby and Lady Madeleine were sitting +together in a corner of a vast drawing-room in Carlton House Terrace. +The drawing-room was Mrs. Allison's. She had returned about a fortnight +before from Bad Wildheim, and was now making an effort, for the boy's +sake, to see some society. As she moved about the room in her black silk +and lace she was more gentle, but in a sense more inaccessible, than +ever. She talked with everyone, but her eyes followed her son's auburn +head, with its strange upstanding tufts of hair above the fair, freckled +face; or they watched the door, even when she was most animated. She +looked ill and thin, and the many friends who loved her would have +gladly clung about her and cherished her. But it was not easy to cherish +Mrs. Allison. + +"Do you see how our hostess keeps a watch for Fontenoy?" said Naseby, in +a low voice, to Lady Madeleine. + +Madeleine turned her startled face to him. Nature had given her this +hunted look--the slightly open mouth, the wide eyes of one who +perpetually hears or expects bad news. Naseby did not like it, and had +tried to laugh her out of her scared ways before this. But he had no +sooner laughed at her than he found himself busy--to use Watton's +word--in "stroking" and making it up to her, so tender and clinging was +the girl's whole nature, so golden was her hair, so white her skin! + +"Isn't it the division news she is expecting?" + +"Yes--but don't look so unhappy! She will bear up--even if they are +beaten. And they will be beaten. Fontenoy's hopes have been going down. +The Government will get through this clause at all events--by a shave." + +"What a fuss everybody is making about this Bill!" + +"Well, you don't root up whole industries without a fuss. But, certainly, +Maxwell has roused the country finely." + +"_She_ will break down if it goes on," said Lady Madeleine, in a +melancholy voice. + +Naseby laughed. + +"Not at all! Lady Maxwell was made for war--she thrives on it. Don't you, +too, enjoy it?" + +"I don't know," said the girl, drearily. "I don't know what I was +made for." + +And over her feather fan her wide eyes travelled to the distant ogress +figure of her mother, sitting majestical in black wig and diamonds beside +the Russian Ambassador. Naseby's also travelled thither--unwillingly. It +was a disagreeable fact that Lady Kent had begun to be very amiable to +him of late. + +Lady Madeleine's remark made him silent a moment. Then he looked at +her oddly. + +"I am going to offend you," he said deliberately. "I am going to tell you +that you were made to wear white satin and pearls, and to look as you +look this evening." + +The girl flushed hotly. + +"I knew you despised women," she said, in a strained voice, staring back +at him reproachfully. During her months of distress and humiliation she +had found her only comfort in "movements" and "causes"--in the moral +aspirations generally--so far as her mother would allow her to have +anything to do with them. She had tried, for instance, to work with +Marcella Maxwell--to understand her. + +But Naseby held his ground. + +"Do I despise women because I think they make the grace and poetry of the +world?" he asked her. "And, mind you, I don't draw any lines. Let them be +county councillors and guardians, and inspectors, and queens as much as +they like. I'm very docile. I vote for them. I do as I'm told." + +"Only, you don't think that _I_ can do anything useful!" + +"I don't think you're cut out for a 'platform woman,' if that's what you +mean," he said, laughing--"even Lady Maxwell isn't. And if she was, she +wouldn't count. The women who matter just now--and you women are getting +a terrible amount of influence--more than you've had any time this half +century--are the women who sit at home in their drawing-rooms, wear +beautiful gowns, and attract the men who are governing the country to +come and see them." + +"Lady Maxwell doesn't sit at home and wear beautiful gowns!" + +"I vow she does!" said Naseby, with spirit. "I can vouch for it. I was +caught that way myself. Not that I belong to the men who are governing +the country. And now she has roped me to her chariot for good and all. +Ah, Ancoats! how do you do?" + +He got up to make room for the master of the house as he spoke. But as +he walked away he said to himself, with a kind of delight: "Good! she +didn't turn a hair." + +Lady Madeleine, indeed, received her former suitor with a cool dignity +that might have seemed impossible to anyone so plaintively pretty. He +lingered beside her, twirling his carefully pointed moustache, that +matched the small Richelieu chin, and looking at her with a furtive +closeness from time to time. + +"Well--so you have just come back from Paris?" she said indifferently. + +"Yes; I stayed a day or two after my mother. One didn't want to come back +to this dull hole." + +"Did you see the new piece at the Francais?" + +He made a face. + +"Not I! One couldn't be caught by such _vieux jeu_ as that! There was a +splendid woman in one of the _cafés chantants_--but I suppose you don't +go to _cafés chantants?"_ + +"No," said Madeleine, eyeing him over her fan with a composure that +astonished herself. "No, I don't go to _cafés chantants_." + +Ancoats looked blank a moment, then resumed, with fervour: + +"This woman's divine--_épatant_! Then, at the Chat Noir--but--ah! well, +perhaps you don't go to the Chat Noir?" + +"No, I don't go to the Chat Noir." + +He fidgeted for a minute. She sat silent. Then he said: + +"There are some new French pictures in the next room. Will you come and +see them?" + +"Thank you, I think I'll stay here," she said coldly. + +He lingered another second or two, then departed. The girl drew a long +breath, then instinctively turned her white neck to see if Naseby had +really left her. Strange! he too, from far away, was looking round. In +another moment he was making his way slowly back to her. + + * * * * * + +"Ah, there's Tressady! Now for news." + +The remark was Naseby's. He and Lady Madeleine were, as it happened, +inspecting the very French pictures that the girl had just refused to +look at in Ancoats's company. + +But now they hurried back to the main drawing-room where the Tressadys +were already surrounded by an eager crowd. + +"Eighteen majority," Tressady was saying. "The Socialists saved it at +the last moment, after growling and threatening till nobody knew what +was going to happen. Forty Ministerialists walked out, twenty more, at +least, were away unpaired, and the Old Liberals voted against the +Government to a man." + +"Oh! they'll go--they'll go on the next clause," said an elderly peer, +whose ruddy face glowed with delight. "Serve them right, too! Maxwell's +whole aim is revolution made easy. The most dangerous man we have had for +years! Looks so precious moderate, too, all the time. Tell me how did +Slade vote after all?" + +And Tressady found himself buttonholed by one person after another; +pressed for the events and incidents of the evening: how this person had +voted, how that; how Ministers had taken it; whether, after this Pyrrhic +victory there was any chance of the Bill's withdrawal, or at least of +some radical modification in the coming clauses. Almost everyone in the +crowded room belonged, directly or indirectly, to the governing political +class. Barely three people among them could have given a coherent account +of the Bill itself. But to their fathers and brothers and cousins would +belong the passing or the destroying of it. And in this country there is +no game that amuses so large a number of intelligent people as the +political game. + +"I don't know why he should look so d--d excited over it," said Lord +Cathedine to Naseby in a contemptuous aside, with a motion of the head +towards Tressady, showing pale and tall above the crowd. "He seems to +have voted straight this time, but he's as shaky as he can be. You +never know what that kind of fellow will be up to. Ah, my lady! and +how are you?" + +He made a low bow, and Naseby, turning, saw young Lady Tressady +advancing. + +"Are you, too, talking politics?" said Letty, with affected disgust, +giving her hand to Cathedine and a smile to Naseby. + +"We will now talk of nothing but your scarlet gown," said Cathedine in +her ear. "Amazing!" + +"You like it?" she said, with nonchalant self-possession. "It makes me +look dreadfully wicked, I know." And she threw a complacent glance at a +mirror near, which showed her a gleam of white shoulders in a setting of +flame-coloured tulle. + +"Well, you wouldn't wish to look good," said Cathedine, pulling his +black moustache. "Any fool can do that!" + +"You cynic!" she said, laughing. "Come and talk to me over there. Have +you got me my invitations?" + +Cathedine followed, a disagreeable smile on his full lips, and they +settled themselves in a corner out of the press. Nor were they disturbed +by the sudden hush and parting of the crowd when, five minutes later, +amid a general joyous excitement, Fontenoy walked in. + +Mrs. Allison forgot her usual dignity, and hurried to meet the leader as +he came up to her, with his usual flushed and haggard air. + +"Magnificent!" she said tremulously. "Now you are going to win!" + +He shook his head, and would hardly let himself be congratulated by any +of the admirers, men or women, who pressed to shake hands with him. To +most of them he said, impatiently, that it was no good hallooing till +one was out of the wood, that for his own part he had expected more, and +that the Government might very well rally on the next clause. Then, when +he had effectively chilled the enthusiasm of the room, he drew his +hostess aside. + +"Well, and are you happier?" he said to her in a low voice, his whole +expression changing. + +"Oh, dear friend! don't think of me," she said, putting out a thin hand +to him with a grateful gesture. "Yes, the boy has been very good--he +gives me a great deal of his time. But how can one _know_--how can one +possibly know?" + +Her pale, small face contracted with a look of pain. Fontenoy, too, +frowned as he looked across at Ancoats, who was leaning against the wall +in an affected pose, and quoting bits from a new play to George Tressady. + +After a pause, he said: + +"I think if I were you I should cultivate Tressady. Ancoats likes him. It +might be possible some time for you to work through him." + +The mother assented eagerly, then said, with a smile: + +"But I gather you don't find him much to be depended on in the House?" + +Fontenoy shrugged his shoulders. + +"Lady Maxwell has bedevilled him somehow. You're responsible!" + +"Poor Castle Luton! You must tell me how it and I can make up. But you +don't mean that there is any thought of his going over?" + +"His vote's all safe--I suppose. He would make too great a fool of +himself if he failed us there. But he has lost all heart for the +business. And Harding Watton tells me it's all her doing. She has been +taking him about in the East End--getting her friends to show him round." + +"And _now_ you are in the mood to put the women down--to show them +their place?" + +She looked at him with gentle humour--a very delicate high-bred figure, +in her characteristic black-and-white. Fontenoy's whole aspect changed as +he caught the reference to their own relation. The look of premature old +age, of harsh fatigue, was for the moment effaced by something young and +ardent as he bent towards her. + +"No--I take the rough with the smooth. Lady Maxwell may do her worst. We +have the counter-charm." + +A flush showed itself in her lined cheek. She was fourteen years older +than he, and had refused a dozen times to marry him. But she would have +found it hard to live without his devotion, and she had brought him by +now into such good order that she dared to let him know it. + + * * * * * + +Half an hour later George and Letty mounted another palatial staircase, +and at the top of it Letty put on fresh smiles for a new hostess. George, +tired out with the drama of the day, could hardly stifle his yawns; but +Letty had treated the notion of going home after one party when, they +might, if they pleased, "do" four, with indignant amazement. + +So here they were at the house of one of the greatest of bankers, and +George stalked through the rooms in his wife's train, taking +comparatively little part in the political buzz all about him, and +thinking mostly of a hurried little talk with Mrs. Allison that had taken +up his last few minutes in her drawing-room. Poor thing! But what could +he do for her? The lad was as stage-struck as ever--could barely talk +sense on any other subject, and not much on that. + +But if he, owing to the clash of an inner struggle, was weary of +politics, the world in general could think and speak of nothing else. The +rooms were full of politicians and their wives, of members just arrived +from the House, of Ministers smiling at each other with lifted eyebrows, +like boys escaped from a birching. A tempest of talk surged through the +rooms--talk concerned with all manner of great issues, with the fate of a +Government, the rousing of a country, the fortunes of individual +statesmen. Through it all the little host himself, a small fair-haired +man, with the tired eyes and hot-house air of the financier, walked about +from group to group, gossiping over the incidents of the division, and +now and then taking up some newcomer to be introduced to his pretty and +fashionable wife. + +Somewhere in the din George stumbled across Lady Leven, who was talking +merrily to young Bayle; and found her, notwithstanding, very ready to +turn and chat with him. + +"Of course we are all waiting for the Maxwells," she said to him. "Will +they come, I wonder?" + +"Why not?" + +"Do people show on their way to disaster? I think I should stay at home +if I were she." + +"Why, they have to hearten their friends!" + +"No good," said Betty, pursing her pretty lips; "and they have +fought so hard." + +"And may win yet," said George, an odd sparkle in his eye, as he stood +looking over his tiny companion to the door. "Nobody is sure of anything, +I can tell you." + +"I don't believe _you_ care," she said audaciously, shaking her golden +head at him. + +"Pray, why?" + +"Oh! you don't seem at all desperate," she said coolly. "Perhaps you're +like Frank--you think the other side make so much better points than you +do. 'If Dowson makes another speech,' Frank said to me yesterday, 'I vow +I shall rat!' There's a way of talking of your own chiefs. Oh! I shall +have to take him out of politics." + +And she unfurled her fan with a jerk half melancholy, half decided. +Then, suddenly, a laugh flashed over her face; she raised herself +eagerly on tiptoe. + +"Ah! bravo!" she said. "Here they are!" + +George turned with the crowd, and saw them enter, Marcella first, +in a blaze of diamonds; then the quiet face and square shoulders of +her husband. + +Nothing, he thought, could have been better than the manner in which both +bore themselves as they passed through the throng, answering the +greetings of friend and foe, and followed by the keen or hostile scrutiny +of hundreds. There was no bravado, no attempt to disguise the despondency +that must naturally follow on a division so threatening and in many ways +so wounding. Maxwell looked grey with fatigue and short nights, while her +black eyes passed wistfully from friend to friend, and had never been +more quick, more responsive. Their cause was in danger; nevertheless, the +impression on Tressady's mind was of two people consciously in the grip +of forces infinitely greater than they--forces that would hold on their +path whatever befell their insignificant mortal agents. + +I steadier step when I recall, +Howe'er I slip, thou canst not fall. + +So cries the thinker to his mistress, Truth. And in the temper of that +cry lies the secret of brave living. One looker-on, at least,--and that +an opponent,--recalled the words as he watched Marcella and her husband +taking their way through the London crowd, amid the doubts of their +friends and the half-concealed triumph of their foes. + +It seemed to him that he could have no chance of speech with her. But +presently, from the other side of the room, he saw that she had +recognised and was greeting him, and, do what he would, he must needs +make his way to her. + +She welcomed him with great friendliness, and without a word of small +reproach on the score of the weeks he had let pass without coming to see +her. They fell into talk about the speeches of the evening. George +thought he could see that she, or Maxwell speaking through her, was +dissatisfied with Dowson's conduct of the Bill in the House, and chafing +under the constitutional practice that made it necessary to give him so +large a share in the matter. But she said nothing ungenerous; nor was +there any bitterness towards the many false friends who had deserted them +that night in the division-lobby. She spoke with eager hope of a series +of speeches Maxwell was about to make in the North, and then she turned +upon her companion. + +"You haven't spoken since the second reading--on any of the fighting +points, at least. I have been wondering what you thought of many things." + +George threw his head back against the wall beside her, and was silent a +moment. At last he said, looking down upon her: + +"Perhaps, very often I haven't known what to think." + +She started--reddened ever so little. "Does that mean"--she hesitated for +a phrase--"that you have moved at all on the main question?" + +"No," he said deliberately--"no! I think as I always did, that you are +calling in law to do what law can't do. But perhaps I appreciate better +than I once did what provokes you to it. It seems to me difficult now to +meet the case your side is putting forward by a mere _non possumus_. One +wants to stop the machine a bit and think it out. So much I admit." + +She met his smile with a curious, tremulous look. Instinctively he +guessed that this partial triumph in him of her cause--of Maxwell's +cause--had let flow some inner font of feeling. + +"If you only knew," she said, "how all this Parliamentary rush and +clatter seem to me beside the mark. People talk to me of divisions and +votes. I think all the time of persons I know--of faces of +children--sick-beds, horrible rooms--" + +She had turned her face from the crowd towards the open window, in whose +recess they were standing. As she spoke they both fell back a little into +comparative solitude, and he drew her on to talk--trying in a young eager +way to make her rest in his kindness, to soothe her weariness and +disappointment. And as she spoke, he clutched at the minutes; he threw +more and more sympathy at her feet to keep her talking, to enchain her +there beside him, in her lovely whiteness and grace. And, mingled with it +all, was the happy guess that she liked to linger with him--that amid +all this hard clamour of public talk and judgment she felt him a friend +in a peculiar sense--a friend whose loyalty grew with misfortune. As for +this wild-beast world, that was thwarting and libelling her, he began to +think of it with a blind, up-swelling rage--a desire to fight and win +for her--to put down-- + +"Tressady, your wife sent me to find you. She wishes to go home." + +The voice was Harding Watton's. That observant young man advanced bowing, +and holding out his hand to Lady Maxwell. + +When Marcella had drifted once more into the fast-melting crowd, George +found himself face to face with Letty. She was very white, and stared at +him with wide, passionate eyes. + +And on the way home George, with all his efforts, could not keep the +peace. Letty flung at him a number of bitter and insulting things that he +found very hard to bear. + +"What do you want me to do?" he said to her at last, impatiently. "I have +hardly spoken six sentences to Lady Maxwell, since the meeting, till +tonight--I suppose because you wished it. But neither you nor anyone else +shall make me rude to her. Don't be such a fool, Letty! Make friends with +her, and you will be ashamed of saying or even thinking such things." + +Whereat Letty burst into hysterical tears, and he soon found himself +involved in all the remorseful, inconsequent speeches to which a man in +such a plight feels himself driven. She allowed herself to be calmed, +and they had a dreary making-up. When it was over, however, George was +left with the uneasy conviction that he knew very little of his wife. She +was not of a nature to let any slight to her go unpunished. What was she +planning? What would she do? + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +"Hullo! Are you come back?" + +The speaker was George Tressady. He was descending the steps of his club +in Fall Mall, and found his arm caught by Naseby, who had just dismissed +his hansom outside. + +"I came back last night. Are you going homewards? I'll walk across the +Square with you." + +The two men turned into St. James's Square, and Naseby resumed: + +"Yes, we had a most lively campaign. Maxwell spoke better than I ever +heard him." + +"The speeches have been excellent reading, too. And you had good +meetings?" + +"Splendid! The country is rallying, I can tell you. The North is now +strong for Maxwell and the Bill--or seems to be." + +"Just as we are going to kick it out in the House! It's very queer--for +no one could tell, a month ago, how the big towns were going. And it +looked as though London even were deserting them." + +"A mere wave, I think. At least, I'll bet you anything they'll win this +Stepney election. Shall we get the division on the hours clause +to-morrow?" + +"They say so." + +"If you know your own interests, you'll hurry up," said Naseby, smiling. +"The country is going against you." + +"I imagine Fontenoy has got his eye on the country! He's been letting the +Socialists talk nonsense till now to frighten the steady-going old +fellows on the other side or putting up our men to mark time. But I saw +yesterday there was a change." + +"Between ourselves, hasn't he been talking a good deal of nonsense on his +own account?" + +Naseby threw a glance of laughing inquiry at his companion. George +shrugged his shoulders in silence. It had become matter of public remark +during the last few days that Fontenoy was beginning at last to show the +strain of the combat--that his speeches were growing hysterical and his +rule a tyranny. His most trusted followers were now to be heard grumbling +in private over certain aspects of his bearing in the House. He had come +into damaging collision with the Speaker on one or two occasions, and had +made here and there a blunder in tactics which seemed to show a weakening +of self-command. Tressady, indeed, knew enough to wonder that the man's +nerve and coolness had maintained themselves in their fulness so long. + +"So Maxwell took a party to the North?" said George, dropping the subject +of Fontenoy. + +"Lady Maxwell, of course--myself, Bennett, and Madeleine Penley. It was a +pleasure to see Lady Maxwell. She has been dreadfully depressed in town +lately. But those trade-union meetings in Lancashire and Yorkshire were +magnificent enough to cheer anyone up." + +George shook his head. + +"I expect they come too late to save the Bill." + +"I daresay. Well, one can't help being tremendously sorry for her. I +thought her looking quite thin and ill over it. It makes one doubt about +women in politics! Maxwell will take it a deal more calmly, unless one +misunderstands his cool ways. But I shouldn't wonder if _she_ had a +breakdown." + +George made no reply. Naseby talked a little more about Maxwell and the +tour, the critical side of him gaining upon the sympathetic with every +sentence. At the corner of King Street he stopped. + +"I must go back to the club. By the way, have you heard anything of +Ancoats lately?" + +George made a face. + +"I saw him in a hansom last night, late, crossing Regent Circus with a +young woman--_the_ young woman, to the best of my belief." + +In the few moments' chat that followed Tressady found that Naseby, like +Fontenoy, regarded him as the new friend who might be able to do +something for a wild fellow, now that mother and old friends were alike +put aside and ignored. But, as he rather impatiently declared--and was +glad to declare--such a view was mere nonsense. He had tried, for the +mother's sake, and could do nothing. As for him, he believed the thing +was very much a piece of _blague_-- + +"Which won't prevent it from taking him to the devil," said Naseby, +coolly; "and his mother, by all accounts, will die of it. I'm sorry for +her. He seems to think tremendous things of you. I thought you might, +perhaps, have knocked it out of him." George shook his head again, and +they parted. + +In truth, Tressady was not particularly flattered by Ancoats's fancy for +him. He did not care enough about the lad in return. Yet, in response to +one or two outbreaks of talk on Ancoats's part--talks full of a stagey +railing at convention--he had tried, for the mother's sake, to lecture +the boy a little--to get in a word or two that might strike home. But +Ancoats had merely stared a moment out of his greenish eyes, had shaken +his queer mane of hair, as an animal shakes off the hand that curbs it, +had changed the subject at once, and departed. Tressady had seen very +little of him since. + +And had not, in truth, taken it to heart. He had neither time nor mind to +think about Ancoats. Now, as he walked home to dinner, he put the subject +from him impatiently. His own moral predicament absorbed him--this weird, +silent way in which the whole political scene was changing in aspect and +composition under his eyes, was grouping itself for him round one +figure--one face. + +Had he any beliefs left about the Bill itself? He hardly knew. In truth +it was not his reason that was leading him. It now was little more than a +passionate boyish longing to wrench himself free from this odious task of +hurting and defeating Marcella Maxwell. The long process of political +argument was perhaps tending every day to the loosening and detaching of +those easy convictions of a young Chauvinism, that had drawn him +originally to Fontenoy's side. Intellectually he was all adrift. At the +same time he confessed to himself, with perfect frankness, that he could +and would have served Fontenoy happily enough, but for another +influence--another voice. + +Yet his old loyalty to Fontenoy tugged sorely at his will. And with this +loyalty of course was bound up the whole question of his own personal +honour and fidelity--his pledges to his constituents and his party. + +Was there no rational and legitimate way out? He pondered the political +situation as he walked along with great coolness and precision. When the +division on the hours clause was over the main struggle on the Bill, as +he had all along maintained, would be also at an end. If the Government +carried the clause--and the probability still was that they would carry +it by a handful of votes--the two great novelties of the Bill would have +been affirmed by the House. The homework in the scheduled trades would +have been driven by law into inspected workshops, and the male workers in +these same trades would have been brought under the time-restrictions of +the Factory Acts. + +Compared to these two great reforms, or revolutions, the remaining +clause--the landlords clause--touched, as he had already said to +Fontenoy, questions of secondary rank, of mere machinery. Might not a man +thereupon--might not he, George Tressady--review and reconsider his +whole position? + +He had told Fontenoy that his vote was safe; but must that pledge extend +to more than the vital stuff, the main proposals of the Bill? The hours +clause?--yes. But after it? + +Fontenoy, no doubt, would carry on the fight to the bitter end, counting +on a final and hard-wrung victory. The sanguine confidence which had +possessed him about the time of the second reading was gone. He did not, +Tressady knew, reckon with any certainty on turning out the Government in +this coming division. The miserable majority with which they had carried +the workshops clause would fall again--it would hardly be altogether +effaced. That final wiping-out would come--if indeed it were attained--in +the last contest of all, to which Fontenoy was already heartening and +urging on his followers. + +Fontenoy's position, of course, in the matter was clear. It was that of +the leader and the irreconcilable. + +But for the private member, who had seen cause to modify some of his +opinions during the course of debate, who had voted loyally with his +party up till now--might not the division on the hours clause be said to +mark a new stage in the Bill--a stage which restored him his freedom? + +The House would have pronounced on the main points of the Bill; the +country was rallying in a remarkable and unexpected way to the +Government--might it not be fairly argued that the war had been carried +far enough? + +He already, indeed, saw signs of that backing down of opposition which he +had prophesied to Fontenoy. The key to the whole matter lay, he believed, +in the hands of the Old Liberals, that remnant of a once great host, who +were now charging the Conservative Government with new and damaging +concessions to the Socialist tyranny. These men kept a watchful eye on +the country; they had maintained all along that the country had not +spoken. George had already perceived a certain weakening among them. And +now, this campaign of Maxwell's, this new enthusiasm in the industrial +North--no doubt they would have their effect. + +He hurried on, closely weighing the whole matter, the prey to a strange +and mingled excitement. + +Meanwhile the streets through which he walked had the empty, listless air +which marks a stage from which the actors have departed. It was nearing +the middle of August, and society had fled. + +All the same, as he reflected with a relief which was not without its +sting, he and Letty would not be alone at dinner. Some political friends +were coming, stranded, like themselves, in this West End, which had by +now covered up its furniture and shut its shutters. + +What a number of smart invitations had been showering upon them during +the last weeks of the season, and were now still pursuing them, for the +country-house autumn! The expansion of their social circle had of late +often filled George with astonishment. No doubt, he said to +himself,--though with a curious doubtfulness,--Letty was very successful; +still, the recent rush of attentions from big people, who had taken no +notice of them on their marriage, was rather puzzling. It had affected +her so far more than himself. For he had been hard pressed by Parliament +and the strike, and she had gone about a good deal alone--appearing, +indeed, to prefer it. + + * * * * * + +"Come out with me on the Terrace," said Marcella to Betty Leven; "I had +rather not wait here. Aldous, will you take us through?" + +She and Betty were standing in the inner lobby of the House of Commons. +The division had just been called and the galleries cleared. Members were +still crowding into the House from the Library, the Terrace, and the +smoking-rooms; and all the approaches to the Chamber itself were filled +with a throng about equally divided between the eagerness of victory and +the anxieties of defeat. + +Maxwell took the ladies to the Terrace, and left them there, while he +himself went back to the House. Marcella took a seat by the parapet, +leant both hands upon it, and looked absently at the river and the +clouds. It was a cloudy August night, with a broken, fleecy sky, and +gusts of hot wind from the river. A few figures and groups were moving +about the Terrace in the flickering light and shade--waiting like +themselves. + +"Will you be very sad if it goes wrongly?" said Betty, in a low voice, as +she took her friend's hand in hers. + +"Yes--" said Marcella, simply. Then, after a pause, she added, "It will +be all the harder after this time in the North. Everything will have come +too late." + +There was a silence; then Betty said, not without sheepishness, "Frank's +all right." + +Marcella smiled. She knew that little Betty had been much troubled by +Frank's tempers of late, and had been haunted by some quite serious +qualms about his loyalty to Maxwell and the Bill. Marcella had never +shared them. Frank Leven had not grit enough to make a scandal and desert +a chief. But Betty's ambition had forced the boy into a life that was +not his; had divided him from the streams and fields, from the country +gentleman's duties and pleasures, that were his natural sphere. In this +hot town game of politics, this contest of brains and ambitions, he was +out of place--was, in fact, wasting both time and capacity. Betty would +have to give way, or the comedy of a lovers' quarrel might grow to +something ill-matched with the young grace and mirth of such a pair of +handsome children. + +Marcella meant to tell her friend all this in due time. Now she +could only wait in silence, listening for every sound, Betty's soft +fingers clasping her own, the wind as it blew from the bridge +cooling her hot brow. + +"Here they are!" said Betty. + +They turned to the open doorway of the House. A rush of feet and voices +approached, and the various groups on the Terrace hurried to meet it. + +"Just saved! By George, what a squeak!" said a man's voice in the +distance; and at the same moment Maxwell touched his wife on the +shoulder. + +"A majority of ten! Nobody knew how it had gone till the last moment." + +She put up her face to him, leaning against him. + +"I suppose it means we can't pull through?" He bent to her. + +"I should think so. Darling, don't take it to heart so much!" + +In the darkness he felt the touch of her lips on his hand. Then she +turned, with a white cheek and smiling mouth, to meet the greetings and +rueful congratulations of the friends that were crowding about them. + +The Terrace was soon a moving mass of people, eagerly discussing the +details of the division. The lamps, blown a little by the wind, threw +uncertain lights on faces and figures, as they passed and re-passed +between the mass of building on the one hand and the wavering darkness of +the river on the other. To Marcella, as she stood talking to person after +person--talking she hardly knew what--the whole scene was a dim +bewilderment, whence emerged from time to time faces or movements of +special significance. + +Now it was Dowson, the Home Secretary, advancing to greet her, with his +grey shaven face, eyelids somewhat drooped, and the cool, ambiguous look +of one not quite certain of his reception. He had been for long a close +ally of Maxwell's. Marcella had thought him a true friend. But certainly, +in his conduct of the Bill of late there had been a good deal to suggest +the attitude of a man determined to secure himself a retreat, and +uncertain how far to risk his personal fortunes on a doubtful issue. So +that she found herself talking to him with a new formality, in the tone +of those who have been friends, yet begin to foresee the time when they +may be antagonists. + +Or, again, it was Fontenoy--Fontenoy's great head and overhanging brows, +thrown suddenly into light against the windy dusk. He was walking with a +young viscount whose curls, clothes, and shoulders were alike +unapproachable by the ordinary man. This youth could not forbear an +exultant twitching of the lip as he passed the Maxwells. Fontenoy +ceremoniously took off his hat. Marcella had a momentary impression of +the passionate, bull-like force of the man, before he disappeared into +the crowd. His eye had wavered as it met hers. Out of courtesy to the +woman he had tried not to _look_ his triumph. + +And now it was quite another face--thin, delicately marked, a noticeable +chin, an outstretched hand. + +She was astonished by her own feeling of pleasure. + +"Tell me," she said quickly, as she moved eagerly forward--"tell me! is +it about what you expected?" + +They turned towards the river. George Tressady hung over the wall +beside her. + +"Yes. I thought it might be anything from eight to twenty." + +"I suppose Lord Fontenoy now thinks the end quite certain." + +"He may. But the end is not certain!" + +"But what can prevent it! The despairing thing for us is, that if the +country had been roused earlier, everything might have been different. +But now the House--" + +"Has got out of hand? It may be; but I find a great many people affected +by Lord Maxwell's speeches in the North, and his reception there. +To-day's result was inevitable, but, if I'm not mistaken, we shall now +see a number of new combinations." + +The sensitive face became in a moment all intelligence. She played the +politician, and cross-examined him. He hesitated. What he was doing was +already a treachery. But he only hesitated to give way. They lingered by +the wall together, discussing possibilities and persons; and when Maxwell +at last turned from his own conversations to suggest to his wife that it +was time to go home, she came forward with a mien of animation that +surprised him. He greeted Tressady with friendliness, and then, as though +a thought had struck him, suddenly drew the young man aside. + +"Ancoats, of course," said George to himself; and Ancoats it was. + +Maxwell, without preliminaries, and taking his companion's knowledge of +the story for granted--no doubt on Fontenoy's information--said a few +words about the renewal of the difficulty. Did he not think it had all +begun again? Yes, George had some reason to think so. "If you can do +anything for us--" + +"Of course! but what can I do? As we all know, Ancoats does not sit still +to be scolded." + +Their colloquy lasted only a minute or two; yet when it was over, and +the Maxwells had gone, George was left with a vivid impression of the +great man's quiet strength and magnanimity. No one could have guessed +from his anxious and well-considered talk on this private matter that he +was in the very heat of a political struggle that must affect all his +own fortunes. Tressady had been accustomed to spend his wit on the +heavier sides of Maxwell's character. To-night, he said to himself, half +in a passion, grudging the confession, that it was not wonderful she +loved him! + +She! The remembrance of how her whole nature had brightened from its +cloud as he drew out for her his own forecast of what might still happen; +the sweet confidence and charm that she had shown him; the intimacy of +the tone she had allowed between them; the mingling all through of a +delicate abstinence from anything touching on his own personal position, +with an unspoken recognition of it--the impulse of a generosity that +could not help rewarding what seemed to it the yielding of an adversary; +these things filled him with a delicious pleasure as he walked home. In a +hundred directions--political, social, spiritual--the old horizons of the +mind seemed to be lightening and expanding. The cynical, indifferent +temper of his youth was breaking down; the whole man was more +intelligent, capable, tender. Yet what sadness and restlessness of soul +as soon as the brief moment of joy had come and gone! + +A few afternoons of Supply encroached upon the eight days that still +remained before the last clause of the Bill came to a division. But the +whole eight days, nevertheless, were filled with the new permutations and +combinations which Tressady had foreseen. The Government carried the +Stepney election, and in other quarters the effects of the speechmaking +in the North began to be visible. Rumours of the syndicate already formed +to take over large numbers of workshops in both the Jewish and Gentile +quarters of the East End, and of the hours and wages that were likely to +obtain in the new factories, were driving a considerable mass of +working-class opinion, which had hitherto held aloof, straight for the +Government, and splitting up much of that which had been purely hostile. + +Nevertheless, the situation in the House itself was hardly changing with +the change in the country. The Socialist members very soon developed the +proposal to make the landlords responsible for the carrying-out of the +new Act into a furious general attack on the landlords of London. Their +diatribes kept up the terrors which had already cost the Government so +many men. It was not possible, not seemly, to yield, as Maxwell was +yielding, all along the line to these fellows! + +But the Old Liberals, or the New Whigs, as George had expected, were +restless. They felt the country, and they had no affection for landlords +as such. Did a man arise who could give them a lead, there was no saying +how soon they might not break away from the Fontenoy combination. +Fontenoy felt it, and prowled among them like a Satan, urging them to +complete their deed, to give the _coup de grâce_. + +On the Wednesday afternoon before the Friday on which he thought the +final vote would be taken, George let himself into his own house about +six o'clock, thankful to feel that he had a quiet evening before him. He +had been wandering about the House of Commons and its appurtenances all +day, holding colloquies with this person and that, unable to see his +way--to come to any decision. And, as was now usual, he and Fontenoy had +been engaged in steering out of each other's way as much as possible. + +As he went upstairs he noticed a letter lying on the step. He took it up, +and found an open note, which he read, at first without thinking of it: + +"My dear Lady,--Chatsworth can't be done. I have thrown my flies with +great skill, but--no go! I don't seem to have influence enough in that +quarter. But I have various other plans on hand. You shall have a jolly +autumn, if I can manage it. There are some Scotch invitations I can +certainly get you--and I should like to show you the ways of those +parts. By the way, I hope your husband shoots decently. People are very +particular. And you really must consult me about your gowns--I'm deuced +clever at that sort of thing! I shall come to-morrow, when I have packed +off my family to the country. Don't know why God made families! + +"Yours always, + +"CATHEDINE." + +"George! is that you?" cried Letty from above him, in a voice half angry, +half hesitating; "and--and--that's my note. Please give it me at once." + +He finished it under her eyes, then handed it to her with formal +courtesy. They walked into the drawing-room, and George shut the door. He +was very pale, and Letty quailed a little. + +"So Cathedine has been introducing us into society," he said, "and +advising you as to your gowns. Was that--quite necessary--do you think?" + +"It's very simple what he has been doing," was her angry reply. "You +never take any pains to make life amusing to me, so I must look +elsewhere, if I want society--that's all." + +"And it never occurs to you that you are thereby incurring an unseemly +obligation to a man whom I dislike, whom I have warned you against, who +bears everywhere an evil name? You think I am likely to enjoy--to put up +with, even--the position of being asked on sufferance--as your +appendage--provided I 'shoot decently'?" + +His tone of scorn, his slight figure, imperiously drawn up, sent her a +challenge, which she answered with sullen haste. + +"That's all nonsense, of course! And he wouldn't be rude to you if you +weren't always rude to him." + +"Rude to him!" He smiled. "But now, let us get to the bottom of this +thing. Did Cathedine get us the cards for Clarence House--and that +Goodwood invitation?" + +Letty made no answer. She stared at him defiantly, twisting and +untwisting the ribbons of her blue dress. + +George reddened hotly. His personal pride in matters of social manners +was one of his strongest characteristics. + +"Let me beg you, at any rate, to write and tell Lord Cathedine that we +will not trouble him for any more of these kind offices. And, moreover, I +shall not go to any of these houses in the autumn unless I am quite +certain he has had nothing to do with it." + +"I have accepted," said Letty, breathing hard. + +"I cannot help that. You should have been frank with me. I am not going +to do what would destroy my own self-respect." + +"No--you prefer making love to Lady Maxwell!" + +He looked steadily a moment at her pallor and her furious eyes. Then he +said, in another tone: + +"Letty, does it ever occur to you that we have not been married yet five +months? Are our relations to each other to go on for ever like this? I +think we might make something better of them." + +"That's your lookout. But as to these invitations, I have accepted them, +and I shall go." + +"I don't think you will. You would find it wouldn't do. Anyway, +Cathedine must be written to." + +"I shall do nothing of the kind!" she cried. + +"Then I shall write myself." + +She rose, quivering with passion, supporting herself on the arm of +her chair. + +"If you do, I will find some way of punishing you for it. Oh, if I had +never made myself miserable by marrying you!" + +Their eyes met. Then he said: + +"I think I had better go and dine at the club. We are hardly fit to be +together." + +"Go, for heaven's sake!" she said, with a disdainful gesture. + +Outside the door he paused a moment, head bent, hands clenched. Then a +wild, passionate look overspread his young face. "It is her evening," he +said to himself. "Letty turns me out. I will go." + +Meanwhile Letty stood where he had left her till she had heard the +street-door close. The typical, significant sound knelled to her heart. +She began to walk tempestuously up and down, crying with excitement. + +Time passed on. The August evening closed in; and in this deserted London +nobody came to see her. She dined alone, and afterwards spent what seemed +to her interminable hours pacing the drawing-room and meditating. At last +there was a pause in the rush of selfish or jealous feeling which had +been pulsing through her for weeks past, dictating all her actions, +fevering all her thoughts. And there is nothing so desolate as such a +pause, to such a nature. For it means reflection; it means putting one's +life away from one, and looking at it as a whole. And to the Lettys of +this world there is no process more abhorrent--none they will spend more +energy in escaping. + +It was inexplicable, intolerable that she should be so unhappy. What was +it that tortured her so--hatred of Marcella Maxwell, or pain that she had +lost her husband? But she had never imagined herself in love with him +when she married him. He had never obtained from her before a tenth part +of the thought she had bestowed upon him during the past six weeks. +During all the time that she had been flirting with Cathedine, and +recklessly placing herself in his power by the favours she asked of him, +she saw now, with a kind of amazement, that she had been thinking +constantly of George, determined to impress him with her social success, +to force him to admire her and think much of her. + +Cathedine? Had he any real attraction for her? Why, she was afraid of +him, she knew him to be coarse and brutal, even while she played with him +and sent him on her errands. When she compared him with George--even +George as she had just seen him in this last odious scene--she felt the +tears of anger and despair rising. + +But to be forced to dismiss him at George's word, to submit in this +matter of the invitations, to let herself be trampled on, while George +gave all his homage, all his best mind, to Lady Maxwell--something +scorching flew through her veins as she thought of it. Never! never! +She would find, she had already thought of, a startling way of +avenging herself. + +Late at night George came home. She had locked her door, and he turned +into his dressing-room. When the house was quiet again, she pressed her +face into the pillows, and wept till she was amazed at her own pain, and +must needs turn her rage upon herself. + + * * * * * + +When Tressady arrived at the house in Mile End Road he found the pretty, +bare room where Marcella held her gatherings full of guests. The East End +had not "gone out of town." The two little workhouse girls, in the +whitest of caps and aprons, were carrying round trays of coffee and +cakes; and beyond the open window was a tiny garden, backed by a huge +Board School and some tall warehouses, yet as pleasant within its own +small space as a fountain and flowers, constantly replenished from +Maxwell Court, could make it. + +Amid the medley of workmen, union officials, and members of Parliament +that the room contained, George was set first of all to talk to a young +schoolmaster or two, but he had never felt so little able to adjust his +mind to strangers. The thought of his home miseries burnt within him. +When could he get his turn with her? He was thirsty for the sound of her +voice, the kindness of her eyes. + +She had received him with unusual warmth, and an eagerness of look that +seemed to show she had at least as much to say to him as he to her. And +at last his turn came. She took some of her guests into the garden. +George followed, and they found themselves side by side. He noticed that +she was very pale. Yet how was it that fatigue and anxiety instead of +marring her physical charm, only increased it? This thin black dress in +which the tall figure moved so finely, the black lace folded in a fashion +all her own about her neck and breast, the waving lines of hair above the +delicate stateliness of the brow--those slight tragic hollows in cheek +and temple with their tale of spirit and passionate feeling, and all the +ebb and flow of noble life--he had never felt her so rare, so adorable. + +"Well! what do you think of it all to-day? Are you still inclined to +prophesy?" she asked him, smiling. + +"I might be--if I saw any chance of the man you want. But he doesn't seem +to be forthcoming, and--" + +"And to-morrow is the end!" + +"The Government has quite made up its mind not to take defeat--not to +accept modifications?" + +She shook her head. + +They were standing at the end of the garden, looking into the brightly +lit windows of the Board School, where evening-classes were going on. She +gave a long sigh. + +"As for us personally, we can only be thankful to have it over. Neither +of us could have borne it much longer. I suppose, when the crisis is all +over, we shall go away for a long time." + +By "the crisis" she meant, of course, the resignation of Ministers and +a change of Government. So that a few days hence she would be no longer +within his reach at all. Maxwell, once out of office, would, no doubt, +for a long while to come prefer to spend the greater part of his time +in Brookshire, away from politics. A sudden sharp perception woke in +Tressady of what it would mean to him to find himself in a world +where, on going out of a morning, it would be no longer possible to +come across her. + +At last she broke the silence. + +"How little I really thought, in spite of all one's anxiety, that Lord +Fontenoy was going to win! He has played his cards amazingly well." + +George took no notice. Thoughts were whirling in his brain. + +"What would you say to me, I wonder," he said at last, "if _I_ were to +try the part?" + +He spoke in a bantering tone, poking at the black London earth with +his stick. + +"What part?" + +"Well, it seems to me I might put the case. One wants to argue the thing +in a common-sense way. I don't feel towards this clause as I did towards +the others. I know a good many men don't." + +He turned to her with a light composure. + +She stared in bewilderment. + +"I don't understand." + +"Well; why shouldn't one put the case? We have always counted on the +hostility of the country. But the country seems to be coming round. Some +of us now feel the Bill should have its chance--we are inclined to let +Ministers take the responsibility. But, gracious heavens!--to suppose the +House would pay any attention to me!" + +He took up a stone and jerked it over the wall. She did not speak for a +moment. At last she said: + +"It would be a grave thing for _you_ to do." + +He turned, and their eyes met, hers full of emotion, and his hesitating +and reflective. Then he laughed, his pride stung a little by her +expression. + +"You think I should do myself more harm, than good to anybody else?" + +"No.--Only it would be serious," she repeated after a pause. + +Instantly he dropped the subject as far as his own action was +concerned. He led her back into discussion of other people, and of the +situation in general. + +Then suddenly, as they talked, a host of thoughts fled cloud-like, +rising and melting, through Marcella's memory. She remembered with what +prestige--considering his youth and inexperience--he had entered +Parliament, the impression made by the short and brilliant campaign of +his election. Now, since the real struggle of the session had begun, his +energies seemed to have been unaccountably in abeyance, and eclipse. +People she noticed had ceased to talk of him. But supposing, after all, +there had been a crisis of mind and conviction underlying it?--supposing +that now, at the last moment, in a situation that cried out for a +leader, something should suddenly release his powers and gifts to do +their proper work-- + +It vexed her to realise her own excitement, together with an odd +shrinking and reluctance that seemed to be fighting with it. All in a +moment, to Tressady's astonishment, she recalled the conversation to the +point where it had turned aside. + +"And you think--you _really_ think"--her voice had a nervous appealing +note--"that even at this eleventh hour--No, I don't understand!--I +_can't_ understand!--why, or how you should still think it possible to +change things enough!" + +He felt a sting of pleasure, and the passing sense of hurt pride was +soothed. At least he had conquered her attention, her curiosity! + +"I am sure that anything might still happen," he said stubbornly. + +"Well, only let it be settled!" she said, trying to speak lightly, "else +there will be nothing left of some of us." + +She raised her hand, and pushed back her hair with a childish gesture of +weariness, that was quite unconscious, and therefore touching. + +As she spoke, indeed, the thought of a strong man harassed with overwork, +and patiently preparing to lay down his baffled task, and all his +cherished hopes, captured her mind, brought a quick rush of tears even to +her eyes. Tressady looked at her; he saw the moisture in the eyes, the +reddening of the cheek, the effort for self-control. + +"Why do you let yourself feel it so much?" he said resentfully; "it is +not natural, nor right." + +"That's our old quarrel, isn't it?" she answered, smiling. + +He was staring at the ground again, poking with his stick. + +"There are so many things one _must_ feel," he said in a bitter low +voice; "one may as well try to take politics calmly." + +She looked down upon him, understanding, but not knowing how to meet him, +how to express herself. His words and manner were a confession of +personal grief,--almost an appeal to her,--the first he had ever made. +Yet how to touch the subject of his marriage! She shrank from it +painfully. What ominous, disagreeable things she had heard lately of the +young Lady Tressady from people she trusted! Why, oh! why had he ruined +his own life in such a way! + +And with the yearning towards all suffering which was natural to her, +there mingled so much else--inevitable softness and gratitude for that +homage towards herself, which had begun to touch and challenge all the +loving, responsive impulse which was at the root of her character--an +eager wish to put out a hand and guide him--all tending to shape in her +this new longing to rouse him to some critical and courageous action, +action which should give him at least the joy that men get from the +strenuous use of natural powers, from the realisation of themselves. And +through it all the most divinely selfish blindness to the real truth of +the situation! Yet she tried not to think of Maxwell--she wished to think +only of and for her friend. + +After his last words they stood side by side in silence for a few +moments. But the expression of her eyes, of her attitude, was all +sympathy. He must needs feel that she cared, she understood, that his +life, his pain, his story mattered to her. At last she said, turning her +face away from him, and from the few people who had not yet left the +garden to go and listen to some music that was going on in the +drawing-room: + +"Sometimes, the best way to forget one's own troubles--don't you +think?--is to put something else first for a time--perhaps in your +case, the public life and service. Mightn't it be? Suppose you thought it +all really out, what you have been saying to me--gave yourself up to +it--and then _determined_. Perhaps afterwards--" + +She paused--overcome with doubt, even shyness--and very pale too, as she +turned to him again. But so beautiful! The very perplexity which spoke in +the gently quivering face as it met his, made her lovelier in his eyes. +It seemed to strike down some of the barrier between them, to present her +to him as weaker, more approachable. + +But after waiting a moment, he gave a little harsh laugh. + +"Afterwards, when one has somehow settled other people's affairs, one +might see straighter in one's own? Is that what you mean?" + +"I meant," she said, speaking with difficulty, "what I have often +found--myself--that it helps one sometimes, to throw oneself altogether +into something outside one's own life, in a large disinterested way. +Afterwards, one comes back to one's own puzzles--with a fresh strength +and hope." + +"Hope!" he said despondently, with a quick lifting of the shoulders. +Then, in another tone-- + +"So that's your advice to me--to take this thing seriously--to take +myself seriously--to think it out?" + +"Yes, yes," she said eagerly; "don't trifle with it--with what you might +think and do--till it is too late to think and do anything." + +Suddenly it flashed across them both how far they had travelled since +their first meeting in the spring. Her mind filled with a kind of dread, +an uneasy sense of responsibility--then with a tremulous consciousness of +power. It was as though she felt something fluttering like a bird in her +hands. And all the time there echoed through her memory a voice speaking +in a moonlit garden--"You know--you don't mind my saying it?--nobody is +ever converted--politically--nowadays." + +No, but there may be honest advance and change--why not? And if she had +influenced him--was it not Maxwell's work and thought that had spoken +through her? + +"Well, anyway," said Tressady's voice beside her, "whatever +happens--you'll believe--" + +"That you won't help to give us the _coup de grâce_ unless you must?" she +said, half laughing, yet with manifest emotion. "Anyway, I should have +believed that." + +"And you really care so much?" he asked her again, looking at her +wondering. + +She suddenly dropped her head upon her hands. They were alone now in the +moonlit garden, and she was leaning over the low wall that divided them +from the school enclosure. But before he could say anything--before he +could even move closer to her--she had raised her face again, and drawn +her hand rapidly across her eyes. + +"I suppose one is tired and foolish after all these weeks," she said, +with a breaking voice--"I apologise. You see when one comes to see +everything through another's eyes--to live in another's life--" He felt +a sudden stab, then a leap of joy--hungry, desolate joy--that she should +thus admit him to the very sanctuary of her heart--let him touch the +"very pulse of the machine." At the same moment that it revealed the +eternal gulf between them, it gave him a delicious passionate sense of +intimity--of privilege. + +"You have--a marvellous idea of marriage"--he said, under his breath, as +he moved slowly beside her towards the house. + +She made no answer. In another minute she was talking to him of +indifferent things, and immediately afterwards he found himself parted +from her in the crowd of the drawing-room. + +When the party dispersed and he was walking alone towards Aldgate through +the night, he could do nothing but repeat to himself fragments of what +she had said to him--lost all the time in a miserable yearning memory of +her eyes and voice. + +His mind was made up. And as he lay sleepless and solitary through the +night, he scarcely thought any more of the strait to which his married +life had come. Forty-eight hours hence he should have time for that. For +the present he had only to "think out" how it might be possible for him +to turn doubt and turmoil into victory, and lay the crown of it at +Marcella Maxwell's feet. + +Meanwhile Marcella, on her return to St. James's Square, put her hands on +Maxwell's shoulders, and said to him, in a voice unlike herself: "Sir +George Tressady was at the party to-night. I _think_ he may be going to +throw Lord Fontenoy over. Don't be surprised if he speaks in that sense +to-morrow." + +Maxwell looked extraordinarily perturbed. + +"I hope he will do nothing of the kind," he said, with decision. "It will +do him enormous harm. All the conviction he has ever shown has been the +other way. It will be thought to be a mere piece of caprice and +indiscipline." + +Marcella said nothing. She walked away from him, her hands clasped behind +her, her soft skirt trailing--a pale muse of meditation--meditation in +which for once she did not invite him to share. + +"Tressady, by all that's wonderful!" said a member of Fontenoy's party to +his neighbour. "What's _he_ got to say?" + +The man addressed bent forward, with his hands on his knees, to look +eagerly at the speaker. + +"I knew there was something up," he said. "Every time I have come across +Tressady to-day he has been deep with one or other of those fellows"--he +jerked his head towards the Liberal benches. "I saw him buttonholing +Green in the Library, then with Speedwell on the Terrace. And just look +at their benches! They're as thick as bees! Yes, by George! there _is_ +something up." + +His young sportsman's face flushed with excitement, and he tried hard +through the intervening heads to get a glimpse of Fontenoy. But nothing +was to be seen of the leader but a hat jammed down over the eyes, a +square chin, and a pair of folded arms. + +The House, indeed, throughout the day had worn an aspect which, to the +experienced observer--to the smooth-faced Home Secretary, for instance, +watching the progress of this last critical division--meant that +everything was possible, the unexpected above all. Rumours gathered and +died away. Men might be seen talking with unaccustomed comrades; and +those who were generally most frank had become discreet. It was known +that Fontenoy's anxiety had been growing rapidly; and it was noticed that +he and the young viscount who acted as the Whip of the party had kept an +extraordinarily sharp watch on all their own men through the dinner-hour. + +Fontenoy himself had spoken before dinner, throwing scorn upon the +clause, as the ill-conceived finish of an impossible Bill. So the +landlords were to be made the executants, the police, of this precious +Act? Every man who let out a tenement-house in workmen's dwellings was to +be haled before the law and punished if a tailor on his premises did his +work at home, if a widow took in shirtmaking to keep her children. Pass, +for the justice or the expediency of such a law in itself. But who but a +madman ever supposed you could get it carried out! What if the landlords +refused or neglected their part? _Quis custodiet?_ And was Parliament +going to make itself ridiculous by setting up a law, which, were it a +thousand times desirable, you simply could not enforce? + +The speech was delivered with amazing energy. It abounded in savage +epigram and personality; and a month before it would have had great +effect. Every Englishman has an instinctive hatred of paper reforms. + +During the dinner-hour Tressady met Fontenoy in the Lobby, and +suddenly stopped to speak. The young man was deeply flushed and +holding himself stiffly erect. "If you want me," he said--"you will +find me in the Library. I don't want to spring anything upon you. You +shall know all I know." + +"Thank you," said the other with slow bitterness--"but we can look after +ourselves. I think you and I understood each other this morning." + +The two men parted abruptly. Tressady walked on, stung and excited afresh +by the memory of the hateful half hour he had spent that morning in +Fontenoy's library. For after all, when once he had come to his decision, +he had tried to behave with frankness, with consideration. + +Fontenoy hurried on to look for the young viscount with the curls and +shoulders, and the two men stood about the inner lobby together, Fontenoy +sombrely watching everybody who came out or in. + +It was about ten o'clock when Tressady caught the Speaker's eye. He +rose in a crowded House, a House conscious not only that the division +shortly to be taken would decide the fate of a Government, but vaguely +aware, besides, that something else was involved--one of those +personal incidents that may at any moment make the dullest piece of +routine dramatic, or rise into history by the juxtaposition of some +great occasion. + +The House had not yet made up its opinion about him as a speaker. He had +done well; then, not so well. And, moreover, it was so long since he had +taken any part in debate that the House had had time to forget whatever +qualities he might once have shown. + +His bearing and voice won him a first point. For youth, well-bred and +well-equipped, the English House of Commons has always shown a +peculiar indulgence. Then members began to bend eagerly forward, to +crane necks, to put hands to ears. The Treasury Bench was seen to be +listening as one man. + +Before the speech was over many of those present had already recognised +in it a political event of the first order. The speaker had traced with +great frankness his own relation to the Bill--from an opinion which was +but a prejudice, to a submission which was still half repugnance. He drew +attention to the remarkable and growing movement in support of the +Maxwell policy which was now spreading throughout the country, after a +period of coolness and suspended judgment; he pointed to the probable +ease with which, as it was now seen, the "harassed trades" would adapt +themselves to the new law; he showed that the House, in at least three +critical divisions, and under circumstances of enormous difficulty, had +still affirmed the Bill; that the country, during the progress of the +measure, had rallied unmistakably to the Government, and that all that +remained was a question of machinery. That being so, he--and, he +believed, some others--had reconsidered their positions. Their electoral +pledges, in their opinion, no longer held, though they would be ready at +any moment to submit themselves to consequences, if consequences there +were to be. + +Then, taking up the special subject-matter of the clause, he threw +himself upon his leader's speech with a nervous energy, an information, +and a resource which held the House amazed. He tore to pieces +Fontenoy's elaborate attack, showed what practical men thought of the +clause, and with what careful reliance upon their opinion and their +experience it had been framed; and, finally--with a reference not +lacking in a veiled passion that told upon the House, to those "dim +toiling thousands" whose lot, "as it comes to work upon the mind, is +daily perplexing if not transforming the thoughts and ideals of such men +as I"--he, in the plainest terms, announced his intention of voting with +the Government, and sat down, amid the usual mingled storm, in a +shouting and excited House. + +The next hour passed in a tumult. One speaker after another got up from +the Liberal benches--burly manufacturers and men of business, who had so +far held a strong post in the army of resistance--to tender their +submission, to admit that the fight had gone far enough, that the country +was against them, and that the Bill must be borne. What use, too, in +turning out a Government which would either be sent back with redoubled +strength or replaced by combinations that had no attractions whatever +from men of moderate minds? Sadness reigned in the speeches of this +Liberal remnant; nor could the House from time to time forbear to jeer +them. But they made their purpose plain, and the Government Whip, +standing near the door, gleefully struck off name after name from his +Opposition list. + +Then followed the usual struggle between the division that all men +wanted and the speakers that no man could endure. But at last the bell +was rung, the House cleared. As Tressady turned against the stream of +his party, Fontenoy, with a sarcastic smile, stood elaborately aside to +let him pass. + +"We shall soon know what you have cost us," he said hoarsely in +Tressady's ear; then, advancing a little towards the centre of the +floor, he looked up markedly and deliberately at the Ladies' Gallery. +Tressady made no reply. He held his fair head higher than usual as he +passed on his unaccustomed way to the Aye Lobby. Many an eager eye +strained back to see how many recruits would join him as he reached the +Front Opposition Bench; many a Parliamentary Nestor watched the young +man's progress with a keenness born of memory--memory that burnt anew +with the battles of the past. + +"Do you remember Chandos," said one old man to another--"young Chandos, +that went for Peel in '46 against his party? It was my first year in +Parliament. I can see him now. He was something like this young fellow." + +"But _his_ ratting changed nothing," said his companion, with an uneasy +laugh; and they both struggled forward among the Noes. + +Twenty minutes later the tellers were at the table, and the moment that +was to make or mar a great Ministry had come. + +"Ayes, 306; Noes, 280. The Ayes have it!" + +"By Jove, he's done it!--the Judas!" cried a young fellow, crimson with +excitement, who was standing beside Fontenoy! + +"Yes--he's done it!" said Fontenoy, with grim composure, though the hand +that held his hat shook. "The curtain may now fall." + +"Where is he?" shouted the hot bloods around him, hooting and groaning, +as their eyes searched the House for the man who had thus, in an +afternoon, pulled down and defeated all their hopes. + +But Tressady was nowhere to be seen. He had left the House just as the +great news, surging like a wave through Lobby and corridor, reached a +group of people waiting in a Minister's private room--and Marcella +Maxwell knew that all was won. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +"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." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +The door opened silently, and there came in a figure that for a moment +was hardly recognised by either Maxwell or his wife. Shrunken, pale, and +grief-stricken, Ancoats's poor mother entered, her eye seeking eagerly +for Maxwell, perceiving nothing else. She was in black, her veil +hurriedly thrown back, and the features beneath it were all blurred by +distress and fatigue. + +Marcella hurried to her. Mrs. Allison took her hand in both her own with +the soft, appealing motion habitual to her, then said hastily, still +looking at Maxwell: + +"Maxwell, the boy has gone. He left me two days ago. This morning, in my +trouble, I sent for Lord Fontenoy, my kind, kind friend. And he persuaded +me to come to you at once. I begged him to come too--" + +She glanced timidly from one to the other, implying many things. + +But even with this preface, Maxwell's greeting of his defeated +antagonist was ceremony itself. The natural instinct of such a man is to +mask victory in courtesy. But a paragraph that morning in Fontenoy's +paper--a paragraph that he happened to have seen in Lord Ardagh's +room--had appealed to another natural instinct, stronger and more +primitive. It amazed him that even this emergency and Mrs. Allison's +persuasions could have brought the owner of the paper within his doors +on this particular morning. + +Fontenoy, immersed in the correspondence of the morning, had not yet +chanced to see the paragraph, which was Harding Watton's. Yet, if he had, +he could not have shown a more haughty and embarrassed bearing. He was +there under a compulsion he did not know how to resist, a compulsion of +tears and grief; but the instinct for manners, which so often upon +occasion serves the man of illustrious family, as well, almost, as good +feeling or education may serve another, had been for the time weakened in +him by the violences and exhaustion of the political struggle, and he did +not feel certain that he could trust himself. He was smarting still +through every nerve, and the greeting especially that Maxwell's tall wife +extended to him was gall and bitterness. She meanwhile, as she advanced +towards him, was mostly struck with the perfection of his morning dress. +The ultra-correctness and strict fashion that he affected in these +matters were generally a surprise to those who knew him only by +reputation. + +After five minutes' question and answer the Maxwells understood something +of the situation. A servant of Ancoats's had been induced to disclose +what he knew. There could be no question that the young fellow had gone +off to Normandy, where he possessed a chalet close to Trouville, in the +expectation that his fair lady would immediately join him there. She had +not yet started. So much Fontenoy had already ascertained. But she had +thrown up a recent engagement within the last few days, and before +Ancoats's flight all Fontenoy's information had pointed to the likelihood +of a _coup_ of some sort. As for the boy himself, he had left his mother +at Castle Luton, three days before, on the pretext of a Scotch visit, and +had instead taken the evening train to Paris, leaving a letter for his +mother in which the influence of certain modern French novels of the +psychological kind could perhaps be detected. "The call of the heart that +drives me from you," wrote this incredible young man, "is something +independent of myself. I wring my hands, but I follow where it leads. +Love has its crimes,--that I admit,--but they are the only road to +experience. And experience is all I care to live for! At any rate, I +cannot accept the limits that you, mother, would impose upon me. Each of +us must be content to recognise the other's personality. I have tried to +reconcile you to an affection that must be content to be irregular. You +repel it and me, under the influence of a bigotry in which I have ceased +to believe. Suffer me, then, to act for myself in this respect. At any +time that you like to call upon me I will be your dutiful son, so long as +this matter is not mentioned between us. And let me implore you not to +bring in third persons. They have already done mischief enough. Against +them I should know how to protect myself." + +Maxwell returned the letter with a disgust he could hardly repress. +Everything in it seemed to him as pinchbeck as the passion itself. Mrs. +Allison took it with the same miserable look, which had in it, Marcella +noticed, a certain strange sternness, as of some frail creature nerving +itself to desperate things. + +"Now what shall we do?" said Maxwell, abruptly. + +Fontenoy moved forward. "I presume you still command the same persons you +set in motion before? Can you get at them to-day?" + +Maxwell pondered. "Yes, the clergyman. The solicitor-brother is too far +away. Your idea is to stop the girl from crossing?" + +"If it were still possible." Fontenoy dropped his voice, and his gesture +induced Maxwell to follow him to the recess of a distant window. + +"The chief difficulty, perhaps," said Fontenoy, resuming, "concerns the +lad himself. His mother, you will understand, cannot run any risk of +being brought in contact with that woman. Nor is she physically fit for +the voyage; but someone must go, if only to content her. There has been +some wild talk of suicide, apparently--mere bombast, of course, like so +much of it, but she has been alarmed." + +"Do you propose, then, to go yourself?" + +"I am of no use," said Fontenoy, decisively. + +Maxwell had cause to know that the statement was true, and did not press +him. They fell into a rapid consultation. + +Meanwhile, Marcella had drawn Mrs. Allison to the sofa beside her, and +was attempting a futile task of comfort. Mrs. Allison answered in +monosyllables, glancing hither and thither. At last she said in a low, +swift voice, as though addressing herself, rather than her companion, "If +all fails, I have made up my mind. I shall leave his house. I can take +nothing more from him." + +Marcella started. "But that would deprive you of all chance, all hope of +influencing him," she said, her eager, tender look searching the other +woman's face. + +"No; it would be my duty," said Mrs. Allison, simply, crossing her hands +upon her lap. Her delicate blue eyes, swollen with weeping, the white +hair, of which a lock had escaped from its usual quiet braids and hung +over her blanched cheeks, her look at once saintly and indomitable--every +detail of her changed aspect made a chill and penetrating impression. +Marcella began to understand what the Christian might do, though the +mother should die of it. + +Meanwhile she watched the two men at the other side of the room, with a +manifest eagerness for their return. Presently, indeed, she half rose +and called: + +"Aldous!" + +Lord Maxwell turned. + +"Are you thinking of someone who might go to Trouville?" she asked him. + +"Yes, but we can hit on no one," he replied, in perplexity. + +She moved towards him, bearing herself with a peculiar erectness +and dignity. + +"Would it be possible to ask Sir George Tressady to go?" she said +quietly. + +Maxwell looked at her open-mouthed for an instant. Fontenoy, behind him, +threw a sudden, searching glance at the beautiful figure in grey. + +"We all know," she said, turning back to the mother, "that Ancoats likes +Sir George." + +Mrs. Allison shrunk a little from the clear look. Fontenoy's rage of +defeat, however modified in her presence, had nevertheless expressed +itself to her in phrases and allusions that had both perplexed and +troubled her. _Had_ Marcella indeed made use of her beauty to decoy a +weak youth from his allegiance? And now she spoke his name so simply. + +But the momentary wonder died from the poor mother's mind. + +"I remember," she said sadly, "I remember he once spoke to me very kindly +about my son." + +"And he thought kindly," said Marcella, rapidly; "he is kind at heart. +Aldous! if Cousin Charlotte consents, why not at least put the case to +him? He knows everything. He might undertake what we want, for her +sake,--for all our sakes,--and it might succeed." + +The swift yet calm decision of her manner completed Maxwell's +bewilderment. + +His eyes sought hers, while the others waited, conscious, somehow, of a +dramatic moment. Fontenoy's flash of malicious curiosity made him even +forget, while it lasted, the little tragic figure on the sofa. + +"What do you say, Cousin Charlotte?" said Maxwell at last. + +His voice was dry and business-like. Only the wife who watched him +perceived the silent dignity with which he had accepted her appeal. + +He went to sit beside Mrs. Allison, stooping over her, while they talked +in a low key. Very soon she had caught at Marcella's suggestion, with an +energy of despair. + +"But how can we find him?" she said at last, looking helplessly round +the room, at the very chair, among others, where Tressady had just +been sitting. + +Maxwell felt the humour of the situation without relishing it. + +"Either at his own house," he said shortly, "or the House of Commons." + +"He may have left town this morning. Lord Fontenoy thought"--she looked +timidly at her companion--"that he would be sure to go and explain +himself to his constituents at once." + +"Well, we can find out. If you give me instructions,--if you are sure +this is what you want,--we will find out at once. Are you sure?" + +"I can think of nothing better," she said, with a piteous gesture. +"And if he goes, I have only one message to give him. Ancoats knows +that I have exhausted every argument, every entreaty. Now let him tell +my son"--her voice grew firm, in spite of her look of anguish--"that +if he insists on surrendering himself to a life of sin I can bear him +company no more. I shall leave his house, and go somewhere by myself, +to pray for him." + +Maxwell tried to soothe her, and there was some half-whispered talk +between them, she quietly wiping away her tears from time to time. + +Meanwhile, Marcella and Fontenoy sat together a little way off, he at +first watching Mrs. Allison, she silent, and making no attempt to play +the hostess. Gradually, however, the sense of her presence beside him, +the memory of Tressady's speech, of the scene in the House of the night +before, began to work in his veins with a pricking, exciting power. His +family was famous for a certain drastic way with women; his father, the +now old and half-insane Marquis, had parted from his mother while +Fontenoy was still a child, after scenes that would have disgraced an +inn parlour. Fontenoy himself, in his reckless youth, had simply avoided +the whole sex, so far as its reputable members were concerned; till one +woman by sympathy, by flattery perhaps, by the strange mingling in +herself of iron and gentleness, had tamed him. But there were brutal +instincts in his blood, and he became conscious of them as he sat beside +Marcella Maxwell. + +Suddenly he broke out, bending forward, one hand on his knee, the other +nervously adjusting the eyeglass without which he was practically blind. + +"I imagine your side had foreseen last night better than we had?" + +She drew herself together instantly. + +"One can hardly say. It was evident, wasn't it, that the House as a whole +was surprised? Certainly, no one could have foreseen the numbers." + +She met his look straight, her white hand playing with Mrs. +Allison's card. + +"Oh! a slide of that kind once begun goes like the wind," said Fontenoy. +"Well, and are you pleased with your Bill--not afraid of your +promises--of all the Edens you have held out?" + +The smile that he attempted roused such ogerish associations in Marcella, +she must needs say something to give colour to the half-desperate laugh +that caught her. + +"Did you suppose we should be already _en penitence?_" she asked him. + +The man's wrath overcame him. So England--all the serious forces of the +country--were to be more and more henceforward at the mercy of this kind +of thing! He had begun the struggle with a scornful disbelief in current +gossip. He--politically and morally the creation of a woman--had yet not +been able to bring himself to fear a woman. And now he sat there, +fiercely saying to himself that this woman, playing the old game under +new names, had undone him. + +"Ah! I see," he said. "You are of the mind of the Oxford don--never +regret, never retract, never apologise?" + +The small, reddish eyes, like needle-points, fixed the face before him. +She looked up, her beautiful lips parting. She felt the insult--marvelled +at it! On such an errand, in her own house! Scorn was almost lost in +astonishment. + +"A quotation which nobody gets right--isn't it so?" she said calmly. "If +a wise man said it, I suppose he meant, 'Don't explain yourself to the +wrong people,' which is good advice, don't you think?" + +She rose as she spoke, and moved away from him, that she might listen to +what her husband was saying. Fontenoy was left to reflect on the folly of +a man who, being driven to ask a kindness of his enemy, cannot keep his +temper in the enemy's house. Yet his temper had been freshly tried since +he entered it. The whole suggestion of Tressady's embassy was to himself +galling in the extreme. "There is a meaning in it," he thought; "of +course she thinks it will save appearances!" There was no extravagance, +no calumny, that this cold critic of other men's fervours was not for the +moment ready to believe. + +Nevertheless, as he threw himself back in his chair, and his eye caught +Mrs. Allison's bent figure on the other side of the room, he knew that he +must needs submit--he did submit--to anything that could give that torn +heart ease. Of his two passions, one, the passion for politics, seemed +for the moment to have lost itself in disgust and disappointment; to the +other he clung but the more strongly. Once or twice in her talk with +Maxwell, Mrs. Allison raised her gentle eyes and looked across to +Fontenoy. "Are you there, my friend?" the glance seemed to say, and a +thrill spread itself through the man's rugged being. Ah, well! the +follies of this young scapegrace must wear themselves out in time, and +either he would marry and so free his mother, or he would so outrage her +conscience that she would separate herself from him. Then would come +other people's rewards. + +Presently, indeed, Mrs. Allison rose from her seat and advanced to him +with hurried steps. + +"We have settled it, I think; Maxwell will do all he can. It seems hard +to trust so much to a stranger like Sir George Tressady, but if he will +go--if Ancoats likes him? We must do the best, mustn't we?" + +She raised to him her delicate, small face, in a most winning dependence. +Fontenoy did not even attempt resistance. + +"Certainly--it is not a chance to lose. May I suggest also"--he looked +at Maxwell--"that there is no time to lose?" + +"Give me ten minutes, and I am off," said Maxwell, hurriedly carrying a +bundle of unopened letters to a distance. He looked through them, to see +if anything especially urgent required him to give instructions to his +secretary before leaving the house. + +"Shall I take you home?" said Fontenoy to Mrs. Allison. + +She drew her thick veil round her head and face, and said some tremulous +words, which unconsciously deepened the gloom on Fontenoy's face. +Apparently they were to the effect that before going home she wished to +see the Anglican priest in whom she especially confided, a certain Father +White, who was to all intents and purposes her director. For in his +courtship of this woman of fifty, with her curious distinction and her +ethereal charm, which years seemed only to increase, Fontenoy had not one +rival, but two--her son and her religion. + +Fontenoy's fingers barely touched those of Maxwell and his wife. As he +closed the door behind Mrs. Allison, leaving the two together, he said to +himself contemptuously that he pitied the husband. + +When the latch had settled, Maxwell threw down his letters and crossed +the room to his wife. + +"I only half understood you," he said, a flush rising in his face. "You +really mean that we, on this day of all days--that I--am to personally +ask this kindness of George Tressady?" + +"I do!" she cried, but without attempting any caress. "If I could only go +and ask it myself!" "That would be impossible!" he said quickly. + +"Then you, dear husband--dear love!--go and ask it for me! Must we +not--oh! do see it as I do!--must we not somehow make it possible to be +friends again, to wipe out that--that half-hour once for all?"--she threw +out her hand in an impetuous gesture. "If you go, he will feel that is +what we mean--he will understand us at once--there is nothing vile in +him--nothing! Dear, he never said a word to me I could resent till this +morning. And, alack, alack! was it somehow my fault?" She dropped her +face a moment on the back of the chair she held. "How I am to play my own +part--well! I must think. But I cannot have such a thing on my heart, +Aldous--I cannot!" + +He was silent a moment; then he said: + +"Let me understand, at least, what it is precisely that we are doing. Is +the idea that it should be made possible for us all to meet again as +though nothing had happened?" + +She shrank a moment from the man's common sense; then replied, +controlling herself: + +"Only not to leave the open sore--to help him to forget! He must know--he +does know"--she held herself proudly--"that I have no secrets from you. +So that when the time comes for remembering, for thinking it over, he +will shrink from you, or hate you. Whereas, what I want"--her eyes filled +with tears--"is that he should _know_ you--only that! I ought to have +brought it about long ago." + +"Are you forgetting that I owe him this morning my political existence?" + +The voice betrayed the inner passion. + +"He would be the last person to remember it!" she cried. "Why not take it +quite, quite simply?--behave so as to say to him, without words, 'Be our +friend--join with us in putting out of sight what hurts us no less than +you to think of. Shut the door upon the old room--pass with us into a +new!'--oh! if I could explain!" + +She hid her face in her hands again. + +"I understand," he said, after a long pause. "It is very like you. I am +not quite sure it is very wise. These things, to my mind, are best left +to end themselves. But I promised Mrs. Allison; and what you ask, dear, +you shall have. So be it." + +She lifted her head hastily, and was dismayed by the signs of +agitation in him as he turned away. She pursued him timidly, laying +her hand on his arm. + +"And then--" + +Her voice sank to its most pleading note. He caught her hand; but she +withdrew herself in haste. + +"And then," she went on, struggling for a smile, "then you and I have +things to settle. Do you think I don't know that I have made all your +work, and all your triumph, gall and bitterness to you--do you think I +don't know?" + +She gazed at him with a passionate intensity through her tears, yet by +her gesture forbidding him to come near her. What man would not have +endured such discomforts a thousand times for such a look? + +He stooped to her. + +"We are to talk that out, then, when I come back?--Please give these +letters to Saunders--there is nothing of importance. I will go first to +Tressady's house." + + * * * * * + +Maxwell drove away through the sultry streets, his mind running on his +task. It seemed to him that politics had never put him to anything so +hard. But he began to plan it with his usual care and precision. The +butler who opened the door of the Upper Brook Street house could only say +that his master was not at home. + +"Shall I find him, do you imagine, at the House of Commons?" + +The butler could not say. But Lady Tressady was in, though just on the +point of going out. Should he inquire? + +But the visitor made it plain that he had no intention of disturbing Lady +Tressady, and would find out for himself. He left his card in the +butler's hands. + +"Who was that, Kenrick?" said a sharp voice behind the man as the hansom +drove away. Letty Tressady, elaborately dressed, with a huge white hat +and lace parasol, was standing on the stairs, her pale face peering out +of the shadows. The butler handed her the card, and telling him to get +her a cab at once, she ran up again to the drawing-room. + +Meanwhile Maxwell sped on towards Westminster, frowning over his problem. +As he drove down Whitehall the sun brightened to a naked midday heat, +throwing its cloak of mists behind it. The gilding on the Clock Tower +sparkled in the light; even the dusty, airless street, with its withered +planes, was on a sudden flooded with gaiety. Two or three official or +Parliamentary acquaintances saluted the successful minister as he passed; +and each was conscious of a certain impatience with the gravity of the +well-known face. That a great man should not be content to look victory, +as well as win it, seemed a kind of hypocrisy. + +In the House of Commons, a few last votes and other oddments of the now +dying session were being pushed through to an accompaniment of empty +benches. Tressady was not there, nor in the library. Maxwell made his way +to the upper lobby, where writing-tables and materials are provided in +the window-recesses for the use of members. + +He had hardly entered the lobby before he caught sight at its further end +of the long straight chin and fair head of the man he was in quest of. +And almost at the same moment, Tressady, who was sitting writing amid a +pile of letters and papers, lifted his eyes and saw Lord Maxwell +approaching. + +He started, then half rose, scattering his papers. Maxwell bowed as he +neared the table, then stopped beside it, without offering his hand. + +"I fear I may be disturbing you," he said, with simple but cold courtesy. +"The fact is I have come down here on an urgent matter, which may perhaps +be my excuse. Could you give me twenty minutes, in my room?" + +"By all means," said Tressady. He tried to put his papers together, but +to his own infinite annoyance his hand shook. He seemed hardly to know +what to do with them. + +"Do not let me hurry you," said Maxwell, in the same manner. "Will you +follow me at your leisure?" + +"I will follow you immediately," said Tressady; "as soon as I have put +these under lock and key." + +His visitor departed. Tressady remained standing a moment by the table, +his blue eyes, unusually wide open, fixed absently on the river, a dark +red flush overspreading the face. Then he rapidly threw his papers +together into a black bag that stood near, and walked with them to his +locker in the wall. + +For an hour after he left Marcella Maxwell he had wandered blindly up +and down the Green Park; at the end of it a sudden impulse had driven +him to the House, as his best refuge both from Letty and himself. There +he found waiting for him a number of letters, and a sheaf of telegrams +besides from his constituency, with which he had just begun to grapple +when Maxwell interrupted him. Some hours of hard writing and thinking +might, he thought, bring him by reaction to some notion of what to do +with the next days and nights--how to take up the business of his +private life again. + +Now, as he withdrew his key from the lock, in a corridor almost empty of +inhabitants, abstraction seized him once more. He leant against the wall +a moment, with his hands in his pockets, seeing her face--the tears on +her cheek--feeling the texture of her dress against his lips. Barely two +hours ago! No doubt she had confided all to Maxwell in the interval. The +young fellow burnt with mingled rage and shame. This interview with the +husband seemed to transform it all to vaudeville, if not to farce. How +was he to get through it with any dignity and self-command? Moreover, a +passionate resentment towards Maxwell developed itself. His telling of +his secret had been no matter for a common scandal, a vulgar jealousy. +_She_ knew that--she could not have so misrepresented him. A sense of the +situation to which he had brought himself on all sides made his pride +feel itself in the grip of something that asked his submission. Yet why, +and to whom? + +He walked along through the interminable corridors towards Maxwell's room +in the House of Lords, a prey to what afterwards seemed to him the +meanest moment of his life. Little knowing the pledges that a woman had +given for him, he did say to himself that Maxwell owed him much--that he +was not called upon to bear everything from a man he had given back to +power. And all the time his thoughts built a thorn-hedge about her face, +her pity. Let him see them no more, not even in the mirror of the mind. +Great heaven! what harm could such as he do to her? + +By the time he reached Maxwell's door he seemed to himself as hard and +cool as usual. As he entered, the minister was standing by an oriel +window, overlooking the river, turning over the contents of a +despatch-box that had just been brought him. He advanced at once; and +Tressady noticed that he had already dismissed his secretary. + +"Will you sit by the window?" said Maxwell. "The day promises to be +extraordinarily hot." + +Tressady took the seat assigned him. Maxwell's grey eye ran over the +young man's figure and bearing. Then he bent forward from a chair on the +other side of a small writing-table. + +"You will probably have guessed the reason of my intrusion upon you--you +and I have already discussed this troublesome affair--and the kind manner +in which you treated our anxieties then--" + +"Ancoats!" exclaimed Tressady, with a start he could not control. "You +wish to consult me about Ancoats?" + +A flash of wonder crossed the other's mind. "He imagined--" Instinctively +Maxwell's opening mildness stiffened into a colder dignity. + +"I fear we may be making an altogether improper claim upon you," he said +quietly; "but this morning, about an hour ago, Ancoats's mother came to +us with the news that he had left her two days ago, and was now +discovered to be at Trouville, where he has a chalet, waiting for this +girl, of whom we all know, to join him. You will imagine Mrs. Allison's +despair. The entanglement is in itself bad enough. But she--I think you +know it--is no ordinary woman, nor can she bring any of the common +philosophy of life to bear upon this matter. It seems to be sapping her +very springs of existence, and the impression she left upon myself--and +upon Lady Maxwell"--he said the words slowly--"was one of the deepest +pity and sorrow. As you also know, I believe, I have till now been able +to bring some restraining influence to bear upon the girl, who is of +course not a girl, but a very much married woman, with a husband always +threatening to turn up and avenge himself upon her. There is a good man, +one of those High Church clergymen who interest themselves specially in +the stage, who has helped us many times already. I have telegraphed to +him, and expect him here before long. We know that she has not yet left +London, and it may be possible again, at the eleventh hour, to stop her. +But that--" + +"Is not enough," said Tressady, quickly, raising his head. "You want +someone to grapple with Ancoats?" + +Face and voice were those of another man--attentive, normal, sympathetic. +Maxwell observed him keenly. + +"We want someone to go to Ancoats; to represent to him his mother's +determination to leave him for good if this disgraceful affair goes on; +to break the shock of the girl's non-arrival to him, if, indeed, we +succeed in stopping her; and to watch him for a day or two, in case there +should be anything in the miserable talk of suicide with which he seems +to have been threatening his mother." + +"Oh! Suicide! Ancoats!" said Tressady, throwing back his head. + +"We rate him, apparently, much the same," said Maxwell, drily. "But it +is not to be wondered at that the mother should be differently affected. +She sent you"--the speaker paused a moment--"what seemed to me a +touching message." + +Tressady bent forward. + +"'Tell him that I have no claim upon him--that I am ashamed to ask this +of him. But he once said some kind words to me about my son, and I know +that Ancoats desired his friendship. His help _might_ save us. I can say +no more.'" + +Tressady looked up quickly, reddening involuntarily. + +"Was Fontenoy there--did he agree?" + +"Fontenoy agreed," said Maxwell, in the same measured voice. "In fact, +you grasp our petition. To speak frankly, my wife suggested it, and I was +deputed to bear it to you. But I need not say that we are quite prepared +to find that you are not able to do what we have ventured to ask of you, +or that your engagements will not permit it." + +A strange gulp rose in Tressady's throat. He understood--oh! he +understood her--perfectly. + +He leant back in his chair, looking through the open window to the +Thames. A breeze had risen and was breaking up the thunderous sky into +gay spaces of white and blue. The river was surging and boiling under the +tide, and strings of barges were mounting with the mounting water, +slipping fast along the terrace wall. The fronts of the various buildings +opposite rose in shadow against the dazzling blue and silver of the +water. Here over the river, even for this jaded London, summer was still +fresh; every mast and spar, every track of boat or steamer in the burst +of light, struck the eye with sharpness and delight. + +Each line and hue printed itself on Tressady's brain. Then he turned +slowly to his companion. Maxwell sat patiently waiting for his reply; and +for the first time Tressady received, as it were, a full impression of a +personality he had till now either ignored or disliked. In youth Maxwell +had never passed for a handsome man. But middle life and noble habit were +every year giving increased accent and spiritual energy to the youth's +pleasant features; and Nature as she silvered the brown hair, and drove +deep the lines of thought and experience, was bringing more than she took +away. A quiet, modest fellow Maxwell would be to the end; not witty; not +brilliant; more and more content to bear the yoke of the great +commonplaces of life as subtlety and knowledge grew; saying nothing of +spiritual things, only living them--yet a man, it seemed, on whom England +would more and more lay the burden of her fortunes. + +Tressady gazed at him, shaken with new reverences, new compunctions. +Maxwell's eyes were drawn to his--mild, penetrating eyes, in which for an +instant Tressady seemed to read what no words would ever say to him. Then +he sprang up. + +"There is an afternoon train put on this month. I can catch it. Tell me, +if you can, a few more details." + +Maxwell took out a half-sheet of notes from his pocket, and the two men +standing together beside the table went with care into a few matters it +was well for Tressady to know. Tressady threw a quick intelligence into +his questions that inevitably recalled to Maxwell the cut-and-thrust of +his speech on the preceding evening; nor behind his rapid discussion of a +vulgar business did the constrained emotion of his manner escape his +companion. + +At last all was settled. At the last moment an uneasy question rose in +Maxwell's mind. "Ought _we_, at such a crisis, to be sending him away +from his wife?" But he could not bring himself to put it, even lightly, +into words, and as it happened Tressady did not leave him in doubt. + +"I am glad you caught me," he said nervously, in what seemed an awkward +pause, while he looked for his hat, forgetting where he had put it. "I +was intending to leave London to-night. But my business can very well +wait till next week. Now I think I have everything." + +He gathered up a new Guide-Chaix that Maxwell had put into his hand, saw +that the half-sheet of notes was safely stowed into his pocket-book, and +took up his hat and stick. As he spoke, Maxwell had remembered the +situation and Mrs. Allison's remark. No doubt Tressady had proposed to go +north that night on a mission of explanation to his Market Malford +constituents, and it struck one of the most scrupulous of men with an +additional pang, that he should be thus helping to put private motives in +the way of public duty. But what was done was done. And it seemed +impossible that either should speak a word of politics. + +"I ought to say," said Tressady, pausing once more as they moved +together towards the door, "that I have not ultimately much hope for +Mrs. Allison. If this entanglement is put aside, there will be something +else. Trouville itself, in August, I should imagine, is a place of +_bonnes fortunes_ for the man who wants them, and Ancoats's mind runs to +such things." + +He spoke with a curious eagerness, like one who pleads that his good-will +shall not be judged by mere failure or success. + +Maxwell raised his shoulders. + +"Nothing that can happen will in the least affect our gratitude to +_you_," he said gravely. + +"Gratitude!" muttered the young man under his breath. His lip trembled. +He looked uncertainly at his companion. Maxwell did not offer his hand, +yet as he opened the door for his visitor there was a quiet cordiality +and kindness in his manner that made his renewed words of thanks sound +like a strange music in Tressady's ears. + + * * * * * + +When the minister was once more alone he walked back to the window, and +stood looking down thoughtfully on the gay pageant of the river. She was +right--she was always right. There was nothing vile in that young fellow, +and his face had a look of suffering it pained Maxwell to remember. Why +had he personally not come to know him better? "I think too little of +men, too much of machinery," he said to himself, despondently; +"unconsciously I leave the dealing with human beings far too often to +her, and then I wonder that a man sees and feels her as she is!" + +Yet as he stood there in the sunshine a feeling of moral relief stole +upon him, the feeling that rewards a man who has tried to deal greatly +with some common and personal strait. Some day, not yet, he would make +Tressady his friend. He calmly felt it to be within his power. + +Unless the wife!--He threw up his hand, and turned back to his +writing-table. What was to be done with that letter? Had Tressady +any knowledge of it? Maxwell could not conceive it possible that he +had. But, no doubt, it would come to his knowledge, as well as +Maxwell's reply. + +For he meant to reply, and as he glanced at the clock on his table he saw +that he had just half an hour before his clergyman-visitor arrived. +Instantly, in his methodical way, he sat down to his task, labouring it, +however, with toil and difficulty, when it was once begun. + +The few words he ultimately wrote ran as follows: + +"Dear Lady Tressady,--Your letter was a great surprise and a great pain +to me. I believe you will recognise before long that you wrote it under a +delusion, and that you have said in it both unkind and unjust things of +one who is totally incapable of wronging you or anyone else. My wife read +your letter, for she and I have no secrets. She will try and see you at +once, and I trust you will not refuse to see her. She will prove to you, +I think, that you have been giving yourself quite needless torture, for +which she has no responsibility, but for which she is none the less +sorrowful and distressed. + +"I have treated your letter in this way because it is impossible to +ignore the pain and trouble which drove you to write. I need not say that +if it became necessary for me to write or act in another way, I should +think only of my wife. But I will trust to the effect upon you of her own +words and character; and I cannot believe that you will misconstrue the +generosity that prompts her to go to you. + +"Is it not possible, also, that your misunderstanding of your husband +may be in its own way as grave as your misunderstanding of Lady Maxwell? +Forgive an intrusive question, and believe me, + +"Yours faithfully, + +"MAXWELL." + +He read it anxiously over and over, then took a hasty copy of it, and +finally sealed and sent it. He was but half satisfied with it. How was +one to write such a letter without argument or recrimination? The poor +thing had a vulgar, spiteful, little soul; that was clear from her +outpouring. It was also clear that she was miserable; nor could Maxwell +disguise from himself that in a sense she had ample cause. From that hard +fact, with all its repellent and unpalatable consequences, a weaker man +would by now have let his mind escape, would at any rate have begun to +minimise and make light of George Tressady's act of the morning. In +Maxwell, on the contrary, after a first movement of passionate resentment +which had nothing whatever in common with ordinary jealousy, that act was +now generating a compelling and beneficent force, that made for healing +and reparation. Marcella had foreseen it, and in her pain and penitence +had given the impulse. For all things are possible to a perfect +affection, working through a nature at once healthy and strong. + +Yet when Maxwell was once more established in his room at the Privy +Council, overwhelmed with letters, interviews, and all the routine of +official business, those who had to do with him noticed an unusual +restlessness in their even-tempered chief. In truth, whenever his work +left him free for a moment, all sorts of questions would start up in his +mind: "Is she there? Is that woman hurting and insulting her? Can I do +nothing? My love! my poor love!" + + * * * * * + +But Marcella's plans so far had not prospered. + +When George Tressady, after hastily despatching his most urgent business +at the House, drove up to his own door in the afternoon just in time to +put his things together and catch a newly-put-on dining-train to Paris, +he found the house deserted. The butler reminded him that Letty +accompanied by Miss Tulloch had gone to Hampton Court to join a river +party for the day. George remembered; he hated the people she was to be +with, and instinct told him that Cathedine would be there. + +A rush of miserable worry overcame him. Ought he to be leaving her? + +Then, in the darkness of the hall, he caught sight of a card lying on the +table. _Her card_! Amazement made him almost dizzy, while the man at his +arm explained. + +"Her ladyship called just after luncheon. She thought she would have +found my lady in--before she went out. But her ladyship is coming again, +probably this evening, as she wished to see Lady Tressady particularly." + +Tressady gave the man directions to pack for him immediately, then took +the card into his study, and stood looking at it in a tumult of feeling. +Ah! let him begone--out of her way! Oh, heavenly goodness and compassion! +It seemed to him already that an angel had trodden this dark house, and +that another air breathed in it. + +That was his first thought. Then the rush of sore longing, of unbearable +self-contempt, stirred all his worser self to life again. Had she not +better after all have left him and Letty alone! What did such lives as +theirs matter to her? + +He ran upstairs to make his last preparations, wrote a few lines to Letty +describing Mrs. Allison's plight and the errand on which he was bound, +and in half an hour was at Charing Cross. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +"Did you ring, my lady?" + +"Yes. Kenrick, if Lady Maxwell calls to see me to-night, you will say, +please, that I am particularly engaged, and unable to receive anyone." + +Letty Tressady had just come in from her river party. Dressed in a +delicate gown of lace and pale green chiffon, she was standing beside her +writing-table with Lady Maxwell's card in her hand. Kenrick had given it +to her on her arrival, together with the message which had accompanied +it, and she had taken a few minutes to think it over. As she gave the man +his order, the energy of the small figure, as it half turned towards the +door, the brightness of the eyes under the white veil she had just thrown +back, no less than the emphasis of her tone, awakened in the butler the +clear perception that neither the expected visit nor his mistress's +directions were to be taken as ordinary affairs. After he left the +drawing-room, Grier passed him on the stairs. He gave her a slight +signal, and the two retired to some nether region to discuss the secrets +of their employers. + +Meanwhile Letty, having turned on the electric light in the room, walked +to the window and set it half open behind the curtain. In that way she +would hear the carriage approaching, it was between eight and nine +o'clock. No doubt Lady Maxwell would drive round after dinner. + +Then, still holding the card lightly in her hand, she threw herself on +the sofa. She was tired, but so excited that she could not rest--first, +by the memory of the day that had just passed; still more by the thought +of the rebuff she was about to administer to the great lady who had +affronted her. No doubt her letter had done its work. The remembrance of +it tilled her with an uneasy joy. Did George know of it by now? She did +not care. Lady Maxwell, of course, was coming to try and appease her, to +hush it up. There had been a scene, it was to be supposed, between her +and her stiff husband. Letty gloated over the dream of it. Tears, +humiliation, reproaches, she meted them all out in plenty to the woman +she hated. Nor would things end there. Why, London was full of gossip! +Harding's paragraph--for of course it was Harding's--had secured that. +How clever of him! Not a name!--not a thing that could be taken hold +of!--yet so clear. Well!--if she, Letty, was to be trampled on and set +aside, at any rate other people should suffer too. + +So George had gone off to France, leaving her alone, without "Good-bye." +She did not believe a word of his excuse; and, if it were true, it was +only another outrage that he should have thought twice of such a matter +at such a crisis. But it was probably a mere device of his and +_hers_--she would find out for what. + +Her state of tension was too great to allow her to stay in the same place +for more than a few minutes. She got up, and went to the glass before the +mantelpiece. Taking out the pins that held her large Gainsborough hat, +she arranged her hair with her hands, putting the curls of the fringe in +their right place, fastening up some stray ends. She had given orders, as +we have seen, to admit no one, and was presumably going to bed. +Nevertheless, her behaviour was instinctively the behaviour of one who +expects a guest. + +When, more or less to her satisfaction, she had restored the symmetry of +the little curled and crimped head, she took her face between her hands, +and stared at her own reflection. Memories of the party she had just +left, of the hot river, the slowly filling locks, the revelry, the +champagne, danced in her mind, especially of a certain walk through a +wood. She defiantly watched the face in the glass grow red, the eyelids +quiver. Then, like the tremor from some volcanic fire far within, a +shudder ran through her. She dropped her head on her hands. She +hated--_hated_ him! Was it to-morrow evening she had told him he might +come? She would go down to Ferth. + +Wheels in the quiet street! Letty flew to the window like an excited +child, her green and white twinkling through the room. + +A brougham, and a tall figure in black stepping slowly out of it. Letty +sheltered herself behind a curtain, held her breath, and listened. + +Presently her lower lip dropped a little. What was Kenrick about? The +front door had closed, and Lady Maxwell had not re-entered her carriage. + +She opened the drawing-room door with care, and was stooping over the +banisters when she saw Kenrick on the stairs. He seemed to be coming +from the direction of George's study. + +"What have you been doing?" she asked him in a hard under-voice, looking +at him angrily. "I told you not to let Lady Maxwell in." + +"I told her, my lady, that you were engaged and could see no one. Then +her ladyship asked if she might write a few lines to you and send them +up, asking when you would be able to see her. So I showed her into Sir +George's study, my lady, and she is writing at Sir George's desk." + +"You should have done nothing of the sort," said Letty, sharply. "What is +that letter?" + +She took it from his hand before the butler, somewhat bewildered by the +responsibilities of his position, could explain that he had just found it +in the letterbox, where it might have been lying some little time, as he +had heard no knock. + +She let him go downstairs again, to await Lady Maxwell's exit, and +herself ran back to read her letter, her heart beating, for the address +of the sender was on the envelope. + +When she had finished she threw it down, half suffocating. + +"So I am to be lectured and preached to besides. Good heavens! In his +lofty manner, I suppose, that people talk of. Prig--odious, +insufferable prig! So I have mistaken George, have I? My own husband! +And insulted her--_her_! And she is actually downstairs, writing to me, +in my own house!" + +She locked her hands, and began stormily to pace the room again. The +image of her rival, only a few feet from her, bending over George's +table, worked in her with poisonous force. Suddenly she swept to the bell +and rang it. A door opened downstairs. She ran to the landing. + +"Kenrick!" + +"Yes, my lady." She heard a pause, and the soft rustle of a dress. + +"Tell Lady Maxwell, please"--she struggled hard for the right, the +dignified tone--"that if it is not too late for her to stay, I am now +able to see her." + +She hurried back into the drawing-room and waited. _Would_ she come? +Letty's whole being was now throbbing with one mad desire. If Kenrick +let her go! + +But steps approached; the door was thrown open. + +Marcella Maxwell came in timidly, very pale, the dark eyes shrinking from +the sudden light of the drawing-room. She was bareheaded, and wore a long +cloak of black lace over her white evening dress. Letty's flash of +thought as she saw her was twofold: first, hatred of her beauty, then +triumph in the evident nervousness with which her visitor approached her. + +Without making the slightest change of position, the mistress of the +house spoke first. + +"Will you please tell me," she said, in her sharpest, thinnest voice, "to +what I owe the honour of this visit?" + +Marcella paused half-way towards her hostess. + +"I read your letter to my husband," she said quietly, though her voice +shook, "and I thought you would hardly refuse to let me speak to you +about it." + +"Then perhaps you will sit down," said Letty, in the same voice; and she +seated herself. + +If she had wished to heighten the effect of her reception by these small +discourtesies she did not succeed. Rather, Marcella's self-possession +returned under them. She looked round simply for a chair, brought one +forward within speaking distance of her companion, moving once more, in +her thin, tall grace, with all that unconscious dignity Letty had so +often envied and admired from a distance. + +But neither dignity nor grace made any bar to the emotion that filled +her. She bent forward, clasping her hands on her knee. + +"Your letter to my husband made me so unhappy--that I could not help +coming," she said, in a tone that was all entreaty, all humbleness. +"Not--of course--that it seemed to either of us a true or just account of +what had happened"--she drew herself up gently--"but it made me +realise--though indeed I had realised it before I read it--that in my +friendship with your husband I had been forgetting--forgetting those +things--one ought to remember most. You will let me put things, won't +you, in my own way, as they seem to me? At Castle Luton Sir George +attracted me very much. The pleasure of talking to him there first made +me wish to try and alter some of his views--to bring him across my poor +people--to introduce him to our friends. Then, somehow, a special bond +grew up between him and me with regard to this particular struggle in +which my husband and I"--she dropped her eyes that she might not see +Letty's heated face--"have been so keenly interested. But what I ought to +have felt--from the very first--was, that there could be, there ought to +have been, something else added. Married people "--she spoke hurriedly, +her breath rising and falling--"are not two, but one--and my first step +should have been to come--and--and ask you to let me know you too--to +find out what your feelings were, whether you wished for a +friendship--that--that I had perhaps no right to offer to Sir George +alone. I have been looking into my own heart"--her voice trembled +again--"and I see that fault, that great fault. To be excluded myself +from any strong friendship my husband might make, would be agony to me!" +The frank, sudden passion of her lifted eyes sent a thrill even through +Letty's fierce and hardly, kept silence. "And that I wanted to say to +you, first of all. I wronged my own conception of what marriage should +be, and you were quite, quite right to be angry!" + +"Well, I think it's quite clear, isn't it, that you forgot from the +beginning George had a wife?" cried Letty, in her most insulting voice. +"That certainly can't be denied. Anybody could see that at Castle Luton!" + +Marcella looked at her in perplexity. What could suggest to her how to +say the right word, touch the right chord? Would she be able to do more +than satisfy her own conscience and then go, leaving this strange little +fury to make what use she pleased of her visit and her avowals? + +She shaded her eyes with her hand a moment, thinking. Then she said: + +"Perhaps it is of no use for me to ask you to remember how full our +minds--my husband's and mine--have been of one subject--one set of +ideas. But, if I am not keeping you too long, I should like to give you +an account, from my point of view, of the friendship between Sir George +and myself. I think I can remember every talk of ours, from our first +meeting in the hospital down to--down to this morning." + +"This morning!" cried Letty, springing up. "This _morning_! He went to +you to-day?" + +The little face convulsed with passion raised an intolerable distress +in Marcella. + +"Yes, he came to see me," she said, her dark eyes, full of pain, full, +too, once more, of entreaty, fixed upon her interrogator. "But do let me +tell you! I never saw anyone in deeper trouble--trouble about +you--trouble about himself." + +Letty burst into a wild laugh. + +"Of course! No doubt he went to complain of me--that I flirted--that I +ill-treated his mother--that I spent too much money--and a lot of other +pleasant little things. Oh! I can imagine it perfectly. Besides that, I +suppose he went to be thanked. Well, he deserved _that_. He has thrown +away his career to please you; so if you didn't thank him, you ought! +Everybody says his position in Parliament now isn't worth a straw--that +he must resign--which is delightful, of course, for his wife. And I saw +it all from the beginning--I understood exactly what you _wanted_ to do +at Castle Luton--only I couldn't believe then--I was only six weeks +married--" + +A wave of excitement and self-pity swept over her. She broke off +with a sob. + +Marcella's heart was wrung. She knew nothing of the real Letty Tressady. +It was the wife as such, slighted and set aside, that appealed to the +imagination, the remorse of this happy, this beloved woman. She rose +quickly, she held out her hands, looking down upon the little venomous +creature who had been pouring these insults upon her. + +"Don't--_don't_ believe such things," she said, with sobbing breath. "I +never wronged you consciously for a moment. Can't you believe that Sir +George and I became friends because we cared for the same kind of +questions; because I--I was full of my husband's work and everything that +concerned it; because I liked to talk about it, to win him friends. If it +had ever entered my mind that such a thing could pain and hurt you--" + +"Where have you sent him to-day?" cried Letty, peremptorily, interrupting +her, while she drew her handkerchief fiercely across her eyes. + +Instantly Marcella was conscious of the difficulty of explaining her own +impulse and Maxwell's action. + +"Sir George told me," she said, faltering, "that he must go away from +London immediately, to think out some trouble that was oppressing him. +Only a few minutes after he left our house we heard from Mrs. Allison +that she was in great distress about her son. She came, in fact, to beg +us to help her find him. I won't go into the story, of course; I am sure +you know it. My husband and I talked it over. It occurred to us that if +Maxwell went to him--to Sir George--and asked him to do us and her this +great kindness of going to Ancoats and trying to bring him back to his +mother, it would put everything on a different footing. Maxwell would +get to know him,--as I had got to know him. One would find a way--to +silence the foolish, unjust things--that have been said--I suppose--I +don't know--" + +She paused, confused by the difficulties in her path, her cheeks hot and +flushed. But the heart knew its own innocence. She recovered herself; she +came nearer. + +"--If only--at the same time--I could make you realise how truly--how +bitterly--I had felt for any pain you might have suffered--if I could +persuade you to look at it all--your husband's conduct and mine--in its +true light, and to believe that he cares--he _must_ care--for nothing in +the world so much as his home--as you and your happiness!" + +The nobleness of the speaker, the futility of the speech, were about +equally balanced! Candour was impossible, if only for kindness' sake. And +the story, so told, was not only unconvincing, it was hardly intelligible +even, to Letty. For the two personalities moved in different worlds, and +what had seemed to the woman who was all delicate impulse and romance the +natural and right course, merely excited in Letty, and not without +reason, fresh suspicion and offence. If words had been all, Marcella had +gained nothing. + +But a strange tumult was rising in Letty's breast. There was something in +this mingling of self-abasement with an extraordinary moral richness and +dignity, in these eyes, these hands that would have so gladly caught and +clasped her own, which began almost to intimidate her. She broke out +again, so as to hold her own bewilderment at bay: + +"What right had you to send him away--to plan anything for _my_ husband +without my consent? Oh, of course you put it very finely; I daresay you +know about all sorts of things _I_ don't know about; I'm not clever, I +don't talk politics. But I don't quite see the good of it, if it's only +to take husbands away from their wives. All the same, I'm not a +hypocrite, and I don't mean to pretend I'm a meek saint. Far from it. +I've no doubt that George thinks he's been perfectly justified from the +beginning, and that I have brought everything upon myself. Well! I don't +care to argue about it. Don't imagine, please, that I have been playing +the deserted wife all the time. If people injure me, it's not my way to +hold my tongue, and I imagine that, after all, I do understand my own +husband, in spite of Lord Maxwell's kind remarks!" She pointed scornfully +to Maxwell's letter on the table. "But as soon as I saw that nothing I +said mattered to George, and that his whole mind was taken up with your +society, why, of course, I took my own measures! There are other men in +the world--and one of them happens to amuse me particularly at this +moment. It's your doing and George's, you see, if he doesn't like it!" + +Marcella recoiled in sudden horror, staring at her companion with wide, +startled eyes. Letty braved her defiantly, her dry lips drawn into a +miserable smile. She stood, looking very small and elegant, beside her +writing-table, her hand, blazing with rings, resting lightly upon it, the +little, hot withered face alone betraying the nerve tension behind. + +The situation lasted a few seconds, then with a quick step Marcella +hurried to a chair on the further side of the room, sank into it, and +covered her face with her hands. + +Letty's heart seemed to dip, as it were, into an abyss. But there was a +frenzied triumph in the spectacle of Marcella's grief and tears. + +_Marcella Maxwell_--thus silenced, thus subdued! The famous name, with +all that it had stood for in Letty's mind, of things to be envied and +desired, echoed in her ear, delighted her revenge. She struggled to +maintain her attitude. + +"I don't know why what I said should make you so unhappy," she said +coldly, after a pause. + +Marcella did not reply. Presently Letty saw that she was resting her +cheek on her hand and gazing before her into vacancy. At last she turned +round, and Letty could satisfy herself that in truth her eyes were wet. + +"Is there no one," asked the full, tremulous voice, "whom you care for, +whom you would send for now to advise and help you?" + +"Thank you!" said Letty, calmly, leaning against the little +writing-table, and beating the ground slightly with her foot. "I don't +want them. And I don't know why you should trouble yourself about it." + +But for the first time, and against its owner's will, the hard +tone wavered. + +Marcella rose impetuously again, and came towards her. + +"When one thinks of all the long years of married life," she said, still +trembling, "of the children that may come--" + +Letty lifted her eyebrows. + +"If one happened to wish for them. But I don't happen to wish for them, +never did. I daresay it sounds horrid. Anyway, one needn't take that into +consideration." + +"And your husband? Your husband, who must be miserable, whose great gifts +will be all spoiled unless you will somehow give up your anger and make +peace. And instead of that, you are only thinking of revenging yourself, +of making more ruin and pain. It breaks one's heart! And it would need +such a _little_ effort on your part, only a few words written or spoken, +to bring him back, to end all this unhappiness!" + +"Oh! George can take care of himself," said Letty, provokingly; "so can +I. Besides, you have sent him away." + +Marcella looked at her in despair. Then silently she turned away, and +Letty saw that she was searching for some gloves and a handkerchief she +had been carrying in her hand when she came in. + +Letty watched her take them up, then said suddenly, "Are you going away?" + +"It is best, I think. I can do nothing." + +"I wish I knew why you came to see me at all! They say, of course, +you are very much in love with Lord Maxwell. Perhaps--that made you +sorry for me?" + +Marcella's pride leapt at the mention by those lips of her own married +life. Then she drove her pride down. + +"You have put it better than I have been able to do, all the time." Her +mouth parted in a slight, sad smile--"Good-night." + +Letty took no notice. She sat down on the arm of a chair near her. Her +eyes suddenly blazed, her face grew dead-white. + +"Well, if you want to know--" she said--"no, don't go--I don't mean to +let you go just yet--I _am_ about the most miserable wretch going! There, +you may take it or leave it; it's true. I don't suppose I cared much +about George when I married him; plenty of girls don't. But as soon as he +began to care about _you_,--just contrariness, I suppose,--I began to +feel that I could kill anybody that took him from me, and kill myself +afterwards! Oh, good gracious! there was plenty of reason for his getting +tired of me. I'm not the sort of person to let anyone get the whip-hand +of me, and I _would_ spend his money as I liked, and I _would_ ask the +persons I chose to the house; and, above all, I wasn't going to be +pestered with looking after and giving up to his _dreadful_ mother, who +made my life a burden to me. Oh! why do you look so white? Well, I +daresay it does sound atrocious. I don't care. Perhaps you'll be still +more horrified when you know that they came round this afternoon, when I +was out and George was gone, to tell me that Lady Tressady was +frightfully ill--dying, I think my maid said. And I haven't given it +another thought since--not one--till now"--she struck one hand against +the other--"because directly afterwards the butler told me of your visit +this afternoon, and that you were coming again--and I wasn't going to +think of anything else in the world but you, and George. No, don't look +like that, don't come near me--I'm not mad. I assure you I'm not mad! But +that's all by the way. What was I saying? Oh! that George had cause +enough to stop caring about me. Of course he had; but if he's lost to +me--I shall give him a good deal more cause before we've done. That +other man--you know him--Cathedine--gave me a kiss this afternoon, when +we were in a wood together"--the same involuntary shudder overtook her, +while she still held her companion at arm's length. "Oh, he is a +brute--a _brute_! But what do I care what happens to me? It's so strange +I don't--rather creditable, I think--for after all I like parties, and +being asked about. But now George hates me--and let you send him away +from me--why, of course, it's all simple enough! I--Don't--don't come. I +shall never, never forgive--it's just being tired--" + +But Marcella sprang forward. Mercifully, there is a limit to nerve +endurance, and Letty in her raving had overpassed it. She sank gasping on +a sofa, still putting out her hand as though to protect herself. But +Marcella knelt beside her, the tears running down her cheeks. She put her +arms--arms formed for tenderness, for motherliness--round the girl's +slight frame. "Don't--don't repulse me," she said, with trembling lips, +and suddenly Letty yielded. She found herself sobbing in Lady Maxwell's +embrace, while all the healing, all the remorse, all the comfort that +self-abandonment and pity can pour out on such a plight as hers, +descended upon her from Marcella's clinging touch, her hurried, +fragmentary words. Assurances that all could be made right entreaties for +gentleness and patience--revelations of her own inmost heart as a wife, +far too sacred for the ears of Letty Tressady--little phrases and +snatches of autobiography steeped in an exquisite experience: the nature +Letty had rained her blows upon, kept nothing back, gave her all its +best. How irrelevant much of it was!--chequered throughout by those +oblivions, and optimisms, and foolish hopes by which such a nature as +Marcella's protects itself from the hard facts of the world. By the time +she had ranged through every note of entreaty and consolation, Marcella +had almost persuaded herself and Letty that George Tressady had never +said a word to her beyond the commonplaces of an ordinary friendship; she +had passionately determined that this blurred and spoiled marriage could +and should be mended, and that it lay with her to do it; and in the +spirit of her audacious youth she had taken upon herself the burden of +Letty's character and fate, vowing herself to a moral mission, to a long +patience. The quality of her own nature, perhaps, made her bear Letty's +violences and frenzies more patiently than would have been possible to a +woman of another type; generous remorse and regret, combined with her +ignorance of Letty's history and the details of Letty's life, led her +even to look upon these violences as the effects of love perverted, the +anguish of a jealous heart. Imagination, keen and loving, drew the +situation for her in rapid strokes, draped Letty in the subtleties and +powers of her own heart, and made forbearance easy. + +As for Letty, her whole being surrendered itself to a mere ebb and flow +of sensations. That she had been able thus to break down the barriers of +Marcella's stateliness filled her all through, in her passion as in her +yielding, with a kind of exultation. A vision of a tall figure in a white +and silver dress, sitting stiff and unapproachable beside her in the +Castle Luton drawing-room, fled through her mind now and then, only +to make the wonder of this pleading voice, these confidences, this +pity, the more wonderful. But there was more than this, and better +than this. Strange up-wellings of feelings long trampled on and +suppressed--momentary awakenings of conscience, of repentance, of +regret--sharp realisations of an envy that was no longer ignoble but +moral, softer thoughts of George, the suffocating, unwilling recognition +of what love meant in another woman's life--these messengers and +forerunners of diviner things passed and repassed through the spaces of +Letty's soul as she lay white and passive under Marcella's yearning look. +There was a marvellous relief besides, much of it a physical relief, in +this mere silence, this mere ceasing from angry railing and offence. + +Marcella was still sitting beside her, holding her hands, and talking in +the same low voice, when suddenly the loud sound of a bell clanged +through the house. Letty sprang up, white and startled. + +"What can it be? It's past ten o'clock. It can't be a telegram." + +Then a guilty remembrance struck her. She hurried to the door as +Kenrick entered. + +"Lady Tressady's maid would like to see you, my lady. They want Sir +George's address. The doctors think she will hardly live over to-morrow." + +And behind Kenrick, Justine, the French maid, pushed her way in, weeping +and exclaiming. Lady Tressady, it seemed, had been in frightful pain all +the afternoon. She was now easier for the moment, though dangerously +exhausted. But if the heart attacks returned during the next twenty-four +hours, nothing could save her. The probability was that they would +return, and she was asking piteously for her son, who had seen her, +Justine believed, the day before these seizures began, just before his +departure for Paris, and had written. "Et la pauvre âme!" cried the +Frenchwoman at last, not caring what she said to this amazing +daughter-in-law, "elle est là toujours, quand les douleurs s'apaisent un +peu, écoutant, espérant--et personne ne vient--_personne_! Voulez-vous +bien, madame, me dire où on peut trouver Sir George?" + +"Poste Restante, Trouville," said Letty, sullenly. "It is the only +address that I know of." + +But she stood there irresolute and frowning, while the French girl, +hardly able to contain herself, stared at the disfigured face, demanding +by her quick-breathing silence, by her whole attitude, something else, +something more than Sir George's address. + +Meanwhile Marcella waited in the background, obliged to hear what passed, +and struck with amazement. It is perhaps truer of the moral world than +the social that one half of it never conceives how the other half lives. +George Tressady's mother--alone--dying--in her son's absence--and Letty +Tressady knew nothing of her illness till it had become a question of +life and death, and had then actually refused to go--forgotten the +summons even! + +When Letty, feverish and bewildered, turned back to the companion +whose heart had been poured out before her during this past hour of +high emotion, she saw a new expression in Lady Maxwell's eyes from +which she shrank. + +"Ought I to go?" she said fretfully, almost like a peevish child, putting +her hand to her brow. + +"My carriage is downstairs," said Marcella, quickly. "I can take you +there at once. Is there a nurse?" she asked, turning to the maid. + +Oh, yes; there was an excellent nurse, just installed, or Justine could +not have left her mistress; and the doctor close by could be got at a +moment's notice. But the poor lady wanted her son, or at least some one +of the family,--Justine bit her lip, and threw a nervous side glance at +Letty,--and it went to the heart to see her. The girl found relief in +describing her mistress's state to this grave and friendly lady, and +showed more feeling and sincerity in speaking of it than might have been +expected from her affected dress and manner. + +Meanwhile Letty seemed to be wandering aimlessly about the room. Marcella +went up to her. + +"Your hat is here, on this chair. I have a shawl in the carriage. Won't +you come at once, and leave word to your maid to bring after you what +you want? Then I can go on, if you wish it, and send your telegram to +Sir George." + +"But you wanted him to do something?" said Letty, looking at her +uncertainly. + +"Mothers come first, I think!" said Marcella, with a smile of wonder. +"It is best to write it before we go. Will you tell me what to say?" + +She went to the writing-table, and had to write the telegram with small +help from Letty, who in her dazed, miserable soul was still fighting some +demonic resistance or other to the step asked of her. Instinctively and +gradually, however, Marcella took command of her. A few quiet words to +Justine sent her to make arrangements with Grier. Then Letty found a +cloak that had been sent for being drawn round her shoulders, and was +coaxed to put on her hat. In another minute she was in the Maxwells' +brougham, with her hand clasped in Marcella's. + +"They will want me to sit up," she said, dashing an irrelevant tear from +her eyes, as they drove away. "I am so tired--and I hate illness!" + +"Very likely they won't let you see her to-night. But you will be there +if the illness comes on again. You would feel it terribly if--if she died +all alone, with Sir George away." + +"Died!" Letty repeated, half angrily. "But that would be so +horrible--what could I do?" + +Marcella looked at her with a strange smile. + +"Only be kind, only forget everything but her!" + +The softness of her voice had yet a severity beneath it that Letty felt, +but had no spirit to resent, Rather it awakened an uneasy and painful +sense that, after all, it was not she who had come off conqueror in this +great encounter. The incidents of the last half-hour seemed in some +curious way to have reversed their positions. Letty, smarting, felt that +her relation to George's dying mother had revealed her to Lady Maxwell +far more than any wild and half-sincere confessions could have done. Her +vanity felt a deep inner wound, yet of a new sort. At any rate, +Marcella's self-abasement was over, and Letty instinctively realised that +she would never see it again, while at the same time a new and clinging +need had arisen in herself. The very neighbourhood of the personality +beside her had begun to thrill and subjugate her. She had been conscious +enough before--enviously, hatefully conscious--of all the attributes and +possessions that made Maxwell's wife a great person in the world of +London. What was stealing upon her now was glamour and rank and influence +of another kind. + +Not unmixed, no doubt, with more mundane thoughts! No ordinary preacher, +no middle-class eloquence perhaps would have sufficed--nothing less +dramatic and distinguished than the scene which had actually passed, than +a Marcella at her feet. Well! there are many modes and grades of +conversion. Whether by what was worst in her, or what was best; whether +the same weaknesses of character that had originally inflamed her had now +helped to subdue her or no, what matter? So much stood--that one short +hour had been enough to draw this vain, selfish nature within a moral +grasp she was never again to shake off. + +Meanwhile, as they drove towards Warwick Square Marcella's only thought +was how to hand her over safe to her husband. A sense of agonised +responsibility awoke in the elder woman at the thought of Cathedine. But +no more emotion--only common sense and gentleness. + +As they neared Warwick Square, Letty withdrew her hand. + +"I don't suppose you will ever want to see me again," she said huskily, +turning her head away. + +"Do you think that very possible between two people who have gone +through such a time as you and I have?" said Marcella, pale, but +smiling. "When may I come to see you to-morrow? I shall send to inquire, +of course, very early." + +Some thought made Letty's breath come quickly. "Will you come in the +afternoon--about four?" she said hastily. "I suppose I shall be here." +They were just stopping at the door in Warwick Square. "You said you +would tell me--" + +"I have a great deal to tell you.... I will come, then, and see if you +can be spared.... Good-night. I trust she will be better! I will go on +and send the telegram." + +Letty felt her hand gravely pressed, the footman helped her out, and +in another minute she was mounting the stairs leading to Lady +Tressady's room, having sent a servant on before her to warn the nurse +of her arrival. + +The nurse came out, finger on lip. She was very glad to see Lady +Tressady, but the doctor had left word that nothing whatever was to be +allowed to disturb or excite his patient. Of course, if the attack +returned--But just now there was hope. Only it was so difficult to keep +her quiet. Instead of trying to sleep, she was now asking for Justine, +declaring that Justine must read French novels aloud to her, and bring +out two of her evening dresses, that she might decide on some +alteration in the trimmings. "I daren't fight with her," said the +nurse, evidently in much perplexity. "But if she only raises herself in +bed she may kill herself." + +She hurried back to her patient, promising to inform the daughter-in-law +at once if there was a change for the worse, and Letty, infinitely +relieved, made her way to the spare room of the house, where Grier was +already unpacking for her. + +After a hasty undressing she threw herself into bed, longing for sleep. +But from a short nightmare dream she woke up with a start. Where was she? +In her mother-in-law's house,--she could actually hear the shrill +affected voice laughing and talking in the room next door,--and brought +there by Marcella Maxwell! The strangeness of these two facts kept her +tossing restlessly from side to side. And where was George? Just arrived +at Paris, perhaps. She thought of the glare and noise of the Gare du +Nord--she heard his cab rattling over the long stone-paved street +outside. In the darkness she felt a miserable sinking of heart at the +thought of his going with every minute farther, farther away from her. +Would he ever forgive her that letter to Lord Maxwell, when he knew of +it? Did she want him to forgive her? + +A mood that was at once soft and desolate stole upon her, and made her +cry a little. It sprang, perhaps, from a sense of the many barriers she +had heaped up between herself and happiness. The waves of feeling, half +self-assertive, half repentant, ebbed and flowed. One moment she yearned +for the hour when Marcella was to come to her; the next, she hated the +notion of it. So between dream and misery, amid a maze of thought without +a clue, Letty's night passed away. By the time the morning dawned, the +sharp conviction had shaped itself within her that she had grown older, +that life had passed into another stage, and could never again be as it +had been the day before. Two emotions, at least, or excitements, had +emerged from all the rest and filled her mind--the memory of the scene +with Marcella, and the thought of George's return. + + + + +PART III + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +"My dear, you don't mean to say you have had her here for ten days?" + +The speaker was Betty Leven, who had just arrived at Maxwell Court, and +was sitting with her hostess under the cedars in front of the magnificent +Caroline mansion, which it was the never-ending task of Marcella's life +to bring somehow into a democratic scheme of things. + +A still September afternoon, lightly charged with autumn mists, lay +gently on the hollows of the park. Betty was in her liveliest mood and +her gayest dress. Her hat, a marvel in poppies, was perched high upon no +less ingenious waves and frettings of hair. Her straw-coloured gown, +which was only simple for the untrained eye, gave added youth even to +her childish figure; and her very feet, clothed in the smallest and most +preposterous of shoes, had something merry and provocative about them, +as they lay crossed upon the wooden footstool Marcella had pushed +towards her. + +The remark just quoted followed upon one made by her hostess, to the +effect that Lady Tressady would be down to tea shortly. + +"Now, Betty," said Marcella, seriously, though she laughed, "I meant to +have a few words with you on this subject first thing--let's have them. +Do you want to be very kind to me, or do you ever want me to be very +nice to you?" + +Betty considered. + +"You can't do half as much for me now as you once could, now that Frank's +going to leave Parliament," she remarked, with as much worldly wisdom as +her face allowed. "Nevertheless, the quality of my nature is such that, +sometimes, I might even be nice to you for nothing. But information +before benevolence--why have you got her here?" + +"Because she was fagged and unhappy in London, and her husband had gone +to take his mother abroad, after first doing Maxwell a great kindness," +said Marcella,--not, however, without embarrassment, as Betty saw,--"and +I want you to be kind to her." + +"Reasons one and two no reasons at all," said Betty, meditating; "and the +third wants examining. You mean that George Tressady went after Ancoats?" + +Marcella raised her shoulders, and was silent. + +"If you are going to be stuffy and mysterious," said Betty, with +vivacity, "you know what sort of a hedgehog I can be. How can you expect +me to be nice to Letty Tressady unless you make it worth my while?" + +"Betty, you infant! Well, then, he did go after Ancoats--got him safely +away from Trouville, brought him to Paris to join Mrs. Allison, and, in +general, has laid us all under very great obligations. Meanwhile, she was +very much tired out with nursing her mother-in-law--" + +"Oh, and such a mother-in-law--such a jewel!" ejaculated Betty. + +"And I brought her down here to rest, till he should come back from +Wildheim and take her home. He will probably be here to-night." + +The speaker reddened unconsciously during her story, a fact not +lost on Betty. + +"Well, I knew most of that before," said Betty, quietly. "And what sort +of a time have you been having this ten days?" + +"I have been very glad to have her here," came the quick reply. "I ought +to have known her long ago." + +Betty looked at the speaker with a half-incredulous smile. + +"You have been 'collecting' her, I suppose, as Hallin collects grasses. +Of course, what I pine to know is what sort of a time _she's_ had. You're +not the easiest person in the world to get on with, my lady." + +"I know that," said Marcella, sighing; "but I don't think she has +been unhappy." + +Betty's green eyes opened suddenly to the light. + +"Are you ever going to tell me the truth? Have you got her under your +thumb? Does she adore you?" + +"Betty, don't be an idiot!" + +"I expect she does," said Betty, thoughtfully, a myriad thoughts and +conjectures passing through her quick brain as she studied her friend's +face and attitude. "I see exactly what fate is going to happen to you in +middle life. Women couldn't get on with you when you were a girl--you +didn't like them, nor they you; and now everywhere I hear the young women +beginning to talk about you, especially the young married women; and in a +few years you will have them all about you like a cluster of doves, +cooing and confessing, and making your life a burden to you." + +"Well, suppose you begin?" said Marcella, with meaning. "I'm quite ready. +How are Frank's spirits since the great decision?" + +"Frank's spirits?" said Betty. She leisurely took off her glove. "Frank's +spirits, my dear, if you wish to know, are simply an affront to his wife. +My ruined ambitions appear to affect him as Parrish's food does the baby. +I prophesy he will have gained a stone by Christmas." + +For the great step had been taken. Betty had given way, and Frank was to +escape from politics. For three years Betty had held him to his task--had +written his speeches, formed his opinions, and done her very best to +train him for a statesman. But the young man had in truth no opinions, +save indeed whatever might be involved in the constant opinion that +Heaven had intended him for a country gentleman and a sportsman, and for +nothing else. And at last a mixture of revolt and melancholy had served +his purpose. Betty was subdued; the Chiltern Hundreds were in sight. The +young wife, with many sighs, had laid down all dreams of a husband on the +front bench. But--in compensation--she had regained her lover, and the +honeymoon shone once more. + +"Frank came to see me yesterday," said Marcella, smiling. + +Betty sprang forward. + +"What did he say? Didn't he tell you I was an angel? Now there's a +bargain! Repeat to me every single word he said, and I will devote +myself, body and bones, to Letty Tressady." + +"Hush!" said Marcella, laying two fingers on the pretty mouth. "Here +she comes." + +Letty Tressady, in fact, had just emerged from a side-door of the house, +and was slowly approaching the two friends on the terrace. Lady Leven's +discerning eye ran over the advancing figure. Marcella heard her make +some exclamation under her breath. Then she rose with little, hurrying +steps, and went to greet the newcomer with a charming ease and kindness. + +Letty responded rather nervously. Marcella looked up with a smile, and +pointed to a low chair, which Letty took with a certain stiffness. It was +evident to Marcella that she was afraid of Lady Leven, who had, indeed, +shown a marked indifference to her society at Castle Luton. + +But Betty was disarmed. The "minx" had lost her colour, and, for the +moment, her prettiness. She looked depressed, and talked little. As to +her relation to Marcella Betty's inquisitive brain indulged itself in a +score of conjectures. "How like her!" she thought to herself, "to forget +the wife's existence to begin with, and then to make love to her by way +of warding off the husband!" + +Meanwhile, aloud, Lady Leven professed herself exceedingly dissatisfied +with the entertainment provided for her. Where were the gentlemen? What +was the good of one putting on one's best frock to come down to a Maxwell +Court Saturday to find only a "hen tea-party" at the end? Marcella +protested that there were only too many men somewhere on the premises +already, and more--with their wives--were arriving by the next train. +But Maxwell had taken off such as had already appeared for a long +cross-country walk. + +Betty demanded the names, and Marcella gave them obediently. Betty +perceived at once that the party was the party of a political chief +obliged to do his duty. She allowed herself a good many shrugs of her +small shoulders. "Oh, Mrs. Lexham,--very charming, of course,--but what's +the good of being friends with a person who has five hundred people in +London that call her Kelly? Lady _Wendover_? I ought to have had notice. +A good mother? I should think she is! That's the whole point against her. +She always gives you the idea of having reared fifteen out of a possible +twelve. To see her beaming on her offspring makes me positively ashamed +of being in the same business myself. Don't you agree, Lady Tressady?" + +But Letty, whose chief joy a month before would have been to dart in on +such a list with little pecking proofs of acquaintance, was leaning back +listlessly in her chair, and could only summon a forced smile for answer. + +"And Sir George, too, is coming to-night, isn't he?" said Lady Leven. + +"Yes, I expect my husband to-night," said Letty, coldly, without looking +at her questioner. Betty glanced quickly at the expression of the eyes +which were bent upon the further reaches of the park; then, to Letty's +astonishment, she bent forward impulsively and laid her little hand on +Lady Tressady's arm. + +"Do you mind telling me," she said in a loud whisper, with a glance over +her shoulder, "your candid opinion of _her_ as a country lady?" + +Letty, taken aback, turned and laughed uneasily; but Betty went rattling +on. "Have you found out that she treats her servants like hospital +nurses; that they go off and on duty at stated hours; that she has +workshops and art schools for them in the back premises; and that the +first footman has just produced a cantata which has been sent in to the +committee of the Worcester Festival (Be quiet, Marcella; if it isn't +that, it's something near it); that she teaches the stable boys and the +laundry maids old English dances, and the _pas de quatre_ once a +fortnight, and acts showman to her own pictures for the benefit of the +neighbourhood once a week? I came once to see how she did it, but I found +her and the Gairsley ironmonger measuring the ears of the Holbeins--it +seems you can't know anything about pictures now unless you have measured +all the ears and the little fingers, which I hope you know; I didn't!--so +I fled, as she hadn't a word to throw to me, even as one of the public. +Then perhaps you don't know that she has invented a whole, new, and +original system of game-preserving--she and Frank fight over it by the +hour--that she has upset all the wage arrangements of the county--that, +perhaps, you do know, for it got into the papers--and a hundred other +trifles. Has she revealed these things?" + +Letty looked in perplexity from Betty's face, full of sweetness and +mirth, to Marcella's. + +"She hasn't talked about them," she said, hesitating. "Of course, I +haven't understood a good many things that are done here--" + +"Don't try," said Marcella, first laughing and then sighing. + +Nothing appeased, Lady Leven chattered away, while Letty watched her +hostess in silence. She had come down to the Court gloating somewhat, in +spite of her very real unhappiness, over the prospect of the riches and +magnificence she was to find there. And to discover that wealth might be +merely the source of one long moral wrestle to the people who possessed +it, burdening them with all sorts of problems and remorses that others +escaped, had been a strange and, on the whole, jarring experience to her. +Of course there must be rich and poor; of course there must be servants +and masters. Marcella's rebellion against the barriers of life had been a +sort of fatigue and offence to Letty ever since she had been made to feel +it. And daily contact with the simple, and even Spartan, ways of living +that prevailed--for the owners of it, at least--in the vast house, with +the overflowing energy and humanity that often made its mistress a +restless companion, and led her into a fair percentage of mistakes--had +roused a score of half-scornful protests in the small, shrewd mind of her +guest. Nevertheless, when Marcella was kind, when she put Letty on the +sofa, insisting that she was tired, and anxiously accusing herself of +some lack of consideration or other; when she took her to her room at +night, seeing to every comfort, and taking thought for luxuries that in +her heart she despised; or when, very rarely, and turning rather pale, +she said a few words--sweet, hopeful, encouraging--about George's return, +then Letty was conscious of a strange leap of something till then +unknown, something that made her want to sob, that seemed to open to her +a new room in the House of Life. Marcella had not kissed her since the +day of their great scene; they had been "Lady Maxwell" and "Lady +Tressady" to each other all the time, and Letty had but realised her own +insolences and audacities the more, as gradually the spiritual dignity of +the woman she had raved at came home to her. But sometimes when Marcella +stood beside her, unconscious, talking pleasantly of London folk or +Ancoats, or trying to inform herself as to Letty's life at Ferth, a +half-desolate intuition would flash across the younger woman of what it +might be to be admitted to the intimate friendship of such a nature, to +feel those long, slender arms pressed about her once more, not in pity or +remonstrance, as of one trying to exorcise an evil spirit, but in mere +love, as of one asking as well as giving. The tender and adoring +friendship of women for women, which has become so marked a feature of +our self-realising generation, had passed Letty by. She had never known +it. Now, in these unforeseen circumstances, she seemed to be trembling +within reach of its emotion; divining it, desiring it, yet forced onward +to the question, "What is there in me that may claim it?" + +Marcella, indeed, after their first stormy interview, had once more +returned to the subject of it. She had told the story of her friendship +with George Tressady, very gently and plainly, in a further conversation, +held between them at the elder Lady Tressady's house during that odd +lady's very odd convalescence; till, indeed, she reached the last scene. +She could not bring herself to deliver the truth of that. Nor was it +necessary. Letty's jealousy had guessed it near enough long ago. But when +all else was told, Letty had been conscious at first of a half-sore +resentment that there was so little to tell. In her secret soul she knew +very well what had been the effect on George. Her husband's mind had been +gradually absorbed by another ideal in which she had no part; nor could +she deny that he had suffered miserably. The memory of his face as he +asked her to "forgive him" when she fled past him on that last wretched +night was enough. But suffered for what? A few talks about politics, a +few visits to poor people, an office of kindness after a street accident +that any stranger must have rendered, a few meetings in the House and +elsewhere! + +Letty's vanity was stabbed anew by the fact that Lady Maxwell's +offence was so small. It gave her a kind of measure of her own hold +upon her husband. + +Once, indeed, Marcella's voice and colour had wavered when she made +herself describe how, on the Mile End evening, she had been conscious of +pressing the personal influence to gain the political end. But good +heavens!--Letty hardly understood what the speaker's evident compunction +was about. Why, it was all for Maxwell! What had she thought of all +through but Maxwell? Letty's humiliation grew as she understood, and as +in the quiet of Maxwell Court she saw the husband and wife together. + +Her anger and resentment might very well only have transferred themselves +the more hotly to George. But this new moral influence upon her had a +kind of paralysing effect. The incidents of the weeks before the crisis +excited in her now a sick, shamed feeling whenever she thought of them. +For contact with people on a wholly different plane of conduct, if such +persons as Letty can once be brought to submit to it, will often produce +effects, especially on women, like those one sees produced every day by +the clash of two standards of manners. It means simply the recognition +that one is unfit to be of certain company, and perhaps there are few +moral ferments more penetrating. Probably Letty would have gone to her +grave knowing nothing of it, but for the accident which had opened to her +the inmost heart of a woman with whom, once known, not even her vanity +dared measure itself. + +George and she had already met since the day when he had gone off to +Paris in search of Ancoats. The telegram sent to him by Marcella on the +night of his mother's violent illness had, indeed, been recalled next +day. Lady Tressady, following the idiosyncrasies of her disease, sprang +from death to life--and life of the sprightliest kind--in the course of a +few hours. The battered, grey-haired woman--so old, do what she would, +under the betraying hand of physical decay!--no sooner heard that George +had been sent for than she at once and peremptorily telegraphed to him +herself to stay away. "I'm not dead yet," she wrote to him afterwards, +"in spite of all the fuss they've made with me. I was simply ashamed to +own such a cadaverous-looking wretch as you were when you came here last, +and if you take my advice you'll stay at Trouville with Lord Ancoats and +amuse yourself. As to that young man, of course it's no good, and his +mother's a great fool to suppose that you or anybody else can prevent +his enjoying himself. But these High Church women are so extraordinary." + +Letty, indeed, remembering her mother-in-law's old ways, and finding +them little changed as far as she herself was concerned, was puzzled and +astonished by the new relations between mother and son. On the smallest +excuse or none, Lady Tressady, a year before, would have been ready to +fetch him back from furthest land without the least scruple. Now, +however, she thought of him, or for him, incessantly. And one day Letty +actually found her crying over an official intimation from the lawyer +concerned that another instalment of the Shapetsky debt would be due +within a month. But she angrily dried her tears at sight of Letty, and +Letty said nothing. + +George, however, came back within about ten days of his departure, having +apparently done what he was commissioned to do, though Letty took so +little interest in the Ancoats affair that she barely read those portions +of his letters in which he described the course of it. His letters, +indeed, with the exception of a few ambiguous words here and there, dealt +entirely with Trouville, Ancoats, or the ups and downs of public opinion +on the subject of his action and speech in the House. Letty could only +gather from a stray phrase or two that he enjoyed nothing; but evidently +he could not yet bring himself to speak of what had happened. + +When he did come back, the husband and wife saw very little of each +other. It was more convenient that he should stay in Upper Brook Street +while she remained at her mother-in-law's; and altogether he was hardly +three days in London. He rushed up to Market Malford to deliver his +promised speech to his constituents, and immediately afterwards, on the +urgent advice of the doctors, he went off to Wildheim with his mother and +the elderly cousin whose aid he had already invoked. Before he went, he +formally thanked his wife--who hardly spoke to him unless she was +obliged--for her attention to his mother, and then lingered a little, +looking no less "cadaverous," certainly, than when he had gone away, and +apparently desiring to say more. + +"I suppose I shall be away about a fortnight," he said at last, "if one +is to settle her comfortably. You haven't told me yet what you would like +to do. Couldn't you get Miss Tulloch to go down with you to Ferth, or +would you go to your people for a fortnight?" + +He was longing to ask her what had come of that promised visit of Lady +Maxwell's. But neither by letter nor by word of mouth had Letty as yet +said a word of it. And he did not know how to open the subject. During +the time that he was with his wife and mother, nothing was seen of +Marcella in Warwick Square, and an interview that he was to have had with +Maxwell, by way of supplement to his numerous letters, had to be +postponed because of overcrowded days on both sides. So that he was still +in the dark. + +Letty at first made no answer to his rather lame proposals for her +benefit. But just as he was turning away with a look of added +worry, she said: + +"I don't want to go home, thank you, and I still less want to go +to Ferth." + +"But you can't stay in London. There isn't a soul in town; and it would +be too dull for you." + +He gazed at her in perplexity, praying, however, that he might not +provoke a scene, for the carriage that was to take him and his mother to +the station was almost at the door. + +Letty rose slowly, and folded up some embroidery she had been +playing with. Then she took a note from her work-basket, and laid it +on the table. + +"You may read that if you like. That's where I'm going." + +And she quickly went out of the room. + +George read the note. His face flushed, and he hurriedly busied himself +with some of his preparations for departure. When his wife came into the +room again he went up to her. + +"You could have done nothing so likely to save us both," he said huskily, +and then could think of nothing more to say. He drew her to him as though +to kiss her, but a blind movement of the old rage with him or +circumstance leapt in her, and she pulled herself away. The thought of +that particular moment had done more perhaps than anything else to thin +and whiten her since she had been at Maxwell Court. + +And now he would be here to-night. She knew both from her host himself +and from George's letters that Lord Maxwell had specially written to him +begging him to come to the Court on his return, in order to join his wife +and also to give that oral report of his mission for which there had been +no time on his first reappearance. Maxwell had spoken to her of his wish +to see her husband, without a tone or a word that could suggest anything +but the natural friendliness and good-will of the man who has accepted a +signal service from his junior. But Letty avoided Maxwell when she could; +nor would he willingly have been left alone with this thin, sharp-faced +girl whose letter to him had been like the drawing of an ugly veil from +nameless and incredible things. He was sorry for her; but in his strong, +deep nature he felt a repulsion for her he could not explain; and to +watch Marcella with her amazed him. + + * * * * * + +Immediately after tea, Lady Leven's complaints of her entertainment +became absurd. Guests poured in from the afternoon train, and a variety +of men, her husband foremost among them, were soon at her disposal, +asking nothing better than to amuse her. + +Letty Tressady meanwhile looked on for a time at the brilliant crowd +about her on the terrace, with a dull sense of being forgotten and of no +account. She said to herself sullenly that of course no one would want to +talk to her; it was not her circle, and she had even few acquaintances +among them. + +Then, to her astonishment, she began to find herself the object of an +evident curiosity and interest to many people among the throng. She +divined that her name was being handed from one to the other, and she +soon perceived that Marcella had been asked to introduce to her this +person and that, several of them men and women whose kindness, a few +weeks before, would have flattered her social ambitions to the highest +point. Colour and nerve returned, and she found herself sitting up, +forgetting her headache, and talking fast. + +"I am delighted to have this opportunity of telling you, Lady Tressady, +how much I admired your husband's great speech," said the deep and +unctuous voice of the grey-haired Solicitor-General as he sank into a +chair beside her. "It was not only that it gave us our Bill, it gave the +House of Commons a new speaker. Manner, voice, matter--all of it +excellent! I hope there'll be no nonsense about his giving up his seat. +Don't you let him! He will find his feet and his right place before long, +and you'll be uncommonly proud of him before you've done." + +"Lady Tressady, I'm afraid you've forgotten me," said a plaintive voice; +and, on turning, Letty saw the red-haired Lady Madeleine asking with +smiles to be remembered. "Do you know, I was lucky enough to get into the +House on the great day? What a scene it was! You were there, of course?" + +When Letty unwillingly said "No," there was a little chorus of +astonishment. + +"Well, take my advice, my dear lady," said the Solicitor-General, +speaking with lazy patronage somewhere from the depths of comfort,--he +was accustomed to use these paternal modes of speech to young +women,--"don't you miss your husband's speeches. We can't do without our +domestic critics. But for the bad quarters of an hour that lady over +there has given me, I should be nowhere." + +And he nodded complacently towards the wife as stout as himself, who was +sitting a few yards away. She, hearing her name, nodded back, with smiles +aside to the bystanders. Most of the spectators, however, were already +acquainted with a conjugal pose which was generally believed to be not +according to facts, and no one took the cue. + +Then presently Mr. Bennett--the workmen's member from the North--was at +Letty's elbow saying the most cordial things of the absent George. Bayle, +too, the most immaculate and exclusive of private secretaries, who was at +the Court on a wedding visit with a new wife, chose to remember Lady +Tressady's existence for the first time for many months, and to bestow +some of his carefully adapted conversation upon her. While, last of all, +Edward Watton came up to her with a cousinly kindness she had scarcely +yet received from him, and, drawing a chair beside her, overflowed with +talk about George, and the Bill, and the state of things at Market +Malford. In fact, it was soon clear even to Letty's bewildered sense that +till her husband should arrive she was perhaps, for the moment, the +person of most interest to this brilliant and representative gathering of +a victorious party. + +Meanwhile she was made constantly aware that her hostess remembered her. +Once, as Marcella passed her, after introducing someone to her, Letty +felt a hand gently laid on her shoulder and then withdrawn. Strange waves +of emotion ran through the girl's senses. When would George be here? +About seven, she thought, when they would all have gone up to dress. He +would have arrived from Wildheim in the morning, and was to spend the day +doing business in town. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Letty was lying on a sofa in her bedroom. Her maid was to come to her +shortly, and she was impatiently listening to every sound that approached +or passed her door. The great clock in the distant hall struck seven, and +it seemed to her intolerably long before she heard movements in the +passage, and then Maxwell's voice outside. + +"Here is your room, Sir George. I hope you don't mind a few ghosts! It is +one of the oldest bits of the house." + +Letty sprang up. She heard the shutting of the passage door, then +immediately afterwards the door from the dressing-room opened, and George +came through. + +"Well!" she said, staring at him, her face flushing; "surely you are +very late?" + +He came up to her, and put his arms round her, while she stood passive. +"Not so very," he said, and she could hear that his voice was unsteady. +"How are you? Give me a kiss, little woman--be a little glad to see me!" + +He looked down upon her wistfully. On the journey he had been conscious +of great weariness of mind and body, a longing to escape from struggle, +to give and receive the balm of kind looks and soft words. He had come +back full of repentance towards her, if she had only known, full too of a +natural young longing for peace and good times. + +She let him kiss her, but as he stooped to her it suddenly struck her +that she had never seen him look so white and worn. Still; after all this +holiday-making! Why? For love of a woman who never gave him a thought, +except of pity. Bitterness possessed her. She turned away indifferently. + +"Well, you'll only just have time to dress. Is someone unpacking for +you?" + +He looked at her. + +"Is that all you have to say?" + +She threw back her head and was silent. + +"I was very glad to come back to you," he said, with a sigh, "though I--I +wish it were anywhere else than here. But, all things considered, I did +not see how to refuse. And you have been here the whole fortnight?" + +"Yes." + +"Have you"--he hesitated--"have you seen a great deal of Lady Maxwell?" + +"Well, I suppose I have--in her own house." Then she broke out, her +heart leaping visibly under her light dressing-gown. "I don't blame +_her_ any more, if you want to know that; she doesn't think of anyone in +the world but him." + +The gesture of her hand seemed to pursue the voice that had been just +speaking in the corridor. + +He smiled. + +"Well, at least I'm glad you've come to see that!" he said quietly. "And +is that all?" + +He had walked away from her, but at his renewed question he turned +back quickly, his hands in his pockets. Something in the look of him +gave her a moment of pleasure, a throb of possession. But she showed +nothing of it. + +"No, it's not all"--her pale blue eyes pierced him. "Why did you go and +see her that morning, and why have you never told me since?" + +He started, and shrugged his shoulders. + +"If you have been seeing much of her," he replied, after a pause, "you +probably know as much as I could tell you." + +"No," she said steadily; "she has told me much about +everything--but that." + +He walked restlessly about for a few seconds, then returned, holding out +his hands. + +"Well, my dear, I said some mad and miserable things. They are as dead +now as if they had never been spoken. And they were not love-making--they +were crying for the moon. Take me, and forget them. I am an +unsatisfactory sort of fellow, but I will do the best I can." + +"Wait a bit," she said, retreating, and speaking with a hard +incisiveness. "There are plenty of things you don't know. Perhaps you +don't know, for instance, that I wrote to Lord Maxwell? I sat up writing +it that night--he got it the same morning you saw her." + +"You wrote to Maxwell!" he said in amazement--then, under his breath--"to +complain of her. My God!" + +He walked away again, trying to control himself. + +"You didn't suppose," she said huskily, "I was going to sit down calmly +under your neglect of me? I might have been silly in not--not seeing what +kind of a woman she was; that's different--besides, of course, she ought +to have thought more about me. But _that's_ not all!" + +Her hand shook as she stood leaning on the sofa. George turned, and +looked at her attentively. + +"The day you left I went to Hampton Court with the Lucys. Cathedine was +there. Of course I flirted with him all the time, and as we were going +through a wood near the river he said abominable things to me, and +kissed me." + +Her brows were drawn defiantly. Her eyes seemed to be riveted to his. He +was silent a moment, the colour dyeing his pale face deep. Then she heard +his long breath. + +"Well, we seem to be about quits," he said, in a bitter voice. "Have you +seen him since?" + +"No. That's Grier knocking--you'd better go and dress." + +He paused irresolutely. But Letty said, "Come in," and he retreated into +his dressing-room. + +Husband and wife hurried down together, without another word to each +other. When George at last found himself at table between Lady Leven and +Mr. Bayle's new and lively wife, he had never been so grateful before to +the ease of women's tongues. In his mental and physical fatigue, he could +scarcely bear even to let himself feel the strangeness of his presence in +this room--at her table, in Maxwell's splendid house. _Not_ to +feel!--somehow to recover his old balance and coolness--that was the cry +of the inner man. + +But the situation conquered him. _Why_ was he here? It was barely a month +since in her London drawing-room he had found words for an emotion, a +confession it now burnt him to remember. And here he was, breaking bread +with her and Maxwell, a few weeks afterwards, as though nothing lay +between them but a political incident. Oh! the smallness, the triviality +of our modern life! + +Was it only four weeks, or nearly? What he had suffered in that time! An +instant's shudder ran through him, during an interval, while Betty's +unwilling occupation with her left-hand neighbour left memory its chance. +All the flitting scenes of the past month, Ancoats's half-vicious +absurdities, the humours of the Trouville beach, the waves of its grey +sea, his mother's whims and plaints, the crowd and heat of the little +German watering-place where he had left her--was it he, George Tressady, +that had been really wrestling with these things and persons, walking +among them, or beside them? It seemed hardly credible. What was real, +what remained, was merely the thought of some hours of solitude, beside +the Norman sea, or among the great beech-woods that swept down the hills +about Bad Wildheim. Those hours--they only--had stung, had penetrated, +had found the shrinking core of the soul. + +What in truth was it that had happened to him? After weeks of a growing +madness he had finally lost his self-command, had spoken passionately, +as only love speaks, to a married woman, who had no thought for any man +in the world but her husband, a woman who had immediately--so he had +always read the riddle of Maxwell's behaviour--reported every incident +of his conversation with her to the husband, and had then tried her +best, with an exquisite kindness and compunction, to undo the mischief +her own charm had caused. For that effort, in the first instance, +George, under the shock of his act and her pain, had been, at intervals, +speechlessly grateful to her; all his energies had gone into pitiful, +eager response. Now, her attempt, and Maxwell's share in it, seemed to +have laid him under a weight he could no longer bear. His acceptance of +Maxwell's invitation had finally exhausted his power of playing the +superhuman part to which she had invited him. He wished with all his +heart he had not accepted it! From the moment of her greeting--with its +mixture of shrinking and sweetness--he had realised the folly, the +humiliation even, of his presence in her house. He could not rise--it +was monstrous, ludicrous almost, that she should wish it--to what she +seemed to ask of him. + +What had he been in love with? He looked at her once or twice in +bewilderment. Had not she herself, her dazzling, unconscious purity, +debarred him always from the ordinary hopes and desires of the sensual +man? His very thought had moved in awe of her, had knelt before her. +Throughout there had been this half-bitter glorying in the strangeness of +his own case. The common judgment in its common vileness mattered nothing +to him. He had been in love with love, with grace, with tenderness, with +delight. He had seen, too late, a vision of the _best_; had realised +what things of enchantment life contains for the few, for the +chosen--what woman at her richest can be to man. And there had been a cry +of personal longing--personal anguish. + +Well!--it was all done with. As for friendship, it was impossible, +grotesque. Let him go home, appease Letty, and mend his life. He +constantly realised now, with the same surprise, as on the night before +his confession, the emergence within himself, independent as it were of +his ordinary will, and parallel with the voice of passion or grief, of +some new moral imperative. Half scornfully he discerned in his own nature +the sort of paste that a man inherits from generations of decent dull +forefathers who have kept the law as they understood it. He was conscious +of the same "ought" vibrating through the moral sense as had governed +their narrower lives and minds. It is the presence or the absence indeed +of this dumb compelling power that in moments of crisis differentiates +one man from another. He felt it; wondered perhaps that he should feel +it; but knew, nevertheless, that he should obey it. Yes, let him go home, +make his wife forgive him, rear his children--he trusted to God there +would be children!--and tame his soul. How strange to feel this tempest +sweeping through him, this iron stiffening of the whole being, amid this +scene, in this room, within a few feet of that magic, that voice-- + + * * * * * + +"Thank goodness I have got rid of my man at last!" said Betty's laughing +whisper in his ear. "Three successive packs of hounds have I followed +from their cradles to their graves. Make it up to me, Sir George, at +once! Tell me everything I want to know!" + +George turned to her smiling. + +"About Ancoats?" + +"Of course. Now don't be discreet!--I know too much already. How did he +receive you?" + +George laughed--not noticing that instead of laughing with him, little +Betty was staring at him open-eyed over her fan. + +"To begin with, he invited me to fight--coffee and pistols before +eight, on the following morning, in the garden of his chalet, which +would not have been at all a bad place, for he is magnificently +installed. I came from his enemies, he said. They had prevented the +woman he loved from joining him, and covered him with ridicule. As +their representative I ought to be prepared to face the consequences +like a man. All this time he was storming up and down, in a marvellous +blue embroidered smoking suit--" + +"Of course, to go with the hair," put in Betty. + +"I said I thought he'd better give me some dinner before we talked it +out. Then he looked embarrassed and said there were friends coming. I +replied, '_Tant mieux.'_ He inquired fiercely whether it was the part of +a gentleman to thrust himself where he wasn't wanted. I kept my temper, +and said I was too famished to consider. Then he haughtily left the room, +and presently a servant came and asked for my luggage, which I had left +at the station, and showed me a bedroom. Ancoats, however, appeared again +to invite me to withdraw, and to suggest the names of two seconds who +would, he assured me, be delighted to act for me. I pointed out to him +that I was unpacked, and that to turn me out dinnerless would be simply +barbarous. Then, after fidgeting about a little, he burst out laughing in +an odd way, and said, 'Very well--only, mind, I didn't ask you.' Sure +enough, of course I found a party." + +George paused. + +"You needn't tell me much about the party," said Betty, nervously, +"unless it's necessary." + +"Well, it wasn't a very reputable affair, and two young women were +present." + +"No need to talk about the young women," said Betty, hastily. + +George bowed submission. + +"I only mentioned them because they are rather necessary to the story. +Anyway, by the time the company was settled Ancoats suddenly threw off +his embarrassment, and, with some defiant looks at me, behaved himself, I +imagine, much as he would have done without me. When all the guests were +gone, I asked him whether he was going to keep up the farce of a _grande +passion_ any more. He got in a rage and vowed that if 'she' had come, of +course all those creatures, male and female, would be packed off. I +didn't suppose that he would allow the woman he loved to come within a +mile of them? I shrugged my shoulders and declined to suppose anything +about his love affairs, which seemed to me too complicated. Then, of +course, I had to come to plain speaking, and bring in his mother." + +"That she should have produced such a being!" cried Betty; "that he +should have any right in her at all!" + +"That she should keep such a heart for him!" said George, raising his +eyebrows. "He turned rather white, I was relieved to see, when I told him +from her that she would leave his house if the London affair went on. +Well, we walked up and down in his garden, smoking, the greater part of +the night, till I could have dropped with fatigue. Every now and then +Ancoats would make a dash for the brandy and soda on the verandah; and in +between I had to listen to tirades against marriage, English prudery, and +English women,--quotations from Gautier and Renan,--and Heaven knows +what. At last, when we were both worn out, he suddenly stood still and +delivered his ultimatum. 'Look here--if you think I've no grievances, +you're much mistaken. Go back and tell my mother that if she'll marry +Fontenoy straight away I'll give up Marguerite!' I said I would deliver +no such impertinence. 'Very well,' he said; 'then I will. Tell her I +shall be in Paris next week, and ask her to meet me there. When are you +going?' 'Well,' I said, rather taken aback, 'there is such an institution +as the post. Now I've come so far, suppose you show me Trouville for a +few days?' He muttered something or other, and we went to bed. +Afterwards, he behaved to me quite charmingly, would not let me go, and I +ended by leaving him at the door of an hotel in Paris where he was to +meet his mother. But on the subject of Fontenoy it is an _idée fixe_. He +chafes under the whole position, and will yield nothing to a man who, as +he conceives, has no _locus standi_. But if his pride were no longer +annoyed by its being said that his mother had sacrificed her own +happiness to him, and if the situation were defined, I _think_ he might +be more amenable. I think they might marry him." + +"That's how the man puts it!" said Betty, tightening her lip. "Of course +_any_ marriage is desirable for _any_ woman!" + +"I was thinking of Mrs. Allison," said George, defensively. "One can't +think of a Lady Ancoats till she exists." + +"_Merci!_ Never mind. Don't apologise for the masculine view. It has to +be taken with the rest of you. Do you understand that matrimony is in the +air here to-night? Have you been talking to Lady Madeleine?" + +"No, not yet. But how handsome she's grown! I see Naseby's not far off." + +George turned smiling to his companion. But, as he did so, again +something cold and lifeless in his own face and in the expression +underlying the smile pricked little Betty painfully. Marcella had made +her no confidences, but there had been much gossip, and Letty Tressady's +mere presence at the Court set the intimate friend guessing very near +the truth. + +She did her best to chatter on, so as to keep him at least +superficially amused. But both became more and more conscious of two +figures, and two figures only, at the crowded table--Letty Tressady, +who was listening absently to Edward Watton with oppressed and indrawn +eyes, and Lady Maxwell. + +George, indeed, watched his wife constantly. He hungered to know more of +that first scene between her and Lady Maxwell, or he thought with bitter +repulsion of the letter she had confessed to him. Had he known of it,--in +spite of that strange, that compelling letter of Maxwell's, so reticent, +and yet in truth so plain,--he could hardly have come as a guest to +Maxwell's house. As for her revelations about Cathedine, he felt little +resentment or excitement. For the future a noxious brute had to be kept +in order--that was all. It was his own fault, he supposed, much more than +hers. The inward voice, as before, was clear enough. "I must just take +her home and be good to her. _She_ shirked nothing--now, no doubt, she +expects me to do my part." + +"Do you notice those jewels that Lady Maxwell is wearing to-night?" said +Betty at last, unable to keep away from the name. + +"I imagine they are a famous set?" + +"They belonged to Marie Antoinette. At last Maxwell has made her have +them cleaned and reset. What a pity to have such desperate scruples as +she has about all your pretty things!" + +"Must diamonds and rubies, then, perish out of the world?" he asked her, +absently, letting his eyes rest again upon the beautiful head and neck. + +Betty made some flippant rejoinder, but as she watched him, she +was not gay. + + * * * * * + +George had had but a few words with his hostess before dinner, and +afterwards a short conversation was all that either claimed. She had +hoped and planned so much! On the stage of imagination before he +came--she had seen his coming so often. All was to be forgotten and +forgiven, and this difficult visit was to lead naturally and without +recall to another and happier relation. And now that he was here she felt +herself tongue-tied, moving near him in a dumb distress. Both realised +the pressure of the same necessities, the same ineluctable facts; and +tacitly, they met and answered each other, in the common avoidance of a +companionship which could after all avail nothing. Once or twice, as they +stood together after dinner, he noticed amid her gracious kindness, her +inquiries after Mrs. Allison or his mother, the search her eyes made for +Letty, and presently she began to talk with nervous, almost appealing, +emphasis--with a marked significance and intensity indeed--of Letty's +fatigue after her nursing, and the need she had for complete change and +rest. George found himself half resenting the implications of her manner, +as the sentences flowed on. He felt her love of influence, and was not +without a hidden sarcasm. In spite of his passionate gratitude to her, he +must needs ask himself, did she suppose that a man or a marriage was to +be remade in a month, even by her plastic fingers? Women envisaged these +things so easily, so childishly, almost. + +When he moved away, a number of men who had already been talking to him +after dinner, and some of the most agreeable women of the party besides, +closed about him, making him, as it were, the centre of a conversation +which was concerned almost entirely with the personalities and chances +of the political moment. He was scarcely less astonished than Letty had +been by his own position amongst the guests gathered under Maxwell's +roof. Never had he been treated with so much sympathy, so much deference +even. Clearly, if he willed it so, what had seemed the dislocation might +only be the better beginning of a career. Nonsense! He meant to throw it +all up as soon as Parliament met again in February. The state of his +money affairs alone determined that. The strike was going from bad to +worse. He must go home and look after his own business. It was a folly +ever to have attempted political life. Meanwhile he felt the stimulus of +his reception in a company which included some of the keenest brains in +England. It appealed to his intelligence and virility, and they +responded. Letty once, glancing at him, saw that he was talking briskly, +and said to herself, with contradictory bitterness, that he was looking +as well as ever, and was going, she supposed, to behave as if nothing +had happened. + +"What is the matter with you to-night, my lady?" said Naseby, taking a +seat beside his hostess. "May I be impertinent and guess?--you don't like +your gems? Lady Leven has been telling me tales about them. They are the +most magnificent things I ever saw. I condole with you." + +She turned rather listlessly to meet his bantering look. + +"'Come you in friendship, or come you in war?'" she said, pointing to a +seat beside her. "I have no fight in me. But I have a great many things +to say to you." + +He reddened for an instant, then recovered himself. + +"So have I to you," he said briskly. "In the first place, I have some +fresh news from Mile End." + +She half laughed, as who should say, "You put me off," then surrendered +herself with eagerness to the pleasure of his report. At the moment of +his approach, under pretence of talking to an elderly cousin of +Maxwell's, she had been lost in such an abstraction of powerless pity for +George Tressady--whose fair head, somehow, never escaped her, wherever it +moved--that she had hardly been able to bear with her guests or the +burden of the evening. + +But Naseby roused her. And, indeed, his story so far was one to set the +blood throbbing in the veins of a creature who, on one side pure woman, +was on the other half poet, half reformer. Since the passage of the +Maxwell Bill, indeed, Naseby and a few friends of his, some "gilded +youths" like himself, together with some trade-union officials of a long +experience, had done wonders. They had been planning out the industrial +reorganisation of a whole district, through its two staple trades, with +the enthusiastic co-operation of the workpeople themselves; and the +result so far struck the imagination. Everywhere the old workshops were +to be bought up, improved, or closed; everywhere factories in which life +might be decent, and work more than tolerable, were to be set up; +everywhere the prospective shortening of hours, and the doing away with +the most melancholy of the home trades was working already like the +incoming of a great slowly surging tide, raising a whole population on +its breast to another level of well-being and of hope. + +Most of what had been done or designed was of course already well known +to Maxwell's wife; she had indeed given substantial help to Naseby +throughout. But Naseby had some fresh advances to report since she was +last in East London, and she drank them in with an eagerness, which +somehow assuaged a hidden smart; while he wondered a little perhaps in +his philosopher's soul at the woman of our English day, with her +compunctions and altruisms, her entanglement with the old scheme of +things, her pining for a new. It had often seemed to him that to be a +Nihilist nurse among a Russian peasantry would be an infinitely easier +task than to reconcile the social remorses and compassions that tore his +companion's mind with the social pageant in which her life, do what she +would, must needs be lived. He knew that, intellectually, she no more +than Maxwell saw any way out of unequal place, unequal spending, unequal +recompense, if civilisation were to be held together; but he perceived +that morally she suffered. Why? Because she and not someone else had been +chosen to rule the palace and wear the gems that yet must be? In the end, +Naseby could but shrug his shoulders over it. Yet even his sceptical +temper made no question of sincerity. + +When all his budget was out, and her comments made, she leant back a +little in her chair, studying him. A smile came to play about her lips. + +"What do you want to say to me?" he asked her quickly. + +She looked round her to see that they were not overheard. + +"When did you see Madeleine last?" + +"At her brother's house, a fortnight ago." + +"Was she nice to you?" + +He bit his lip, and drew his brows a little together, under her scrutiny. + +"Do you imagine I am going to be cross-examined like this?" + +"Yes--reply!" + +"Well, I don't know what her conception of 'niceness' may be; it didn't +fit mine. She had got it into her head that I 'pitied' her, which seemed +to be a crime. I didn't see how to disprove it, so I came away." + +He spoke with a dry lightness, but she perceived anxiety and unrest under +his tone. She bent forward. + +"Do you know where Madeleine is now?" + +"Not in the least." + +"In the Long Gallery. I sent her there." + +"Upon my word!" he said, after a pause. "Do you want to rule us all?" +His cheek had flushed again; his look was half rebellious. + +A flash of pain struck through her brightness. + +"No, no!" she said, protesting. "But I know--you don't!" + +He rose deliberately, and bowed with the air of obeying her commands. +Then suddenly he bent down to her. + +"I knew perfectly well that she was in the Long Gallery! But I also knew +that Mrs. Bayle had chosen to join her there. The coast, you may +perceive, is now clear." + +He walked away. Marcella looked round, and saw an elegant little bride, +Mr. Bayle's new wife, rustling into the room again. She leant back in +her chair, half laughing, yet her eyes were wet. The new joy brought a +certain ease to old regrets. Only that word "rule" rankled a little. + +Yet the old regrets were all sharp and active again. It seemed to be +impossible now to talk with George Tressady, to make any real breach in +the barrier between them; but how impossible also not to think of +him!--of the young fellow, who had given Maxwell his reward, and said to +herself such sad, such agitating things! She did think of him. Her heart +ached to serve him. The situation made a new and a very troubling appeal +to her womanhood. + + * * * * * + +The night was warm, and still, and the windows were open to it as they +had been on that May night at Castle Luton. Maxwell came to look for +Tressady, and took him out upon a flagged terrace that ran the length of +the house. + +They talked first of the Ancoats incident, George supplementing his +letters by some little verbal pictures of Ancoats's life and surroundings +that made Maxwell laugh grimly from time to time. As to Mrs. Allison, +Maxwell reported that Ancoats seemed to have gained his point. There was +talk of the marriage coming off some time in the winter. + +"Well, Fontenoy has earned his prize," said George. + +"There are more than twelve years between them. But she seems to be one +of the women who don't age. I have seen her go through griefs that +would kill most women; and it has been like the passage of a storm over +a flower." + +"Religion, I suppose, carried to that point, protects one a good deal," +said George, not, in truth, feeling much interest in the matter or in +Mrs. Allison now that his task was done. + +"And especially religion of the type that allows you to give your soul +into someone else's keeping. There is no such anodyne," said Maxwell, +musing. "I have often noticed how Catholic women keep their youth and +softness. But now, do allow me a few words about yourself. Is what I hear +about your withdrawal from Parliament irrevocable?" + +George's reply led to a discussion in which Maxwell, without any attempt +at party proselytism, endeavoured to combat all that he could understand +of the young man's twofold disgust, disgust with his own random +convictions no less than with the working of the party machine. + +"Where do I belong?" he said. "I don't know myself. I ought never to have +gone in. Anyway, I had better stand aside for a time." + +"But evidently the Malford people want to keep you." + +"Well, and of course I shall consult their convenience as much as I can," +said George, unwillingly, but would say no more. + +Nothing, indeed, could be more flattering, more healing, than all that +was implied in Maxwell's earnestness, in the peculiar sympathy and +kindness with which the elder man strove to win the younger's confidence; +but George could not respond. His whole inner being was too sore; and his +mind ran incomparably more upon the damnable letter that must be lying +somewhere in the archives of the memory of the man talking to him, than +upon his own political prospects. The conversation ended for Maxwell in +mere awkwardness and disappointment,--deep disappointment if the truth +were known. Once roused his idealism was little less stubborn, less +wilful than Marcella's. + +When the ladies withdrew, a brilliant group of them stood for a moment on +the first landing of the great oak staircase, lighting candles and +chattering. Madeleine Penley took her candle absently from Marcella's +hand, saying nothing. The girl's curious face under its crown of gold-red +hair was transformed somehow to an extraordinary beauty. The frightened +parting of the lips and lifting of the brows had become rather a look of +exquisite surprise, as of one who knows at last "the very heart of love." + +"I am coming to you, presently," murmured Marcella, laying her cheek +against the girl's. + +"Oh, _do_ come!" said Madeleine, with a great breath, and she walked +away, unsteadily, by herself, into the darkness of the tapestried +passage, her white dress floating behind her. + +Marcella looked after her, then turned with shining eyes to Letty +Tressady. Her expression changed. + +"I am afraid your headache has been very bad all the evening," she said +penitently. "Do let me come and look after you." + +She went with Letty to her room, and put her into a chair beside the wood +fire, that even on this warm night was not unwelcome in the huge place. +Letty, indeed, shivered a little as she bent towards it. + +"Must you go so early?" said Marcella, hanging over her. "I heard Sir +George speak of the ten o'clock train." + +"Oh, yes," said Letty, "that will be best." + +She stared into the fire without speaking. Marcella knelt down +beside her. + +"You won't hate me any more?" she said, in a low, pleading voice, taking +two cold hands in her own. + +Letty looked up. + +"I should like," she said, speaking with difficulty, "if you cared--to +see you sometimes." + +"Only tell me when," said Marcella, laying her lips lightly on the hands, +"and I will come." Then she hesitated. "Oh, do believe," she broke out at +last, but still in the same low voice, "that all can be healed! Only show +him love,--forget everything else,--and happiness must come. Marriage is +so difficult--such an art--even for the happiest people, one has to learn +it afresh day by day." + +Letty's tired eyes wavered under the other's look. + +"I can't understand it like that," she said. Then she moved restlessly in +her chair. "Ferth is a terrible place! I wonder how I shall bear it!" + + * * * * * + +An hour later Marcella left Madeleine Penley and went back to her own +room. The smile and flush with which she had received the girl's last +happy kisses disappeared as she walked along the corridor. Her head +drooped, her arms hung listlessly beside her. + +Maxwell found her in her own little sitting-room almost in the dark. He +sat down by her and took her hand. + +"You couldn't make any impression on him as to Parliament?" she asked +him, almost whispering. + +"No. He persists that he must go. I think his private circumstances at +Ferth have a great deal to do with it." + +She shook her head. She turned away from him, took up a paper-knife, and +let it fall on the table beside her. He thought that she must have been +in tears, before he found her, and he saw that she could find no words in +which to express herself. Lifting her hand to his lips, he held it there, +silently, with a touch all tenderness. + +"Oh, why am I so happy!" she broke out at last, with a sob, almost +drawing her hand away. "Such a life as mine seems to absorb and batten +upon other people's dues--to grow rich by robbing their joy, joy that +should feed hundreds and comes all to me! And that besides I should +actually bruise and hurt--" + +Her voice failed her. + +"Fate has a way of being tolerably even, at last," said Maxwell, slowly, +after a pause. "As to Tressady, no one can say what will come of it. He +has strange stuff in him--fine stuff I think. He will pull himself +together. And for the wife--probably, already he owes you much! I saw her +look at you to-night--once as you touched her shoulder. Dear!--what +spells have you been using?" + +"Oh! I will do all I can--all I can!" Marcella repeated in a low, +passionate voice, as one who makes a vow to her own heart. + +"But after to-morrow he will not willingly come across us again," said +Maxwell, quietly. "That I saw." + +She gave a sad and wordless assent. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +Letty Tressady sat beside the doorway of one of the small red-brick +houses that make up the village of Ferth. It was a rainy October +afternoon, and through the door she could see the black main street +--houses and road alike bedabbled in wet and mire. At one point in the +street her eye caught a small standing crowd of women and children, most +of them with tattered shawls thrown over their heads to protect them from +the weather. She knew what it meant. They were waiting for the daily +opening of the soup kitchen, started in the third week of the great +strike by the Baptist minister, who, in the language of the Tory paper, +was "among the worst firebrands of the district." There was another soup +kitchen further down, to which George had begun to subscribe immediately +on his return to the place. She had thought it a foolish act on his part +thus to help his own men to fight him the better. But--now, as she +watched the miserable crowd outside the Baptist chapel, she felt the +teasing pressure of those new puzzles of her married life which had so +far done little else, it seemed, than take away her gaiety and her power +of amusing herself. + +Near her sat an oldish woman with an almost toothless mouth, who was +chattering to her in a tone that Letty knew to be three parts +hypocritical. + +"Well, the treuth is the men is that fool 'ardy when they gets a thing +into their yeds, there's no taakin wi un. There's plenty as done like the +strike, my lady, but they dursent say so--they'd be afeard o' losin the +skin off their backs, for soom o' them lads o' Burrows's is a routin +rough lot as done keer what they doos to a mon, an yo canna exspeck a +quiet body to stan up agen 'em. Now, my son, ee comes in at neet all +slamp and downcast, an I says to 'im, 'Is there noa news yet o' the Jint +Committee, John?' I ses to un. 'Noa, mither,' ee says, 'they're just +keepin ov it on.' An ee do seem so down'earted when ee sees the poor +soart ov a supper as is aw I can gie un to 'is stomach. Now, _I'm_ wun o' +thoase as _wants_ nuthin. The doctor ses, 'Yo've got no blude in yer, +Missus 'Ammersley, what 'ull yer 'ave?' An I says, '_Nuthin!_ it's sun +cut, an it's sun cooked, _nuthin!_' Noa, I've niver bin on t' parish--an +I _might_--times. An I don't 'old wi strikes. Lor, it is a poor pleace, +is ours--ain't it?--an nobbut a bit o' bread an drippin for supper." + +The old woman threw her eyes round her kitchen, bringing them back slyly +to Letty's face. Letty ended by leaving some money with her, and walking +away as dissatisfied with her own charity as she was with its recipient. +Perhaps this old body was the only person in the village who would have +begged of "Tressady's wife" at this particular moment. Letty, moreover, +had some reason to believe that her son was one of the roughest of +Burrows's bodyguard; while the old woman was certainly no worse off than +any of her neighbours. + +Outside, she was disturbed to find as she walked home, that the street +was full of people, in spite of the rain--of gaunt men and pinched +women, who threw her hostile and sidelong glances as she passed. She +hurried through them. How was it that she knew nothing of them--except, +perhaps, of the few toadies and parasites among them? How was one to +penetrate into this ugly, incomprehensible world of "the people"? The +mere idea of trying to do so filled her with distaste and ennui. She was +afraid of them. She wished she had not stayed so long with that old +gossip, Mrs. Hammersley, and that there were not so many yards of dark +road between her and her own gate. Where was George? She knew that he +had gone up to the pits that afternoon to consult his manager about some +defect in the pumping arrangements. She wished she had secured his +escort for the walk home. + +But before she left the village she paused irresolutely, then turned down +a side street, and went to see Mary Batchelor, George's old nurse, the +mother who had lost her only son in his prime. + +When, a few minutes later, she came up the lane, she was flatly conscious +of having done a virtuous thing--several virtuous things--that afternoon, +but certainly without any pleasure in them. She did not get on with Mary, +nor Mary with her. The tragic absorption of the mother--little abated +since the spring--in her dead boy seemed somehow to strike Letty dumb. +She felt pity, but yet the whole emotion was beyond her, and she shrank +from it. As for Mary, she had so far received Lady Tressady's visits with +a kind of dull surprise, always repeated and not flattering. Letty +believed that, in her inmost heart, the broken woman was offended each +time that it was not George who came. Moreover, though she never said a +word of it to Tressady's wife, she was known to be passionately on the +side of the strikers, and her manner gave the impression that she did not +want to be talking with their oppressors. Perhaps it was this feeling +that had reconciled her to the loutish lad who lived with her, and had +been twice "run in" by the police for stone-throwing at non-union men +since the beginning of the strike. At any rate, she took a great deal +more notice of him than she had done. + +No--they were not very satisfactory, these attempts of Letty's in the +village. She thought of them with a kind of inner exasperation as she +walked home. She had been going to a few old and sick people, and trying +to ignore the strike. But at bottom she felt an angry resentment towards +these loafing, troublesome fellows, who filled the village street when +they ought to have been down in the pits--who were starving their own +children no less than disturbing and curtailing the incomes of their +betters. Did they suppose that people were going to run pits for them for +nothing? Their drink and their religion seemed to her equally hideous. +She hated the two Dissenting ministers of the place only less than +Valentine Burrows himself, and delighted to pass their wives with her +head high in air. + +With these general feelings towards the population in her mind, why +these efforts at consolation and almsgiving? Well, the poor old people +were not responsible; but she did not see that any good had come of it. +She had said nothing about her visits to George, nor did-she suppose +that he had noticed them. He had been so incessantly busy since their +arrival with conferences and committees that she had seen very little of +him. It was generally believed that the strike was nearing its end, and +that the men were exhausted; but she did not think that George was very +hopeful yet. + +Presently, as she neared a dark slope of road, bordered with trees on +one side and the high "bank" of the main pit on the other, her thoughts +turned back to their natural and abiding subject--herself. Oh, the +dulness of life at Ferth during the last three weeks! She thought of +her amusements in town, of the country houses where they might now be +staying but for George's pride, of Cathedine, even; and a rush of +revolt and self-pity filled her mind. George always away, nothing to do +in the ugly house, and Lady Tressady coming directly--she said to +herself, suffocating, her small hands stiffening, that she felt fit to +kill herself. + +Half-way down the slope she heard steps behind her in the gathering +darkness, and at the same moment something struck her violently on the +shoulder. She cried out, and clutched at some wooden railings along the +road for support, as the lump of "dirt" from the bank which had been +flung at her dropped beside her. + +"Letty, is that you?" shouted a voice from the direction of the +village--her husband's voice. She heard running. In a few seconds George +had reached her and was holding her. + +"What is it struck you? I see! Cowards! _damned_ cowards! Has it broken +your arm? Try and move it." + +Sick with pain she tried to obey him. "No," she said faintly; "it is not +broken--I think not." + +"Good!" he cried, rejoicing; "probably only a bad bruise. The brute +mercifully picked up nothing very hard"--and he pushed the lump with +his foot. "Take my scarf, dear; let me sling it. Ah!--what was that? +Letty! can you be brave--can you let me go one minute? I sha'n't be out +of your sight." + +And he pointed excitedly to a dark spot moving among the bushes along the +lower edge of the "bank." + +Letty nodded. "I can stay here." + +George leapt the palings and ran. The dark spot ran too, but in queer +leaps and bounds. There was the sound of a scuffle, then George returned, +dragging something or someone behind him. + +"I knew it," he said, panting, as he came within earshot of his wife; "it +was that young ruffian, Mary Batchelor's grandson! Now you stand still, +will you? I could hold two of the likes of you with one hand. Madan!" + +He had but just parted from his manager on the path which led sideways up +the "bank," and waited anxiously to see if his voice would reach the +Scotchman's ears. But no one replied. He shouted again; then he put two +fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly towards the pit, holding the +struggling lad all the time. + +At the same moment a couple of heavily built men, evidently colliers, +came down the road from the village. George at once called to them from +across the palings. + +"Here, you there! this young rascal has been throwing a lump of dirt at +Lady Tressady, and has hit her badly on the arm. Will you two just walk +him up to the police-station for me, while I take my wife home?" + +The two men stopped and stared at the lady by the railings and at Sir +George holding the boy, whose white but grinning face was just visible in +the growing dusk. + +"Noa," said one of them at last, "it's noa business ov ourn--is +it, Bill?" + +"Noa," said the other, stolidly; and on they tramped. + +"Oh, you heroes!" George flung after them. "Attacking a woman in the dark +is about what you understand!--Madan!" + +He whistled again, and this time there was a hurrying from overhead. + +"Sir George!" + +"Come down here, will you, at once!" + +In a few more minutes the boy was being marched up the road to the +police-station in charge of the strong-wristed Scotch manager, and George +was free to attend to Letty. + +He adjusted a sling very fairly, then made her cling to him with her +sound arm; and they were soon inside their own gates. + +"You can't climb this hill," he said to her anxiously. "Rest at the +lodge, and let me go for the brougham." + +"I can walk perfectly well--and it will be much quicker." + +Involuntarily, he was surprised to find her rather belittling than +exaggerating the ill. As they climbed on in the dark, he helping her as +much as he could, both could not but think of another accident and +another victim. Letty found herself imagining again and again what the +scene with Lady Maxwell, after the East End meeting, might have been +like; while, as for him, a face drew itself upon the rainy dusk, which +the will seemed powerless to blot out. It was a curious and unwelcome +coincidence. His secret sense of it made him the more restlessly kind. + +"What were you in the village for?" he asked, bending to her; "I did not +know you had anything to do there!" + +"I had been to see old Bessie Hammersley and Mrs. Batchelor," she +said, in a tone that tried to be stiff or indifferent. "Bessie begged, +as usual." + +"That was very good of you. Have you been doing visiting, then, during +all these days I have been away?" + +"Yes--a few people." + +George groaned. + +"What's the use of it--or of anything? They hate us and we them. This +strike begins to eat into my very being. And the men will be beaten soon, +and the feeling towards the employers will be worse than ever." + +"You are sure they will be beaten?" + +"Before Christmas, anyway. I daresay there will be some bad times first. +To think a woman even can't walk these roads without danger of +ill-treatment! How is one to have any dealings with the brutes, or any +peace with them?" + +His rage and bitterness made her somehow feel her bruises less. She even +looked up in protest. + +"Well, it was only a boy, and you used to think he wasn't all there." + +"Oh! all there!" said George, scornfully. "There'd be half of them in +Bedlam if one had to make that excuse for them. There isn't a day passes +without some devilry against the non-union men somewhere. It was only +this morning I heard of two men being driven into a reservoir near +Rilston, and stoned in the water." + +"Perhaps we should do the same," she said unwillingly. + +"Lean on me more heavily--we shall soon be there. You think we should be +brutes too? Probably. We seem to be all brutes for each other--that's the +charming way this competitive world is managed. So you have been looking +after some of the old people, have you? You must have had a dull time of +it this last three weeks--don't think I don't know that!" + +He spoke with emotion. He thought he felt her grasp waver a little on his +arm, but she did not speak. + +"Suppose--when this business was over--I were to cut the whole +concern--let the pits and the house, and go right away? I daresay I +could." + +"Could you?" she said eagerly. + +"We shouldn't get so much money, you know, as in the best years. But +then it would be certain. What would you say to a thousand a year less?" +he asked her, trying to speak lightly. + +"Well, it doesn't seem easy to get on with what we have--even if we had +it," she said sharply. + +He understood the reference to his mother's debts, and was silent. + +But evidently the recollection, once introduced, generated the usual heat +and irritation in her, for, as they neared the front door, she suddenly +said, with an acerbity he had not heard for some weeks: + +"Of course, to have a country house, and not to be able to spend a +farthing upon it--to ask your friends, or have anything decent--is enough +to make anyone sick of it. And, above all, when we needn't have been here +at all this October--" + +She stopped, shrinking from the rest of the sentence, but not before he +had time to think, "She say _that_!--monstrous!" + +Aloud he coldly replied: + +"It is difficult to see where I could have been but here, this October." + +Then the door opened, and the light showed her to him pale, with lips +tight pressed from the pain of her injury. Instantly he forgot everything +but his natural pity and chivalry towards women. He led her in, and half +carried her upstairs. A little later she was resting on her bed, and he +had done everything he could for her till the doctor should come. She +seemed to have passed into an eclipse of temper or moodiness, and he got +little gratitude. + +The evening post brought her a letter which he took up to her himself. +He knew the clear, rapid hand, and he knew, too, that Letty had received +many such during the preceding month. He stood beside her a moment, +almost on the point of asking her to let him see it. But the words died +on his lips. And, perceiving that she would not read it while he was +there, he went away again. + +When he returned, carrying a new book and asking if he should read to +her, he found her lying with her cheek on her hand, staring into the +fire, and so white and miserable that his heart sank. Had he married her, +a girl of twenty-four, only to destroy her chance of happiness +altogether? A kind of terror seized him. He had been "good to her," so +far as she and his business had allowed him, since their return; there +had been very little outward jarring; but no one knew better than he that +there had not been one truly frank or reconciling moment. + +His own inner life during these weeks had passed in one obscure +continuous struggle--a sort of dull fever of the soul. And she had simply +held herself aloof from him. + +He knelt down beside her, and laid his face against hers. + +"Don't look so unhappy!" he said in a whisper, caressing her free hand. +She did not answer or make any response till, as he got up again in a +kind of despair as to what to do or say next, she hastily asked: + +"Has the constable been up here to see you?" + +He looked at her in surprise. + +"Yes. It is all arranged. The lad will be brought up before the +magistrates on Thursday." + +She fidgeted, then said abruptly: + +"I should like him to be let off." + +He hesitated. + +"That's very nice of you, but it wouldn't be very good for the district." + +She did not press the matter, but as he moved away she said fretfully: + +"I wish you'd read to me. The pain's horrid." + +Thankful, in his remorse, to do anything for her, he tried to amuse and +distract her as he best could. But in the middle of a magazine story she +interrupted him: + +"Isn't it the day after to-morrow your mother's coming?" + +"According to her letter this morning." He put down the book. "But I +don't think you'll be at all fit to look after her. Shall I write +to-night and suggest that she stays in London a little?" + +"No. I shall be all right, the doctor says. I want to tell +Esther"--Esther was the housemaid--"_not_ to get the Blue Room ready for +her. I looked in to-day, and it seemed damp. The back room over the +dining-room is smaller, but it's much warmer." + +She turned to look at him with a rather flushed face. + +"You know best," he said, smiling. "I am sure it will be all right. But I +sha'n't let her come unless you are better." + +He went on reading till it grew late, and it seemed to him she was +dropping off to sleep. He was stealing off by way of the large +dressing-room near by, where he had been installed since their return, +when, she said faintly, "Good-night!" + +He returned, and felt the drawing of her hot hand. He stooped and kissed +her. Then she turned away from him, and seemed to go instantly to sleep. + +He went downstairs to his library, and gathered about him some documents +he had brought back from the last meeting of the masters' committee, +which had to be read. But in reality he spent an hour of random thought. +When would she herself tell him anything of her relations to Lady +Maxwell, of the nature and causes of that strange subjection which, as +he saw quite plainly, had been brought about? She must know that he +pined to know; yet she held her secret only the more jealously, no doubt +to punish him. + +He thought of her visits to the village, half humorously, half sadly; +then of her speech about the Blue Room and his mother. They seemed to him +signs of some influence at work. + +But at last he turned back to his papers with a long impatient sigh. The +clear pessimism with which he was wont to see facts that concerned +himself maintained that all the surrounding circumstance of the case was +as untoward as it could be--this dull house, a troubled district, his +money affairs, the perpetual burden of his mother, Letty's own thirst for +pleasure, and the dying down in himself of the feelings that might +once--possibly--have made up to her for a good deal. The feelings might +be simulated. Was the woman likely to be deceived? That she was capable +of the fiercest jealousy had been made abundantly plain; and such a +temper once roused would find a hundred new provocations, day by day, in +the acts and doings of a husband who had ceased to be a lover. + +Two days later Lady Tressady arrived, with Justine, and her dogs, and +all her paraphernalia. She declared herself better, but she was a mere +shadow of the woman who had tormented George with her debts and +affectations at Malford House a twelvemonth before. She took Ferth +discontentedly, as usual, and was particularly cross with Letty's +assignment to her of the back room, instead of the larger spare room to +the front of the house. + +"Damp?--nonsense!" she said to Justine, who was trying to soothe her on +the night she arrived. "I suppose Lady Tressady has some friend of her +own coming to stay--that's, of _course_, what it is. _C'est parfaitement +clair, je te dis--parfaitement!_" + +The French maid reminded her that her daughter-in-law had said, on +showing her the room, she had only to express a wish to change, and the +arrangements should be altered at once. + +"I daresay," cried Lady Tressady. "But I shall ask _no_ favours of +her--and that, of course, she knew." + +"But, miladi, I need only speak to the housemaid." + +"Thank you! Then afterwards, whenever I had a pain or a finger-ache, it +would be, 'I told you so!' No! she has managed it very cleverly--very +cleverly indeed!--and I shall let it alone." + +Thenceforward, however, there were constant complaints of everything +provided for her--room, food, the dulness of the place, the manners of +her daughter-in-law. Whether it was that her illness had now reached a +stage when the will could no longer fight against it, and its only effect +was demoralising; or whether the strange flash of courage and natural +affection struck from the volatile nature by the first threat of death +could not in any case have maintained itself, it is hard to say. At any +rate, George also found it hard to keep up his new and better ways with +her. The fact was, he suffered through Letty. In a few days his +sympathies were all with her, and to his amazement he perceived before +long that, in spite of occasional sharp speeches and sulky moments that +only an angel could have forborne, she was really more patient under his +mother's idiosyncrasies than he was. Yet Lady Tressady, even now, was +rarely unmanageable in his presence, and could still restrain herself if +it was a question of his comfort and repose; whereas, it was clear that +she felt a cat-like impulse to torment Letty whenever she saw her. + +One recent habit, however, bore with special heaviness on himself. Oddly +enough, it was a habit of religious discussion. Lady Tressady in health +had never troubled herself in the least as to what the doctors of the +soul might have to say, and had generally gaily professed herself a +sceptic in religious matters, mostly, as George had often thought, for +the sake of escaping all inconvenient restrictions--such as family +prayers, or keeping Sunday, or observing Lent--which might have got in +the way of her amusements. + +But, now, poor lady, she was all curiosity and anxiety about this strange +other side of things, and inclined, too, to be rather proud of the +originality of her inquiries on the subject. So that night after night +she would keep George up, after an exhausting day, till the small hours, +while she declared her own views "on God, on Nature, and on Human Life," +and endeavoured to extract his. This latter part of the exercise was +indeed particularly attractive to her; no doubt because of its +difficulty. George had been a singularly reserved person in these +respect's all his life, and had no mind now to play the part of a +coal-seam for his mother to "pike" at. But "pike" she would incessantly. + +"Now, George, look here! what do you _really_ think about a future life? +Now don't try and get out of it! And don't just talk nonsense to me +because you think I'm ill. I'm not a baby--I really am not. Tell +me--seriously--what you think. Do you honestly expect there _is_ a +future life?" + +"I've told you before, mother, that I have no particular thoughts on that +subject. It isn't in my line," George would say, smiling profanely, but +uneasily, and wondering how long this bout of it might be going to last. + +"Don't be shocking, George! You _must_ have some ideas about it. Now, +don't hum and haw--just tell me what you think." And she would lean +forward, all urgency and expectation. + +A pause, during which George could think only of the ghastly figure on +the sofa. She sat upright, generally, against a prop of cushions, +dressed in a white French tea-gown, slim enough to begin, with, but far +too large now for the shrunk form--a bright spot of rouge on either +pinched cheek, and the dyed "fringe" and "coils" covering all the once +shapely head. Meanwhile her hand would play impatiently on her knee. +The hand was skin and bone; and the rings with which it was laden would +often slip off from it to the floor--a diversion of which George was +always prompt to avail himself. + +"Why don't you talk to Mr. Fearon, mother?" he would say gently at last. +"It's his business to discuss these things." + +"Talk to a clergyman! thank you! I hope I have more respect for my own +intelligence. What can a priest do for you? What does he know more than +anybody else? But I do want to know what my own son thinks. Now, George, +just answer me. If there _is_ a future life"--she spread out her hand +slowly on her lap--"what do you suppose your father's doing at this +moment? That's a thing I often think of, George. I don't think I want a +future life if it's to be just like the past. You know--you remember how +he used to be--poking about the house, and going down to the pits, +and--and--swearing at the servants, and having rows with me about the +accounts--and all his dear dreadful little ways? Yet, what else in the +world can you imagine him doing? As to singing hymns!" + +She raised her hands expressively. + +George laughed, and puffed away at his cigarette. But as he still said +nothing Lady Tressady began to frown. + +"That's the way you always get out of my questions," she said fretfully; +"it's so provoking of you." + +"I've recommended you to the professional," he said, patting her hand. +"What else could I do?" + +Her thin cheek flamed. + +"As if we couldn't be certain, anyway," she cried, "that the Christians +don't know anything about it. As M. d'Estrelles used to say to me at +Monte Carlo, if there's one thing clear, it is that we needn't bother +ourselves with _their_ doctrines!" + +"Needn't we?" said George. Then he looked at her, smiling. "And you think +M. d'Estrelles was an authority?" + +Odd recollections began to run through his mind of this elderly +French admirer of his mother's, whom he had seen occasionally +flitting about their London lodgings when, as a boy, he came up from +Eton for his _exeat_. + +"Oh! don't you scoff, George," said his mother, angrily. "M. d'Estrelles +was a very clever man, though he did gamble like a fool. Everybody said +his memory was marvellous. He used to quote me pages out of Voltaire and +the rest of them on the nights when we walked up and down the gardens at +Monte Carlo, after he'd cleared himself out. He always said he didn't see +why these things should be kept from women--why men shouldn't tell women +exactly what they think. And I know he'd been a Catholic in his youth, so +he'd had experience of both. However, I don't care about M. d'Estrelles. +I want your opinions. Now, George!"--her voice would begin to break--"how +can you be so unkind. You might really compose my mind a little, as the +doctors say!" + +And through her incorrigible levity he would see for a moment the terror +which always possessed her raise its head. Then it would be time for him +to go and put his arm round her, and try and coax her to bed. + +One night, after he had taken her upstairs, he came down so wearied and +irritable that he put all his letters aside, and tried to forget himself +in some miscellaneous reading. + +His knowledge of literature was no more complete than his character. +Certain modern English poets--Rossetti, Morris, Keats, and Shelley--he +knew almost by heart. And in travels and biography--mostly of men of +action--he had, at one time or another, read voraciously. But "the +classics he had not read," as with most of us, would have made a list of +lamentable length. + +Since his return to Ferth, however, he had browsed a good deal among the +books collected by his grandfather, mostly by way of distracting himself +at night from the troubles and worries of the day. + +On this particular night there were two books lying on his table. One was +a volume of Madame de Sévigné, the other St. Augustine's "Confessions." +He turned over first one, then the other. + +"Au reste, ma fille, une de mes grandes envies, ce serait d'être dévote; +je ne suis ni an Dieu, ni an Diable; cet état m'ennuie, quoiqu' entre +nous je le trouve le plus naturel du monde. On n'est point an Diable +parce qu'on craint Dieu, et qu' an fond on a un principe de religion; on +n'est point à Dieu aussi, parce que sa loi paroit dure, et qu' on n'aime +point à se détruire soi-même." + +"Admirable!" he thought to himself, "_admirable!_ We are all there--my +mother and I--three parts of mankind." + +But on a page of the other book he had marked these lines--for the +beauty of them: + +"Beatus qui amat te, et amicum in te, et inimicum propter te. Solus enim +nullum eorum amittit, cui omnes in illo cari sunt qui non amittitur." + +He hung over the fire, pondering the two utterances. + +"A marvellous music," he thought of the last. "But I know no more what it +means than I know what a symphony of Brahms' means. Yet some say they +know. Perhaps of _her_ it might be true." + +The weeks ran on. Outside, the strike was at its worst, though George +still believed the men would give in before Christmas. There was hideous +distress, and some bad rioting in different parts of the country. Various +attempts had been made by the employers to use and protect non-union +labour, but the crop of outrage they had produced had been too +threatening: in spite of the exasperation of the masters they had been +perforce let drop. The Press and the public were now intervening in good +earnest--"every fool thinks he can do our business for us," as George +would put it bitterly to Letty. Burrows was speaking up and down the +district with a superhuman energy, varied only by the drinking-bouts to +which he occasionally succumbed; and George carried a revolver with him +when he went abroad. + +The struggle wore him to death; the melancholy of his temperament had +never been so marked. At the same time Letty saw a doggedness in him, a +toughness like Fontenoy's own, which astonished her. Two men seemed to be +fighting in him. He would talk with perfect philosophy of the miners' +point of view, and the physical-force sanction by which the lawless among +them were determined to support it; but at the same time he belonged to +the stiffest set among the masters. + +Meanwhile, at home, friction and discomfort were constantly recurring. +In the course of three or four weeks Lady Tressady had several attacks +of illness, and it was evident that her weakness increased rapidly. And +with the weakness, alas! the ugly incessant irritability, that dried up +the tenderness of nurses, and made a battleground of the sick-room. +Though, indeed, she could never be kept in her room; she resented being +left a moment alone. She claimed, in spite of the anxieties of the +moment, to be constantly amused; and though George could sometimes +distract and quiet her, nothing that Letty did, or said, or wore was +ever tolerable to a woman who merely saw in this youth beside her a +bitter reminder of her own. + +At last, one day early in November, came a worse turn than usual. The +doctor was in the house most of the day, but George had gone off before +the alarm to a place on the further side of the county, and could not be +got at till the evening. + +He came in to find Letty waiting for him in the hall. There had been a +rally; the doctor had gone his way marvelling, and it was thought there +was no immediate danger. + +"But oh, the pain!" said Letty, under her breath, pressing her hands +together, and shivering. Her eyes were red, her cheeks pale; he saw that +she was on the point of exhaustion; and he guessed that she had never +seen such a sight before. + +He ran up to visit his mother, whom he found almost speechless from +weakness, yet waiting, with evident signs of impatience and temper, for +her evening food. And while he and Letty were at their melancholy dinner +together, Justine came flying downstairs in tears. Miladi would not eat +what had been taken to her. She was exciting herself; there would be +another attack. + +Husband and wife hurried from the room. In the hall they found the butler +just receiving a parcel left by the railway delivery-cart. + +George passed the box with an exclamation and a shudder. It bore a large +label, "From Worth et Cie," and was addressed to Lady Tressady. But Letty +stopped short, with a sudden look of pleasure. + +"You go to her. I will have this unpacked." + +He went up and coaxed his mother like a child to take her soup and +champagne. And presently, just as she was revived enough to talk to +him, Letty appeared. Her mother-in-law frowned, but Letty came gaily up +to the bed. + +"There is a parcel from Paris for you," she said, smiling. "I have had it +opened. Would you like it brought in?" + +Lady Tressady first whimpered, and said it should go back--what did a +dying woman want with such things?--then demanded greedily to see it. + +Letty brought it in herself. It was a new evening gown of the softest +greens and shell-pinks, fit for a bride in her first season. To see the +invalid, ashen-grey, stretching out her hand to finger it was almost more +than George could stand. But Letty shook out the rustling thing, put on +the skirt herself that Lady Tressady might see, and paraded up and down +in it, praising every cut and turning with the most ingenious ardour. + +"I sha'n't wear it, of course, till after Christmas," said Lady Tressady +at last, still looking at it with half-shut covetous eyes. "Isn't it +_darling_ the way the lace is put on! Put it away. George!--it's the +_first_ I've had from him this year." + +She looked up at him appealingly. He stooped and kissed her. + +"I am so glad you like it, mother dear. Can't you sleep now?" + +"Yes, I think so. Good-night. And good-night, Letty." + +Letty came, and Lady Tressady held her hand, while the blue eyes, still +bearing the awful impress of suffering, stared at her oddly. + +"It was nice of you to put it on, Letty. I didn't think you'd have done +it. And I'm glad you think it's pretty. I wish you would have one made +like it. Kiss me." + +Letty kissed her. Then George slipped his wife's arm in his, and they +left the room together. Outside Letty turned suddenly white, and nearly +fell. George put his arms round her, and carried her down to his study. +He put her on the sofa, and watched her tenderly, rubbing the cold hands. + +"How you _could_," he said at last, in a low voice, when he saw that +she was able to talk; "how you _could!_ I shall never forget that +little scene." + +"You'd have done anything, if you'd seen her this morning," she said, +with her eyes still closed. + +He sat beside her, silent, thinking over the miseries of the last few +weeks. The net result of them--he recognised it with a leap of +surprise--seemed to have been the formation of a new and secret bond +between himself and Letty. During all the time he had been preparing +himself for the worst this strange thing had been going on. How had it +been possible for her to be, comparatively, so forbearing? He could see +nothing in his past knowledge of her to explain it. + +He recalled the effort and gloom with which she had made her first +preparations for Lady Tressady. Yet she had made them. Is there really +some mystic power, as the Christians say, in every act of self-sacrifice, +however imperfect,--a power that represents at once the impelling and the +rewarding God,--that generates, moreover, from its own exercise, the +force to repeat itself? Personally such a point of view meant little to +him, nor did his mind dwell upon it long. All that he knew was that some +angel had stirred the pool--that old wounds smarted less--that hope +seemed more possible. + +Letty knew quite well that he was watching her in a new way, that there +was a new clinging in his touch. She, little more than he, understood +what was happening to her. From time to time during these weeks of +painful tension there had been hours of wild rebellion, when she had +hated her surroundings, her mother-in-law, and her general ill-luck as +fiercely as ever. Then there had followed strange appeasements, and +inflowing calms--moments when she had been able somehow to express +herself to one who cared to listen who poured upon her in return a +sympathy which braced while it healed. + +Suddenly she opened her eyes. + +"Do you want to hear about that first time when she came to see me?" she +whispered, her look wavering under his. + +He flushed and hesitated. Then he kissed her hand. + +"No, not now. You are worn out. Another time. But I love you for thinking +of telling me." + +A feeling of rest and well-being stole over her. Mercifully he made no +protestations, and she asked for none, but there was a gentle moving of +heart towards heart. And the memory of that hour, that night, made one of +the chief barriers between her and despair in the time that followed. + +Two days later a painless death, death in her sleep, overtook Lady +Tressady. Her delicate face, restored to its true years, and framed in +its natural grey hair, seemed for the first time beautiful to George when +he saw her in her coffin. He could not remember admiring her, even when +he was a boy, and she was reckoned among the handsomest women of her day. +Parting with her was like the snapping of a strain that had pulled life +out of its true bearings and proportions. An immense, inevitable relief +followed. But after her death Letty never said a harsh word of her, and +George had a queer, humble feeling that after all he might be found to +owe her much. + +For as November and December passed away the relation between the husband +and wife steadily settled and improved. "We shall rub along," George +said to himself in his frank, secret thoughts--"in the end it will be +much better perhaps than either of us could have hoped." That no doubt +was the utmost that could ever be said; but it was much. + +The night after his mother's death, Letty abruptly, violently even, as +though worked up to it by an inner excitement, told him the story of her +wrestle with Marcella. Then, throwing some letters into his hand she +broke into sobbing and ran away from him. When he went to look for her +his own eyes were wet. "Who else could have done such a thing?" he said; +and Letty made no protest. + +The letters gave him food for thought for many a day afterwards. They +were little less of a revelation to him than the motives and personality +lying behind them had been to Letty. In spite of all that he had felt for +the woman who had written them, they still roused in him a secret and +abiding astonishment. We use the words "spiritual," "poetic" in relation +to human conduct; we talk as though all that the words meant were +familiarly understood by us; and yet when the spiritual or the poetic +comes actually to walk among us, slips into the forms and functions of +our common life, we find it amazing, almost inhuman. It gives us some +trouble to take it simply, to believe in it simply. + +Yet nothing in truth could be a more inevitable outcome of character and +circumstance than these letters of Marcella Maxwell to George Tressady's +wife. Marcella had suffered under a strong natural remorse, and to free +her heart from the load of it she had thrown herself into an effort of +reconciliation and atonement with all the passion, the subtlety, and the +resource of her temperament. She had now been wooing Letty Tressady for +weeks, nor had the eager contriving ability she had been giving to the +process missed its reward. Letty fresh from the new impressions made upon +her by Marcella at home, and Marcella as a wife, by a beauty she could no +longer hate, and a charm to which she had been forced to yield, had found +herself amid the loneliness and dulness of Perth gradually enveloped and +possessed anew by the same influence, acting in ways that grew week by +week more personal, and more subduing. + +What to begin with could be more flattering either to heart or vanity +than the persistence with which one of the most famous women of her +time--watched, praised, copied, attacked, surrounded, as Letty knew her +to be, from morning till night--had devoted herself first to the +understanding, then to the capturing, of the smaller, narrower life. The +reaction towards a natural reserve, a certain proud, instinctive +self-defence, which had governed Marcella's manner during a great part of +Letty's visit to the Court, had been in these letters deliberately broken +down--at first with effort, then more and more frankly, more and more +sweetly. Day after day, as Letty knew, Marcella had taken time from +politics, from society, from her most cherished occupations, to write to +this far-off girl, from whom she had nothing either to gain or to fear, +who had no claims whatever on her friendship, had things gone normally, +while thick about the opening of their relation to each other hung the +memory of Letty's insults and Letty's violence. + +And the letters were written with such abandonment! As a rule Marcella +was a hasty or impatient correspondent. She thought letters a waste of +time; life was full enough without them. But here, with Letty, she +lingered, she took pains. The mistress of Les Rochers writing to her +absent, her exacting Pauline, could hardly have been more eager to +please. She talked--at leisure--of all that concerned her--husband, +child, high politics, the persons she saw, the gaieties she bore with, +the books she read, the schemes in which she was busied; then, with +greater tenderness, greater minuteness, of the difficulties and tediums +of Letty's life at Ferth, as they had been dismally drawn out for her in +Letty's own letters. The animation, the eager kindness of it all went for +much; the amazing self-surrender, self-offering, implied in every page +for much more. + +Strange!--as he read the letters George felt his own heart beating. Were +they in some hidden way meant for him too?--he seemed to hear in them a +secret message--a woman's yearning, a woman's response. + +At any rate, the loving, reconciling effort had done its work. Letty +could not be insensible to such a flattery, a compliment so unexpected, +so bewildering--the heart of a Marcella Maxwell poured out to her for the +taking. She neither felt it so profoundly, nor so delicately as hundreds +of other women could have felt it. Nevertheless the excitement of it had +thrilled and broken up the hardnesses of her own nature. And with each +yielding on her part had come new capacity for yielding, new emotions +that amazed herself; till she found herself, as it were, groping in a +strange world, clinging to Marcella's hand, trying to express feelings +that had never visited her before, one moment proud of her new friend +with a pride half moral, half selfish, the next, ill at ease with her, +and through it all catching dimly the light of new ideals. + +One day, as George walked into Letty's sitting-room, to discuss some +small business of the afternoon, he saw on her writing-table that same +photograph of Lady Maxwell and her boy, whereof an earlier copy had come +to such a tragic end in Letty's hands. He walked up to it with an +exclamation; Letty was not in the room. Suddenly, however, she came in. +He made no attempt whatever to disguise that he had been looking at the +photograph; he bent over it indeed a moment longer, deliberately. Then, +walking away to the window, he began speaking of the matter which had +brought him to look for his wife. Letty answered absently. The colour had +rushed to her face. Her hands fidgeted with the books and papers on her +table, and her mind was full of fevered remembrance. + +Presently George, having settled the little point he came to speak of, +fell silent. But he still stood by the window, looking out through the +rain-splashed glass to the wintry valley below with its chimneys and +straggling village. Letty, who was pretending to write a note, raised her +head, looked at him--the quick breath beating through the parted lips, +the blue eyes half wild, half miserable. She was not nearly so pretty as +she had been a year before. George had often noticed it; it made part of +his remorse. But the face was more troubling, infinitely more human; +and, in truth, he knew it much better, was more sensitively alive to it, +so to speak, than he ever had been in the days of their courtship. + +Before he left the room he came back to her, put his arm round her +shoulders and kissed her hair. She did not raise her head or say +anything. But when he had gone she looked up with a sudden fierce sob, +took the photograph from its place, and thrust it angrily into the drawer +in front of her. Afterwards she sat for some minutes, motionless, with +her handkerchief at her lips, trying to choke down the tears that had +seized her. And last of all, with trembling fingers, she took out the +picture again, wrapped it in some soft tissue paper that lay near, as +though propitiating it, and once more put it out of sight. + +What had made her first ask Marcella for it, and then place it on her +table where George might, nay, must see it? Some vague wish, no doubt, to +"make up"; to punish herself, while touching him. But the recollection of +him, bending over the picture, tortured her, gripped her at the heart for +many a day afterwards. She let it be seen no more. Yet that week she +wrote more fully, more incoherently, more piteously to Marcella than ever +before. She talked, not without bitterness and injustice, of her bringing +up, asked what she should read, spread out her puzzles with the poor, or +with her household--half angrily, as though she were accusing someone. +For the first time, as it were, she was seeking a teacher in the art of +living. And though the tone was still querulous, she knew, and Marcella +presently dared to guess, that the ugly house on the hill had in truth +ceased to be in the least dull or burdensome to her. George went in and +out of it. And for the woman that has come to hunger for her husband's +step, there is no more ennui. + + * * * * * + +Letty indeed hardly knew the strength of her own position. The reading +of Lady Maxwell's letters to his wife had cleared a number of relics +and fragments from George's mind. The day of passion was done. +Yes!--but to see her frequently, to be brought back into any of the old +social or political relations to her and Maxwell, from this his pride +shrank no less than his conscience. Yet there was a large party in his +constituency, and belonging to it some of the men whose probity and +intelligence he had come to rate most highly, who were pressing him +hard not to resign in February, and, indeed, not to resign at all. The +few public meetings he had so far addressed had been stormy indeed, but +on the whole decidedly friendly to him, and it was urged that he must +at least present himself for re-election, in which case his expenses +should be borne, and he should be left as unpledged as possible. Since +the passage of the Bill Fontenoy's reactionary movement had lost ground +largely in the constituency; and the position of independent member +with a general leaning to the Government was no doubt easily open to +George Tressady. + +But his whole soul shrank from such a renewal of the effort of +politics--probably because of that something in him, that enfeebling, +paralysing something, which in all directions made him really prefer the +half to the whole, and see barriers in the way of all enthusiasms. +Nevertheless, the arguments he had to meet, and the kind persuasions he +had to rebut, made these weeks all the more trying to him. + +The second week of December came, the beginning of the end so far as the +strike was concerned. The men's resources were exhausted; the masters +stood unbroken. They had met the men in a joint committee; but they had +steadily refused arbitration from outside. At the beginning of this week, +rioting broke out in a district where the Union had least strength, +caused, no doubt, by the rage of impending failure. By the middle of the +following week, men were going in here and there, and the stampede of +defeat had begun. + +George, passing through the pinched and lowering faces that lined the +village, hated the triumph of his class. On the 21st, he rode over to a +neighbouring town, where local committees, both of masters and men, +were sitting, to see if there was any final news as to the pits of his +own valley. + +About eight o'clock in the evening Letty heard his horse's hoofs +returning. She knew that he was accustomed to ride in the dark, but the +rumours of violence and excitement that filled the air had unnerved her, +and she had been listening to every sound for some time past. + +When the door was open she ran out. + +"Yes, I'm late," said George, in answer to her remonstrances; "but it is +all right--it was worth waiting for. The thing's over. Some of the men go +down to-morrow week, and the rest as we can find room for them." + +"On the masters' terms?" + +"Of course--or all but." + +She clapped her hands. + +"Oh, for goodness' sake, don't!" he said, as he hung up his hat, and she, +supposing that he was irritable from over-fatigue, managed to overlook +the sharpness of his tone. + +Their Christmas passed in solitude. George, more and more painfully alive +to the disadvantages of Ferth as the home of a young woman with a natural +love of gaiety, had tried, in spite of their mourning, to persuade Letty +to ask some friends to spend Christmas week with them. She had refused, +however, and they were still alone when the end of the strike arrived. + +The day before the men were to go back to work, George returned late from +a last meeting of the employers. Letty had begun dinner, and when he +walked into the dining-room she saw at once that some unusual excitement +or strain had befallen him. + +"Let me have some food!" was all he would say in answer to her first +questions, and she let him alone. When the servants were gone he +looked up. + +"I have had a shindy with Burrows, dear--rather a bad one. But that's +all. I walked down to the station with Ashton"--Ashton was a +neighbouring magistrate and coal-owner--"and there we found Valentine +Burrows. Two or three friends were in charge of him, and it has been +given out lately that he has been suffering from nervous breakdown, +owing to his exertions. All that I could see was that he was drunker +than usual--no doubt to drown defeat. Anyway, directly he saw me he +made a scene--foamed and shouted. According to him, I am at the bottom +of the men's defeat. It is all my wild-beast delight in the sight of +suffering,--my love of 'fattening on the misery of the collier,'--my +charming villanies of all sorts--that are responsible for everything. +Altogether he reached a fine flight! Then he got violent--tried to get +at me with his knobbed stick. Ashton and I, and the men with him, +succeeded in quelling him without bothering the police.--I don't think +anything more will come of it." + +And he stretched out his hand to some salted almonds, helping himself +with particular deliberation. + +After dinner, however, he lay down on a sofa in Letty's sitting-room, +obliged to confess himself worn out. She made him comfortable, and after +she had given him a cushion, she suddenly bent over him from behind and +kissed him. + +"Come here!" he said, with a smile, throwing up his hand to catch her. +But with an odd blush and conscious look, she eluded him. + +When, a little later, she came to sit by him with some needle-work she +found him restless and inclined to talk. + +"I wonder if we are always to live in this state of war for one's +bread and butter!" he said, impatiently throwing down a newspaper he +had been reading. "It doesn't tend to make life agreeable--does it? +Yet what on earth--" + +He threw back his head, with a stiff protesting air, staring +across the room. + +Letty had the sudden impression that he was not talking to her at all, +but to some third person, unseen. + +"_Either_ capital gets its fair remuneration"--he went on in an +argumentative voice--"and ability its fair wages--_or_ the Marxian state, +labour-notes, and the rest of it. There is no half-way house--absolutely +none. As for me, I am not going to lend my capital for nothing--nor to +give my superintendence for nothing. And I don't ask exorbitant pay for +either. It is quite simple. My conscience is quite clear." + +"I should think so!" said Letty, resentfully. "I wonder whether +Marcella--is all for the men? She has never mentioned the strike in +her letters." + +As the Christian name slipped out, she flushed, and he was conscious of a +curious start. But the breaking through of a long reticence was +deliberate on Letty's part. + +"Very likely she is all for the men," he said drily, after a pause. "She +never could take a strike calmly. Her instinct always was to catch hold +of any stick that could beat the employers--Watton and I used often to +tease her about it." + +He threw himself back against the sofa, with a little laugh that was +musical in Letty's ear. It was the first time that Lady Maxwell's name +had been mentioned between them in this trivial, ordinary way. The +young wife sat alert and straight at her work, her cheek still pink, +her eyes bright. + +But after a silence, George suddenly sprang up to pace the little room, +and she heard him say, under his breath, "_But who am I, that I should +be coercing them and trampling on them!--men old enough to be my +father--driving them down to-morrow--while I sleep--for a dog's wage!_" + +"George, what is the matter with you?" she cried, looking at him in +real anxiety. + +"Nothing! _nothing!_--Darling, who's ill? I saw the old doctor on the +road home, and he threw me a word as he passed about having been +here--looked quite jolly over it. What's wrong--one of the servants?" + +Letty put down her work upon her knee and her hands upon it. She grew red +and pale; then she turned away from him, pressing her face into the back +of her chair. + +He flew to her, and she murmured in his ear. + + * * * * * + +What she said was by no means all sweetness. There was mingled with it +much terror and some anger. Letty was not one of the women who take +maternity as a matter of course. + +But emotion and natural feeling had their way. George was dissolved in +joy. He threw himself at her feet, resting his head against her knee. + +"If he doesn't have your eyes and hair I'll disinherit him," he said, +with a gaiety which seemed to have effaced all his fatigue. + +"I don't want him," was her pettish reply; "but if _she_ has your chin, +I'll put her out to nurse. Oh! how I hate the thought of it!" and she +shuddered. + +He caught her hand, comforting her. Then, putting up both his own, he +drew her down to him. + +"After all, little woman, it hasn't turned out so badly?" he said in her +ear, with sad appeal. Their lips met, trembling. Suddenly Letty broke +into passionate weeping. George sprang up, gathered her upon his knee, +and they sat for long, in silence, clinging to each other. + +At last Letty drew back from him, pushing a hand against his shoulder. + +"You know--you didn't care a bit for me--when you married me," she said, +half bitter, half crying. + +"Didn't I? And you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. + +"Oh! I don't remember!" she said hurriedly, and dropped her face on his +coat again. + +"Well, we are going to care for each other," he said in a low voice, +after a pause. "That's what matters now, isn't it?" + +She made no reply, but she put up a hand, and touched his face. He turned +his lips to the hand and kissed it tenderly. There was a sore, sad spot +in each heart; and neither dared to look forward. But tonight there was a +sense of belonging to each other in a new and sacred way, of being drawn +apart, separated from the world, husband and wife, together. Through +George's mind there wandered half-astonished thoughts about this strange +compelling power of marriage,--the deep grip it makes on life--the almost +mechanical way in which it bears down resistance, provided only that +certain compunctions, certain scruples still remain for it to work on. + +George slept lightly, being over-tired. All through the night the vision +of the beaten men going down sullenly to their first shift seemed to +hold him as though in a nightmare. + +Between seven and eight o'clock a sound startled him. He found himself +standing by his bed, struggling to wake and collect himself. + +A sound that had shaken the house, passing like a dull thud through the +valley? A horror seized him. He looked at Letty, who was fast asleep; +then he walked noiselessly into his dressing-room, and began to hurry on +his clothes. + +Five minutes later he was running down the hill at his full speed. It was +bitterly cold and still; the first snow lay on the grass, and a raw grey +veil hung over the hills. As he came in sight of the distant pit-bank he +saw a crowd of women swarming up it; a confused and hideous sound of +crying and shrieking came to his ears; and at the same moment a boy, +panting and dead-white, ran through the lodge-gates to meet him. + +"Where is it, Sprowston?" + +"Oh, sir, it's No. 2 pit. The damp's comin up the upcast, and the cage is +blown to pieces. But the down shaft's all right, and Mr. Madan and Mr. +Macgregor were starting down as I come away. There was eighty-six men and +boys went down first shift." + +George groaned, and rushed on. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +England knows these scenes too well! + +When Tressady, out of breath with running, reached the top of the bank, +and threw a hurried look in front of him, his feeling was that he had +seen everything before--the wintry dawn, the crowds of pale men and +weeping women ranged on either hand, the police keeping the ground round +the shafts clear for the mine officials--even the set white face of his +manager, who, with Macgregor the fireman and two hewers, had just emerged +from the cage that was waiting at the mouth of the downcast shaft. + +As soon as Madan saw Tressady rounding the corner of the engine-house he +hurried towards his employer. + +"Have you been down yet?" Tressady cried to him. + +"Just come up, sir. We got about fifty yards--air fairly good--then we +found falls along the main intake. We got over three or four, till the +damp rose on us too bad--we had a rough bit getting back. I thought you'd +be here by now. Macgregor thinks from the direction in which things were +lying that the blast had come from Holford's Heading or thereabouts." + +And the manager hastily opened a map of the colliery he was carrying in +his hand against the wall of the engine-house, and pointed to the spot. + +"How many men there?" + +"About thirty-two in the workings round about--as near as I can +reckon it." + +"Any sign of the rest? How many went down?" + +"Eighty-six. A cageful of men and lads--just them from the +shaft-bottom--got up immediately after the explosion. Since then, not a +sound from anyone! The uptake shaft is chock-full of damp. Mitchell, in +the fan-room, had to run for it at first, it was coming up so fast." + +"Good God!" said George, under his breath; and the two men eyed each +other painfully. + +"Have you sent for the inspector?" said Tressady, after a moment. + +"He ought to be here in five minutes now, sir." + +"Got some baulks together?" + +"The men are piling them by the shaft at this moment." + +"Fan uninjured?" + +"Yes, sir--and speed increased." + +Followed by Madan, Tressady walked up to the shaft, and himself +questioned Macgregor and the two hewers. + +Then he beckoned to Madan, and the two walked in close converse towards +the lamphouse, discussing a plan of action. As they passed slowly along +the bank the eyes of the miserable terror-stricken throng to either side +followed every movement. But there was not a sound from anyone. Once +Tressady looked up and caught the faces of some men near him--dark +faces, charged with a meaning that seemed instantly to stiffen his own +nerve for what he had to do. + +"I give Dixon three more minutes," he said, impatiently looking at his +watch; "then we go down without him." + +Dixon was the inspector. He was well known throughout the district, a +plucky, wiry fellow, who was generally at the pit's mouth immediately +after an accident, ready and keen to go with any rescue party on any +errand, however dangerous--purely, as he himself declared, for +professional and scientific reasons. In this case, he lived only a mile +away, on the further side of the village, so that Madan's messenger had +not far to go. + +As he spoke, George felt his arm clutched from behind. He turned, and saw +Mary Batchelor, who had come forward from a group of women. + +"Sir George! Listen 'ere, Sir George." Her lined face and tear-blurred +eyes worked with a passion of entreaty. "The boy went down at five with +the rest. Don't yer bear 'im no malice. Ee's a poor sickly creetur, an +the Lord an't give 'im the full use of his wits." + +George smiled at the poor thing's madness, and touched her kindly on +the shoulder. + +"Don't you trouble yourself, Mary; all that can be done will be done--for +everybody. We are only giving Mr. Dixon another minute; then we go down. +Look here"--he drew her inside the door of the lamproom, which happened +to be close by, for an open-mouthed group, eager to hear whatever he +might be saying, had begun to press about them. "Can you take this +message from me up to the house? There'll be no news here, you know, for +a long time, and I left Lady Tressady asleep." + +He tore a half-sheet from the letter in his pocket, scribbled a few words +upon it, and put it into Mary's hand. + +The woman, with her shawl over her head, ran past the lamphouse towards +the entrance-gate as fast as her age would let her, while George +rejoined Madan. + +"Ah, there he is!" + +For the small, lean figure of the inspector was already passing the gate. + +Tressady hurried to meet him. + +By the time the first questions and answers were over, Tressady, looking +round for Madan, saw that the manager was speaking angrily to a tall man +in a rough coat and corduroy trousers who had entered the pit premises in +the wake of Mr. Dixon. + +"You take yourself off, Mr. Burrows! You're not wanted here." + +"Madan!" called Tressady, "attend to Mr. Dixon, please. I'll see to +that man." + +And he walked up to Burrows, while the men standing near crowded over the +line they had been told to keep. + +"What do you want?" he said, as he reached the newcomer. + +"I have come to offer myself for the rescue party. I've been a working +miner for years. I've had special experience in accidents before. I can +beat anybody here in physical strength." + +As he spoke the great heavily built fellow looked round him, and a +murmur of assenting applause came from the bystanders. + +Tressady studied him. + +"Are you fit?" he said shortly. + +Burrows flushed. Tressady's penetrating look forced his own to meet it. + +"As fit as you are," was his haughty reply. + +"Well"--said Tressady, slowly, "we don't want to be refusing strong men. +If Madan'll have you, you shall come. Mind, we're all under his orders." + +He went to the manager, and said a word in his ear. Madan, in response, +vouchsafed neither look nor remark to the man, whom he hated apparently +more bitterly than his employer did. But he made no further objection to +his joining the search party. + +Presently all preparations were made. Picked bands of firemen and +timbermen descended first, with Madan at their head. Then George, Mr. +Dixon, a couple of local doctors who had hurried up to offer their +services, and Burrows. + +As they shot down into the darkness George was conscious of a strange +exhilaration. Working on the indications given him by the first exploring +party, his mind was alive with conjectures as to the cause of the +accident, and with plans for dealing with the various obstacles that +might occur. Never during these weeks of struggle and noise and +objurgation had he felt so fit, so strenuous. At the bottom of the shaft +he had even to remind himself, with a shudder, of the dead men who must +be waiting for them in these blank depths. + +For some little distance from the shaft nothing was to be seen that +spoke of an explosion. Some lamps in the porch of the shaft and along the +main roadway were burning as usual, and the "journey" of trucks, from +which the "hookers-on" and engine-men had escaped at the first sign of +danger, was standing laden in the entrance of the mine. The door of the +under-manager's cabin, near the base of the shaft, was open. Madan looked +into the little den, where the lamp was still burning on the wall, and +groaned. The young fellow who was generally to be found there was a great +friend of his, and they attended the same chapel together. A little +farther an open cupboard was noticed with a wisp of spun yarn hanging out +from it--inflammable stuff, quite untouched. But about thirty yards +farther they came upon the first signs of mischief. A heavy fall of roof +had to be scrambled over, and beyond it afterdamp was clearly +perceptible. + +Here there was an exclamation from Burrows, who was to the front, and the +first victim showed out of the dark in the pale glow-worm light of the +lamps turned upon him. A man lay on his side, close against the wall, +with an unlocked lamp in his hands, which were badly burnt. But no other +part of him was burnt, and it was clear that he had died of afterdamp in +trying to escape. He had evidently come from one of the nearer +work-places, and fallen within a few yards of safety. The inspector +pounced upon the lamp at once, while the doctors knelt by the body. But +in itself the lamp told little. If it were the illegal unlocking of a +lamp that caused the disaster, neither this lamp nor this man could be at +fault; for he had died clearly on the verge of the explosion area, and +from the after-effects of the calamity. But the inspector, who had +barely looked at the dead man, turned the lamp round in his hands, +dissatisfied. + +"Bad pattern! bad pattern! If I had my way I'd fine every manager whose +lamps _could_ be unlocked," he said to himself, but quite audibly. + +"The fireman may have unlocked it, sir, to re-light his own or someone +else's," said Madan, stiffly, put at once on his defence. + +"Oh! I know you're within your legal right, Mr. Madan," said the +inspector, briskly. "_I_ haven't the making of the laws." + +And he sat down on the floor, taking the lamp to pieces, and bending his +shrewd, black-eyed face over it, all the time that the doctors were +examining its owner. He was, perhaps, one of the most humane men in his +profession, but a long experience had led him to the conclusion that in +these emergencies the fragments of a lamp, or a "tamping," or a "shot," +matter more to the community than dead men. + +Meanwhile George crouched beside the doctors, watching them. The owner of +the lamp was a strong, fair-haired young man, without a mark on him +except for the burning of the hands, the eyes quietly shut, the face at +peace. One of the colliers in the search party had burst out crying when +he saw him. The lad was his nephew, and had been a favourite in the pit, +partly because of his prowess as a football player. But the young life +had gone out irrevocably. The doctor shook his head as he lifted himself, +and they left him there, in order not to waste any chance of getting out +the living first. + +Twenty yards farther on three more bodies were found, two oldish men and +a boy, very little burnt. They also had been killed in escaping, dragged +down by the inexorable afterdamp. + +A little beyond this group a fall of mingled stone and coal from the roof +blocked the way so heavily that the hewers and timbermen had to be set to +work to open out and shore up before a passage could be made. Meanwhile +the air in the haulage road was clearing fast, and George could sit on a +lump of stone and watch the dim light playing on the figures of the men +at work. The blows struck echoed from floor to roof; the work of the bare +arms and backs, as they swayed and jerked, woke a clamour in the mine. +Were there any ears still to listen for them beyond that mass? He could +scarcely keep a limb quiet, as he sat looking on, for impatience and +excitement. Burrows meanwhile was wielding a pick with the rest, and +George envied him the bodily skill and strength that, in spite of his +irregular ways of life, were still left to him. + +To restore the ventilation-current was their first object, and the +foremost pick had no sooner gained the roadway on the other side than a +strong movement of the air was perceptible. Madan's face cleared. The +ventilation circuit between the downcast and upcast shafts must be +already in some sort re-established. Let them only get a few more +"stoppings" and brattices put temporarily to rights, and the fan, working +at its increased speed, would soon drive the renewed air-currents forward +again, and make it possible to get all over the mine. The hole made was +quickly enlarged, and the rescuers scrambled through. + +But still fall after fall on the further side delayed their progress, +and the work of repairing the blown-out stoppings by such wood brattice +as could be got at, was long and tedious. The rescuers toiled and +sweated, pausing every now and then to draw upon the food and drink sent +up from behind; and the hours flew unheeded. At last, upon the further +side of one of the worst of these falls--a loose mingled mass of rock and +coal--they came on indications that showed them they had reached the +centre and heart of the disaster. A door leading on the right to one of +the side-roads of the pit known as Holford's Heading was blown outwards, +and some trucks from the heading had been dashed across the main intake, +and piled up in a huddled and broken mass against the farther wall. Just +inside that door lay victim after victim, mostly on their faces, poor +fellows! as they had come running out from their stalls at the noise of +the explosion, only to meet the fiery blast that killed them. Two or +three had been flung violently against the sides of the heading, and were +left torn, with still bleeding wounds, as well as charred and blackened +by the flame. Of sixteen men and boys that lay in this place of death, +not one had survived to hear the stifled words--half groans, half sobs, +of the comrades who had found them. + +"But, thank God! no torture, no _thought_," said George to himself as he +went from face to face; "an instant--a flash--then nothingness." + +Many of the men were well known to him. He had seen them last hanging +about the village street, pale with famine--the hatred in their eyes +pursuing him. + +He knelt down an instant beside an elderly man whom he could remember +since he was quite a boy--a weak-eyed, sallow fellow, much given to +preaching--much given, too, it was said, to beating his wife and +children, as the waves of excitement took him. Anyway, a fellow who could +feel, whose nerves stung and tormented him, even in the courses of +ordinary life. He lay with his eyes half open, the face terribly +scorched, the hands clenched, as though he still fought with the death +that had overcome him. + +George covered the man's face with a handkerchief as the doctor left the +body. "_He_ suffered," he said, under his breath. The doctor heard him, +and nodded sadly. + +Hark! What was that? A cry--a faint cry! + +"They're some of them alive in the end workings," cried Madan, with a sob +of joy. "Come on, my lads! come on!" + +And the party--all but Mr. Dixon--leaving the dead, pushed on through +the foul atmosphere, over heaps of fallen stone and coal, in quest of +the living. + +"Leave me a man," said Mr. Dixon, detaining the manager a moment. "I stay +here. You have enough with you. If I judge right, it all began here." + +A collier stayed with him, unwillingly, panting all the time under the +emotion of the rescue the man imagined but was not to see. + +For while the inspector measured and sketched, far up the heading, in +some disused workings off a side-dip or roadway, Burrows was the first to +come upon twenty-five men, eighteen of whom were conscious and uninjured. +Two of them had strength enough, as they heard the footsteps and shouts +approaching, to stagger out into the heading to meet their rescuers. One, +a long, thin lad, came forward with leaps and gambols, in spite of his +weakness, and fell almost at Tressady's feet. As he recognised the tall +man standing above him, his bloodless mouth twitched into a broad grin. + +"I say, give us a chance. Take me out--won't you?" + +It was Mary Batchelor's grandson. In retribution for the assault on Letty +the lad had been sentenced to three weeks' imprisonment, and George had +not seen him since. He stooped now, and poured some brandy down the boy's +throat. "We'll get you out directly," he said, "as soon as we've looked +to the others." + +"There's some on 'em not worth takin out," said the boy, clinging to +George's leg. "They're dead. Take me out first." Then, with another grin, +as George disengaged himself, "Some on em's prayin." + +Indeed, the first sight of that little group was a strange and touching +one. About a dozen men sat huddled round one of their number, a Wesleyan +class-leader, who had been praying with them and reciting passages from +St. John. All of them, young or old, were dazed and bent from the effects +of afterdamp, and scarcely one of them had strength to rise till they +were helped to their feet. Nevertheless, the cry which had been heard by +their rescuers had not been a cry for help, but the voices of the little +prayer-meeting raised feebly through the darkness in the Old Hundredth. + +A little distance from the prayer-meeting, the sceptics of the party +leant against the wall or lay along the floor, unheeding; while seven +men were unconscious, and possibly dying. Two or three young fellows +meanwhile, who had been least touched by the afterdamp, had "amused +themselves," as they said, by riding up and down the neighbouring level +on the "jummer" or coal-truck of one of them. + +"Weren't you afraid?" Tressady asked one of these, turning a curious look +at him, while the doctors were examining the worst cases, and rough men +were sobbing and shaking each other's hands off. + +"Noa," said the young hewer, his face, like something cut out in +yellowish wax, returning the light from Tressady's lamp. "Noa, theer was +cumpany. Old Moses, there--ee saved us." + +Old Moses was the leader of the prayer-meeting. He was a fireman besides, +who had been for twenty-six years in the mine. At the time of the +explosion, it appeared, he had been in a working close to that door on +the heading where death had done so ghastly and complete a work. But the +flame in its caprice had passed him by, and he and another man had been +able to struggle through the afterdamp back along the heading, just in +time to stem the rush of men and boys from the workings at the farther +end. These men were at the moment in a madness of terror, and ready even +to plunge into the white death-mist advancing to meet them, obeying only +the instinct of the trapped animal to "get out." But Moses was able to +control them, to draw them back by degrees along the heading till, in the +distant workings where they were found, the air was more tolerable, and +they could wait for rescue. + +George was the first to help the old fireman to his feet. But instead of +listening to any praises of his own conduct, he was no sooner clinging to +Tressady's arm than he called to Madan: + +"Mr. Madan, sir!" + +"Aye, Moses." + +"Have ye heard aught of them in the West Heading yet?" + +"No, Moses; we must get these fellows out first. We'll go there next." + +"I left thirty men and boys there this morning at half-past six. It was +fair thronged up with them." The old man's voice shook. + +Meanwhile Madan and the doctors were busy with the transport of the seven +unconscious men, some of whom were already dying. Each of them had to be +carried on his back by two men, and as soon as the sick procession was +organised it was seen that only three of the search party were left +free--Tressady, Burrows, and the Scotch fireman, Macgregor. + +Up the level and along the heading, past the point where Dixon was still +at work, over the minor falls that everywhere attested the range of the +explosion, and through the pools of water that here and there gathered +the drippings of the mine, the seven men were tenderly dragged or +carried, till at last the party regained the main intake or roadway. + +George turned to Madan. + +"You will have your hands full with these poor fellows. Macgregor and +I--Mr. Burrows, if he likes--will push on to the West Heading." + +Madan looked uneasy. + +"You'd better go up, Sir George," he said, in a low voice, "and let me +go on. You don't know the signs of the roof as I do. Eight or nine hours +after an explosion is the worst time for falls. Send down another shift, +sir, as quick as you can." + +"Why should you risk more than I?" said George, quietly. "Stop! What time +is it?" He looked at his watch. Five o'clock--nearly nine hours since +they descended! He might have guessed it at three, if he had been asked. +Time in the midst of such an experience contracts to a pin's point. But +the sight of the watch stirred a pang in him. + +"Send word at once to Lady Tressady," he said, in Madan's ear, drawing +the manager to one side. "Tell her I have gone on a little farther, and +may be another hour or two in getting back. If she is down at the bank, +beg her from me to go home. Tell her the chances are that we may find the +other men as safe as these." + +Madan acquiesced reluctantly. George then plundered him of some dry +biscuits--of some keys, moreover, that might be useful in opening one or +two locked doors farther up the workings. + +"Macgregor, you'll come?" + +"Aye, Sir George." + +"You, Mr. Burrows?" + +"Of course," said Burrows, carelessly, throwing back his handsome head. + +Some of the rescued men turned and looked hard at their agent and leader +with their sunken eyes. Others took no notice. His prestige had been lost +in defeat; and George had noticed that they avoided speech with him. No +doubt this rescue party had presented itself to the agent as an opening +he dare not neglect. + +"Come on, then," said George; and the three men turned back towards the +interior of the pit. + +Old Moses, from whose clutch George had just freed himself, stopped short +and looked after them. Then he raised a hoarse voice: + +"Be you going to the West Heading, Sir George?" + +"Yes," George flung back over his shoulder, already far away. + +"The Lord go with yer, Sir George!" + +No answer. The old man, breathing hard, caught hold of one of his +stronger comrades and tottered on towards the shaft. Two or three of his +fellows gathered round him. "Aye," said one of them, out of Madan's +hearing, "ee's been a-squeezing of us through the ground, ee ave, but +ee's a plucky lot, is the boss." + +"They do say as Burrers slanged 'im fine at the station yesterday," said +another, hoarsely. "Called 'im the devil untied, one man told me." + +The first speaker, still haggard and bowed from the poison in his blood, +made no reply, and the movement of old Moses' lips, as he staggered +forward, helped on by the two others, his head hanging on his breast, +showed that he was praying. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile George and his two companions pushed cautiously on, Macgregor +trying the roof with his lamp from time to time for signs of fire-damp. +Two seams of coal were worked in the mine, one of which was "fiery." No +naked lights, therefore, were allowed, and all "shots" or charges for +loosening the coal were electrically fired. + +As they walked, they spoke now and then of the possible cause of the +disaster: whereof Dixon, as they passed him, had bluntly declined to say +a word till his task was done. George, with the characteristic contempt +of intelligence for the blunderer, threw out a few caustic remarks as to +the obstinate disobedience or carelessness of a certain type of +miner--disobedience which, in his own experience even, had already led to +a score of fatal accidents. Burrows, irritated apparently by his tone, +took up a provoking line of reply. Suppose a miner, set to choose between +the risk of bringing the coal-roof down on his head for lack of a proper +light to work by, and the risk of "being blown to hell" by the opening of +his lamp, did a mad thing sometimes, who were other people that they +should blame him? His large, ox-like eyes, clear in the light of his +lamp, turned a scornful defiance on his companion. "Try it yourself, my +fine gentleman"--that was what the expression of them meant. + +"He doesn't only risk his own life," said George, shortly. "That's the +answer.--I say, Macgregor, isn't this the door to the Meadows Pit? If +anything cut us off from the shaft, and supposing we couldn't get round +yet by the return, we might have to try it, mightn't we?" + +Macgregor assented, and George as he passed stepped up to the heavy +wooden door, and tried one of the keys he held, that he might be sure of +opening it in case of need. + +The door had been unopened for long, and he shook it backwards and +forwards to make the key bite. + +Meanwhile Macgregor had lingered a little behind, while Burrows had +walked on. Suddenly, above the rattle of the door a cracking noise was +heard. A voice of agony rang through the roadway. + +"Run, Sir George! run!" + +A rattle like thunder roared through the mine. It was heard at the +pithead, and the people crowded there ran hither and thither in dismay, +thinking it was another explosion. + + * * * * * + +Hours passed. At last in George's numbed brain there was a faint stir of +consciousness. He opened his eyes slowly. + +Oh, horror! oh, cruelty! to come back from merciful nothingness and peace +to this burning anguish, not to be borne, of body and mind. "I had died," +he thought--"it was done with," and a wild, impotent rage, as against +some brutality done him, surged through him. + +A little later he made a first slight movement, which was answered at +once by another movement on the part of a man sitting near him. The man +bent over him in the darkness and felt for his pulse. + +"Burrows!" The whisper was just perceptible. + +"Yes, Sir George." + +"What has happened? Where is Macgregor? Give me some brandy--there, in my +inner pocket." + +"No; I have it. Can you swallow it? I have tried several times before, +but your mouth was set--it ran down my fingers." + +"Give it me." + +Their fingers met, George feeling for the flask. As he moved his arm a +groan of anguish broke from him. + +"Drink it--if you possibly can." + +George put all the power of his being into the effort to swallow a few +drops. Still the anguish! "O God, my back! and the legs--paralysed!" + +The words were only spoken in the brain, but it seemed to him that he +cried them aloud. For a moment or two the mind swam again; then the +brandy began to sting. + +He slid down a hand slowly, defying the pain it caused him, to feel his +right leg. The trouser round the thigh hung in ribbons, but the fragments +lying on the flesh were caked and hard; and beneath him was a pool. His +reason worked with difficulty, but clearly. "Some bad injury to the +thigh," he thought. "Much bleeding--probably the bleeding has dulled the +worst pain. The back and shoulders burnt--" + +Then, in the same hesitating, difficult way he managed to lift his hand +to his head, which ached intolerably. The right temple and the hair upon +it were also caked and wet. + +He let his hand drop. "How long have I--?" he thought. For already his +revived consciousness could hardly maintain itself; something from the +black tunnels of the mine seemed to be perpetually pressing out upon it, +threatening to drown it like a flood. + +"Burrows!"--he felt again with his hand--"where's Macgregor?" + +A sob broke from the darkness beside him. + +"Crushed in an instant. I heard one cry. Why not we, too?" + +"It was such a bad fall?" + +"The whole mine seemed to come down." George felt the shudder of the huge +frame. "I escaped; you must have been caught by some of it. Macgregor was +right underneath it. But there was an explosion besides." + +"Macgregor's lamp? Broken?" whispered George, after a pause. + +"Possibly. It couldn't have been much, or we should have been killed +instantly. I was only stunned--a bit scorched, too--not badly. You're the +lucky one. I shall die by inches." + +"Cheer up!" said George, faintly. "I can't last--but they'll find you." + +"What chance for either of us," said Burrows, groaning. "The return must +be blocked, too, or they'd have got round to us by now." + +"How long--" + +"God knows! To judge by the time I've been sitting--since I got you +here--it's night long ago." + +"Since you got me here?" repeated George, with feeble interrogation. + +"When I came to I was lying with my face in a dampish sort of hollow, and +I suppose the afterdamp had lifted a bit, for I could raise my head. I +felt you close by. Then I dragged myself on a bit, till I felt some +brattice. I got past that, found a dip where the air was better, came +back for you, and dragged you here. I thought you were dead at first; +then I felt your heart. And since we got here I've found an air-pipe up +here along the wall, and broken it." + +George was silent. But the better atmosphere was affecting him somewhat, +and consciousness was becoming clearer. Only, what seemed to him a loud +noise disturbed him--tortured the wound in his head. Then, gradually, as +he bent his mind upon it, he made out what it was--a slow drip or trickle +of water from the face of the wall. The contrast between his imagination +and the reality supplied him with a kind of measure of the silence that +enwrapped them--silence that seemed in itself a living thing, charged +with the brooding vengeance of the earth upon the creatures that had been +delving at her heart. + +"Burrows!--that water--maddens me." He moved his head miserably. "Could +you get some? The brandy-flask has a cup." + +"There is a little pool by the brattice. I put my cap in as we got there, +and dashed it over you. I'll go again." + +George heard the long limbs drag themselves painfully along. Then he lost +count again of time, and all impressions on the ear, till he was roused +by the water at his lips and a hand dashing some on his brow. + +He drank greedily. + +"Thanks! Put it by me--there; that's safe. Now, Burrows, I'm dying. Leave +me. You can't do anything--and you--you might still try for it. There are +one or two ways that might be worth trying. Take these keys. I could +explain--" + +But the little thread of life wavered terribly as he spoke. Burrows had +to put his ear close to the scorched lips. + +"No," he said gloomily, "I don't leave a man while there's any life in +him. Besides, there's no chance--I don't know the mine." + +Suddenly, as though answering to the other's despair, a throb of such +agony rose in George it seemed to rive body and soul asunder. His poor +Letty!--his child that was to be!--his own energy of life, he had been so +conscious of at the very moment of descending to this hideous death--all +gone, all done!--his little moment of being torn from him by the +inexorable force that restores nothing and explains nothing. + +A picture flashed into his mind, an etching that he had seen in Paris in +a shop window--had seen and pondered over. "Entombed" was written +underneath it, and it showed a solitary miner, on whom the awful trap +has fallen, lifting his arms to his face in a last cry against the +universe that has brought him into being, that has given him nerve and +brain--for this! + +Wherever he turned his eyes in the blackness he saw it--the lifted arms, +the bare torso of the man, writhing under the agony of realisation--the +tools, symbols of a life's toil, lying as they had dropped for ever from +the hands that should work no more. It had sent a shudder through him, +even amid the gaiety of a Paris street. + +Then this first image was swept away by a second. It seemed to him that +he was on the pit bank again. It was night, but the crowd was still +there, and big fires lighted for warmth threw a glow upon the faces. +There were stars, and a pale light of snow upon the hills. He looked +into the engine-house. There she was--his poor Letty! O God! He tried to +get through to her, to speak to her. Impossible! + +A sound disturbed his dream. + +His ear and brain struggled with it--trying to give it a name. A man's +long, painful breaths--half sobs. Burrows, no doubt--thinking of the +woman he loved--of the poor emaciated soul George had seen him tending +in the cottage garden on that April day. + +He put out his hand and touched his companion. + +"Don't despair," he whispered; "you will see her again. How strange--we +two--we enemies--but this is the end. Tell me about her." + +"I took her from a ruffian who had nearly murdered her and the child," +said the hoarse voice after a pause. "She was happy--in spite of the +drink, in spite of everything--she would have been happy, till she died. +To think of her alone is too cruel. If people turned their backs on her, +I made up." + +"You will see her again," George repeated, but hardly knowing what the +words were he said. + +When he next spoke it was with an added strength that astonished his +companion. + +"Burrows, promise me something. Take a message from me to my wife. +Come nearer." + +Then, as he felt his companion's breath on his cheek, he roused himself +to speak plainly: + +"Tell her--I sent her my dear love--that I thanked her with all my heart +and soul for her love--that it was very hard to leave her--and our child. +Write the words for her, Burrows. Tell her it was impossible for me to +write, but I dictated this." He paused for a long time, then resumed: +"And tell her, too--my last wish was--that she should ask Lord and Lady +Maxwell--can you hear plainly?"--he repeated the names--"to be her +friends and guardians. And bid her ask them--from me--not to forsake her. +Have you understood? Will you repeat it?" + +Burrows, in the mood of one humouring the whim of the dying, repeated +what had been said to him word by word, his own sensuous nature swept the +while by the terrors of a death which seemed but one little step further +from himself than from Tressady. Yet he did his best to understand, and +recollect; and to the message so printed on his shrinking brain a woman's +misery owed its only comfort in the days that followed. + +"Thank you," said Tressady, painfully listening for the last word. "Give +me your hand. Good-bye. You and I--The world's a queer place--I wish I'd +turned you back at the pit's mouth. I wanted to show I bore no malice. +Well--at least I know--" + +The words broke off incoherently. Burrows caught the word "suffering," +and some phrase about "the men," then Tressady's head slipped back +against the wall, and he spoke no more. + +But the mind was active long afterwards. Again and again he seemed to +himself standing in a bright light, alive and free. Innumerable illusions +played about him. In one of the most persistent he was climbing the slope +of a Swiss meadow in May. Oh! the scent of the narcissus, heavy still +with the morning dew--the brush of the wet grass against his +ankles--those yellow anemones shining there beneath the pines--the roar +of the river in the gorge below--and beyond, far above, the grey peak, +sharp and tall against that unmatched brilliance of the blue. In another +he was riding alone in a gorge aflame with rhododendrons, and far down in +the plain--the burnt-up Indian plain--some great fortified town, grave on +its hill-top, broke the level lines--"A rose-red city, half as old as +time." Or, again, it was the sea in some glow of sunset, the white +reflections of the sails slipping down and down through the translucent +pinks and blues, till the eye lost itself in the infinity of shades and +tints, which the breeze--oh, the freshness of it!--was painting each +moment anew at its caprice--painting and blotting, over and over again, +as the water swung under the ship. + +But all through these freaks of memory some strange thing seemed to have +happened to him. He carried something in his arms--on his breast. The +anguish of his inner pity for Letty, piercing through all else, expressed +itself so. + +But sometimes, as the brain grew momentarily clearer, he would wonder, +almost in his old cynical way, at his own pity. She seemed to have come +to love him. But was it not altogether for her good that his flawed, +contradictory life should be cut violently from hers? Could their +marriage, ill-planted, ill-grown, have come in the end to any tolerable +fruit? His mind passed back, with bitterness, over the nine months of it; +not bitterness towards her--he seemed to be talking to her all the time, +as she lay hidden on his shoulder--bitterness towards himself, towards +the futility of his own life and efforts and desires. + +But why his more than any other? The futility, the insignificance of all +that man desires, all that waits on him--that old self-scorn, which began +with the race, tormented him none the less, in dying, for the myriads it +had haunted so before. An image of human fate, which had struck him in +some book, recurred to him now--an image of daisied grass, alive one +moment in the evening light--a quivering world of blades and dew, insects +and petals, a forest of innumerable lines, crossed by the innumerable +movements of living things--the next withdrawn into the night, all +silenced, all effaced. + +So life. Except, perhaps, for pain! His own pain never ceased. The only +eternity that seemed conceivable, therefore, was an eternity of pain. It +had become to him the last reality. What a horrible quickening had come +to him of that sense for misery, that intolerable compassion, which in +life he had always held to be the death of a man's natural energy! Again +and again, as consciousness still fought against the last surrender, it +seemed to him that he heard voices and hammerings in the mine. And while +he painfully listened, from the eternal darkness about him, dim tragic +forms would break in a faltering procession--men or young boys, burnt and +marred and slain like himself--turning to him faces he remembered. It was +as though the scorn for pity he had once flung at Marcella Maxwell had +been but the fruit of some obscure and shrinking foresight that he +himself should die drowned and lost in pity; for as he waited for death +his soul seemed to sink into the suffering of the world, as a spent +swimmer sinks into the wave. + +One perception, indeed, that was not a perception of pain, this piteous +submission to the human lot brought with it. The accusing looks of hungry +men, the puzzles of his own wavering heart, all social qualms and +compunctions--these things troubled him no more. In the wanderings of +death he was not without the solemn sense that, after all, he, George +Tressady, a man of no professions, and no enthusiasms, had yet paid his +share and done his part. + +Was there something in this thought that softened the dolorous way? +Once--nearly at the last--he opened his eyes with a start. + +"What is it? Something watches me. There is a sense of something that +supports--that reconciles. If--_if_--how little would it all matter! _Oh! +what is this that knows the road I came_--_the flame turned cloud, the +cloud returned to flame_--_the lifted, shifted steeps, and all the way!_" +His dying thought clung to words long familiar, as that of other men +might have clung to a prayer. There was a momentary sense of ecstasy, of +something ineffable. + +And with that sense came a rending of all barriers, a breaking of long +tension, a flooding of the soul with joy. Was it a passing under new +laws, into a new spiritual polity? He knew not; but as he lifted his +sightless eyes he saw the dark roadway of the mine expand, and a woman, +stepping with an exquisite lightness and freedom, came towards him. +Neither shrank nor hesitated. She came to him, knelt by him, and took +his hands. He saw the pity in her dark eyes. "_Is it so bad, my friend? +Have courage--the end is near." "Care for her--and keep me, too, in your +heart_," he cried to her, piteously. She smiled. Then light--blinding, +featureless light--poured over the vision, and George Tressady had +ceased to live. + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Sir George Tressady, Vol. II, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR GEORGE TRESSADY, VOL. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Sir George Tressady, Vol. II + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Posting Date: December 10, 2011 [EBook #9634] +Release Date: January, 2006 +First Posted: October 11, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR GEORGE TRESSADY, VOL. II *** + + + + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Mary +Meehan, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + + +SIR GEORGE TRESSADY, VOLUME II + +IN TWO VOLUMES + +BY + +MRS. HUMPHRY WARD + +AUTHOR OF "MARCELLA," "THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE," +"ROBERT ELSMERE," ETC. + + + + + + + +VOLUME II. + + + + +PART II + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +On a hot morning at the end of June, some four weeks after the Castle +Luton visit, George Tressady walked from Brook Street to Warwick Square, +that he might obtain his mother's signature to a document connected with +the Shapetsky negotiations, and go on from there to the House of Commons. + +She was not in the drawing-room, and George amused himself during his +minutes of waiting by inspecting the various new photographs of the +Fullerton family that were generally to be found on her table. What a +characteristic table it was, littered with notes and bills, with patterns +from every London draper, with fashion-books and ladies' journals +innumerable! And what a characteristic room, with its tortured +decorations and crowded furniture, and the flattered portraits of Lady +Tressady, in every caprice of costume, which covered the walls! George +looked round it all with an habitual distaste; yet not without the secret +admission that his own drawing-room was very like it. + +His mother might, he feared, have a scene in preparation for him. + +For Letty, under cover of some lame excuse or other, had persisted in +putting off the visit which Lady Tressady had intended to pay them at +Ferth during the Whitsuntide recess, and since their return to town +there had been no meeting whatever between the two ladies. George, +indeed, had seen his mother two or three times. But even he had just let +ten days pass without visiting her. He supposed he should find her in a +mood of angry complaint; nor could he deny that there would be some +grounds for it. + +"Good morning, George," said a sharp voice, which startled him as he was +replacing a photograph of the latest Fullerton baby. "I thought you had +forgotten your way here by now." + +"Why, mother, I am very sorry," he said, as he kissed her. "But I +have really been terribly busy, what with two Committees and this +important debate." + +"Oh! don't make excuses, pray. And of course--for Letty--you won't even +attempt it. I wouldn't if I were you." + +Lady Tressady settled herself on a chair with her back to the light, and +straightened the ribbons on her dress with hasty fingers. Something in +her voice struck George. He looked at her closely. + +"Is there anything wrong, mother? You don't look very well." + +Lady Tressady got up hurriedly, and began to move about the room, picking +up a letter here, straightening a picture there. George felt a sudden +prick of alarm. Were there some new revelations in store for him? But +before he could speak she interrupted him. + +"I should be very well if it weren't for this heat," she said pettishly. +"Do put that photograph down, George!--you do fidget so! Haven't you got +any news for me--anything to amuse me? Oh! those horrid papers!--I see. +Well! they'll wait a little. By the way, the 'Morning Post' says that +young scamp, Lord Ancoats, has gone abroad. I suppose that girl was +bought off." + +She sat down again in a shady corner, fanning herself vigorously. + +"I am afraid I can't tell you any secrets," said George, smiling, "for I +don't know any. But it looks as though Mrs. Allison and Maxwell between +them had somehow found a way out." + +"How's the mother?" + +"You see, she has gone abroad, too--to Bad Wildheim. In fact, Lord +Ancoats has taken her." + +"That's the place for heart, isn't it?" said his mother, abruptly. +"There's a man there that cures everybody." + +"I believe so," said George. "May we come to business, mother? I have +brought these papers for you to sign, and I must get to the House in +good time." + +Lady Tressady seemed to take no notice. She got up again, restlessly, and +walked to the window. + +"How do you like my dress, George? Now, don't imagine anything absurd! +Justine made it, and it was quite cheap." + +George could not help smiling--all the more that he was conscious of +relief. She would not be asking him to admire her dress if there were +fresh debts to confess to him. + +"It makes you look wonderfully young," he said, turning a critical eye, +first upon the elegant gown of some soft pinky stuff in which his mother +had arrayed herself, then upon the subtly rouged and powdered face above +it. "You are a marvellous person, mother! All the same, I think the heat +must have been getting hold of you, for your eyes are tired. Don't racket +too much!" + +He spoke with his usual careless kindness, laying a hand upon her arm. + +Lady Tressady drew herself away, and, turning her back upon him, looked +out of the window. + +"Have you seen any more of the Maxwells?" she said, over her shoulders. + +George gave a slight involuntary start. Then it occurred to him that his +mother was making conversation in an odd way. + +"Once or twice," he said, reluctantly, in reply. "They were at the +Ardaghs' the other night, of course." + +"Oh! you were there?"--Lady Tressady's voice was sharp again. "Well, of +course. Letty went as your wife, and you're a member of Parliament. Lady +Ardagh knows _me_ quite well--but I don't count now; she used to be glad +enough to ask me." + +"It was a great crush, and very hot," said George, not knowing +what to say. + +Lady Tressady frowned as she looked out of the window. + +"Well!--and Lady Maxwell--is she as absurd as ever?" + +"That depends upon one's point of view," said George, smiling. "She +seemed as convinced as ever." + +"Who sent Mrs. Allison to that place? Barham, I suppose. He always sends +his patients there. They say he's in league with the hotel-keepers." + +George stared. What was the matter with her? What made her throw out +these jerky sentences with this short, hurried breath. + +Suddenly Lady Tressady turned. + +"George!" + +"Yes, mother." He stepped nearer to her. She caught his sleeve. + +"George "--there was something like a sob in her voice--"you were quite +right. I am ill. There, don't talk about it. The doctors are all fools. +And if you tell Letty anything about it, I'll never forgive you." + +George put his arm round her, but was not, in truth, much disturbed. Lady +Tressady's repertory, alas! had many _roles_. He had known her play that +of the invalid at least as effectively as any other. + +"You are just overdone with London and the heat," he said. "I saw it at +once. You ought to go away." + +She looked up in his face. + +"You don't believe it?" she said. + +Then she seemed to stagger. He saw a terrible drawn look in her face, +and, putting out all his strength, he held her, and helped her to a sofa. + +"Mother!" he exclaimed, kneeling beside her, "what is the matter?" + +Voice and tone were those of another man, and Lady Tressady quailed +under the change. She pointed to a small bag on a table near her. He +opened it, and she took out a box, from which she swallowed something. +Gradually breath and colour returned, and she began to move restlessly. + +"That was nothing," she said, as though to herself--"nothing--and it +yielded at once. Well, George, I knew you thought me a humbug!" + +Her eyes glanced at him with a kind of miserable triumph. He looked down +upon her, still kneeling, horror-struck against his will. After a life of +acting, was this the truth--this terror, which spoke in every movement, +and in some strange way had seized upon and infected himself? + +He urgently asked her to be frank with him. And with a sob she poured +herself out. It was the tragic, familiar story that every household +knows. Grave symptoms, suddenly observed--the hurried visit to a +specialist--his verdict and his warnings. + +"Of course, he said at first I ought to give up everything and go +abroad--to this very same place--Bad-what-do-you-call-it? But I told him +straight out I couldn't and wouldn't do anything of the sort. I am just +eaten up with engagements. And as to staying at home and lying-up, that's +nonsense--I should die of that in a fortnight. So I told him to give me +something to take, and that was all I could do. And in the end he quite +came round--they always do if you take your own line--and said I had +much better do what suited me, and take care. Besides, what do any of +them know? They all confess they're just fumbling about. Now, surgery, +of course--that's different. Battye"--Battye was Lady Tressady's ordinary +medical adviser--"doesn't believe all the other man said. I knew he +wouldn't. And as for making an invalid of me, he sees, of course, that it +would kill me at once. There, my dear George, don't make too much of it. +I think I was a fool to tell you." + +And Lady Tressady struggled to a sitting position, looking at her son +with a certain hostility. The frown on her white face showed that she was +already angry with him for his emotion--this rare emotion, that she had +never yet been able to rouse in him. + +He could only implore her to be guided by her doctor--to rest, to give up +at least some of the mill-round of her London life, if she would not go +abroad. Lady Tressady listened to him with increasing obstinacy and +excitability. + +"I tell you I know best!" she said, passionately, at last. "Don't go on +like this--it worries me. Now, look here--" + +She turned upon him with emphasis. + +"Promise me not to tell Letty a word of this. Nobody shall know--she +least of all. I shall do just as usual. In fact, I expect a very gay +season. Three 'drums' this afternoon and a dinner-party--it doesn't +look as though I were quite forgotten yet, though Letty does think me +an old fogey!" + +She smiled at him with a ghastly mixture of defiance and conceit. The old +age in her pinched face, fighting with the rouged cheeks and the gaiety +of her fanciful dress, was pitiful. + +"Promise," she said. "Not a word--to her!" + +George promised, in much distress. While he was speaking she had a slight +return of pain, and was obliged to submit to lie down again. + +"At least," he urged, "don't go out to-day. Give yourself a rest. Shall I +go back, and ask Letty to come round to tea?" + +Lady Tressady made a face like a spoilt child. + +"I don't think she'll come," she said. "Of course, I know from the first +she took an ungodly dislike to me. Though, if it hadn't been for +me--Well, never mind! Yes, you can ask her, George--do! I'll wait and see +if she comes. If she comes, perhaps I'll stay in. It would amuse me to +hear what she has been doing. I'll behave quite nicely--there!" + +And, taking up her fan, Lady Tressady lightly tapped her son's hand with +it in her most characteristic manner. + +He rose, seeing from the clock that he should only just have time to +drive quickly back to Letty if he was to be at the House in time for an +appointment with a constituent, which had been arranged for one o'clock. + +"I will send Justine to you as I go out," he said, taking up his hat, +"and I shall hear of you from Letty this evening." + +Lady Tressady said nothing. Her eyes, bright with some inner +excitement, watched him as he looked for his stick. Suddenly she said, +"George! kiss me!" + +Her tone was unsteady. Infinitely touched and bewildered, the young man +approached her, and, kneeling down again beside her, took her in his +arms. He felt a quick sobbing breath pass through her; then she pushed +him lightly away, and, putting up the slim, pink-nailed hand of which she +was so proud, she patted him on the cheek. + +"There--go along! I don't like that coat of yours, you know. I told you +so the other day. If your figure weren't so good, you'd positively look +badly dressed in it. You should try another man." + +Tressady hailed a hansom outside, and drove back to Brook Street. On the +way his eyes saw little of the crowded streets. So far, he had had no +personal experience of death. His father had died suddenly while he was +at Oxford, and he had lost no other near relation or friend. Strange! +this grave, sudden sense that all was changed, that his careless, +half-contemptuous affection for his mother could never again be what it +had been. Supposing, indeed, her story was all true! But in the case of a +character like Lady Tressady's, there are for long, recurrent, +involuntary scepticisms on the part of the bystander. It seems +impossible, unfitting, to grant to such persons _le beau role_ they +claim. It outrages a certain ideal instinct, even, to be asked to believe +that they too can yield, in their measure, precisely the same tragic +stuff as the hero or the saint. + +Letty was at home, just about to share her lunch with Harding Watton, who +had dropped in. Hearing her husband's voice, she came out to the +stairhead to speak to him. + +But after a minute or two George dashed down again to his study, that he +might write a hurried note to a middle-aged cousin of his mother's, +asking her to go round to Warwick Square early in the afternoon, and +making excuses for Letty, who was "very much engaged." + +For Letty had met his request with a smiling disdain. Why, she was simply +"crowded up" with engagements of all sorts and kinds! + +"Mother is really unwell," said George, standing with his hands on his +sides, looking down upon her. He was fuming with irritation and hurry, +and had to put a force on himself to speak persuasively. + +"My dear old boy!"--she rose on tiptoe and twisted his moustache for +him--"don't we know all about your mother's ailments by this time? I +suppose she wants to give me a scolding, or to hear about the Ardaghs, or +to tell me all about the smart parties _she_ has been to--or something of +the sort. No, really, it's quite impossible--this afternoon. I know I +must go and see her some time--of course I will." + +She said this with the air of someone making a great concession. It was, +indeed, her first formal condonement of the offence offered her just +before the Castle Luton visit. + +George attempted a little more argument and entreaty, but in vain. Letty +was rather puzzled by his urgency, but quite obdurate. And as he ran down +the stairs, he heard her laugh in the drawing-room mingled with Harding +Watton's. No doubt they were making merry over the "discipline" which +Letty found it necessary to apply to her mother-in-law. + +In the House of Commons the afternoon was once more given up to the +adjourned debate on the second reading of the Maxwell Bill. The House was +full, and showing itself to advantage. On the whole, the animation and +competence of the speeches reflected the general rise in combative energy +and the wide kindling of social passions which the Bill had so far +brought about, both in and out of Parliament. Those who figured as the +defenders of industries harassed beyond bearing by the Socialist meddlers +spoke with more fire, with more semblance, at any rate, of putting their +hearts into it than any men of their kind had been able to attain since +the "giant" days of the first Factory debates. Those, on the other hand, +who were urging the House to a yet sterner vigilance in protecting the +worker--even the grown man--from his own helplessness and need, who +believed that law spells freedom, and that the experience of half a +century was wholly on their side--these friends of a strong cause were +also at their best, on their mettle. Owing to the widespread flow of a +great reaction, the fight had become a representative contest between two +liberties--a true battle of ideas. + +Yet George, sitting below the Gangway beside his leader, his eyes staring +at the ceiling, and his hands in his pockets, listened to it all in much +languor and revolt. He himself had made his speech on the third day of +the debate. It had cost him endless labour, only to seem to him in the +end--by contrast with the vast majority of speeches made in the course of +the debate, even those by men clearly inferior to himself in mind and +training--to be a hollow and hypocritical performance. What did he +really think and believe? What did he really desire? He vowed to himself +once more, as he had vowed at Ferth, that his mind was a chaos, without +convictions, either intellectual or moral; that he had begun what he was +not able to finish; and that he was doomed to make a failure of his +parliamentary career, as he was already making a failure of coal-owning +and a failure-- + +He curbed something bitter and springing that haunted his most inmost +mind. But his effort could not prevent his dwelling angrily for a minute +on the thought of Letty laughing with Harding Watton--laughing because he +had asked her a small kindness, and she had most unkindly refused it. + +Yet she _must_ help him with his poor mother. How softened were all his +thoughts about that difficult and troublesome lady! As it happened, he +had a good deal of desultory medical knowledge, for the problems and +perils of the body had always attracted his pessimist sense. Yet it did +not help him much at this juncture. At one moment he said to himself, +"eighteen months--she will live eighteen months," and at another, "Battye +was probably right; Barham took an unnecessarily gloomy view--she may +quite well last as long as the rest of us." + + * * * * * + +Suddenly he was startled by a movement beside him. + +"The honourable member has totally misunderstood me," cried Fontenoy, +springing to his feet and looking eagerly towards the Speaker. + +The member who was speaking on the Government side smiled, put on his +hat, and sat down. Fontenoy flung out a few stinging sentences, was hotly +cheered both by his own supporters and from a certain area of the Liberal +benches, and sat down again triumphant, having scored an excellent point. + +George turned round to his companion. + +"Good!" he said, with emphasis. "That rubbed it in!" + +But when the man opposite was once more on his legs, labouring to undo +the impression which had been made, George found himself wondering +whether, after all, the point had been so good, and why he had been so +quick to praise. _She_ would have said, of course, that it was a point +scored against common-sense, against humanity. He began to fancy the +play of her scornful eyes, the eloquence of her white hand moving and +quivering as she spoke. + +How long was it--one hurried month only--since he had walked with her +along the river at Castle Luton? While the crowded House about him was +again listening with attention to the speech which had just brought the +protesting Fontenoy to his legs; while his leader was fidgeting and +muttering beside him; while to his left the crowd of members round the +door was constantly melting, constantly reassembling, Tressady's mind +withdrew itself from its surroundings, saw nothing, heard nothing, but +the scenes of a far-off London and a figure that moved among them. + +How often had he been with her since Castle Luton? Once or twice a week, +certainly, either at St. James's Square or in the East End, in spite of +Parliament, and Fontenoy, and his many engagements as Letty's husband. +Strange phenomenon--that little _salon_ of hers in the far East! For it +was practically a _salon_, though it existed for purposes the Hotel +Rambouillet knew nothing of. He found himself one of many there. And, +like all _salons_, it had an inner circle. Charles Naseby, Edward Watton, +Lady Madeleine Penley, the Levens--some or all of these were generally to +be found in Lady Maxwell's neighbourhood, rendering homage or help in one +way or another. It was touching to see that girl, Lady Madeleine, looking +at the docker or the shirtmaker, with her restless greenish eyes, as +though she realised for the first time what hideous bond it is--the one +true commonalty--that crushes the human family together! + +Well!--and what had he seen? Nothing, certainly, of which he had not had +ample information before. Under the fresh spur of the talk that occupied +the Maxwell circle he had made one or two rounds through some dismal +regions in Whitechapel, Mile End, and Hackney, where some of the worst of +the home industries to which, at last, after long hesitation on the part +of successive Governments, Maxwell's Bill was intended to put an end, +crowded every house and yard. He saw some of it in the company of a lady +rent-collector, an old friend of the Maxwells, who had charge of several +tenement blocks where the trouser and vest trade was largely carried on; +and he welcomed the chance of one or two walks in quest of law-breaking +workshops with a young inspector, who could not say enough in praise of +the Bill. But if it had been only a question of fact, George would have +felt when the rounds were done merely an added respect for Fontenoy, +perhaps even for his own party as a whole. Not a point raised by his +guides but had been abundantly discussed and realised--on paper, at any +rate--by Fontenoy and his friends. The young inspector, himself a hot +partisan, and knowing with whom he had to deal, would have liked to +convict his companion of sheer and simple ignorance; but, on the +contrary, Tressady was not to be caught napping. As far as the trade +details and statistics of this gruesome slopwork of East London went, he +knew all that could be shown him. + +Nevertheless, cool and impassive as his manner was throughout, the +experience in the main did mean the exchange of a personal for a paper +and hearsay knowledge. When, indeed, had he, or Fontenoy, or anyone else +ever denied that the life of the poor was an odious and miserable +struggle, a scandal to gods and men? What then? Did they make the world +and its iron conditions? And yet this long succession of hot and smelling +dens, this series of pale, stooping figures, toiling hour after hour, at +fever pace, in these stifling backyards, while the June sun shone +outside, reminding one of English meadows and the ripple of English +grass; these panting, dishevelled women, slaving beside their husbands +and brothers, amid the rattle of the machines and the steam of the +pressers' irons, with the sick or the dying, perhaps, in the bed beside +them, and their blanched children at their feet--sights of this sort, +thus translated from the commonplace of reports and newspapers into a +poignant, unsavoury truth, had at least this effect--they vastly +quickened the personal melancholy of the spectator, they raised and drove +home a number of piercing questions which, probably, George Tressady +would never have raised, and would have lived happily without raising, if +it had not been for a woman, and a woman's charm. + +For that woman's _solutions_ remained as doubtful to him as ever. He +would go back to that strange little house where she kept her strange +court, meet her eager eyes, and be roused at once to battle. How they had +argued! He knew that she had less hope than ever of persuading him even +to modify his view of the points at issue between the Government and his +own group. She could not hope for a moment that any act of his would be +likely to stand between Maxwell and defeat. He had not talked of his +adventures to Fontenoy--would rather, indeed, that Fontenoy knew nothing +of them. But he and she knew that Fontenoy, so far, had little to fear +from them. + +And yet she had not turned from him. To her personal mood, to her wifely +affection even, he must appear more plainly than ever as the callous and +selfish citizen, ready and glad to take his own ease while his brethren +perished. He had been sceptical and sarcastic; he had declined to accept +her evidence; he had shown a persistent preference for the drier and more +brutal estimate of things. Yet she had never parted from him without +gentleness, without a look in her beautiful eyes that had often +tormented his curiosity. What did it mean? Pity? Or some unspoken comment +of a personal kind she could not persuade her womanly reticence to put +into words? + +Or, rather: had she some distant inkling of the real truth--that he was +beginning to hate his own convictions--to feel that to be right with +Fontenoy was nothing, but to be wrong with her would be delight? + +What absurdity! With a strong effort, he pulled himself +together--steadied his rushing pulse. It was like someone waking at night +in a nervous terror, and feeling the pressure of some iron dilemma, from +which he cannot free himself--cold vacancy and want on the one side, +calamity on the other. + +For that cool power of judgment in his own case which he had always +possessed did not fail him now. He saw everything nakedly and coldly. His +marriage was not three months old, but no spectator could have discussed +its results more frankly than he was now prepared to discuss them with +himself. It was monstrous, no doubt. He felt his whole position to be as +ugly as it was abnormal. Who could feel any sympathy with it or him? He +himself had been throughout the architect of his own misfortune. Had he +not rushed upon his marriage with less care--relatively to the weight of +the human interest in such a matter--than an animal shows when it mates? + +Letty's personal idiosyncrasies even--her way of entering a room, her +mean little devices for attracting social notice, the stubborn +extravagance of her dress and personal habits, her manner to her +servants, her sharp voice as she retailed some scrap of slanderous +gossip--her husband had by now ceased to be blind or deaf to any of +them. Indeed, his senses in relation to many things she said and did were +far more irritable at this moment--possibly far less just--than a +stranger's would have been. Often and often he would try to recall to +himself the old sense of charm, of piquancy. In vain. It was all gone--he +could only miserably wonder at the past. Was it that he knew now what +charm might mean, and what divinity may breathe around a woman! + + * * * * * + +"I say, where are you off to?" + +Tressady looked up with a start as Fontenoy rose beside him. + +"Good opportunity for dinner, I think," said Fontenoy, with a motion of +the head towards the man who had just caught the Speaker's eye. "Are you +coming? I should like a word with you." + +George followed him into the Lobby. As the swing-door closed behind him, +they plunged into a whirlpool of talk and movement. All the approaches to +the House were full of folk; everybody was either giving news or getting +it. For the excitement of a coming crisis was in the air. This was +Friday, and the division on the second reading was expected on the +following Monday. + +"What a crowd, and what a temperature!" said Fontenoy. "Come on to the +Terrace a moment." + +They made their way into the air, and as they walked up and down Fontenoy +talked in his hoarse, hurried voice of the latest aspect of affairs. The +Government would get their second reading, of course that had never been +really doubtful; though Fontenoy was certain that the normal majority +would be a good deal reduced. But all the hopes of the heterogeneous +coalition which had been slowly forming throughout the spring hung upon +the Committee stage, and Fontenoy's mind was now full of the closest +calculations as to the voting on particular amendments. + +For him the Bill fell into three parts. The first part, which was mainly +confined to small amendments and extensions of former Acts, would be +sharply criticised, but would probably pass without much change. The +second part contained the famous clause by which it became penal to +practise certain trades, such as tailoring, boot-finishing, and +shirt-making, in a man's or woman's own home--in the same place, that is +to say, as the worker uses for eating and sleeping. This clause, which +represented the climax of a long series of restrictions upon the right of +a man to stitch even his own life away, still more upon his right to +force his children or bribe his neighbour to a like waste of the nation's +force, was by now stirring the industrial mind of England far and wide. + +And not the mind of England only. Ireland and Scotland, town and country, +talked of it, seethed with it. The new law, if it passed, was to be +tried, indeed, at first, in London only. But every provincial town and +every country district knew that, if it succeeded, there was not a corner +of the land that would not ultimately feel the yoke, or the deliverance, +of it Every workman's club, every trade-union meeting, every mechanics' +institute was ringing with it. Organised labour, dragged down at every +point--in London, at any rate--by the competition of the starving and +struggling crew of home-workers, clamoured for the Bill. The starving and +struggling crew themselves were partly voiceless, partly bewildered; now +drawn by the eloquence of their trade-union fellows to shout for the +revolution that threatened them, now surging tumultuously against it. + +On this vital clause, in Fontenoy's belief, the Government would go down. +But if, by amazing good-fortune and good generalship, they should get +through with it, then the fight would but rage the more fiercely round +the last two sections of the Bill. + +The third section dealt with the hours of labour in the new workshops +that were to be. For the first time it became directly penal for a man, +as well as a woman, to work more than the accepted factory-day of ten and +a half hours, with a few exceptions and exemptions in the matter of +overtime. On this clause, if it were ever reached, the Socialist vote, +were it given solidly for the Government, might, no doubt, pull them +through. "But if we have any luck--damn it! they won't get the chance!" +Fontenoy would say, with that grim, sudden reddening which revealed from +moment to moment the feverish tension of the man. + +In the last section of the Bill the Government, having made its +revolution, looked round for a class on which to lay the burden of +carrying it into action, and found it in the landlords. The landlords +were to be the policemen of the new Act. To every owner of every tenement +or other house in London the Bill said: _You_ are responsible. If, after +a certain date, you allow certain trades to be carried on within your +walls at all, even by the single man or the single woman working in their +own room, penalty and punishment shall follow. + +Of this clause in the Bill Fontenoy could never speak with calmness. One +might see his heart thumping in his breast as he denounced it. At bottom +it was to him the last and vilest step in a long and slanderous campaign +against the class to which he belonged, against property,--against the +existing social order. He fell upon the subject to-night _a propos_ of a +Socialist letter in the morning papers; and George, who was mostly +conscious at the moment of a sick fatigue with Fontenoy and Fontenoy's +arguments, had to bear it as best he might. Presently he interrupted: + +"One assumption you make I should like to contest. You imagine, I think, +that if they carry the prohibition and the hours clauses we shall be able +to whip up a still fiercer attack on the 'landlords' clause. Now, that +isn't my view." + +Fontenoy turned upon him, startled. + +"Why isn't it your view?" he said abruptly. + +"Because there are always waverers who will accept a _fait accompli_; and +you know how opposition has a trick of cooling towards the end of a Bill. +Maxwell has carried his main point, they will say; this is a question of +machinery. Besides, many of those Liberals who will be with us on the +main point don't love the landlords. No! don't flatter yourself that, if +we lose the main engagement, there will be any Prussians to bring up. The +thing will be done." + +"Well, thank God!" grumbled Fontenoy, "we don't mean to lose the main +engagement. But if one of _our_ men were to argue in that way, I should +know what to say to him." + +George made no reply. + +They walked on in silence, the summer twilight falling softly over the +river and the Hospital, over the Terrace with its groups, and the +towering pile of buildings beside them. + +Presently Fontenoy said, in another voice: + +"I have really never had the courage to talk to you of the matter, +Tressady, but didn't you see something of that lad Ancoats before he went +off abroad?" + +"Yes, I saw him several times, first at the club; then he came and dined +with me here one night." + +"And did he confide in you?" + +"More or less," said George, smiling rather queerly at the recollection. + +Fontenoy made a sound between a growl and a sigh. + +"Really, it's rather too much to have to think out that young +man's affairs as well as one's own. And the situation is so +extraordinary!--Maxwell and I have to be in constant consultation. I went +to see him in his room in the House of Lords the other night, and met a +man coming out, who stopped, and stared as though he were shot. Luckily I +knew him, and could say a word to him, or there would have been all sorts +of cock-and-bull stories abroad." + +"Well, and what are you and Maxwell doing?" + +"Trying to get at the young woman. One can't buy her off, of course. +Ancoats is his own master, and could outbid us. But Maxwell has found a +brother--a decent sort of fellow--a country solicitor. And there is a +Ritualist curate, a Father somebody,"--Fontenoy raised his +shoulders,--"who seems to have an intermittent hold on the girl. When +she has fits of virtue she goes to confess to him. Maxwell has got hold +of _him_." + +"And meanwhile Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim?" + +"Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim, and behaving himself, as I hear from his +poor mother." Fontenoy sighed. "But the boy was frightened, of course, +when they went abroad. Now she is getting better, and one can't tell--" + +"No, one can't tell," said George. + +"I wish I knew what the thing really _meant_," said Fontenoy, presently, +in a tone of perplexed reverie. "What do you think? Is it a passion--?" + +"Or a pose?" + +George pondered. + +"H'm," he said at last--"more of a pose, I think, than a passion. Ancoats +always seems to me the _jeune premier_ in his own play. He sees his life +in scenes, and plays them according to all the rules." + +"Intolerable!" said Fontenoy, in exasperation. "And at least he might +refrain from dragging a girl into it! We weren't saints in my day, but we +weren't in the habit of choosing well-brought-up maidens of twenty in our +own set for our confidantes. You know, I suppose, what broke up the party +at Castle Luton?" + +"Ancoats told me nothing. I have heard some gossip from Harding Watton," +said George, unwillingly. It was one of his strongest characteristics, +this fastidious and even haughty dislike of chatter about other people's +private affairs, a dislike which, in the present case, had been +strengthened by his growing antipathy to Harding. + +"How should he know?" said Fontenoy, angrily. He was glad enough to use +Watton as a political tool, but had never yet admitted him to the +smallest social intimacy. + +Yet with Tressady he felt no difficulty in talking over these private +affairs; and he did, in fact, report the whole story--that same story +with which Marcella had startled Betty Leven on the night in question: +how Ancoats on this Sunday evening had decoyed this handsome, +impressionable girl, to whom throughout the winter he had been paying +decided and even ostentatious court, into a _tete-a-tete_--had poured out +to her frantic confessions of his attachment to the theatrical lady--a +woman he could never marry, whom his mother could never meet, but with +whom, nevertheless, come what might, he was determined to live and die. +She--Madeleine--was his friend, his good angel. Would she go to his +mother and break it to her? Would she understand, and forgive him? There +must be no opposition, or he would shoot himself. And so on, till the +poor girl, worn out with excitement and grief, tottered into Mrs. +Allison's room more dead than alive. + +But at that point Fontenoy stopped abruptly. + +George agreed that the story was almost incredible, and added the inward +and natural comment of the public-school man--that if people will keep +their boys at home, and defraud them of the kickings that are their due, +they may look out for something unwholesome in the finished product. +Then, aloud, he said: + +"I should imagine that Ancoats was acting through the greater part of +that. He had said to himself that such a scene would be effective--and +would be new." + +"Good heavens!--why, that makes it ten thousand times more abominable +than before!" + +"I daresay," said George, coolly. "But it also makes the future, perhaps, +a little more hopeful--throws some light on the passion or pose +alternative. My impression is, that if we can only find an effective exit +for Ancoats,--a last act that he would consider worthy of him,--he will +bow himself out of the business willingly enough." + +Fontenoy smiled rather gloomily, and the two walked on in silence. + +Once or twice, as they paced the Terrace, George glanced sidelong at his +leader. A corner of Fontenoy's nightly letter to Mrs. Allison was, he +saw, sticking out of the great man's coat-pocket. Every night he wrote a +crowded sheet upon his knee, under the shelter of a Blue Book, and on one +or two nights George's quick eyes had not been able to escape from the +pencilled address on the envelope to which it was ultimately consigned. +The sheet was written with the regularity and devotion of a Prime +Minister reporting to the Sovereign. + +Well! it was all very touching and very remarkable. But George had some +sympathy with Ancoats. To be virtually saddled with a stepfather, with +whom your minutest affairs are confidentially discussed, and yet to have +it said by all the world that your poor mother is too unselfish and too +devoted to her son to marry again--the situation is not without its +pricks. And that Ancoats was acutely conscious of them George had good +reason to know. + +"I say, Tressady, will you pair till eleven?" cried a man, swinging +bareheaded along the Terrace with his hat in his hand. "I want an hour or +two off badly, and there will be no big guns on till eleven or so." + +George exchanged a word or two with Fontenoy, then stood still, and +thought a moment. A sudden animation flushed into his face. Why not? + +"All right!" he said; "till eleven." + +Then he and Fontenoy went back to dine. As they mounted the dark +staircase leading from the Terrace another man caught Tressady by the +arm. + +"The strike notices are out," he said. "I have just had a wire. Everyone +leaves work to-night." + +George shrugged his shoulders. He had been expecting the news at any +moment, and was glad that the long shilly-shallying on both sides was at +last over. + +"Good luck to them!" he said. "I'm glad. The fight had to come." + +"Oh! we shall be in the middle of arbitration before a fortnight's up. +The men won't stand." + +George shook his head. He himself believed that the struggle would last +on through the autumn. + +"Well, to be sure, there's Burrows," said his informant, himself a large +coal-owner in the Ferth district; "if Burrows keeps sober, and if +somebody doesn't buy him, Burrows will do his worst." + +"That we always knew," said George, laughing, and passed on. He had but +just time to catch his train. + +He walked across to the Underground station, and by the time he reached +it he had clean forgotten his pits and the strike, though as he passed +the post-office in the House a sheaf of letters and telegrams had been +put into his hands. Rather, he was full of a boy's eagerness and +exultation. He had never supposed he could be let off to-night, till the +offer of Dudley's pair tempted him. And now, in half an hour he would be +in that queer Mile End room, watching her--quarrelling with her. + +A little later, however, as he was sitting quietly in the train, quick +composite thoughts of Letty, of his miners, and his money difficulties +began to clutch at him again. Perhaps, now that the strike was a reality, +it might even be a help to him and a bridle to his wife. Preposterous, +what she was doing and planning at Perth! His face flushed and hardened +as he thought of their many wrangles during the past fortnight, her +constant drag upon his purse, his own weakness, the annoyance and +contempt that made him yield rather than argue. + +What was that fellow, Harding Watton, doing in the house at all hours, +and beguiling Letty, by his collector's airs, into a hundred foolish +wants and whims? And that brute Cathedine! Was it decent, was it +bearable, that a bride of three months should take no more notice of her +husband's wishes and dislikes in such a matter than Letty had shown with +regard to her growing friendship with that disreputable person? It seemed +to George that he called most afternoons. Letty laughed, excused herself, +or abused her visitor as soon as he had departed; but the rebuff which +George's pride would not let him ask of her directly, while yet his +whole manner demanded it, was never given. + +He sat solitary in his brilliantly lit carriage, staring at the +advertisements opposite, his long chin thrust forward, his head, with its +fair curls, thrown moodily back. And all the time his mind was working +with an appalling clearness. This cold light, in which he was beginning +to see his wife and all she did--it was already a tragedy. + +What was he flying to, what was he in search of--there in the East End? +His whole being flung the answer. A little sympathy, a little heart, a +little tenderness and delicacy of soul!--nothing else. He had once taken +it for granted that every woman possessed them in some degree. Or, was it +only since he had found them in this unexampled fulness and wealth that +he had begun to thirst for them in this way? He made himself face the +question. "One needn't lie to oneself!" + +At Aldgate, as he was making his way out of the station, he stumbled upon +Edward Watton. + +"Hullo! You bound for No. 20, too?" + +"No; there is no function to-night. Lady Maxwell is at a meeting. It has +grown rather suddenly from small beginnings, and two days ago they made +her promise to speak. I came down because I am afraid of a row. Things +are beginning to look ugly down here, and I don't think she has much idea +of it. Will you come?" + +"Of course." + +Watton looked at him with an amused and friendly eye. + +It was another instance of her power--that she had been able to bind +even this young enemy to her chariot-wheels. He hoped Letty had the sense +to approve! As a matter of fact, Watton had never, by his own choice, +become well acquainted with his cousin Letty, and had always secretly +marvelled at Tressady's sudden marriage. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +The two men were soon on the top of the Mile End Road tramcar, on their +way eastward. It was a hot, dull evening. The setting sun behind them was +already swallowed up in mist, and the heavy air held down and made +palpable all the unsavoury odours of street and shop. Before them +stretched the wide, interminable road which was once the highway from the +great city to Colchester and East Anglia. A broad and comely thoroughfare +on the whole, save that from end to end it has now the dyed and patched +look that an old village street inevitably puts on when it has been +swallowed up by the bricks and mortar of an overtaking town. + +Tressady looked round him in a reverie, interested in the place and the +streets because _she_ cared for them, and had struck one of her roots +here. Strange medley everywhere--in this main street, at all events--of +old and new! Here were the Trinity almshouses, with their Jacobean gables +and their low, spreading quadrangle behind the fine ironwork that +shelters them from the street--a poetic fragment from the days of Wren +and Dryden, sore threatened now by an ever-advancing London, hungry for +ground and space. Here was a vast mission-hall, there a still vaster +brewery; on the right, the quiet entrance to the oldworld quiet of +Stepney-Green; and to the left a huge flame-ringed gin-palace, with shops +on either side, hung to the roof with carpets, or brooms, or umbrellas, +plastered with advertisements, and blazing with gas. While in the street +between streamed the ever-moving crowd of East London folk, jostling, +chattering, loafing, doing their business or their pleasure, and made +perpetually interesting, partly by their frank preoccupation with the +simplest realities of life: with eating, drinking, earning, marrying, +child-rearing; still more, perhaps, by the constant presence among them +of that "leisured class" which, alike at the bottom and the top of +things, has time to be gay, curious, and witty. + +As he rolled along, watching the scene, Tressady thought to himself, as +he had often thought before, that the East End, in many of its aspects, +is a very decentish sort of place, about which many people talk much +nonsense. He made the remark, carelessly, to Watton. + +Watton shrugged his shoulders, and pointed silently to the entrances, +right and left, of two side-streets, the typical streets of the East End: +long lines of low houses,--two storeys always, or two storeys and a +basement,--all of the same yellowish brick, all begrimed by the same +smoke, every door-knocker of the same pattern, every window-blind hung in +the same way, and the same corner "public" on either side, flaming in the +hazy distance. + +Watton hardly put his comment into words; but Tressady, who knew him +well, understood, and nodded over his cigarette. Watton meant, of course, +to suggest the old commonplace of the mean and dull monotony that weighs +like a nightmare upon this vast East London and its human hive, which +hums and toils, drones and feeds, by night and day, in these numberless +featureless boxes of wood and stone, on this flat, interminable earth +that stretches eastward to Essex marshes and southward to the river, and +bears yellow brick and cemeteries for corn. Well! Tressady knew that the +thought of this monotony, and of the thousands under its yoke, was to +Watton a constant sting and oppression; he knew, too, or guessed, the +religious effects it produced in him. For Watton was a religious man, and +the action of the dream within showed itself in him and all he did. But +why should everyone make a grief of East London? He was in the mood again +to-night to feel it a kind of impertinence, this endless, peering anxiety +about a world you never planned and cannot mend. Whose duty is it to cry +for the moon? + +"Better get down here, I think," said Watton, signalling to the +tram-conductor, "and find out whether they have really gone, or not." + +They stopped, half-way down the Mile End Road, before a piece of wall +with a door in it. A trim maiden of fifteen in a spotless cotton frock +and white apron opened to them. + +Inside was a small flagged courtyard and the old-fashioned house that +Marcella Maxwell, a year before,--some time after their first lodging had +been given up,--had rescued from demolition and the builder, to make an +East End home out of it. Somewhere about 1750 some City tradesman had +built it among fields, and taken his rest there; while somewhat later, in +a time of Evangelical revival, a pious widow had thrown out a low room to +one side for class-meetings. In this room Marietta now held her +gatherings, and both Tressady and Watton knew it well. + +The little handmaid bubbled over with willing talk. Oh, yes, there was a +meeting up Manx Road, and her Ladyship had gone with Lord Naseby, and +Lady Madeleine, and Mr. Everard, the inspector, and, she thought, one or +two besides. She expected the ladies back about ten, and they were to +stay the night. + +"An they do say, sir," she said eagerly, looking up at Watton, whom she +knew, "as there'll be a lot o' rough people at the meetin." + +"Oh! I daresay," said Watton. "Well, we're going up, too, to look +after her." + +As they walked on they talked over the general situation in the district, +and Watton explained what he knew of this particular meeting. In the +first place, he repeated, he could not see that Lady Maxwell understood +as yet the sort of opposition that the Bill was rousing, especially in +these East End districts. The middle-class and parliamentary resistance +she had always appreciated; but the sort of rage that might be awakened +among a degraded class of workers by proposals that seemed to threaten +their immediate means of living, he believed she had not yet realised, in +anything like its full measure and degree. And he feared that this +meeting might be a disagreeable experience. + +For it was the direct fruit of an agitation that, as Tressady knew, was +in particular Fontenoy's agitation. The Free Workers' League, which had +called upon the trade-unionist of Mile End to summon the meeting, and to +hear therein what both sides had to say, was, in fact, Fontenoy's +creation. It had succeeded especially in organising the women +home-workers of Mile End and Poplar. Two or three lady-speakers employed +by the League had been active to the point of frenzy in denouncing the +Bill and shrieking "Liberty!" in the frightened ear of Mile End. Watton +could not find a good word for any of them--was sure that what mostly +attracted them was the notoriety of the position, involving, as it did, +a sort of personal antagonism to Lady Maxwell, who had, so to speak, +made Mile End her own. And to be Lady Maxwell's enemy was, Watton +opined, the next best thing, from the point of view of advertisement, to +being her friend. + +"Excellent women, I daresay," said Tressady, laughing--"talking excellent +sense. But, tell me, what is this about Naseby--why Naseby?--on all these +occasions?" + +"Why not, indeed?" said Watton. "Ah! you don't know? It seems to be +Naseby that's going to get the egg out of the hat for us." + +And he plunged eagerly into the description of certain schemes wherewith +Naseby had lately astonished the Maxwell circle. Tressady listened, +languidly at first, then with a kind of jealous annoyance that +scandalised himself. How well he could understand the attraction of such +things for her quick mind! Life was made too easy for these "golden +lads." People attributed too much importance to their fancies. + +Naseby, in fact,--but so much George already knew,--had been for some +months now the comrade and helper of both the Maxwells. His friends still +supposed him to be merely the agreeable and fashionable idler. In +reality, Naseby for some years past had been spending all the varied +leisure that his commission in the Life Guards allowed him upon the work +of a social and economic student. He had joined the staff of a well-known +sociologist, who was at the time engaged in an inquiry into certain +typical East London trades. The inquiry had made a noise, and the +evidence collected under it had already been largely used in the debates +on the Maxwell Bill. Tressady, for instance, had much of it by heart, +although he never knew, until he became a haunter of Lady Maxwell's +circle, that Naseby had played any part in the gathering of it. + +At the same time, as George had soon observed, Naseby was no blind +follower of the Maxwells. In truth, under his young gaiety and coolness +he had the temper of the student, who was more in love with his problem +itself than with any suggested solution of it. As he had told Lady +Betty, he had "no opinions"--would himself rather leave the sweated +trades alone, and trust to much slower and less violent things than +law-making. All this the Maxwells knew perfectly, and liked and trusted +him none the less. + +Now, however, it seemed there was a new development. If the Bill passed, +Naseby had a plan. He was already a rich man, independently of the +marquisate to come. His grandmother had left him a large preliminary +fortune, and through his friends and connections besides he seemed to +command as much money as he desired. And of this money, supposing the +Bill passed, he proposed to make original and startling use. He had +worked out the idea of a syndicate furnished with, say, a quarter of a +million of money, which should come down upon a given district of the +East End, map it out, buy up all the existing businesses in its typical +trade, and start a system of new workshops proportioned to the +population, supplying it with work just as the Board schools supply it +with education. The new scheme was to have a profit-sharing element: the +workers were to be represented on the syndicate, and every nerve was to +be strained to secure the best business management. The existing +middlemen would be either liberally bought out, or absorbed into the new +machine. It was by no means certain that they would show it any strong +resistance. + +Tressady made a number of unfriendly comments on the scheme as Watton +detailed it. A bit of amateur economics, which would only help the Bill +to ruin a few more people than would otherwise have gone down! + +"Ah! well," said Watton, "if this thing passes there are bound to be +experiments, and Naseby means to be in 'em. So do I, only I haven't got a +quarter of a million. Here's our road! We're late, of course--the +meeting's begun. I say, just look at this!" + +For Manx Road, as they turned into it, was already held by another big +meeting of its own. The room in the Board school which crossed the end of +the street must be full, and this crowd represented, apparently, those +who had been turned away. + +As the two friends pushed their way through, Tressady's quick eye +recognised in the throng a number of familiar types. Well-to-do +"pressers" and machinists, factory-girls of different sorts, hundreds of +sallow women, representing the home-workers of Mile End, Bow, and +Stepney--poor souls bowed by toil and maternity, whose marred fingers +labour day and night to clothe the Colonies and the army; their husbands +and brothers, too, English slop-tailors for the most part, of the humbler +sort--the short side-street was packed with them. It was an anxious, +sensitive crowd, Tressady thought, as he elbowed his passage through it. +A small thing might inflame it; and he saw a number of rough lads on the +skirts of it. + +Jews, too, there were in plenty. For the stress of this Bill had brought +Jew and Gentile together in a new comradeship that amazed the East End. +Here were groups representing the thrifty, hard-working London Jew of +the second generation,--small masters for the most part, pale with the +confinement and "drive" of the workshop,--men who are expelling and +conquering the Gentile East Ender, because their inherited passion for +business is not neutralised by any of the common English passions for +spending--above all by the passion for drink. Here, too, were men of a +far lower type and grade--the waste and refuse of the vast industrial +mill. Tressady knew a good many of them by sight--sullen, quick-eyed +folk, who buy their "greeners" at the docks, and work them day and night +at any time of pressure; whose workshops are still flaring at two +o'clock in the morning, and alive again by the winter dawn; who fight +and flout the law by a hundred arts, and yet, brutal and shifty as many +of them are, have a curious way of winning the Gentile inspector's +sympathy, even while he fines and harasses them, so clearly are they and +their "hands" alike the victims of a huge world-struggle that does but +toss them on its surge. + +These gentry, however, were hard hit by more than one clause of the +Maxwell Bill, and they were here to-night to protest, as they had been +already protesting at many meetings, large and small, all over the East +End. And they had their slaves with them,--ragged, hollow-eyed creatures, +newly arrived from Russian Poland, Austria, or Romania, and ready to +shout or howl in Yiddish as they were told,--men whose strange faces and +eyes under their matted shocks of black or reddish hair suggested every +here and there the typical history and tragic destiny of the race which, +in other parts of the crowd, was seen under its softer and more +cosmopolitan aspects. + +As the two men neared the door of the school, where the press was +densest, they were recognised as probably belonging to the Maxwell party, +and found themselves a good deal jeered and hustled, and could hardly +make any way at all. However, a friendly policeman came to their aid. +They were passed into a lobby, and at last, with much elbowing and +pushing, found themselves inside the schoolroom. + +So crowded was the place and so steaming the atmosphere, that it was +some minutes before Tressady could make out what was going on. Then he +saw that Naseby was speaking--Naseby, looking remarkably handsome and +well curled, and much at his ease, besides, in the production of a string +of Laodicean comments on the Bill, his own workshop scheme, and the +general prospects of East End labour. He described the scheme, but in +such a way as rather to damn it than praise it; and as for the Bill +itself, which he had undertaken to compare with former Factory Bills, +when he sat down he left it, indeed, in a parlous case--a poor, limping, +doubtful thing, quite as likely to ruin the East End as to do it a hand's +turn of good. + +Just as the speaker was coming to his peroration Tressady suddenly caught +sight of a delicate upraised profile on the platform, behind Naseby. The +repressed smile on it set him smiling, too. + +"What on earth do they make Naseby speak for!" said Watton, indignantly. +"Idiocy! He spoils everything he touches. Let him give the money, and +other people do the talking. You can see the people here don't know what +to make of him in the least. Look at their faces.--Who's he talking to?" + +"Lady Madeleine, I think," said Tressady. "What amazing red hair that +girl has! and what queer, scared eyes! It is like an animal--one wants to +stroke her." + +"Well, Naseby strokes her," said Watton, laughing. "Look at her; she +brightens up directly he comes near." + +Tressady thought of the tale Fontenoy had just told him, and wondered. +Consolation seemed to come easy to maidens of quality. + +Meanwhile various trade-unionists--sturdy, capable men, in black +coats--were moving and seconding resolutions; flinging resentful +comments, too, at Naseby whenever occasion offered. Tressady heard very +little of what they had to say. His eyes and thoughts were busy with the +beautiful figure to the left of the chair. Its dignity and charm worked +upon him like a spell--infused a kind of restless happiness. + +When he woke from his trance of watching, it was to turn upon Watton +with impatience. How long was this thing going on? The British workman +spoke with deplorable fluency. Couldn't they push their way through to +the platform? + +Watton looked at the crowd, and shrugged his shoulders. + +"Not yet--I say! who's this they've put up. Come, my dear fellow, that +looks like the real thing!" + +Tressady turned, and saw an old man, a Jew, with a long greyish beard, +coming slowly to the front of the platform. His eyes were black and deep, +sunk under white brows; he was decently but poorly dressed; and he began +to speak with a slight German accent, in an even, melancholy voice, +rather under-pitched, which soon provoked the meeting. He was +vociferously invited to speak up or sit down; and at the first +interruption he stopped timorously, and looked towards the Chair. + +An elderly, grey-haired woman was presiding--no doubt to mark the +immense importance of the Bill for the women of the East End. She came +forward at the man's appeal. + +"My friends," she said quietly, "you let this man speak, and don't you be +hard on him. He's got a sad story to tell you, and he won't be long about +it. You give him his chance. Some of you shall have yours soon." + +Up. The speaker was the paid secretary of one of the women's unions; but +she had been a tailoress for years, and had known a tragic life. Once, at +a meeting where some flippant speaker had compared the reality and +frequency of "starvation" in London to the reality and frequency of the +sea serpent, Tressady had seen her get up and, with a sudden passion, +describe the death of her own daughter from hardship and want, with the +tears running down her cheeks. Her appeal to the justice of the meeting +succeeded, and the old man was allowed to go on. It soon appeared that he +had been put up by one of the tailoring unions to denounce the long hours +worked in some of the Whitechapel and Spitalfields workshops. His H facts +were appalling. But he put them badly, with a dull, stumbling voice, and +he got no hold on the meeting at all till suddenly he stepped forward, +paused,--his miserable face working, his head turning from if side to +side,--and finally said, with a sharp change of note: + +"And now, if you please, I will tell you how it was about Isaac--my +brother Isaac. It was Mr. Jacobs "--he looked round, and pointed to the +tradeunion secretary who had been speaking before him--"Mr. Jacobs it +was that put it in my mind to come here and tell you about Isaac. For the +way Isaac died was like this. He and I were born in Spitalfields; he +wasn't one of your greeners--he was a reg'lar good worker, first-rate +general coat-hand, same as me. But he got with a hard master. And last +winter season but one there came a rush. And Isaac must be working six +days a week--and he must be working fourteen hours a day--and, more'n +that, he must be doing his bastes overtime, two hours one time, and an +hour or so, perhaps, another; anyway, they made it up to half a +day--eight hours and more in the week. _You_ know how they reckon it." + +He stopped, grinning feebly. The trade-unionists about the platform +shouted or groaned in response. The masters round the door, with their +"greeners," stood silent. + +"And about Wednesday in the third week," he went on, "he come to the +master, and he says--Isaac was older than me, and his chest it would be +beginning to trouble him pretty bad, so he says: 'I'm done,' he says; 'I +must go home. You can get another chap to do my bastes to-night--will +you?' And the master says to Isaac: 'If you don't do your bastes +overtime, if you're too high and mighty,' he says, 'why, there's plenty +as will, and you don't need to come to-morrow neither.' And Isaac had his +wife Judith at home, and four little uns; and he stopped and done his +bastes, of _course_. And next night he couldn't well see, and he'd been +dreadful sick all day, and he says to the master again, he says as he +must go home. And the master, he says the same to him--and Isaac stops. +And on Friday afternoon he come home. And the shop had been steamin hot, +but outside it was a wind to cut yer through. And his wife Judith says to +him, 'Isaac, you look starved!' and she set him by the fire. And he sat +by the fire, and he didn't say nothing. Then his hands fell down sudden +like that--" + +The old man let his hands drop heavily by his side with a simple dramatic +gesture. By this time there was not a sound in the crowded room. Even the +wildest and most wolfish of the greeners were staring silently, craning +brown necks forward. + +"And his wife ran to him, and he falls against her; and he says, 'Lay me +down, Judith, and don't you let em wake me--not the young uns,' he says +'not for nothing and nobody. For if it was the trump of the Most High,' +he says--and Isaac was a religious man, and careful in his speech--'I +must have my sleep.' And she laid him down, and the children and she +watched--and by midnight Isaac turned himself over. He just opened his +eyes once, and groaned. And he never spoke no more--he was gone before +mornin.--And his master gave Judith five shillings towards the coffin, +and the men in the shop, they raised the rest." + +The old man paused. He stood considering a moment, his face and ragged +beard thrown out--a spot of greyish white--against the figures behind, +his eyes blinking painfully under the gas. + +"Well, we've tried many things," he said at last. "We've tried strikes +and unions, and it isn't no good. There's always one treading on +another, and if you don't do it, someone else will. It's the _law_ as'll +have to do it. You may take that and smoke it!--you won't get nothing +else. Why!"--his hoarse voice trembled--"why, they use us up cruel in the +sort of shop I work for. Ten or twelve years, and a man's all to pieces. +It's the irons, and the heat, and the sitting--_you_ know what it is. +I've lasted fifteen year, but I'm breaking up now. If my master give me +the sack for speaking here I'll have nothing but the Jewish Board of +Guardians to look to. All the same, I made up my mind as I'd come and say +how they served Isaac." + +He stopped abruptly, and stood quite still a moment, fronting the +meeting, as though appealing to them, through the mere squalid physical +weakness he could find no more words to express. Then, with a sort of +shambling bow, he turned away, and the main body of the meeting clapped +excitedly, while at the back some of the "sweaters" grinned, and chatted +sarcastic things in Yiddish with their neighbours. Tressady saw Lady +Maxwell rise eagerly as the old man passed her, take his hand, and find +him a seat. + +"That, I suppose, was an emotion," said Tressady, looking down upon his +companion. + +"Or an argument," said Watton--"as you like!" + +One other "emotion" of the same kind--the human reality at its simplest +and cruellest--Tressady afterwards remembered. + +A "working-woman" was put up to second an amendment condemning the +workshops clause, which had been moved in an angry speech by one of +"Fontenoy's ladies," a shrill-voiced, fashionable person, the secretary +to the local branch of the Free Workers' League. Tressady had yawned +impatiently through the speech, which had seemed to him a violent and +impertinent performance. But as the speaker sat down he was roused by an +exclamation from a man beside him. + +"_That_ woman!" cried a tall curate, straining on tiptoe to see. "No! +They ought to be ashamed of themselves!" + +Tressady wondered who and why; but all that he saw was that a thin, tall +woman was being handed along the bench in front of him, while her +neighbours and friends clapped her on the back as she passed, laughing +and urging her on. Then, presently, there she stood on the platform, a +thin, wand-like creature, with her battered bonnet sideways on her head, +a woollen crossover on her shoulders, in spite of July, her hands clasped +across her chest, her queer light eyes wandering and smiling hither and +thither. In her emaciation, her weird cheerfulness, she was like a figure +from a Dance of Death. But what was amazing was her self-possession. + +"Now yer laffin' at me," she began in a conversational tone, nodding +towards the group of women she had just left. "You go 'long! I told the +lidy I'd speak, an I will. Well, they comes to me, an they ses, Mrs. +Dickson, yer not to work at 'ome no longer--they'll put yer in prison if +yer do't, they ses; yer to go out ter work, same as the shop 'ands, they +ses; and what's more, if they cotch Mr. Butterford--that's my landlord; +p'raps yer dunno 'im--" + +She looked down at the meeting with a whimsical grin, her eyes screwed up +and her crooked brows lifted, so that the room roared merely to look at +her. The trim lady-secretary, however, bent forward with an air of +annoyance. She had not, perhaps, realised that Mrs. Dickson was so much +of a character. + +"If they cotch Mr. Butterford, they'll make 'im pay up smart for lettin +yer do such a thing as make knickers in 'is 'ouse. So I asks the lidy, +Wot's ter become o' me an the little uns? An she says she done know, but +yer mus come and speak Tuesday night, she says--Manx Road Schools, she +says--if yer want to perwent em making a law ov it. Which I'm a doin +of--aint I?" + +Fresh laughter and response from the room. She went on satisfied. + +"An, yer know, if I can't make the knickers at 'ome, I can't make 'em +awy from 'ome. For ther aint no shops as want kids squallin round, as +fer as I can make out. An Jimmy's a limb, as boys mos'ly are in my +egsperience. Larst week 'e give the biby a 'alfpenny and two o' my +biggest buttons to swaller, an I ony jest smacked 'em out of 'er in +time. Ther'd be murder done if I was to leave 'em. An 'ow 'ud I be able +to pay anyone fer lookin' after em? I can't git much, yer know, shop or +no shop. I aint wot I was." + +She stopped, and pointed significantly to her chest. Tressady shuddered +as the curate whispered to him. + +"I've been in orspital--cut about fearful. I can't go at the pace them +shops works at. They'd give me the sack, double-quick, if I was to go try +in 'em. No, it's _settin_ as does it--settin an settin. I'm at it by +seven, an my 'usband--yer can see im there--e'll tell yer." + +She stopped, and pointed to a burly ruffian standing amid a group of +"pals" round the door. This gentleman had his arms folded, and was +alternately frowning and grinning at this novel spectacle of his wife as +a public performer. Bribes had probably been necessary to bring him to +consent to the spectacle at all. But he was not happy, and when his wife +pointed at him, and the meeting turned to look, he suddenly took a dive +head-foremost into the crowd about him; so that when the laughter and +horse-play that followed had subsided, it was seen that Mr. Tom Dickson's +place knew him no more. + +Meanwhile Mrs. Dickson stood grinning--grinning wide and visibly. It was +the strangest mirth, as though hollow pain and laughter strove with each +other for the one poor indomitable face. + +"Well, ee _could_ 'a told yer, if e'd ad the mind," she said, nodding, +"for ee knows. Ee's been out o' work this twelve an a arf year--well, +come, I'll bet yer, anyway, as ee 'asn't done a 'and's turn this three +year--an I don't blime im. Fust, there isn't the work to be got, and +then yer git out of the way o' wantin it. An beside, I'm used to im. +When Janey--no, it were Sue!--were seven month old, he come in one +night from the public, an after ee'd broke up most o' the things, he +says to me, 'Clear out, will yer!' An I cleared out, and Sue and me +set on the doorstep till mornin. And when mornin come, Tom opened the +door, an ee says, 'What are you doin there, mother? Why aint yer got my +breakfast?' An I went in an got it. But, bless yer, nowadays--the +_women won't do it_!--" + +Another roar went up from the meeting. Mrs. Dickson still grinned. + +"An so there's nothink but _settin_', as I said before--settin' till yer +can't set no more. If I begin o' seven, I gets Mr. Dickson to put the +teathings an the loaf andy, so as I don't 'ave to get up more'n jes to +fetch the kettle; and the chillen gets the same as me--tea an bread, and +a red 'erring Sundays; an Mr. Dickson, 'e gets 'is meals out. I gives +'im the needful, and 'e don't make no trouble; an the children is +dreadful frackshus sometimes, and gets in my way fearful. But there, if +I can _set_--set till I 'ear Stepney Church goin twelve--I can earn my +ten shillin a week, an keep the lot of 'em. Wot does any lidy or +genelman want, a comin' meddlin down 'ere? Now, that's the middle an +both ends on it. Done? Well, I dessay I is done. Lor, I ses to em in the +orspital it do seem rummy to me to be layin abed like that. If Tom was +'ere, why, 'e'd--" + +She made a queer, significant grimace. But the audience laughed no +longer. They stared silently at the gaunt creature, and with their +silence her own mood changed. + +Suddenly she whipped up her apron. She drew it across her eyes, and flung +it away again passionately. + +"I dessay we shall be lyin abed in Kingdom Come," she said defiantly, yet +piteously. "But we've got to git there fust. An I don't want no shops, +thank yer!" + +She rambled on a little longer, then, at a sign from the lady-secretary, +made a grinning curtsy to the audience and departed. + +"What do they get out of that?" said Watton, in Tressady's ear--"Poor +galley-slave in praise of servitude!" + +"Her slavery keeps her alive, please." + +"Yes--and drags down the standard of a whole class!" + +"You'll admit she seemed content?" + +"It's that content we want to kill.--Ah! _at last!_" and Watton clapped +loudly, followed by about half the meeting, while the rest sat silent. +Then Tressady perceived that the chair-woman had called upon Lady Maxwell +to move the next resolution, and that the tall figure had risen. + +She came forward slowly, glancing from side to side, as though doubtful +where to look for her friends. She was in black, and her head was covered +with a little black lace bonnet, in the strings of which, at her throat, +shone a small diamond brooch. The delicate whiteness of her face and +hands, and this sparkle of light on her breast, that moved as she moved, +struck a thrill of pleasure through Tressady's senses. The squalid +monotony and physical defect of the crowd about him passed from his mind. +Her beauty redressed the balance. "'Loveliness, magic, and grace--they +are here; they are set in the world!'--and ugliness and pain have not +conquered while this face still looks and breathes." This, and nothing +less, was the cry of the young man's heart and imagination as he +strained forward, waiting for her voice. + +Then he settled himself to listen--only to pass gradually from +expectation to nervousness, from nervousness to dismay. + +What was happening? She had once told him that she was not a speaker, and +he had not believed her. She had begun well, he thought, though with a +hesitation he had not expected. But now--had she lost her thread--or +what? Incredible! when one remembered her in private life, in +conversation. Yet these stumbling sentences, this evident distress! + +Tressady found himself fidgeting in sympathetic misery. He and Watton +looked at each other. + +A little more, and she would have lost her audience. She _had_ lost it. +At first there had been eager listening, for she had plunged +straightway into a set explanation and defence of the Bill point by +point, and half the room knew that she was Lord Maxwell's wife. But by +the end of ten minutes their attention was gone. They were only staring +at her because she was handsome and a great lady. Otherwise, they +seemed not to know what to make of her. She grew white; she wavered. +Tressady saw that she was making great efforts, and all in vain. The +division between her and her audience widened with every sentence, and +Fontenoy's lady-organiser, in the background, sat smilingly erect. +Tressady, who had been at first inclined to hate the thought of her +success in this Inferno, grew hot with wrath and irritation. His own +vanity suffered in her lack of triumph. + +Amazing! How _could_ her personal magic--so famous on so many +fields--have deserted her like this in an East End schoolroom, before +people whose lives she knew, whose griefs she carried in her heart? + +Then an idea struck him. The thought was an illumination--he understood. +He shut his eyes and listened. Maxwell's sentences, Maxwell's +manner--even, at times, Maxwell's voice! He had been rehearsing to her +his coming speech in the House of Lords, and she was painfully repeating +it! To his disgust, Tressady saw the reporters scribbling away--no doubt +they knew their business! Aye, there was the secret. The wife's adoration +showed through her very failure--through this strange conversion of all +that was manly, solid, and effective in Maxwell, into a confused mass of +facts and figures, pedantic, colourless, and cold! + +Edward Watton began to look desperately unhappy. "Too long," he said, +whispering in Tressady's ear, "and too technical. They can't follow." + +And he looked at a group of rough factory-girls beginning to scuffle with +the young men near them, at the restless crowd of "greeners," at the +women in the centre of the hall lifting puzzled faces to the speaker, as +though in a pain of listening. + +Tressady nodded. In the struggle of devotion with a half-laughing +annoyance he could only crave that the thing should be over. + +But the next instant his face altered. He pushed forward instinctively, +turning his back on Watton, hating the noisy room, that would hardly +let him hear. + +Ah!--those few last sentences, that voice, that quiver of passion--they +were her own--herself, not Maxwell. The words were very simple, and a +little tremulous--words of personal reminiscence and experience. But for +one listener there they changed everything. The room, the crowd, the +speaker--he saw them for a moment under another aspect: that poetic, +eternal aspect, which is always there, behind the veil of common things, +ready to flash out on mortal eyes. He _felt_ the woman's heart, oppressed +with a pity too great for it; the delicate, trembling consciousness, like +a point in space, weighed on by the burden of the world; he stood, as it +were, beside her, hearing with her ears, seeing the earth-spectacle as +she saw it, with that terrible second sight of hers: the all-environing +woe and tragedy of human things--the creeping hunger and pain--the +struggle that leads no whither--the life that hates to live and yet +dreads to die--the death that cuts all short, and does but add one more +hideous question to the great pile that hems the path of man. + +A hard, reluctant tear rose in his eyes. Is it starved tailoresses and +shirtmakers alone who suffer? Is there no hunger of the heart, that +matches and overweighs the physical? Is it not as easy for the rich as +the poor to miss the one thing needful, the one thing that matters and +saves? Angrily, and in a kind of protest, he put out his hand, as it +were, to claim his own share of the common pain. + +"Make way there! make way!" cried a police-sergeant, holding back the +crowd, "and let the lady pass." + +Tressady did his best to push through with Lady Maxwell on his arm. But +there was an angry hum of voices in front of him, an angry pressure round +the doors. + +"We shall soon get a cab," he said, bending over her. "You are very +tired, I fear. Please lean upon me." + +Yet he could but feel grateful to the crowd. It gave him this joy of +protecting and supporting her. Nevertheless, as he looked ahead, he +wished that they were safely off, and that there were more police! + +For this meeting, which had been only mildly disorderly and inattentive +while Marcella was speaking, had suddenly flamed, after she sat down, +into a fierce confusion and tumult--why, Tressady hardly now understood. +A man had sprung up to speak as she sat down who was apparently in bad +repute with most of the unions of the district. At any rate, there had +been immediate uproar and protest. The trade-unionists would not hear +him--hurled names at him--"thief," "blackleg"--as he attempted to speak. +Then the Free Workers, for whom this dubious person had been lately +acting, rose in a mass and booed at the unionists; and finally some of +the dark-eyed, black-bearded "greeners" near the door, urged on, +probably, by the masters, whose slaves they were, had leaped the benches +near them, shouting strange tongues, and making for the hostile throng +around the platform. + +Then it had been time for Naseby and the police to clear the platform and +open a passage for the Maxwell party. Unfortunately, there was no outlet +to the back, no chance of escaping the shouting crowd in Manx Road. +Tressady, joining his friends at last by dint of his height and a free +play of elbows, found himself suddenly alone with Lady Maxwell, Naseby +and Lady Madeleine borne along far behind, and no chance but to follow +the current, with such occasional help as the police stationed along the +banks of it might be able to give. + +Outside, Tressady strained his eyes for a cab. + +"Here, sir!" cried the sergeant in front, carving a passage by dint of +using his own stalwart frame as a ram. + +They hurried on, for some rough lads on the edges of the crowd had +already begun stone-throwing. The faces about them seemed to be partly +indifferent, partly hostile. "Look at the bloomin bloats!" cried a wild +factory-girl with a touzled head as Lady Maxwell passed. "Let 'em stop at +'ome and mind their own 'usbands--yah!" + +"Garn! who paid for your bonnet?" shouted another, until a third girl +pulled her back, panting, "If you say that any more I'll scrag yer!" For +this third girl had spent a fortnight in the Mile End Road house, getting +fed and strengthened before an operation. + +But here was the cab! Lady Maxwell's foot was already on the step, when +Tressady felt something fly past him. + +There was a slight cry. The form in front of him seemed to waver a +moment. Then Tressady himself mounted, caught her, and in another moment, +after a few plunges from the excited horse, they were off down Manx +Road, followed by a shouting crowd that gradually thinned. + +"You are hurt!" he said. + +"Yes," she said faintly, "but not much. Will you tell him to drive first +to Mile End Road?" + +"I have told him. Can I do anything to stop the bleeding?" + +He looked at her in despair. The handkerchief, and the delicate hand +itself that she was holding to her brow, were dabbled in blood. + +"Have you a silk handkerchief to spare?" she asked him, smiling slightly +and suddenly through her pallor, as though at their common predicament. + +By good fortune he had one. She took off her hat, and gave him a few +business-like directions. His fingers trembled as he tried to obey her; +but he had the practical sense that the small vicissitudes and hardships +of travel often develop in a man, and between them they adjusted a rough +but tolerable bandage. + +Then she leant against the side of the cab, and he thought she would +have swooned. There was a pause, during which he watched the quivering +lines of the lips and nostrils and the pallor of the cheeks with a +feeling of dismay. + +But she did not mean to faint, and little by little her will answered to +her call upon it. Presently she said, with eyes shut and brow contracted: + +"I _trust_ the others are safe. Oh! what a failure--what a failure! I am +afraid I have done Aldous harm!" + +The tone of the last words touched Tressady deeply. Evidently she could +hardly restrain her tears. + +"They were not worthy you should go and speak to them," he said quickly. +"Besides, it was only a noisy minority." + +She did not speak again till they drew up before the house in the Mile +End Road. Then she turned to him. + +"I was to have stayed here for the night, but I think I must go home. +Aldous might hear that there had been a disturbance. I will leave a +message here, and drive home." + +"I trust you will let me go with you. We should none of us be happy to +think of you as alone just yet. And I am due at the House by eleven." + +She smiled, assenting, then descended, leaning heavily upon him in +her weakness. + +When she reappeared, attended by her two little servants, all frightened +and round-eyed at their mistress's mishap, she had thrown a thick lace +scarf round her head, which hid the bandage and gave to her pale beauty a +singularly touching, appealing air. + +"I wish I could see Madeleine," she said anxiously, standing beside the +cab and looking up the road. "Ah!" + +For she had suddenly caught sight of a cab in the distance driving +smartly up. As it approached, Naseby and Lady Madeleine were plainly to +be seen inside it. The latter jumped out almost at Marcella's feet, +looking more scared than ever as she saw the bandage and the black scarf +twisted round the white face. But in a few moments Marcella had soothed +her, and given her over, apparently, to the care of another lady staying +in the house. Then she waved her hand to Naseby, who, with his usual +coolness, asked no questions and made no remarks, and she and Tressady +drove off. + +"Madeleine will stay the night," Marcella explained as they sped towards +Aldgate. "That was our plan. My secretary will look after her. She has +been often here with me lately, and has things of her own to do. But I +ought not to have taken her to-night. Lady Kent would never have forgiven +me if she had been hurt. Oh! it was all a mistake--all a great mistake! I +suppose I imagined--that is one's folly--that I could really do some +good--make an effect." + +She bit her lip, and the furrow reappeared in the white brow. + +Tressady felt by sympathy that her heart was all sore, her moral being +shaken and vibrating. After these long months of labour and sympathy and +emotion, the sudden touch of personal brutality had unnerved her. + +Mere longing to comfort, to "make-up," overcame him. + +"You wouldn't talk of mistake--of failing--if you knew how to be near +you, to listen to you, to see you, touches and illuminates some of us!" + +His cheek burnt, but he turned a manly, eager look upon her. + +Her cheek, too, flushed, and he thought he saw her bosom heave. + +"Oh no!--no!" she cried. "How _impossible!_--when one feels oneself so +helpless, so clumsy, so useless. Why couldn't I do better? But perhaps it +is as well. It all prepares one--braces one--against--" + +She paused and leaned forward, looking out at the maze of figures and +carriages on the Mansion House crossing, her tight-pressed lips trembling +against her will. + +"Against the last inevitable disappointment." That, no doubt, was what +she meant. + +"If you only understood how loth some of us are to differ from you," he +cried,--"how hard it seems to have to press another view,--to be +already pledged." + +"Oh yes!--_please_--I know that you are pledged," she said, in +hasty distress, her delicacy shrinking as before from the direct +personal argument. + +They were silent a little. Tressady looked out at the houses in Queen +Victoria Street, at the lamplit summer night, grudging the progress of +the cab, the approach of the river, of the Embankment, where there would +be less traffic to bar their way--clinging to the minutes as they passed. + +"Oh! how could they put up that woman?" she said presently, her eyes +still shut, her hand shaking, as it rested on the door. "How _could_ +they? It is the thought of women like that--the hundreds and thousands of +them--that goads one on. A clergyman who knows the East End well said to +me the other day, 'The difference between now and twenty years ago is +that the women work much more, the men less.' I can never get away from +the thought of the women! Their lives come to seem to me the mere refuse, +the rags and shreds, that are thrown every day into the mill and ground +to nothing--without a thought--without a word of pity, an hour of +happiness! Cancer--three children left out of nine--and barely forty, +though she looked sixty! They tell me she may live eighteen months. Then, +when the parish has buried her, the man has only to hold up his finger to +find someone else to use up in the same way. And she is just one of +thousands." + +"I can only reply by the old, stale question," said Tressady, sturdily. +"Did we make the mill? Can we stop its grinding? And if not, is it fair +even to the race that has something to gain from courage and gaiety--is +it _reasonable_ to take all our own poor little joy and drench it in +this horrible pain of sympathy, as you do! But we have said all these +things before." + +He bent over to her, smiling. But she did not look up. And he saw a tear +which her weakness, born of shock and fatigue, could not restrain, steal +from the lashes on the cheek. Then he added, still leaning towards her: + +"Only, what I never have said--I think--is what is true to-night. At last +you have made one person feel--if that matters anything!--the things you +feel. I don't know that I am particularly grateful to you! And, +practically, we may be as far apart as ever. But I was without a sense +when I went into this game of politics; and now--" + +His heart beat. What would he not have said, mad youth!--within the +limits imposed by her nature and his own dread--to make her look at him, +to soften this preposterous sadness! + +But it needed no more. She opened her eyes, and looked at him with a wild +sweetness and gratitude which dazzled him, and struck his memory with the +thought of the Southern, romantic strain in her. + +"You are very kind and comforting!" she said; "but then, from the +first--somehow--I knew you were a friend to us. One felt it--through all +difference." + +The little sentences were steeped in emotion--emotion springing from +many sources, fed by a score of collateral thoughts and memories--with +which Tressady had, in truth, nothing to do. Yet the young man gulped +inwardly. She had been a tremulous woman till the words were said. +Now--strange!--through her very gentleness and gratefulness, a barrier +had risen between them. Something stern and quick told him this was +the very utmost of what she could ever say to him--the farthest limit +of it all. + +They passed under Charing Cross railway bridge. Beside them, as they +emerged, the moon shone out above the darks and silvers of the river, and +in front, the towers of Westminster rose purplish grey against a west +still golden. + +"How were things going in the House this afternoon?" she asked, looking +at the towers. "Oh! I forgot. You see, the clock says close on eleven. +Please let me drop you here. I can manage by myself quite well." + +He protested, and she yielded, with a patient kindness that made him +sore. Then he gave his account, and they talked a little of Monday's +division and of the next critical votes in Committee--each of them, so he +felt in his exaltation, a blow dealt to her--that he must help to deal. +Yet there was a fascination in the topic. Neither could get away from it. + +Presently, Pall Mall being very full of traffic, they had to wait a +moment at the corner of the street that turns into St. James's Square. In +the pause Tressady caught sight of a man on the pavement. The man smiled, +looked astonished, and took off his hat. Lady Maxwell bowed coldly, and +immediately looked away. Tressady recognised Harding Watton. But neither +he nor she mentioned his name. + +In another minute he had seen her vanish within the doors of her own +house. Her hand had rested gently, willingly, in his. + +"I am so grateful!" she had said; "so will Maxwell be. We shall meet +soon, and laugh over our troubles!" + +And then she was gone, and he was left standing a moment, bewildered. + +Eleven? What had he to do? + +Then he remembered his pair, and that he had promised to call for Letty +at a certain house, and take her on to a late ball. The evening, in fact, +instead of ending, was just beginning. He could have laughed, as he got +back into his cab. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile Marcella had sped through the outer hall into the inner, where +one solitary light, still burning, made a rather desolate dark-in-light +through the broad, pillared space. A door opened at the farther side. + +"Aldous!" + +"You!" + +He came out, and she flew to him. He felt her trembling as she touched +him. In ten words she told him something of what had happened. Then +he saw the bandage round her temple. His countenance fell. She knew +that he turned white, and loved him for it. How few things had power +to move him so! + +He wanted to lead her back into his library, where he was at work. But +she resisted. + +"Let me go up to Annette," she said. "The little wound--oh! it is not +much, I _know_ it is not much--ought to be properly seen to. We will do +it between us in a moment. Then come--I will send her down for you. I +want to tell you." + +But in her heart of hearts she was just a little afraid of telling him. +What if an exaggerated version should get into the papers--if it should +really do him harm--at this critical moment! She was always tormented by +this dread, a dread born of long-past indiscretions and mistakes. + +He acquiesced, but first he insisted on half leading, half carrying her +upstairs; and she permitted it, delighting in his strong arm. + +Half an hour later she sent for him. The maid found him pacing up and +down the hall, waiting. + +When he entered her room she was lying on her sofa in a white wrapper of +some silky stuff. The black lace had been drawn again round her head, and +he saw nothing but a very pale face and her eager, timid eyes--timid for +no one in the world but him. As he caught sight of her, she produced in +him that exquisite mingled impression of grace, passion, self-yielding, +which in all its infinite variations and repetitions made up for him the +constant poem of her beauty. But though she knew it, she glanced at him +anxiously as he approached her. It had been to her a kind of luxury of +feeling, in the few moments that she had been waiting for him, to cherish +a little fear of him--of his displeasure. + +"Now describe exactly what you have been doing," he said, sitting down by +her with a troubled face and taking her hand, as soon as he had assured +himself that the cut was slight and would leave no scar. + +She told her tale, and was thrilled to see that he frowned. She laid her +hand on his shoulder. + +"It is the first public thing I have done without consulting you. I meant +to have asked you yesterday, but we were both so busy. The meeting was +got up rather hurriedly, and they pressed me to speak, after all the +arrangements were made." + +"We are both of us too busy," he said, rather sadly; "we glance, and nod, +and bustle by--" + +He did not finish the quotation, but she could. Her eyes scanned his +face. "Do you think I ought to have avoided such a thing at such a time? +Will it do harm?" + +His brow cleared. He considered the matter. + +"I think you may expect some of the newspapers to make a good deal of +it," he said, smiling. + +And, in fact, his own inherited tastes and instincts were all chafed by +her story. His wife--the wife of a Cabinet Minister--pleading for her +husband's Bill, or, as the enemy might say, for his political existence, +with an East End meeting, and incidentally with the whole +public--exposing herself, in a time of agitation, to the rowdyism and +the stone-throwing that wait on such things! The notion set the +fastidious old-world temper of the man all on edge. But he would never +have dreamed of arguing the matter so with her. A sort of high chivalry +forbade it. In marrying her he had not made a single condition--would +have suffered tortures rather than lay the smallest fetter upon her. In +consequence, he had been often thought a weak, uxorious person. Maxwell +knew that he was merely consistent. No sane man lays his heart at the +feet of a Marcella without counting the cost. + +She did not answer his last remark. But he saw that she was wistful and +uneasy, and presently she laid her fingers lightly on his. + +"Tell me if I am too much away from you--too much occupied with +other people." + +He sighed,--the slightest sigh,--but she winced. "I had just an hour +before dinner," he said; "you were not here, and the house seemed very +empty. I would have come down to fetch you, but there were some important +papers to read before to-morrow." A Cabinet meeting was fixed, as she +knew, for the following day. "Then, I have been making Saunders draw up a +statement for the newspapers in answer to Watton's last attack, and it +would have been a help to talk to you before we sent it off. Above all, +if I had known of the meeting I should have begged you not to go. I ought +to have warned you yesterday, for I knew that there was some ugly +agitation developing down there. But I never thought of you as likely to +face a mob. Will you please reflect"--he pressed her hand almost roughly +against his lips--"that if that stone had been a little heavier, and +flung a little straighter--" + +He paused. A dew came to her eyes, a happy glow to her cheek. As for her, +she was grateful to the stone that had raised such heart-beats. + +Perhaps some instinct told him not to please her in this way too much, +for he rose and walked away a moment. + +"There! don't let's think of it, or I shall turn tyrant after all, and +plunge into 'shalls' and 'sha'n'ts'! You _know_ you carry two lives, and +all the plans that either of us care about, in your hand. You say that +Tressady brought you home?" + +He turned and looked at her. + +"Yes. Edward Watton brought him to the meeting." + +"But he has been down to see you there several times before, as well as +coming here?" + +"Oh yes! almost every week since we met at Castle Luton." + +"It is curious," said Maxwell, thoughtfully; "for he will certainly vote +steadily with Fontenoy all through. His election speeches pledged him +head over ears." + +"Oh! of course he will vote," said Marcella, moving a little uneasily; +"but one cannot help trying to modify his way of looking at things. And +his tone _is_ changed." + +Maxwell stood at the foot of her sofa, considering, a host of perplexed +and unwelcome notions flitting across his mind. In spite of his idealist +absorption in his work, his political aims, and the one love of his +life, he had the training of a man of the world, and could summon the +shrewdness of one when he pleased. He had liked this young Tressady, for +the first time, at Castle Luton, and had seen him fall under Marcella's +charm with some amusement. But this haunting of their camp in the East +End, at such a marked and critical moment, was strange, to say the least +of it. It must point, one would think, to some sudden and remarkable +strength of personal influence. + +Had she any real consciousness of the power she wielded? Once or twice, +in the years since they had been married, Maxwell had watched this spell +of his wife's at work, and had known a moment of trouble. "If I were the +fellow she had talked and walked with so," he had once said to himself, +"I must have fallen in love with her had she been twenty times another +man's wife!" Yet no harm had happened; he had only reproached himself for +a gross mind without daring to breathe a word to her. + +And he dared not now. Besides, how absurd! The young man was just +married, and, to Maxwell's absent, incurious eyes, the bride had seemed a +lively, pretty little person enough. No doubt it was the nervous strain +of his political life that made such fancies possible to him. Let him not +cumber her ears with them! + +Then gradually, as he stood at her feet, the sight of her, breathing +weakness, submission, loveliness, her eyes raised to his, banished every +other thought from his happy heart, and drew him like a magnet. + +Meanwhile she began to smile. He knelt down beside her, and she put both +hands on his shoulders. + +"Dear!" she said, half laughing and half crying, "I did speak so badly; +you would have been ashamed of me. I couldn't hold the meeting. I didn't +persuade a soul. Lord Fontenoy's ladies had it all their own way. And +first I was dreadfully sorry I couldn't do such a thing decently--sorry +because of one's vanity, and sorry because I couldn't help you. And now I +think I'm rather glad." + +"Are you?" said Maxwell, drily; "as for me, I'm enchanted! There!--so +much penalty you _shall_ have." + +She pressed his lips with her hand. + +"Don't spoil my pretty speech. I am only glad because--because public +life and public success make one stand separate--alone. I have gone +far enough to know how it might be. A new passion would come in, and +creep through one like a poison. I should win you votes--and our +hearts would burn dry! There! take me--scold me--despise me. I am a +poor thing--but yours!" + +With such a humbleness might Diana have wooed her shepherd, stooping her +goddess head to him on the Latmian steep. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +George went back to the House, and stayed for half an hour or so, +listening to a fine speech from a member of a former Liberal Cabinet. The +speech was one more sign of the new cleavage of parties that was being +everywhere brought about by the pressure of the new Collectivism. + +"We always knew," said the speaker, referring to a Ministry in which +he had served seven years before, "that we should be fighting +Socialism in good earnest before many years were over; and we knew, +too, that we should be fighting it as put forward by a Conservative +Government. The hands are the hands of the English Tory, the voice is +the voice of Karl Marx." + +The Socialists sent forth mocking cheers, while the Government benches +sat silent. The rank-and-file of the Conservative party already hated the +Bill. The second reading must go through. But if only some rearrangement +were possible without rushing the country into the arms of +revolutionists--if it were only conceivable that Fontenoy, or even the +old Liberal gang, should form a Government, and win the country, the +Committee stage would probably not trouble the House long. + +Meanwhile in the smoking-rooms and lobbies the uncertainties of the +coming division kept up an endless hum of gossip and conjecture. Tressady +wandered about it all like a ghost, indifferent and preoccupied, careful +above all to avoid any more talk with Fontenoy. While he was in the House +itself he stood at the door or sat in the cross-benches, so as to keep a +space between him and his leader. + +A little before twelve he drove home, dressed hastily, and went off to a +house in Berkeley Square, where he was to meet Letty. He found her +waiting for him, a little inclined to be reproachful, and eager for her +ball. As they drove towards Queen's Gate she chattered to him of her +evening, and of the people and dresses she had seen. + +"And, you foolish boy!" she broke out, laughing, and tapping him on the +hand with her fan--"you looked so glum this morning when I couldn't go +and see Lady Tressady--and--what do you think? Why, she has been at a +party to-night--at a party, my dear!--and _dressed_! Mrs. Willy Smith +told me she had seen her at the Webers'." + +"I daresay," said George, rather shortly; "all the same, this morning she +was very unwell." + +Letty shrugged her shoulders, but she did not want to be disagreeable and +argue the point. She was much pleased with her dress--with the last +glance of herself that she had caught in the cloak-room looking-glass +before leaving Berkeley Square--and, finally, with this well-set-up, +well-dressed husband beside her. She glanced at him every now and then as +she put on a fresh pair of gloves. He had been very much absorbed in this +tiresome Parliament lately, and she thought herself a very good and +forbearing wife not to make more fuss. Nor had she made any fuss about +his going down to see Lady Maxwell at the East End. It did not seem to +have made the smallest difference to his opinions. + +The thought of Lady Maxwell brought a laugh to her lips. + +"Oh! do you know, Harding was so amusing about the Maxwells to-day!" she +said, turning to Tressady in her most good-humoured and confiding mood. +"He says people are getting so tired of her,--of her meddling, and her +preaching, and all the rest of it,--and that everybody thinks him so +absurd not to put a stop to it. And Harding says that it doesn't succeed +even--that Englishmen will never stand petticoat government. It's all +very well--they have to stand it in some forms!" + +And, stretching her slim neck, she turned and gave her husband a tiny +flying kiss on the cheek. Mechanically grateful, George took her hand in +his, but he did not make her the pretty speech she expected. Just before +she spoke he was about to tell her of his evening--of the meeting, and of +his drive home with Lady Maxwell. He had been far too proud hitherto, and +far too confident in himself, to make any secret to Letty of what he did. +And, luckily, she had raised no difficulties. In truth, she had been too +well provided with amusements and flatteries of her own since their +return from the country to leave her time or opportunities for jealousy. +Perhaps, secretly, the young husband would have been more flattered if +she had been more exacting. + +But as she quoted Harding something stiffened in him. Later, after the +ball, when they were alone, he would tell her--he would try and make her +understand what sort of a woman Marcella Maxwell was. In his trouble of +mind a confused plan crossed his thoughts of trying to induce Lady +Maxwell to make friends with Letty. But a touch of that charm, that +poetry!--he asked no more. + +He glanced at his wife. She looked pretty and young as she sat beside +him, lost in a pleasant pondering of social successes. But he wondered, +uncomfortably, why she must use such a thickness of powder on her still +unspoilt complexion; and her dress seemed to him fantastic, and not +over-modest. He had begun to have the strangest feeling about their +relation, as though he possessed a double personality, and were looking +on at himself and her, wondering how it would end. It was characteristic, +perhaps, of his half-developed moral life that his sense of ordinary +husbandly responsibility towards her was not strong. He always thought of +her as he thought of himself--as a perfectly free agent, dealing with him +and their common life on equal terms. + +The house to which they were going belonged to very wealthy people, and +Letty was looking forward feverishly to the cotillon. + +"They say, at the last dance they gave, the cotillon gifts cost eight +hundred pounds," she said gleefully, to George. "They always do things +extraordinarily well." + +No doubt it was the prospect of the cotillon that had brought such a +throng together. The night was stifling; the stairs and the supper-room +were filled with a struggling mob; and George spent an hour of purgatory +wondering at the gaieties of his class. + +He had barely more than two glimpses of Letty after they had fought their +way into the room. On the first occasion, by stretching himself to his +full height so as to look over the intervening crowd, he saw her seated +in a chair of state, a mirror in one hand and a lace handkerchief in the +other. Young men were being brought up behind her to look into the glass +over her shoulder, and she was merrily brushing their images away. +Presently a tall, dark fellow advanced, with jet-black moustache and red +cheeks. Letty kept her handkerchief suspended a moment over the +reflection in the glass. George could see the corners of her lips +twitching with amusement. Then she quietly handed the mirror to the +leader of the cotillon, rose, gathered up her white skirt a little, the +music struck up joyously, and she and Lord Cathedine spun round the room +together, followed by the rest of the dancers. + +George meanwhile found few people to talk to. He danced a few dances, +mostly with young girls in the white frocks of their first season--a +species of partner for which, as a rule, he had no affinity at all. But +on the whole he passed the time leaning against the wall in a corner, +lost in a reverie which was a vague compound of this and that, there and +here; of the Manx Road schoolroom, its odours and heats, its pale, +uncleanly crowd absorbed in the things of daily bread, with these gay, +scented rooms, and this extravagance of decoration, that made even +flowers a vulgarity, with these costly cotillon gifts--pins, bracelets, +rings--that were being handed round and wondered over by people who had +already more of such things than they could wear; of these rustling +women, in their silks and diamonds, with that gaunt stooping image of the +loafer's wife, smiling her queer defiance at pain and fate, and letting +meddling "lidies" know that without sixteen hours' "settin" she could not +keep her husband and children alive. Stale commonplace, that all the +world knows by heart!--the squalor of the _pauperum tabernae_ dimming the +glory of the _regum turres_. Yet there are only a few men and women in +each generation who really pass into the eclipsing shadow of it. Others +talk--_they_ feel and struggle. There were many elements in Tressady's +nature that might seem destined to force him into their company. Yet +hitherto he had resolutely escaped his destiny--and enjoyed his life. + +About supper-time he found himself near Lady Cathedine, a thin-faced, +silent creature, whose eyes suddenly attracted him. He took her down to +supper, and spent an exceedingly dull time. She had the air of one pining +to talk, to confide herself. Yet in practice it was apparently impossible +for her to do it. She fell back into monosyllables or gentle banalities; +and George noticed that she was always restlessly conscious of the +movements in the room--who came in, who went out--and throwing little +frightened glances towards the door. + +He was glad indeed when his task was over. On their way to the +drawing-rooms they passed a broad landing, which on one side led out to a +balcony, and had been made into a decorated bower for sitting-out. At +the farther end he saw Letty sitting beside Harding Watton. Letty was +looking straight before her, with a flushed and rather frowning face. +Harding was talking to her, and, to judge from his laughing manner, was +amusing himself, if not her. + +George duly found Lady Cathedine a seat, and returned himself to ask +Letty whether it was not time to go. He found, however, that she had been +carried off by another partner, and could only resign himself to a fresh +twenty minutes of boredom. He leant, yawning, against the wall, feeling +the evening interminable. + +Then a Harrow and Oxford acquaintance came up to him, and they chatted +for a time behind a stand of flowers that stood between them and one of +the doorways to the ballroom. At the end of the dance George saw Lady +Cathedine hurrying up to this door with the quick, furtive step that was +characteristic of her. She passed on the other side of the flowers, and +George heard her say to someone just inside the room: + +"Robert, the carriage has come!" + +A pause; then a thick voice said, in an emphatic undertone: + +"Damn the carriage!--go away!" + +"But, Robert, you know we _promised_ to look in at Lady Tuam's on the +way home." + +The thick voice dropped a note lower. + +"Damn Lady Tuam! I shall come when it suits me." + +Lady Cathedine fell back, and George saw her cross the landing, and drop +into a chair beside an old general, who was snoozing in a peaceful corner +till his daughters should see fit to take him home. The old general took +no notice of her, and she sat there, playing with her fan, her rather +prominent grey eyes staring out of her white face. + +Both George and his friend, as it happened, had heard the conversation. +The friend raised his eyebrows in disgust. + +"What a brute that fellow is! They have been married four months. +However, she was amply warned." + +"Who was she?" + +"The daughter of old Wickens, the banker. He married her for her money, +and lives upon it religiously. By now, I should think, he has dragged her +through every torture that marriage admits of." + +"So soon?" said George, drily. + +"Well," said the friend, laughing, "no doubt it admits of a great many." + +"I am ready to go home," said a voice at Tressady's elbow. + +Something in the intonation surprised him, and he turned quickly. + +"By all means," he said, throwing an astonished look at his wife, who had +come up to him on Lord Cathedine's arm. "I will go and look for the +carriage." + +What was the matter, he asked himself as he ran downstairs--what was the +meaning of Letty's manner and expression? + +But by the time he had sent for the carriage the answer had suggested +itself. No doubt Harding Watton had given Letty news of that hansom in +Pall Mall, and no doubt, also--He shrugged his shoulders in annoyance. +The notion of having to explain and excuse himself was particularly +unpalatable. What a fool he had been not to tell Letty of his East End +adventure on their way to Queen's Gate. + +He was standing in a little crowd at the foot of the stairs when Letty +swept past him in search of her wraps. He smiled at her, but she held her +head erect as though she did not see him. + +So there was to be a scene. George felt the rise of a certain inner +excitement. Perhaps it was as well. There were a good many things he +wanted to say. + +At the same time, the Cathedine episode had filled him with a new disgust +for the violences and brutalities to which the very intimacy of the +marriage relation may lead. If a scene there was to be, he meant to be +more or less frank, and at the same time to keep both himself and her +within bounds. + + * * * * * + +"You can't deny that you made a secret of it from me," cried Letty, +angrily. "I asked you what had been doing in the House, and you never let +me suspect that you had been anywhere else the whole evening." + +"I daresay," said George, quietly. "But I never meant to make any +mystery. Something you said about Lady Maxwell put me off telling +you--then. I thought I would wait till we got home." + +They were in George's study--the usual back-room on the ground-floor, +which George could not find time to make comfortable, while Letty had +never turned her attention to it. Tressady was leaning against the +mantelpiece. He had turned up a solitary electric light, and in the cold +glare of it Letty was sitting opposite to him, angrily upright. The ugly +light had effaced the half-tones of the face and deepened the lines of +it, while it had taken all the grace from her extravagant dress and +tumbled flowers. She seemed to have lost her prettiness. + +"Something I said about Lady Maxwell?" she repeated scornfully. "Why +shouldn't I say what I like about Lady Maxwell? What does she matter +either to you or to me that I should not laugh at her if I please? +Everybody laughs at her." + +"I don't think so," said Tressady, quietly. "I have seen her to-night in +a curious and touching scene--in a meeting of very poor people. She tried +to make a speech, by the way, and spoke badly. She did not carry the +meeting with her, and towards the end it got noisy. As we came out she +was struck with a stone, and I got a hansom for her, and drove her home +to St. James's Square. We were just turning into the Square when Harding +saw us. I happened to be with her in the crowd when the stone hit her. +What do you suppose I could do but bring her home?" + +"Why did you go? and why didn't you tell me at once?" + +"Why did I go?" Tressady hesitated, then looked down upon his wife. +"Well!--I suppose I went because Lady Maxwell is very interesting to +watch--because she is sympathetic and generous, and it stirs one's mind +to talk to her." + +"Not at all!" cried Letty, passionately. "You went because she is +handsome--because she is just a superior kind of flirt. She is always +making women anxious about their husbands under this pretence of +politics. Heaps of women hate her, and are afraid of her." + +She was very white, and could hardly save herself from the tears of +excitement. Yet what was working in her was not so much Harding Watton's +story as this new and strange manner of her husband's. She had sat +haughtily silent in the carriage on their way home, fully expecting him +to question her--to explain, entreat, excuse himself, as he had generally +been ready to do whenever she chose to make a quarrel. But he, too, said +nothing, and she could not make up her mind how to begin. Then, as soon +as they were shut into his room her anger had broken out, and he had not +yet begun to caress and appease her. Her surprise had brought with it a +kind of shock. What was the matter? Why was she not mistress as usual? + +As she made her remark about Marcella, Tressady smiled a little, and +played with a cigarette he had taken up. + +"Whom do you mean?" he asked her. "One often hears these things said of +her in the vague, and never with any details. I myself don't believe it. +Harding, of course, believes anything to her disadvantage." + +Letty hesitated; then, remembering all she could of Harding's ill-natured +gossip, she flung out some names, exaggerating and inventing freely. The +emphasis with which she spoke reddened all the small face again--made it +hot and common. + +Tressady raised his shoulders as she came to the end of her tirade. + +"Well, you know I don't believe all that--and I don't think Harding +believes it. Lady Maxwell, as you once said yourself, is not, I suppose, +a woman's woman. She gets on better, no doubt, with men than with women. +These men you speak of are all personal and party friends. They support +Maxwell, and they like her. But if anybody is jealous, I should think +they might remember that there is safety in numbers." + +"Oh, that's all very well! But she wants _power_, and she doesn't care a +rap how she gets it. She is a dangerous, intriguing woman--and she just +trades upon her beauty!" + +Tressady, who had been leaning with his face averted from her, turned +round with sparkling eyes. + +"You foolish child!" he said slowly--"you foolish child!" + +Her lips twitched. She put out a shaking hand to her cloak, that had +fallen from her arms. + +"Oh! very well. I sha'n't stay here to be talked to like that, so +good-night." + +He took no notice. He walked up to her and put his hands on her +shoulders. + +"Don't you know what it is"--he spoke with a curious imperiousness--"that +protects any woman--or any man either for the matter of that--from +Marcella Maxwell's beauty? Don't you know that she adores her husband?" + +"That's a pose, of course, like everything else," cried Letty, trying to +move herself away; "you once said it was." + +"Before I knew her. It's not a pose--it's the secret of her whole life." + +He walked back to the mantelpiece, conscious of a sudden rise of inward +bitterness. + +"Well, I shall go to bed," said Letty, again half rising. "You might, I +think, have had the kindness and the good taste to say you were sorry I +should have the humiliation of finding out where my husband spends his +evenings, from Harding Watton!" + +Tressady was stung. + +"When have I ever concealed what I did from you?" he asked her hotly. + +Letty, who was standing stiff and scornful, tossed her head +without speaking. + +"That means," said Tressady after a pause, "that you don't take my word +for it--that you suspect me of deceiving you before to-night?" + +Letty still said nothing. His eyes flashed. Then a pang of conscience +smote him. He took up his cigarette again with a laugh. + +"I think we are both a pair of babies," he said, as he pretended to look +for matches. "You know very well that you don't really think I tell you +mean lies. And let me assure you, my dear child, that fate did not mean +Lady Maxwell to have lovers--and that she never will have them. But when +that's said there's something else to say." + +He went up to her again, and touched her arm. + +"You and I couldn't have this kind of scene, Letty, could we, if +everything was all right?" + +Her breast rose and fell hurriedly. + +"Oh! I supposed you would want to retaliate--to complain on your side!" + +"Yes," he said deliberately, "I think I do want to complain. Why is it +that--I began to like going down to see Lady Maxwell--why did I like +talking to her at Castle Luton? Well! of course it's pleasant to be with +a beautiful person--I don't deny that in the least. But she might have +been as beautiful as an angel, and I mightn't have cared twopence about +her. She has something much less common than beauty. It's very simple, +too--I suppose it's only _sympathy_--just that. Everybody feels the same. +When you talk to her she seems to care about it; she throws her mind into +yours. And there's a charm about it--there's no doubt of that." + +He had begun his little speech meaning to be perfectly frank and +honest--to appeal to her better nature and his own. But something +stopped him abruptly, perhaps the sudden perception that he was after +playing the hypocrite--perhaps the consciousness that he was only making +matters worse. + +"It's a pity you didn't say all these things before," she said, with +a hard laugh, "instead of denouncing the political woman, as you +used to do." + +He sat down on the arm of the chair beside her, balancing lightly, with +his hands in his pockets. + +"Did I denounce the political woman? Well, the Lord knows I'm not in love +with her now! It isn't politics, my dear, that are attaching--it's the +kind of human being. Ah! well, don't let's talk of it. Let's go back to +that point of sympathy. There's more in it than I used to think. Suppose, +for instance, you were to try and take a little more interest in my +political work than you do? Suppose you were to try and see money matters +from my point of view, instead of driving us"--he paused a moment, then +went on coolly, lifting his thin, long-chinned face to her as she stood +quivering beside him--"driving us into expenses that will, sooner or +later, be the ruin of us--that rob us, too, of self-respect. Suppose you +were to take a little more account, also, of my taste in people? I am +afraid I don't like Harding, though he is your cousin, and I don't +certainly see why he should furnish our drawing-rooms and empty our purse +for us as he has been doing. Then, as to Lord Cathedine, I'm really not +over-particular, but when I hear that fellow's in the house, my impulse +is to catch the nearest hansom and drive away from it. I heard him speak +to his wife to-night in a way for which he ought to be kicked down Oxford +Street--and, in general, I should say that it takes the shine off a +person to be much seen with Cathedine." + +The calm attitude--the voice, just a shade interrogative, exasperated +Letty still more. She, too, sat down, her cheeks flaming. + +"I am _extremely_ obliged to you! You really couldn't have been more +frank. I am sorry that _nothing_ I do pleases you. You must be quite +sorry by now you married me--but really I didn't force you! Why should I +give up my friends? You know very well you won't give up Lady Maxwell." + +She looked at him keenly, her little foot beating the ground. +George started. + +"But what is there to give up?" he cried. "Come and see her +yourself--come with me, and make friends with her. You would be +quite welcome." + +But as he spoke he knew that he was talking absurdly, and that Letty had +reason for her laugh. + +"Thank you! Lady Maxwell made it _quite_ plain to me at Castle Luton that +she didn't want _my_ acquaintance. I certainly sha'n't force myself upon +her any more. But if you'll give up going to see her--well, perhaps I'll +see what can be done to meet your wishes; though, of course, I think all +you say about Harding and Lord Cathedine is just unreasonable prejudice!" + +George was silent. His mind was torn between the pricks of a conscience +that told him Letty had in truth, as far as he was concerned, a far more +real grievance than she imagined, and a passionate intellectual contempt +for the person who could even distantly imagine that Marcella Maxwell +belonged to the same category as other women, and was to be won by the +same arts as they. At last he broke out impatiently: + +"I cannot possibly show discourtesy to one who has been nothing but +kindness to me, as she is to scores of others--to old friends like Edward +Watton, or new ones like--" + +"She wants your vote, of course!" threw in Letty, with an excited laugh. +"_Either_ she is a flirt--_or_ she wants your vote. Why should she take +so much notice of you? She isn't your side--she wants to get hold of +you--and it makes you ridiculous. People just laugh at you and her!" She +turned upon him passionately. A little more, and the wish to say the +wounding, venomous thing would have grown like a madness upon her. But +George kept his self-possession. + +"Well, they may laugh," he said, with a strong effort to speak +good-humouredly. "But politics aren't managed like that, as you and they +will find out. Votes are not so simple as they sound." + +He got up and walked away from her as he spoke. As usual, his mood was +beginning to cool. He saw no way out. They must both accept the _status +quo_. No radical change was possible. It is character that makes +circumstance, and character is inexorable. + +"Well, of course I didn't altogether believe that you would really be +such a fool, and wreck all your prospects!" said Letty, violently, her +feverish eyes intent the while on her husband and on the thin fingers +once more busied with the cigarette. "There now! I think we have had +enough of this! It doesn't seem to have led to much, does it?" + +"No," said George, coolly; "but perhaps we shall come to see more alike +in time. I don't want to tyrannise--only to show you what I think. Shall +I carry up your cloak for you?" + +He approached her punctiliously. Letty gathered her wraps upon her arm in +a disdainful silence, warding him off with a gesture. As he opened the +door for her she turned upon him: + +"You talk of my extravagance, but you never seem to consider what you +might do to make up to me for the burden of being your mother's relation! +You expect me to put up with the annoyance and ridicule of belonging to +her--and to let her spend all your money besides. I give you fair warning +that I sha'n't do it! I shall try and spend it on my side, that she +sha'n't get it." + +She was perfectly conscious that she was behaving like a vixenish child, +but she could not restrain herself. This strange new sense that she could +neither bend nor conquer him was becoming more than she could bear. + +George looked at her, half inclined to shake her first, and then insist +on making friends. He was conscious that he could probably assert himself +with success if he tried. But the impulse failed him. He merely said, +without any apparent temper, "Then I shall have to see if I can invent +some way of protecting both myself and you." + +She flung through the door, and almost ran through the long passage to +the stairs, in a sobbing excitement. A sudden thought struck George as he +stood looking after her. He pursued her, caught her at the foot of the +stairs, and held her arm strongly. + +"Letty! I wasn't to tell you, but I choose to break my promise. Don't be +too cruel, my dear, or too angry. My mother is dying!" + +She scanned him deliberately, the flushed face--the signs of strongly +felt yet strongly suppressed emotion. The momentary consciousness flew +through her that he was at bottom a very human, impressionable +creature--that if she could but have broken down and thrown herself on +his neck, this miserable evening might open for both of them a new way. +But her white-heat of passion was too strong. She pushed him away. + +"She made you believe that this morning? Then I'd better hurry up at +Ferth; for of course it only means that there will be a fresh list of +debts directly!" + +He let her go, and she heard him walk quickly back to his study and +shut the door. She stared after him triumphantly for a moment, then +rushed upstairs. + +In her room her maid was waiting for her. Grier's sallow face and gloomy +eyes showed considerable annoyance at being kept up so late. But she said +nothing, and Letty, who in general was only too ready to admit the woman +to a vulgar familiarity, for once held her tongue. Her state of +excitement and exhaustion, however, was evident, and Grier bestowed many +furtive, examining glances upon her mistress in the course of the +undressing. She thought she had heard "them" quarrelling on the stairs. +What a pity she had been too tired and cross to listen! + +Of course they must come to quarrelling! Grier's sympathies were +tolerably impartial. She had no affection for her mistress, and she +cordially disliked Sir George, knowing perfectly well that he thought ill +of her. But she had a good place, and meant to keep it if she could. To +which end she had done her best to strengthen a mean hold on Letty. Now, +as she was brushing out Letty's brown hair, and silently putting two and +two together the while, an idea occurred to her which pleased her. + +After Grier had left her, Letty could not make up her mind to go to bed. +She was still pacing up and down the room in her dressing-gown, when she +heard a knock--Grier's knock. + +"Come in!" + +"Please, my lady," said Grier, appearing with something in her hand, +"doesn't this belong to your photograph box? I found it on the floor in +Sir George's dressing-room this morning." + +Letty hastily took it from her, and, in spite of an instant effort to +control herself, the red flushed again into a cheek that had been very +pale when Grier came in. + +"Where did you find it?" + +"It had tumbled off Sir George's table, I think," said Grier, with +elaborate innocence; "someone must have took it out of your photo-box." + +"Thank you," said Letty, shortly. "You may go, Grier." + +The maid went, and Letty was left standing with the photograph in +her hands. + +Two days before Tressady had been in Edward Watton's room in St. +James's Street, and had seen this amateur photograph of Marcella +Maxwell and her boy on Watton's table. The poetic charm of it had +struck him so forcibly that he had calmly put it in his pocket, telling +the protesting owner that he in his _role_ of great friend could easily +procure another, and must beware of a grudging spirit. Watton had +laughed and submitted, and Tressady had carried off the picture, +honestly meaning to present it to Letty for a collection of +contemporary "beauties" she had just begun to make. + +Later in the day, as he was taking off his coat in the evening to dress +for dinner, Tressady drew out the photograph. A sudden instinct, which he +himself could hardly have explained, made him delay handing it over to +Letty. He thrust it into the top tray of his collar-and-shirt wardrobe. +Two days later the butler, coming in a hurry before breakfast to put out +his master's clothes, shook the photograph out of the folds of the shirt, +where it had hidden itself, without noticing what he had done. The +picture slipped between the wardrobe and the wall of the recess in which +it stood, was discovered later in the day by the housemaid, and given to +Lady Tressady's maid. + +Letty laid the photograph down on the dressing-table, and stood leaning +upon her hands, looking at it. Marcella was sitting under one of the +cedars of Maxwell Court with her boy beside her. A fine corner of the old +house made a background, and the photographer had so dealt with his +picture as to make it a whole, full of significance, and culminating in +the two faces--the sensitive, speaking beauty of the mother, the sturdy +strength of the child. Marcella had never looked more wistful, more +attaching. It was the expression of a woman at rest, in the golden moment +of her life, yet conscious--as all happiness is conscious--of the common +human doom that nothing escapes. Meanwhile the fine, lightly furrowed +brow above the eyes spoke action and power; so did the strong waves of +black hair blown back by the breeze. A noble, strenuous creature, yet +quivering through and through with the simplest, most human instincts. So +one must needs read her, as one looked from the eyes to the eager clasp +of the arm about the boy. + +Letty studied it, as though she would pierce and stab it with looking. +Then, with a sudden wild movement, she took up the picture, and tore it +into twenty pieces. The pieces she left strewn on the floor, so that they +must necessarily strike the eye of anyone coming into the room. And in a +few more minutes she was in bed, lying still and wakeful, with her face +turned away from the door. + +About an hour afterwards there was a gentle knock at her door. She made +no answer, and Tressady came in. He stepped softly, thinking she was +asleep, and presently she heard him stop, with a stifled exclamation. She +made no sound, but from his movement she guessed that he was picking up +the litter on the floor. Then she heard it thrown into the basket under +her writing-table, and she waited, holding her breath. + +Tressady walked to a far window, drew a curtain back softly, and stood +looking out at the starlight over the deserted street. Once, finding him +so still, she ventured a hasty glance at him over the edge of the sheet. +But she could see nothing. And after a time he turned and came to his +accustomed place beside her. In twenty minutes at latest, she knew, much +to her chagrin, that he was asleep. + +She herself had no sleep. She was stung to wakefulness by that recurrent +sense of the irrevocable which makes us say to ourselves in wonder, "How +can it have happened? Two hours ago--such a little while--it had not +happened!" And the mind clutches at the bygone hour, so near, so +eternally distant--clutches at its ghost, in vain. + +Yet it seemed to her now that she had been jealous from the first moment +when she and George had come into contact with Marcella Maxwell. During +the long hours of this night her jealousy burnt through her like a hot +pain--jealousy, mixed with reluctant memory. Half consciously she had +always assumed that it had been a piece of kindness on her part to marry +George Tressady at all. She had almost condescended to him. After all, +she had played with ambitions so much higher! At any rate, she had taken +for granted that he would always admire and be grateful to her--that in +return for her pretty self she might at least dispose of him and his as +she pleased. + +And now, what galled her intolerably was this discernment of the way in +which--at least since their honeymoon--he must have been criticising +and judging her--judging her by comparison with another woman. She +seemed to see at a glance, the whole process of his mind, and her +vanity writhed under it. + +How much else than vanity? As she turned restlessly from side to side, +possessed by plans for punishing George, for humiliating Lady Maxwell, +and avenging herself, she said to herself that she did not care,--that it +was not worth caring about,--that she would either bring George to his +senses, or manage to amuse herself without him. + +But in reality she was held tortured and struggling all the time in the +first grip of that masterful hold wherewith the potter lifts his clay +when he lays it on the eternal whirring of the wheel. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +The newspapers of the morning following these events--that is to say, +of Saturday, July 5--gave very lively accounts of the East End meeting, +at which, as some put it, Lady Maxwell "had got her answer" from the +East End mob. The stone-throwing, the blow, the woman, and the cause +were widely discussed that same day throughout the clubs and +drawing-rooms of Mayfair and Belgravia, no less than among the clubs and +"publics" of the East End; and the guests at country-house parties as +they hurried out of town for the Sunday, carried the gossip of the +matter far and wide. The Maxwells went down alone to Brookshire, and the +curious visitors who called in St. James's Square "to inquire" came away +with nothing to report. + +"A put-up thing, the whole business," said Mrs. Watton, indignantly, to +her son Harding, as she handed him the "Observer," on the Sunday morning, +in the dining-room of the family house in Tilney Street. "Of course, a +little martyrdom just now suits her book excellently. How that man _can_ +let her make him a laughing-stock in this way--" + +"A laughing-stock?" said Harding, smiling. "Not at all. Don't spoil your +first remark, mother. For, of course, it is all practical politics. The +handsomest woman in England doesn't give her temple to be gashed for +nothing. You will see what her friends will make out of it!--and out of +the brutal violence of our mob." + +"Disgusting!" said Mrs. Watton, playing severely with the lid of the +mustard-pot that stood beside her. + +She and Harding were enjoying a late breakfast _tete-a-tete._ The old +Squire had finished long before, and was already doing his duty with a +volume of sermons in the library upstairs, preparatory to going to +church. Mrs. Watton and Harding, however, would accompany him thither +presently; for Harding was a great supporter of the Establishment. + +The son raised his shoulders at his mother's adjective. + +"What I want to know," he said, "is whether Lady Maxwell is going to bag +George Tressady, or not. He brought her home from the meeting on Friday." + +"Brought her home from the meeting?--_George Tressady?_" + +Mrs. Watton raised her masculine head and frowned at her son, as though +he were, in some sense, personally responsible for this unseemly fact. + +"He has been haunting her in the East End for weeks. I got that out of +Edward. But, of course, one knew that was going to happen as soon as +one saw them together at Castle Luton. She throws her flies cleverly, +that woman!" + +"All I can say is," observed Mrs. Watton, ponderously, "that in any +decent state of society such a woman would be banned!" + +Harding rose, and stood by the open window caressing his moustache. It +was a perception of long standing with him, that life would have been +better worth living had his mother possessed a sense of humour. + +"It seems to me," his mother resumed after a pause, "that someone at +least should give Letty a hint." + +"Oh! Letty can take care of herself," said Watton, laughing. He might +have said, if he had thought it worth while, that somebody had already +given Letty a hint. Tressady, it appeared, disliked him. Well, people +that disliked you were fair game. However, in spite of Tressady's +dislike, he had been able to amuse himself a good deal with Letty and +Letty's furnishing during the last few months. Harding, who prided +himself on the finest of tastes, liked to be consulted; he liked +anything, also, that gave him importance, if it were only with the master +of a curiosity shop, and, under cover of Letty's large dealings, he had +carried off various spoils of his own for his rooms in the Temple--spoils +which were not to be despised--at a very moderate price indeed. + +"Who could have thought George Tressady would turn out such a weak +creature," said his mother, rising, "when one remembers how Lord Fontenoy +believed in him?" + +"And does still believe in him, more or less," said Harding; "but +Fontenoy will have to be warned." + +He looked at the clock, to see if there was time for a cigarette before +church, lit it, and, leaning against the window, gazed towards the hazy +park with a meditative air. + +"Do you mean there is any question of his ratting?" said his mother. + +Harding raised his eyebrows. + +"Well, no--hardly anything so gross as that. But you can see all the +spirit has gone out of him. He does no work for us. The party gets +nothing out of him." + +Harding spoke as if he had the party in his pocket. His mother looked at +him with a severely concealed admiration. There were few limits to her +belief in Harding. But it was not her habit to flatter her sons. + +"What makes one so mad," she said, as she sailed towards the door in a +stiff rustle of Sunday brocade, "is the way in which the people who +admire her talk of her. When one thinks that all this 'slumming,' and all +this stuff about the poor, only means keeping her husband in office and +surrounding herself with a court of young men, it turns one sick!" + +"My dear mother, we keep all our little hypocrisies," said Harding, +indulgently. "Don't forget that Lady Maxwell provides me with a deal of +good copy." + +And after his mother had left him he smoked on, thinking with pleasure of +an article of his on "The Woman of the Slums," packed with allusions to +Marcella Maxwell, which was to appear in the next number of the +"Haymarket Reporter," the paper that he and Fontenoy were now running. +Harding was not the editor. He disliked drudgery and office-hours; and +his father was good for enough to live upon. But he was a powerful +adviser in the conduct of the new journal, and wrote, perhaps, the +smartest articles. + +The paper, indeed, was written by the smartest people conceivable, and +had achieved the smartest combinations. "Liberty" was its catchword; but +the employer must be absolute. To care or think about religion was +absurd; but whoso threw a stone at the Established Church, let him die +the death. Christianity must be steadily, even ferociously supported; in +the policing of an unruly world it was indispensable. But the perennial +butt of the paper was the fool who "went about doing good." The young men +who lived in "settlements," for instance, and gave University Extension +Lectures--the paper pursued all such with a hungry malice, only less +biting than that wherewith day by day it attacked Lord Maxwell, the arch +offender of all the philanthropic tribe. To help a man who had toiled his +ten or twelve hours in the workshop or the mine to read Homer or Dante in +the evening,--well! in the language of Hedda Gabler "people don't do +these things,"--not people with any sense of the humorous or the seemly. +Harding and his crew had required a good deal of help in their time +towards the reading of those authors; that, however, was only their due, +and in the order of the universe. The same universe had sent the miner +below to dig coals for his betters, while Harding Watton went to college. + +But the last and worst demerit in the eyes of Harding and his set was +that old primitive offence that Cain already found so hard to bear. Half +the violence which the new paper had been lavishing on Maxwell--apart +from passionate conviction of the Fontenoy type, which also spoke through +it--sprang from this source. Maxwell, in spite of his obvious drawbacks, +threatened to succeed, to be accepted, to take a large place in English +political life. And his wife, too, reigned, and had her way without the +help of clever young men who write. There was the sting. Harding at any +rate found it intolerable. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile, in spite of newspapers to right of it and newspapers to left +of it, the political coach clattered on. + +The following day--Monday--was a day of early arrivals, packed benches, +and much excitement in the House of Commons; for the division on the +second reading was to be taken after the Home Secretary's reply on the +debate. Dowson was expected to get up about ten o'clock, and it was +thought that the division would be over by eleven. + +On this afternoon and evening Fontenoy was ubiquitous. At least so it +seemed to Tressady. Whenever one put one's head into the Smoking-room or +the Library, whenever one passed through the Lobby, or rushed on to the +Terrace for ten minutes' fresh air, Fontenoy's great brow and rugged face +were always to be seen, and always in fresh company. + +The heterogeneous character of the Opposition with which the Government +was confronted, the conflicting groups and interests into which it was +split up, offered large scope for the intriguing, contriving genius of +the man. And he was spending it lavishly. The small eyes were more +invisible, the circles round them more saucer-like than ever. + +Meanwhile George Tressady had never been so keenly conscious as on +this critical afternoon that his party had begun to drop him out of +its reckonings. Consultations that would once have included him as a +matter of course were going on without him. During the whole of this +busy day Fontenoy even had hardly spoken to him; the battle was +leaving him on one side. + +Well, what room for bitterness?--though, with the unreason that no man +escapes, he was not without bitterness. He had disappointed them as a +debater--and, in other ways, what had he done for them since Whitsuntide? +No doubt also the mention of his name in the reports of the Mile End +meeting had not been without its effect. He believed that Fontenoy's +personal regard for him still held. Otherwise, he was beginning to feel +himself placed in a tacit isolation. + +What wonder, good Lord! During the dinner-hour he found himself in a +corner of the library, dreaming over a biography of Lord Melbourne. Poor +Melbourne! in those last tragic years of waiting and pining, every day +expecting the proffer of office that never came and the familiar +recognition that would be his no more. But Melbourne was old, and had +had his day. + +"I wanted to speak to you," said a hoarse voice, over his shoulder. + +"Say on, and sit down," said George, smiling, and pushing forward a chair +beside him. "I should think you'll want a week's sleep after this." + +"Have you got some time to spare this week," said Fontenoy, abruptly, as +he sat down. + +George hesitated. + +"Well, no. I ought to go down to the country immediately, and see after +my own affairs and the strike, before Committee begins. There is a +meeting of coal-owners on Wednesday." + +"What I want wouldn't take long," said Fontenoy, persistently, after a +pause. "I hear you have been going round workshops lately?" + +His keen, peremptory eyes fixed his companion. + +"I had a round or two with Everard," said George. "We saw a fair +representative lot." + +The thought that flashed through Fontenoy's mind was, "Why the deuce +didn't you speak of it to me?" Aloud, he said with impatience: + +"Representing what Everard chose to show, I should think. However, what I +want is this. You know the series of extracts from reports that has been +going on lately in the 'Chronicle.'" + +George nodded. + +"We want something done to correct the impression that has been made. You +and I know perfectly well that the vast majority of workshops work +factory-hours and an average of four and a half days a week. You have +just had personal experience, and you can write. Will you do three or +four signed articles for the 'Reporter' this week or next? Of course the +office will give you every help." + +George considered. + +"I think not," he said presently, looking up. "I shouldn't do it well. +Perhaps I have become too conscious of the exceptions--the worst cases. +Frankly, the whole thing has become more of a problem to me than it was." + +Fontenoy moved, and grunted uneasily. + +"Does that mean," he said at last, in his harshest manner, "that you +will feel any difficulty in--?" + +"In voting? No. I shall vote right enough. I am all for delay. This +particular Bill doesn't convince me any more than it did. But I don't +want to take a strong public part just at present." + +The two men eyed each other in silence. + +"I thought there was something brewing," said Fontenoy at last. + +"Well, I'm not sorry to have had these few words," was George's reply, +after a pause. "I wanted to tell you that, though I shall vote, I don't +think I shall speak much more. I don't believe I'm the stuff people in +Parliament ought to be made of. I shall be remorseful presently for +having led you into a mistake!" He forced a smile. + +"I made no mistake," said Fontenoy, grimly, and departed. Then, as he +walked down the corridor, he completed his sentence--"except in not +seeing that you were the kind of man to be made a fool of by women!" + +First of all, a hasty marriage with a silly girl who could be no help to +him or to the cause; now, according to Watton--who had called upon +Fontenoy that morning, at his private house, to discuss various matters +of business--the Lady-Maxwell fever in a pronounced form. Most likely. It +was the best explanation. + +The leader's own sense of annoyance and disappointment was considerable. +There was no man for whom he had felt so much personal liking as for +Tressady since the fight began. + +Somewhere before midnight the division on the second reading was taken, +amid all those accompaniments of crowd, expectation, and commotion, that +are usually evoked by the critical points of a contested measure. The +majority for Government was forty-four--less by twenty-four votes than +its normal figure. + +As the cheers and counter-cheers subsided, George found himself borne +into the Lobby with the crowd pouring out of the House. As he approached +the door leading to the outer lobby, a lady in front of him turned. +George received a lightning impression of beauty, of a kind of anxious +joy, and recognised Marcella Maxwell. + +She held out her hand. + +"Well, the first stage is over!" she said. + +"Yes, and well over," he said, smiling. "But you have shed a great many +men already." + +"Oh! I know--I know. The next few weeks will be intolerable; one will +feel sure of nobody." Then her voice changed--took a certain shyness. "A +good many people from here are coming down to us at Mile End during the +next few weeks--will you come some time, and bring Lady Tressady?" + +"Thank you," said George, rather formally. "It is very kind of you." +Then, in another voice: "And you are really none the worse?" + +His eyes sought the injured temple, and she instinctively put up her +hand to the black wave of hair that had been drawn forward so as to +conceal the mark. + +"Oh no! That boy was not an expert, luckily. How absurd the papers +have been!" + +George shook his head. + +"I don't know what else one could expect," he said, laughing. + +"Not at all!"--the flush mounted in the delicate hollow of the cheek. +"Why should there be any more fuss about a woman's being struck than a +man? We don't want any of this extra pity and talk." + +"Human nature, I am afraid," said George, raising his shoulders. Did she +really suppose that women could mix in the political fight on the same +terms as men--could excite no more emotion there than men? Folly! + +Then Maxwell, who was standing behind her, came forward, greeted Tressady +kindly, and they talked for a few minutes about the evening's debate. The +keen look of the elder scanned the younger's face and manner the while +with some minuteness. As for George, his dialogue with the Minister, at +which more than one passer-by threw looks of interest and amusement, gave +him no particular pleasure. Maxwell's qualities were not of the kind that +specially appealed to him; nor was he likely to attract Maxwell. +Nevertheless, he could have wished their ten minutes' talk to last +interminably, merely because of the excuse it gave him to be near +her!--played upon by her movements and her tones. He talked to Maxwell of +speeches, and votes, and little incidents of the day. And all the time he +knew how she was surrounded; how the crowd that was always gathering +about her came and went; with whom she talked; above all, how that eager, +sensitive charm which she had shown in its fulness to him--perhaps to +him only, beside her husband, of all this throng--played through her +look, her voice, her congratulations, and her dismays. For had he not +seen her in distress and confusion--seen her in tears, wrestling with +herself? His heart caressed the thought like a sacred thing, all the time +that he was conscious of her as the centre of this political throng--the +adored, detested, famous woman, typical in so many ways of changing +custom and of an expanding world. + +Then, in a flash, as it were, the crowd had thinned, the Maxwells had +gone, and George was running down the steps of the members' entrance, +into the rain outside. He seemed to carry with him the scent of a +rose,--the rose she had worn on her breast,--and his mind was tormented +with the question he had already asked himself: "How is it going to end?" + +He pushed on through the wet streets, lost in a hundred miseries and +exaltations. The sensation was that of a man struggling with a rising +tide, carried helplessly in the rush and swirl of it. Yet conscience had +very little to say, and, when it did speak, got little but contempt for +its pains. What had any clumsy code, social or moral, to do with it? When +would Marcella Maxwell, by word or look or thought, betray the man she +loved? Not till + +A' the seas gang dry, my dear, +An the rocks melt wi' the sun! + +How he found his way home he hardly knew; for it was a moment of blind +crisis with him. All that crowded, dramatic scene of the House--its +lights, its faces, its combinations--had vanished from his mind. What +remained was a group of three people, contemplated in a kind of +terror--terror of what this thing might grow to! Once, in St. James's +Street, the late hour, the soft, gusty night, suddenly reminded him of +that other gusty night in February when he had walked home after his +parting with Letty, so well content with himself and the future, and +had spoken to Marcella Maxwell for the first time amid that little +crowd in the Mall. Nothing had been irreparable then. He had his life +in his hands. + +As for this passion, that was creeping into all his veins, poisoning and +crippling all his vitalities, he was still independent enough of it to be +able to handle it with the irony it deserved. For it was almost as +ludicrous as it was pitiable. He did not want any man of the world, any +Harding Watton, to tell him that. + +What amazed him was the revelation of his own nature that was coming out +of it. He had always been rather proud to think of himself as an +easygoing fellow with no particular depths. Other men were proud of a +"storm period"--of feasting and drinking deep--made a pose of it. +Tressady's pose had been the very opposite. Out of a kind of good taste, +he had wished to take life lightly, with no great emotion. And marriage +with Letty had seemed to satisfy this particular canon. + +Now, for the first time, certain veils were drawn aside, and he knew what +this hunger for love, and love's response, can do with a man--could do +with _him_, were it allowed its scope! + +Had Marcella Maxwell been another woman, less innocent, less secure! + +As it was, Tressady no sooner dared to give a sensuous thought to her +beauty than his own passion smote him back--bade him beware lest he +should be no longer fit to speak and talk with her, actually or +spiritually. For in this hopeless dearth of all the ordinary rewards and +encouragements of love he had begun to cultivate a sort of second, or +spiritual, life, in which she reigned. Whenever he was alone he walked +with her, consulted her, watched her dear eyes, and the soul playing +through them. And so long as he could maintain this dream he was +conscious of a sort of dignity, of reconciliation with himself; for the +passions and tragedies of the soul always carry with them this dignity, +as Dante, of all mortals, knew first and best. + +But with the turn into Upper Brook Street, the dream suddenly and +painfully gave way. He saw his own house, and could forget Letty and the +problem of his married life no more. What was he going to do with her and +it? What relation was he going to establish with his wife, through all +these years that stretched so interminably before them? Remorse mingled +with the question. But perhaps impatience, still more--impatience of his +own misery, of this maze of emotion in which he felt himself entangled, +as it were against his will. + +During the three days which had passed since his quarrel with Letty, +their common life had been such a mere confusion of jars and discomforts +that George's hedonist temper was almost at the end of its patience; yet +so far, he thought, he had not done badly in the way of forbearance. +After the first moment of angry disgust, he had said to himself that the +tearing up of the photograph was a jealous freak, which Letty had a right +to if it pleased her. At any rate, he had made no comment whatever upon +it, and had done his best to resume his normal manner with her the next +day. She had been, apparently, only the more enraged; and, although there +had been no open quarrelling since, her cutting, contemptuous little airs +had been very hard to bear. Nor was it possible for George to ignore her +exasperated determination to have her own way in the matter both of +friends and expenses. + +As he took his latch-key out of the lock, and turned up the electric +light, he saw two handsome marqueterie chairs standing in the hall. He +went to look at them in some perplexity. Ah! no doubt they had been sent +as specimens. Letty had grown dissatisfied with the chairs originally +bought for the dining-room. He remembered to have heard her say something +about a costly set at a certain Asher's, that Harding had found. + +He studied them for a few moments, his mouth tightening. Then, instead of +going upstairs, he went into his study, and sat down to his table to +write a letter. + +Yes--he had better go off to Staffordshire by the early train; and this +letter, which he would put upon her writing-desk in the drawing-room, +should explain him to Letty. + +The letter was long and candid, yet by no means without tenderness. "I +have written to Asher," it said, "to direct him to send in the morning +for the chairs I found in the hall. They are too expensive for us, and I +have told him that I will not buy them, I need not say that in writing to +him I have avoided every word that could be annoying to you. If you would +only trust me, and consult me a little about such things,--trifles as +they be,--life just now would be easier than it is." + +Then he passed to a very frank statement of their financial position, and +of his own steady resolve not to allow himself to drift into hopeless +debt. The words were clear and sharp, but not more so than the course of +the preceding six weeks made absolutely necessary. And their very +sharpness led him to much repentant kindness at the end. No doubt she was +disappointed both in him and in his circumstances; and, certainly, +differences had developed between them that they had never foreseen at +the time of their engagement. But to "make a good thing" of living +together was never easy. He asked her not to despair, not to judge him +hardly. He would do his best--let her only give him back her confidence +and affection. + +He closed the letter, and then paced restlessly about the little room for +a time. It seemed to him that he was caught in a vice--that neither +happiness, nor decent daily comfort, nor even the satisfactions of +ambition, were ever to be his. + +Next day he was off to Euston before Letty was properly awake. She found +his letter waiting for her when she descended, and spent the day in a +pale excitement. Yet by the end of it she had pretty well made up her +mind. She would have to give in on the money question. George's figures +and her natural shrewdness convinced her that the ultimate results of +fighting him in this matter could only be more uncomfortable for herself +than for him. But as to her freedom in choosing her own friends, or as +to her jealousy of Lady Maxwell, she would never give in. If George had +ceased to court his wife, then he could have nothing to say if she +looked for the amusement and admiration that were her due from other +people. There was no harm in that. Everybody else did it; and she was +not going to be pretty and young for nothing. Whereupon she sat down and +wrote a line to Lord Cathedine to tell him that she and "Tully" would be +at the Opera on the following night, and to beg him to make sure that +she got her "cards for Clarence House." Moreover, she meant to make use +of him to procure her a card for a very smart ball, the last of the +season, which was coming off in a fortnight. That could be arranged, no +doubt, at the Opera. + + * * * * * + +George returned from the North in a few days looking, if possible, +thinner and more careworn than when he went. He had found the strike a +very stubborn business. Burrows was riding the storm triumphantly; and +while upon his own side Tressady looked in vain for a "man," there was a +dogged determination to win among the masters. George's pugnacity shared +it fully. But he was beginning to ask himself a number of questions about +these labour disputes which, apparently, his co-employers did not ask +themselves. Was it that here, no less than in matters that concerned the +Bill before Parliament, _her_ influence, helped by the power of an +expanding mind, had developed in him that fatal capacity for sympathy, +for the double-seeing of compromise, which takes from a man all the joy +of battle. + +Letty, at any rate, was not troubled by anything of the sort. When he +came back he found that she was ready to be on fairly amicable terms with +him. Moreover, she had postponed the more expensive improvements and +changes she had begun to make at Perth against his will; nor was there +any sign of the various new purchases for the London house with which she +had threatened him. On the other hand, she ceased to consult him about +her own engagements; and she let him know, though without any words on +the subject, that she had entirely broken with his mother--would neither +see her nor receive her. As her attitude on this point involved--or, +apparently, must involve--a refusal to accept her husband's statement +made solemnly under strong emotion, George's pride took it in absolute +silence. No doubt it was her revenge upon him for their crippled +income--and for Lady Maxwell. + +The effect of her behaviour on this point was to increase his own pity +for his mother. He told her frankly that Letty could not get over the +inroads upon their income and the shortening of their resources produced +by the Shapetsky debt, just at a time when they should have been able to +spend, and were already hampered by the state of the coal trade. It would +be better that she and Letty should not meet for a time. He would do his +best to make it up. + +Lady Tressady took his news with a curious equanimity. + +"Well, she always hated me!" she said--"I don't exactly know why--and was +a little jealous of my gowns, too, I think. Don't mind, George. I must +say it out. You know, she doesn't really dress very well--Letty doesn't. +Though, my goodness, the bills! Wait till you see them before you call +_me_ extravagant. You should make her go to that new woman--what do they +call her? She's a _darling_, and such a style! Never mind about Letty; +you needn't bother. I daresay she isn't very nice to _you_ about it. But +if you don't come and see me, I shall cut my throat, and leave a note on +the dressing-table. It would spoil your career dreadfully, so you'd +better take care." + +But, indeed, George came, without any pressing, almost every day. He saw +her in her bursts of gaiety and affectation, when the habits of a +lifetime asserted themselves as strongly as ever; and he saw her in her +moments of pain and collapse, when she could hide the omens of inexorable +physical ill neither from herself nor him. By the doctor's advice, he +ceased to press her to give in, to resign herself to bed and invalidism. +It was best, even physically, to let her struggle on. And he was both +astonished and touched by her pluck. She had never been so repellent to +him as on those many occasions in the past when she had feigned illness +to get her way. Now that Death was really knocking, the half-gay, +half-frightened defiance with which she walked the palace of life, one +moment listening to the sounds at the gate, the next throwing herself +passionately into the revelry within, revealed to the son a new fact +about her--a fact of poetry unutterably welcome. + +Even her fawning dependents, the Fullertons, ceased to annoy him. They +were poor parasites, but she thought for them, and they professed to love +her in return. She had emptied her life of finer things, but this +relation of patron and flatterer, such as it was, did something to fill +the vacancy; and George made no further effort to disturb it. + +It was surprising, indeed, how easily, as the weeks went on, he came +to bear many of those ways of hers which had once set him most on +edge--even her absurd outbursts of affection towards him, and +preposterous praise of him in public. In time he submitted even to +being flown at and kissed before the Fullertons. Amazing into what new +relations that simple perspective of _the end_ will throw all the +stuff of life! + + * * * * * + +In Parliament the weeks rushed by. The first and comparatively +non-contentious sections of the Bill passed with a good deal of talk and +delay. George spoke once or twice, without expecting to speak, +instinctively pleasing Fontenoy where he could. They had now but little +direct intercourse. But George did not feel that his leader had become +his enemy, and was not slow to recognise a magnanimity he had not +foreseen. Yet, after all, he had not offered the worst affront to party +discipline. Fontenoy could still count on his vote. As to the rest of +his party, he saw that he was to be finally reckoned as a "crank," and +let alone. It was not, he found, altogether to be regretted. The position +gave him a new freedom of speech. + +Meanwhile he and Marcella Maxwell rarely met. Week after week passed, and +still Tressady avoided those gatherings at the Mile End house, of which +he heard full accounts from Edward Watton. He once formally asked Letty +if she would go with him to one of Lady Maxwell's East End "evenings," +and she, with equal formality, refused. But he did not take advantage of +her refusal to go himself. Was it fear of his own weakness, or +compunction towards Letty, or the mere dread of being betrayed into +something at once ridiculous and irreparable? + +At the same time, it was surprising how often during these weeks he had +occasion to pass through St. James's Square. Once or twice he saw her go +out or come in, and sometimes was near enough to catch the sudden smile +and look which surely must be the smile and look she gave her friends, +and not to every passing stranger! Once or twice, also, he met her for a +few minutes in the Lobby, or on the Terrace, but always in a crowd. She +never repeated her invitation. He divined that she was, perhaps, vexed +with herself for having seemed to press the point on the night of the +second reading. + + * * * * * + +July drew to an end. The famous "workshop clause" had been debated for +nearly ten days, the whole country, as it were, joining in. One evening +in the last week of the month Naseby and Lady Madeleine were sitting +together in a corner of a vast drawing-room in Carlton House Terrace. +The drawing-room was Mrs. Allison's. She had returned about a fortnight +before from Bad Wildheim, and was now making an effort, for the boy's +sake, to see some society. As she moved about the room in her black silk +and lace she was more gentle, but in a sense more inaccessible, than +ever. She talked with everyone, but her eyes followed her son's auburn +head, with its strange upstanding tufts of hair above the fair, freckled +face; or they watched the door, even when she was most animated. She +looked ill and thin, and the many friends who loved her would have +gladly clung about her and cherished her. But it was not easy to cherish +Mrs. Allison. + +"Do you see how our hostess keeps a watch for Fontenoy?" said Naseby, in +a low voice, to Lady Madeleine. + +Madeleine turned her startled face to him. Nature had given her this +hunted look--the slightly open mouth, the wide eyes of one who +perpetually hears or expects bad news. Naseby did not like it, and had +tried to laugh her out of her scared ways before this. But he had no +sooner laughed at her than he found himself busy--to use Watton's +word--in "stroking" and making it up to her, so tender and clinging was +the girl's whole nature, so golden was her hair, so white her skin! + +"Isn't it the division news she is expecting?" + +"Yes--but don't look so unhappy! She will bear up--even if they are +beaten. And they will be beaten. Fontenoy's hopes have been going down. +The Government will get through this clause at all events--by a shave." + +"What a fuss everybody is making about this Bill!" + +"Well, you don't root up whole industries without a fuss. But, certainly, +Maxwell has roused the country finely." + +"_She_ will break down if it goes on," said Lady Madeleine, in a +melancholy voice. + +Naseby laughed. + +"Not at all! Lady Maxwell was made for war--she thrives on it. Don't you, +too, enjoy it?" + +"I don't know," said the girl, drearily. "I don't know what I was +made for." + +And over her feather fan her wide eyes travelled to the distant ogress +figure of her mother, sitting majestical in black wig and diamonds beside +the Russian Ambassador. Naseby's also travelled thither--unwillingly. It +was a disagreeable fact that Lady Kent had begun to be very amiable to +him of late. + +Lady Madeleine's remark made him silent a moment. Then he looked at +her oddly. + +"I am going to offend you," he said deliberately. "I am going to tell you +that you were made to wear white satin and pearls, and to look as you +look this evening." + +The girl flushed hotly. + +"I knew you despised women," she said, in a strained voice, staring back +at him reproachfully. During her months of distress and humiliation she +had found her only comfort in "movements" and "causes"--in the moral +aspirations generally--so far as her mother would allow her to have +anything to do with them. She had tried, for instance, to work with +Marcella Maxwell--to understand her. + +But Naseby held his ground. + +"Do I despise women because I think they make the grace and poetry of the +world?" he asked her. "And, mind you, I don't draw any lines. Let them be +county councillors and guardians, and inspectors, and queens as much as +they like. I'm very docile. I vote for them. I do as I'm told." + +"Only, you don't think that _I_ can do anything useful!" + +"I don't think you're cut out for a 'platform woman,' if that's what you +mean," he said, laughing--"even Lady Maxwell isn't. And if she was, she +wouldn't count. The women who matter just now--and you women are getting +a terrible amount of influence--more than you've had any time this half +century--are the women who sit at home in their drawing-rooms, wear +beautiful gowns, and attract the men who are governing the country to +come and see them." + +"Lady Maxwell doesn't sit at home and wear beautiful gowns!" + +"I vow she does!" said Naseby, with spirit. "I can vouch for it. I was +caught that way myself. Not that I belong to the men who are governing +the country. And now she has roped me to her chariot for good and all. +Ah, Ancoats! how do you do?" + +He got up to make room for the master of the house as he spoke. But as +he walked away he said to himself, with a kind of delight: "Good! she +didn't turn a hair." + +Lady Madeleine, indeed, received her former suitor with a cool dignity +that might have seemed impossible to anyone so plaintively pretty. He +lingered beside her, twirling his carefully pointed moustache, that +matched the small Richelieu chin, and looking at her with a furtive +closeness from time to time. + +"Well--so you have just come back from Paris?" she said indifferently. + +"Yes; I stayed a day or two after my mother. One didn't want to come back +to this dull hole." + +"Did you see the new piece at the Francais?" + +He made a face. + +"Not I! One couldn't be caught by such _vieux jeu_ as that! There was a +splendid woman in one of the _cafes chantants_--but I suppose you don't +go to _cafes chantants?"_ + +"No," said Madeleine, eyeing him over her fan with a composure that +astonished herself. "No, I don't go to _cafes chantants_." + +Ancoats looked blank a moment, then resumed, with fervour: + +"This woman's divine--_epatant_! Then, at the Chat Noir--but--ah! well, +perhaps you don't go to the Chat Noir?" + +"No, I don't go to the Chat Noir." + +He fidgeted for a minute. She sat silent. Then he said: + +"There are some new French pictures in the next room. Will you come and +see them?" + +"Thank you, I think I'll stay here," she said coldly. + +He lingered another second or two, then departed. The girl drew a long +breath, then instinctively turned her white neck to see if Naseby had +really left her. Strange! he too, from far away, was looking round. In +another moment he was making his way slowly back to her. + + * * * * * + +"Ah, there's Tressady! Now for news." + +The remark was Naseby's. He and Lady Madeleine were, as it happened, +inspecting the very French pictures that the girl had just refused to +look at in Ancoats's company. + +But now they hurried back to the main drawing-room where the Tressadys +were already surrounded by an eager crowd. + +"Eighteen majority," Tressady was saying. "The Socialists saved it at +the last moment, after growling and threatening till nobody knew what +was going to happen. Forty Ministerialists walked out, twenty more, at +least, were away unpaired, and the Old Liberals voted against the +Government to a man." + +"Oh! they'll go--they'll go on the next clause," said an elderly peer, +whose ruddy face glowed with delight. "Serve them right, too! Maxwell's +whole aim is revolution made easy. The most dangerous man we have had for +years! Looks so precious moderate, too, all the time. Tell me how did +Slade vote after all?" + +And Tressady found himself buttonholed by one person after another; +pressed for the events and incidents of the evening: how this person had +voted, how that; how Ministers had taken it; whether, after this Pyrrhic +victory there was any chance of the Bill's withdrawal, or at least of +some radical modification in the coming clauses. Almost everyone in the +crowded room belonged, directly or indirectly, to the governing political +class. Barely three people among them could have given a coherent account +of the Bill itself. But to their fathers and brothers and cousins would +belong the passing or the destroying of it. And in this country there is +no game that amuses so large a number of intelligent people as the +political game. + +"I don't know why he should look so d--d excited over it," said Lord +Cathedine to Naseby in a contemptuous aside, with a motion of the head +towards Tressady, showing pale and tall above the crowd. "He seems to +have voted straight this time, but he's as shaky as he can be. You +never know what that kind of fellow will be up to. Ah, my lady! and +how are you?" + +He made a low bow, and Naseby, turning, saw young Lady Tressady +advancing. + +"Are you, too, talking politics?" said Letty, with affected disgust, +giving her hand to Cathedine and a smile to Naseby. + +"We will now talk of nothing but your scarlet gown," said Cathedine in +her ear. "Amazing!" + +"You like it?" she said, with nonchalant self-possession. "It makes me +look dreadfully wicked, I know." And she threw a complacent glance at a +mirror near, which showed her a gleam of white shoulders in a setting of +flame-coloured tulle. + +"Well, you wouldn't wish to look good," said Cathedine, pulling his +black moustache. "Any fool can do that!" + +"You cynic!" she said, laughing. "Come and talk to me over there. Have +you got me my invitations?" + +Cathedine followed, a disagreeable smile on his full lips, and they +settled themselves in a corner out of the press. Nor were they disturbed +by the sudden hush and parting of the crowd when, five minutes later, +amid a general joyous excitement, Fontenoy walked in. + +Mrs. Allison forgot her usual dignity, and hurried to meet the leader as +he came up to her, with his usual flushed and haggard air. + +"Magnificent!" she said tremulously. "Now you are going to win!" + +He shook his head, and would hardly let himself be congratulated by any +of the admirers, men or women, who pressed to shake hands with him. To +most of them he said, impatiently, that it was no good hallooing till +one was out of the wood, that for his own part he had expected more, and +that the Government might very well rally on the next clause. Then, when +he had effectively chilled the enthusiasm of the room, he drew his +hostess aside. + +"Well, and are you happier?" he said to her in a low voice, his whole +expression changing. + +"Oh, dear friend! don't think of me," she said, putting out a thin hand +to him with a grateful gesture. "Yes, the boy has been very good--he +gives me a great deal of his time. But how can one _know_--how can one +possibly know?" + +Her pale, small face contracted with a look of pain. Fontenoy, too, +frowned as he looked across at Ancoats, who was leaning against the wall +in an affected pose, and quoting bits from a new play to George Tressady. + +After a pause, he said: + +"I think if I were you I should cultivate Tressady. Ancoats likes him. It +might be possible some time for you to work through him." + +The mother assented eagerly, then said, with a smile: + +"But I gather you don't find him much to be depended on in the House?" + +Fontenoy shrugged his shoulders. + +"Lady Maxwell has bedevilled him somehow. You're responsible!" + +"Poor Castle Luton! You must tell me how it and I can make up. But you +don't mean that there is any thought of his going over?" + +"His vote's all safe--I suppose. He would make too great a fool of +himself if he failed us there. But he has lost all heart for the +business. And Harding Watton tells me it's all her doing. She has been +taking him about in the East End--getting her friends to show him round." + +"And _now_ you are in the mood to put the women down--to show them +their place?" + +She looked at him with gentle humour--a very delicate high-bred figure, +in her characteristic black-and-white. Fontenoy's whole aspect changed as +he caught the reference to their own relation. The look of premature old +age, of harsh fatigue, was for the moment effaced by something young and +ardent as he bent towards her. + +"No--I take the rough with the smooth. Lady Maxwell may do her worst. We +have the counter-charm." + +A flush showed itself in her lined cheek. She was fourteen years older +than he, and had refused a dozen times to marry him. But she would have +found it hard to live without his devotion, and she had brought him by +now into such good order that she dared to let him know it. + + * * * * * + +Half an hour later George and Letty mounted another palatial staircase, +and at the top of it Letty put on fresh smiles for a new hostess. George, +tired out with the drama of the day, could hardly stifle his yawns; but +Letty had treated the notion of going home after one party when, they +might, if they pleased, "do" four, with indignant amazement. + +So here they were at the house of one of the greatest of bankers, and +George stalked through the rooms in his wife's train, taking +comparatively little part in the political buzz all about him, and +thinking mostly of a hurried little talk with Mrs. Allison that had taken +up his last few minutes in her drawing-room. Poor thing! But what could +he do for her? The lad was as stage-struck as ever--could barely talk +sense on any other subject, and not much on that. + +But if he, owing to the clash of an inner struggle, was weary of +politics, the world in general could think and speak of nothing else. The +rooms were full of politicians and their wives, of members just arrived +from the House, of Ministers smiling at each other with lifted eyebrows, +like boys escaped from a birching. A tempest of talk surged through the +rooms--talk concerned with all manner of great issues, with the fate of a +Government, the rousing of a country, the fortunes of individual +statesmen. Through it all the little host himself, a small fair-haired +man, with the tired eyes and hot-house air of the financier, walked about +from group to group, gossiping over the incidents of the division, and +now and then taking up some newcomer to be introduced to his pretty and +fashionable wife. + +Somewhere in the din George stumbled across Lady Leven, who was talking +merrily to young Bayle; and found her, notwithstanding, very ready to +turn and chat with him. + +"Of course we are all waiting for the Maxwells," she said to him. "Will +they come, I wonder?" + +"Why not?" + +"Do people show on their way to disaster? I think I should stay at home +if I were she." + +"Why, they have to hearten their friends!" + +"No good," said Betty, pursing her pretty lips; "and they have +fought so hard." + +"And may win yet," said George, an odd sparkle in his eye, as he stood +looking over his tiny companion to the door. "Nobody is sure of anything, +I can tell you." + +"I don't believe _you_ care," she said audaciously, shaking her golden +head at him. + +"Pray, why?" + +"Oh! you don't seem at all desperate," she said coolly. "Perhaps you're +like Frank--you think the other side make so much better points than you +do. 'If Dowson makes another speech,' Frank said to me yesterday, 'I vow +I shall rat!' There's a way of talking of your own chiefs. Oh! I shall +have to take him out of politics." + +And she unfurled her fan with a jerk half melancholy, half decided. +Then, suddenly, a laugh flashed over her face; she raised herself +eagerly on tiptoe. + +"Ah! bravo!" she said. "Here they are!" + +George turned with the crowd, and saw them enter, Marcella first, +in a blaze of diamonds; then the quiet face and square shoulders of +her husband. + +Nothing, he thought, could have been better than the manner in which both +bore themselves as they passed through the throng, answering the +greetings of friend and foe, and followed by the keen or hostile scrutiny +of hundreds. There was no bravado, no attempt to disguise the despondency +that must naturally follow on a division so threatening and in many ways +so wounding. Maxwell looked grey with fatigue and short nights, while her +black eyes passed wistfully from friend to friend, and had never been +more quick, more responsive. Their cause was in danger; nevertheless, the +impression on Tressady's mind was of two people consciously in the grip +of forces infinitely greater than they--forces that would hold on their +path whatever befell their insignificant mortal agents. + +I steadier step when I recall, +Howe'er I slip, thou canst not fall. + +So cries the thinker to his mistress, Truth. And in the temper of that +cry lies the secret of brave living. One looker-on, at least,--and that +an opponent,--recalled the words as he watched Marcella and her husband +taking their way through the London crowd, amid the doubts of their +friends and the half-concealed triumph of their foes. + +It seemed to him that he could have no chance of speech with her. But +presently, from the other side of the room, he saw that she had +recognised and was greeting him, and, do what he would, he must needs +make his way to her. + +She welcomed him with great friendliness, and without a word of small +reproach on the score of the weeks he had let pass without coming to see +her. They fell into talk about the speeches of the evening. George +thought he could see that she, or Maxwell speaking through her, was +dissatisfied with Dowson's conduct of the Bill in the House, and chafing +under the constitutional practice that made it necessary to give him so +large a share in the matter. But she said nothing ungenerous; nor was +there any bitterness towards the many false friends who had deserted them +that night in the division-lobby. She spoke with eager hope of a series +of speeches Maxwell was about to make in the North, and then she turned +upon her companion. + +"You haven't spoken since the second reading--on any of the fighting +points, at least. I have been wondering what you thought of many things." + +George threw his head back against the wall beside her, and was silent a +moment. At last he said, looking down upon her: + +"Perhaps, very often I haven't known what to think." + +She started--reddened ever so little. "Does that mean"--she hesitated for +a phrase--"that you have moved at all on the main question?" + +"No," he said deliberately--"no! I think as I always did, that you are +calling in law to do what law can't do. But perhaps I appreciate better +than I once did what provokes you to it. It seems to me difficult now to +meet the case your side is putting forward by a mere _non possumus_. One +wants to stop the machine a bit and think it out. So much I admit." + +She met his smile with a curious, tremulous look. Instinctively he +guessed that this partial triumph in him of her cause--of Maxwell's +cause--had let flow some inner font of feeling. + +"If you only knew," she said, "how all this Parliamentary rush and +clatter seem to me beside the mark. People talk to me of divisions and +votes. I think all the time of persons I know--of faces of +children--sick-beds, horrible rooms--" + +She had turned her face from the crowd towards the open window, in whose +recess they were standing. As she spoke they both fell back a little into +comparative solitude, and he drew her on to talk--trying in a young eager +way to make her rest in his kindness, to soothe her weariness and +disappointment. And as she spoke, he clutched at the minutes; he threw +more and more sympathy at her feet to keep her talking, to enchain her +there beside him, in her lovely whiteness and grace. And, mingled with it +all, was the happy guess that she liked to linger with him--that amid +all this hard clamour of public talk and judgment she felt him a friend +in a peculiar sense--a friend whose loyalty grew with misfortune. As for +this wild-beast world, that was thwarting and libelling her, he began to +think of it with a blind, up-swelling rage--a desire to fight and win +for her--to put down-- + +"Tressady, your wife sent me to find you. She wishes to go home." + +The voice was Harding Watton's. That observant young man advanced bowing, +and holding out his hand to Lady Maxwell. + +When Marcella had drifted once more into the fast-melting crowd, George +found himself face to face with Letty. She was very white, and stared at +him with wide, passionate eyes. + +And on the way home George, with all his efforts, could not keep the +peace. Letty flung at him a number of bitter and insulting things that he +found very hard to bear. + +"What do you want me to do?" he said to her at last, impatiently. "I have +hardly spoken six sentences to Lady Maxwell, since the meeting, till +tonight--I suppose because you wished it. But neither you nor anyone else +shall make me rude to her. Don't be such a fool, Letty! Make friends with +her, and you will be ashamed of saying or even thinking such things." + +Whereat Letty burst into hysterical tears, and he soon found himself +involved in all the remorseful, inconsequent speeches to which a man in +such a plight feels himself driven. She allowed herself to be calmed, +and they had a dreary making-up. When it was over, however, George was +left with the uneasy conviction that he knew very little of his wife. She +was not of a nature to let any slight to her go unpunished. What was she +planning? What would she do? + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +"Hullo! Are you come back?" + +The speaker was George Tressady. He was descending the steps of his club +in Fall Mall, and found his arm caught by Naseby, who had just dismissed +his hansom outside. + +"I came back last night. Are you going homewards? I'll walk across the +Square with you." + +The two men turned into St. James's Square, and Naseby resumed: + +"Yes, we had a most lively campaign. Maxwell spoke better than I ever +heard him." + +"The speeches have been excellent reading, too. And you had good +meetings?" + +"Splendid! The country is rallying, I can tell you. The North is now +strong for Maxwell and the Bill--or seems to be." + +"Just as we are going to kick it out in the House! It's very queer--for +no one could tell, a month ago, how the big towns were going. And it +looked as though London even were deserting them." + +"A mere wave, I think. At least, I'll bet you anything they'll win this +Stepney election. Shall we get the division on the hours clause +to-morrow?" + +"They say so." + +"If you know your own interests, you'll hurry up," said Naseby, smiling. +"The country is going against you." + +"I imagine Fontenoy has got his eye on the country! He's been letting the +Socialists talk nonsense till now to frighten the steady-going old +fellows on the other side or putting up our men to mark time. But I saw +yesterday there was a change." + +"Between ourselves, hasn't he been talking a good deal of nonsense on his +own account?" + +Naseby threw a glance of laughing inquiry at his companion. George +shrugged his shoulders in silence. It had become matter of public remark +during the last few days that Fontenoy was beginning at last to show the +strain of the combat--that his speeches were growing hysterical and his +rule a tyranny. His most trusted followers were now to be heard grumbling +in private over certain aspects of his bearing in the House. He had come +into damaging collision with the Speaker on one or two occasions, and had +made here and there a blunder in tactics which seemed to show a weakening +of self-command. Tressady, indeed, knew enough to wonder that the man's +nerve and coolness had maintained themselves in their fulness so long. + +"So Maxwell took a party to the North?" said George, dropping the subject +of Fontenoy. + +"Lady Maxwell, of course--myself, Bennett, and Madeleine Penley. It was a +pleasure to see Lady Maxwell. She has been dreadfully depressed in town +lately. But those trade-union meetings in Lancashire and Yorkshire were +magnificent enough to cheer anyone up." + +George shook his head. + +"I expect they come too late to save the Bill." + +"I daresay. Well, one can't help being tremendously sorry for her. I +thought her looking quite thin and ill over it. It makes one doubt about +women in politics! Maxwell will take it a deal more calmly, unless one +misunderstands his cool ways. But I shouldn't wonder if _she_ had a +breakdown." + +George made no reply. Naseby talked a little more about Maxwell and the +tour, the critical side of him gaining upon the sympathetic with every +sentence. At the corner of King Street he stopped. + +"I must go back to the club. By the way, have you heard anything of +Ancoats lately?" + +George made a face. + +"I saw him in a hansom last night, late, crossing Regent Circus with a +young woman--_the_ young woman, to the best of my belief." + +In the few moments' chat that followed Tressady found that Naseby, like +Fontenoy, regarded him as the new friend who might be able to do +something for a wild fellow, now that mother and old friends were alike +put aside and ignored. But, as he rather impatiently declared--and was +glad to declare--such a view was mere nonsense. He had tried, for the +mother's sake, and could do nothing. As for him, he believed the thing +was very much a piece of _blague_-- + +"Which won't prevent it from taking him to the devil," said Naseby, +coolly; "and his mother, by all accounts, will die of it. I'm sorry for +her. He seems to think tremendous things of you. I thought you might, +perhaps, have knocked it out of him." George shook his head again, and +they parted. + +In truth, Tressady was not particularly flattered by Ancoats's fancy for +him. He did not care enough about the lad in return. Yet, in response to +one or two outbreaks of talk on Ancoats's part--talks full of a stagey +railing at convention--he had tried, for the mother's sake, to lecture +the boy a little--to get in a word or two that might strike home. But +Ancoats had merely stared a moment out of his greenish eyes, had shaken +his queer mane of hair, as an animal shakes off the hand that curbs it, +had changed the subject at once, and departed. Tressady had seen very +little of him since. + +And had not, in truth, taken it to heart. He had neither time nor mind to +think about Ancoats. Now, as he walked home to dinner, he put the subject +from him impatiently. His own moral predicament absorbed him--this weird, +silent way in which the whole political scene was changing in aspect and +composition under his eyes, was grouping itself for him round one +figure--one face. + +Had he any beliefs left about the Bill itself? He hardly knew. In truth +it was not his reason that was leading him. It now was little more than a +passionate boyish longing to wrench himself free from this odious task of +hurting and defeating Marcella Maxwell. The long process of political +argument was perhaps tending every day to the loosening and detaching of +those easy convictions of a young Chauvinism, that had drawn him +originally to Fontenoy's side. Intellectually he was all adrift. At the +same time he confessed to himself, with perfect frankness, that he could +and would have served Fontenoy happily enough, but for another +influence--another voice. + +Yet his old loyalty to Fontenoy tugged sorely at his will. And with this +loyalty of course was bound up the whole question of his own personal +honour and fidelity--his pledges to his constituents and his party. + +Was there no rational and legitimate way out? He pondered the political +situation as he walked along with great coolness and precision. When the +division on the hours clause was over the main struggle on the Bill, as +he had all along maintained, would be also at an end. If the Government +carried the clause--and the probability still was that they would carry +it by a handful of votes--the two great novelties of the Bill would have +been affirmed by the House. The homework in the scheduled trades would +have been driven by law into inspected workshops, and the male workers in +these same trades would have been brought under the time-restrictions of +the Factory Acts. + +Compared to these two great reforms, or revolutions, the remaining +clause--the landlords clause--touched, as he had already said to +Fontenoy, questions of secondary rank, of mere machinery. Might not a man +thereupon--might not he, George Tressady--review and reconsider his +whole position? + +He had told Fontenoy that his vote was safe; but must that pledge extend +to more than the vital stuff, the main proposals of the Bill? The hours +clause?--yes. But after it? + +Fontenoy, no doubt, would carry on the fight to the bitter end, counting +on a final and hard-wrung victory. The sanguine confidence which had +possessed him about the time of the second reading was gone. He did not, +Tressady knew, reckon with any certainty on turning out the Government in +this coming division. The miserable majority with which they had carried +the workshops clause would fall again--it would hardly be altogether +effaced. That final wiping-out would come--if indeed it were attained--in +the last contest of all, to which Fontenoy was already heartening and +urging on his followers. + +Fontenoy's position, of course, in the matter was clear. It was that of +the leader and the irreconcilable. + +But for the private member, who had seen cause to modify some of his +opinions during the course of debate, who had voted loyally with his +party up till now--might not the division on the hours clause be said to +mark a new stage in the Bill--a stage which restored him his freedom? + +The House would have pronounced on the main points of the Bill; the +country was rallying in a remarkable and unexpected way to the +Government--might it not be fairly argued that the war had been carried +far enough? + +He already, indeed, saw signs of that backing down of opposition which he +had prophesied to Fontenoy. The key to the whole matter lay, he believed, +in the hands of the Old Liberals, that remnant of a once great host, who +were now charging the Conservative Government with new and damaging +concessions to the Socialist tyranny. These men kept a watchful eye on +the country; they had maintained all along that the country had not +spoken. George had already perceived a certain weakening among them. And +now, this campaign of Maxwell's, this new enthusiasm in the industrial +North--no doubt they would have their effect. + +He hurried on, closely weighing the whole matter, the prey to a strange +and mingled excitement. + +Meanwhile the streets through which he walked had the empty, listless air +which marks a stage from which the actors have departed. It was nearing +the middle of August, and society had fled. + +All the same, as he reflected with a relief which was not without its +sting, he and Letty would not be alone at dinner. Some political friends +were coming, stranded, like themselves, in this West End, which had by +now covered up its furniture and shut its shutters. + +What a number of smart invitations had been showering upon them during +the last weeks of the season, and were now still pursuing them, for the +country-house autumn! The expansion of their social circle had of late +often filled George with astonishment. No doubt, he said to +himself,--though with a curious doubtfulness,--Letty was very successful; +still, the recent rush of attentions from big people, who had taken no +notice of them on their marriage, was rather puzzling. It had affected +her so far more than himself. For he had been hard pressed by Parliament +and the strike, and she had gone about a good deal alone--appearing, +indeed, to prefer it. + + * * * * * + +"Come out with me on the Terrace," said Marcella to Betty Leven; "I had +rather not wait here. Aldous, will you take us through?" + +She and Betty were standing in the inner lobby of the House of Commons. +The division had just been called and the galleries cleared. Members were +still crowding into the House from the Library, the Terrace, and the +smoking-rooms; and all the approaches to the Chamber itself were filled +with a throng about equally divided between the eagerness of victory and +the anxieties of defeat. + +Maxwell took the ladies to the Terrace, and left them there, while he +himself went back to the House. Marcella took a seat by the parapet, +leant both hands upon it, and looked absently at the river and the +clouds. It was a cloudy August night, with a broken, fleecy sky, and +gusts of hot wind from the river. A few figures and groups were moving +about the Terrace in the flickering light and shade--waiting like +themselves. + +"Will you be very sad if it goes wrongly?" said Betty, in a low voice, as +she took her friend's hand in hers. + +"Yes--" said Marcella, simply. Then, after a pause, she added, "It will +be all the harder after this time in the North. Everything will have come +too late." + +There was a silence; then Betty said, not without sheepishness, "Frank's +all right." + +Marcella smiled. She knew that little Betty had been much troubled by +Frank's tempers of late, and had been haunted by some quite serious +qualms about his loyalty to Maxwell and the Bill. Marcella had never +shared them. Frank Leven had not grit enough to make a scandal and desert +a chief. But Betty's ambition had forced the boy into a life that was +not his; had divided him from the streams and fields, from the country +gentleman's duties and pleasures, that were his natural sphere. In this +hot town game of politics, this contest of brains and ambitions, he was +out of place--was, in fact, wasting both time and capacity. Betty would +have to give way, or the comedy of a lovers' quarrel might grow to +something ill-matched with the young grace and mirth of such a pair of +handsome children. + +Marcella meant to tell her friend all this in due time. Now she +could only wait in silence, listening for every sound, Betty's soft +fingers clasping her own, the wind as it blew from the bridge +cooling her hot brow. + +"Here they are!" said Betty. + +They turned to the open doorway of the House. A rush of feet and voices +approached, and the various groups on the Terrace hurried to meet it. + +"Just saved! By George, what a squeak!" said a man's voice in the +distance; and at the same moment Maxwell touched his wife on the +shoulder. + +"A majority of ten! Nobody knew how it had gone till the last moment." + +She put up her face to him, leaning against him. + +"I suppose it means we can't pull through?" He bent to her. + +"I should think so. Darling, don't take it to heart so much!" + +In the darkness he felt the touch of her lips on his hand. Then she +turned, with a white cheek and smiling mouth, to meet the greetings and +rueful congratulations of the friends that were crowding about them. + +The Terrace was soon a moving mass of people, eagerly discussing the +details of the division. The lamps, blown a little by the wind, threw +uncertain lights on faces and figures, as they passed and re-passed +between the mass of building on the one hand and the wavering darkness of +the river on the other. To Marcella, as she stood talking to person after +person--talking she hardly knew what--the whole scene was a dim +bewilderment, whence emerged from time to time faces or movements of +special significance. + +Now it was Dowson, the Home Secretary, advancing to greet her, with his +grey shaven face, eyelids somewhat drooped, and the cool, ambiguous look +of one not quite certain of his reception. He had been for long a close +ally of Maxwell's. Marcella had thought him a true friend. But certainly, +in his conduct of the Bill of late there had been a good deal to suggest +the attitude of a man determined to secure himself a retreat, and +uncertain how far to risk his personal fortunes on a doubtful issue. So +that she found herself talking to him with a new formality, in the tone +of those who have been friends, yet begin to foresee the time when they +may be antagonists. + +Or, again, it was Fontenoy--Fontenoy's great head and overhanging brows, +thrown suddenly into light against the windy dusk. He was walking with a +young viscount whose curls, clothes, and shoulders were alike +unapproachable by the ordinary man. This youth could not forbear an +exultant twitching of the lip as he passed the Maxwells. Fontenoy +ceremoniously took off his hat. Marcella had a momentary impression of +the passionate, bull-like force of the man, before he disappeared into +the crowd. His eye had wavered as it met hers. Out of courtesy to the +woman he had tried not to _look_ his triumph. + +And now it was quite another face--thin, delicately marked, a noticeable +chin, an outstretched hand. + +She was astonished by her own feeling of pleasure. + +"Tell me," she said quickly, as she moved eagerly forward--"tell me! is +it about what you expected?" + +They turned towards the river. George Tressady hung over the wall +beside her. + +"Yes. I thought it might be anything from eight to twenty." + +"I suppose Lord Fontenoy now thinks the end quite certain." + +"He may. But the end is not certain!" + +"But what can prevent it! The despairing thing for us is, that if the +country had been roused earlier, everything might have been different. +But now the House--" + +"Has got out of hand? It may be; but I find a great many people affected +by Lord Maxwell's speeches in the North, and his reception there. +To-day's result was inevitable, but, if I'm not mistaken, we shall now +see a number of new combinations." + +The sensitive face became in a moment all intelligence. She played the +politician, and cross-examined him. He hesitated. What he was doing was +already a treachery. But he only hesitated to give way. They lingered by +the wall together, discussing possibilities and persons; and when Maxwell +at last turned from his own conversations to suggest to his wife that it +was time to go home, she came forward with a mien of animation that +surprised him. He greeted Tressady with friendliness, and then, as though +a thought had struck him, suddenly drew the young man aside. + +"Ancoats, of course," said George to himself; and Ancoats it was. + +Maxwell, without preliminaries, and taking his companion's knowledge of +the story for granted--no doubt on Fontenoy's information--said a few +words about the renewal of the difficulty. Did he not think it had all +begun again? Yes, George had some reason to think so. "If you can do +anything for us--" + +"Of course! but what can I do? As we all know, Ancoats does not sit still +to be scolded." + +Their colloquy lasted only a minute or two; yet when it was over, and +the Maxwells had gone, George was left with a vivid impression of the +great man's quiet strength and magnanimity. No one could have guessed +from his anxious and well-considered talk on this private matter that he +was in the very heat of a political struggle that must affect all his +own fortunes. Tressady had been accustomed to spend his wit on the +heavier sides of Maxwell's character. To-night, he said to himself, half +in a passion, grudging the confession, that it was not wonderful she +loved him! + +She! The remembrance of how her whole nature had brightened from its +cloud as he drew out for her his own forecast of what might still happen; +the sweet confidence and charm that she had shown him; the intimacy of +the tone she had allowed between them; the mingling all through of a +delicate abstinence from anything touching on his own personal position, +with an unspoken recognition of it--the impulse of a generosity that +could not help rewarding what seemed to it the yielding of an adversary; +these things filled him with a delicious pleasure as he walked home. In a +hundred directions--political, social, spiritual--the old horizons of the +mind seemed to be lightening and expanding. The cynical, indifferent +temper of his youth was breaking down; the whole man was more +intelligent, capable, tender. Yet what sadness and restlessness of soul +as soon as the brief moment of joy had come and gone! + +A few afternoons of Supply encroached upon the eight days that still +remained before the last clause of the Bill came to a division. But the +whole eight days, nevertheless, were filled with the new permutations and +combinations which Tressady had foreseen. The Government carried the +Stepney election, and in other quarters the effects of the speechmaking +in the North began to be visible. Rumours of the syndicate already formed +to take over large numbers of workshops in both the Jewish and Gentile +quarters of the East End, and of the hours and wages that were likely to +obtain in the new factories, were driving a considerable mass of +working-class opinion, which had hitherto held aloof, straight for the +Government, and splitting up much of that which had been purely hostile. + +Nevertheless, the situation in the House itself was hardly changing with +the change in the country. The Socialist members very soon developed the +proposal to make the landlords responsible for the carrying-out of the +new Act into a furious general attack on the landlords of London. Their +diatribes kept up the terrors which had already cost the Government so +many men. It was not possible, not seemly, to yield, as Maxwell was +yielding, all along the line to these fellows! + +But the Old Liberals, or the New Whigs, as George had expected, were +restless. They felt the country, and they had no affection for landlords +as such. Did a man arise who could give them a lead, there was no saying +how soon they might not break away from the Fontenoy combination. +Fontenoy felt it, and prowled among them like a Satan, urging them to +complete their deed, to give the _coup de grace_. + +On the Wednesday afternoon before the Friday on which he thought the +final vote would be taken, George let himself into his own house about +six o'clock, thankful to feel that he had a quiet evening before him. He +had been wandering about the House of Commons and its appurtenances all +day, holding colloquies with this person and that, unable to see his +way--to come to any decision. And, as was now usual, he and Fontenoy had +been engaged in steering out of each other's way as much as possible. + +As he went upstairs he noticed a letter lying on the step. He took it up, +and found an open note, which he read, at first without thinking of it: + +"My dear Lady,--Chatsworth can't be done. I have thrown my flies with +great skill, but--no go! I don't seem to have influence enough in that +quarter. But I have various other plans on hand. You shall have a jolly +autumn, if I can manage it. There are some Scotch invitations I can +certainly get you--and I should like to show you the ways of those +parts. By the way, I hope your husband shoots decently. People are very +particular. And you really must consult me about your gowns--I'm deuced +clever at that sort of thing! I shall come to-morrow, when I have packed +off my family to the country. Don't know why God made families! + +"Yours always, + +"CATHEDINE." + +"George! is that you?" cried Letty from above him, in a voice half angry, +half hesitating; "and--and--that's my note. Please give it me at once." + +He finished it under her eyes, then handed it to her with formal +courtesy. They walked into the drawing-room, and George shut the door. He +was very pale, and Letty quailed a little. + +"So Cathedine has been introducing us into society," he said, "and +advising you as to your gowns. Was that--quite necessary--do you think?" + +"It's very simple what he has been doing," was her angry reply. "You +never take any pains to make life amusing to me, so I must look +elsewhere, if I want society--that's all." + +"And it never occurs to you that you are thereby incurring an unseemly +obligation to a man whom I dislike, whom I have warned you against, who +bears everywhere an evil name? You think I am likely to enjoy--to put up +with, even--the position of being asked on sufferance--as your +appendage--provided I 'shoot decently'?" + +His tone of scorn, his slight figure, imperiously drawn up, sent her a +challenge, which she answered with sullen haste. + +"That's all nonsense, of course! And he wouldn't be rude to you if you +weren't always rude to him." + +"Rude to him!" He smiled. "But now, let us get to the bottom of this +thing. Did Cathedine get us the cards for Clarence House--and that +Goodwood invitation?" + +Letty made no answer. She stared at him defiantly, twisting and +untwisting the ribbons of her blue dress. + +George reddened hotly. His personal pride in matters of social manners +was one of his strongest characteristics. + +"Let me beg you, at any rate, to write and tell Lord Cathedine that we +will not trouble him for any more of these kind offices. And, moreover, I +shall not go to any of these houses in the autumn unless I am quite +certain he has had nothing to do with it." + +"I have accepted," said Letty, breathing hard. + +"I cannot help that. You should have been frank with me. I am not going +to do what would destroy my own self-respect." + +"No--you prefer making love to Lady Maxwell!" + +He looked steadily a moment at her pallor and her furious eyes. Then he +said, in another tone: + +"Letty, does it ever occur to you that we have not been married yet five +months? Are our relations to each other to go on for ever like this? I +think we might make something better of them." + +"That's your lookout. But as to these invitations, I have accepted them, +and I shall go." + +"I don't think you will. You would find it wouldn't do. Anyway, +Cathedine must be written to." + +"I shall do nothing of the kind!" she cried. + +"Then I shall write myself." + +She rose, quivering with passion, supporting herself on the arm of +her chair. + +"If you do, I will find some way of punishing you for it. Oh, if I had +never made myself miserable by marrying you!" + +Their eyes met. Then he said: + +"I think I had better go and dine at the club. We are hardly fit to be +together." + +"Go, for heaven's sake!" she said, with a disdainful gesture. + +Outside the door he paused a moment, head bent, hands clenched. Then a +wild, passionate look overspread his young face. "It is her evening," he +said to himself. "Letty turns me out. I will go." + +Meanwhile Letty stood where he had left her till she had heard the +street-door close. The typical, significant sound knelled to her heart. +She began to walk tempestuously up and down, crying with excitement. + +Time passed on. The August evening closed in; and in this deserted London +nobody came to see her. She dined alone, and afterwards spent what seemed +to her interminable hours pacing the drawing-room and meditating. At last +there was a pause in the rush of selfish or jealous feeling which had +been pulsing through her for weeks past, dictating all her actions, +fevering all her thoughts. And there is nothing so desolate as such a +pause, to such a nature. For it means reflection; it means putting one's +life away from one, and looking at it as a whole. And to the Lettys of +this world there is no process more abhorrent--none they will spend more +energy in escaping. + +It was inexplicable, intolerable that she should be so unhappy. What was +it that tortured her so--hatred of Marcella Maxwell, or pain that she had +lost her husband? But she had never imagined herself in love with him +when she married him. He had never obtained from her before a tenth part +of the thought she had bestowed upon him during the past six weeks. +During all the time that she had been flirting with Cathedine, and +recklessly placing herself in his power by the favours she asked of him, +she saw now, with a kind of amazement, that she had been thinking +constantly of George, determined to impress him with her social success, +to force him to admire her and think much of her. + +Cathedine? Had he any real attraction for her? Why, she was afraid of +him, she knew him to be coarse and brutal, even while she played with him +and sent him on her errands. When she compared him with George--even +George as she had just seen him in this last odious scene--she felt the +tears of anger and despair rising. + +But to be forced to dismiss him at George's word, to submit in this +matter of the invitations, to let herself be trampled on, while George +gave all his homage, all his best mind, to Lady Maxwell--something +scorching flew through her veins as she thought of it. Never! never! +She would find, she had already thought of, a startling way of +avenging herself. + +Late at night George came home. She had locked her door, and he turned +into his dressing-room. When the house was quiet again, she pressed her +face into the pillows, and wept till she was amazed at her own pain, and +must needs turn her rage upon herself. + + * * * * * + +When Tressady arrived at the house in Mile End Road he found the pretty, +bare room where Marcella held her gatherings full of guests. The East End +had not "gone out of town." The two little workhouse girls, in the +whitest of caps and aprons, were carrying round trays of coffee and +cakes; and beyond the open window was a tiny garden, backed by a huge +Board School and some tall warehouses, yet as pleasant within its own +small space as a fountain and flowers, constantly replenished from +Maxwell Court, could make it. + +Amid the medley of workmen, union officials, and members of Parliament +that the room contained, George was set first of all to talk to a young +schoolmaster or two, but he had never felt so little able to adjust his +mind to strangers. The thought of his home miseries burnt within him. +When could he get his turn with her? He was thirsty for the sound of her +voice, the kindness of her eyes. + +She had received him with unusual warmth, and an eagerness of look that +seemed to show she had at least as much to say to him as he to her. And +at last his turn came. She took some of her guests into the garden. +George followed, and they found themselves side by side. He noticed that +she was very pale. Yet how was it that fatigue and anxiety instead of +marring her physical charm, only increased it? This thin black dress in +which the tall figure moved so finely, the black lace folded in a fashion +all her own about her neck and breast, the waving lines of hair above the +delicate stateliness of the brow--those slight tragic hollows in cheek +and temple with their tale of spirit and passionate feeling, and all the +ebb and flow of noble life--he had never felt her so rare, so adorable. + +"Well! what do you think of it all to-day? Are you still inclined to +prophesy?" she asked him, smiling. + +"I might be--if I saw any chance of the man you want. But he doesn't seem +to be forthcoming, and--" + +"And to-morrow is the end!" + +"The Government has quite made up its mind not to take defeat--not to +accept modifications?" + +She shook her head. + +They were standing at the end of the garden, looking into the brightly +lit windows of the Board School, where evening-classes were going on. She +gave a long sigh. + +"As for us personally, we can only be thankful to have it over. Neither +of us could have borne it much longer. I suppose, when the crisis is all +over, we shall go away for a long time." + +By "the crisis" she meant, of course, the resignation of Ministers and +a change of Government. So that a few days hence she would be no longer +within his reach at all. Maxwell, once out of office, would, no doubt, +for a long while to come prefer to spend the greater part of his time +in Brookshire, away from politics. A sudden sharp perception woke in +Tressady of what it would mean to him to find himself in a world +where, on going out of a morning, it would be no longer possible to +come across her. + +At last she broke the silence. + +"How little I really thought, in spite of all one's anxiety, that Lord +Fontenoy was going to win! He has played his cards amazingly well." + +George took no notice. Thoughts were whirling in his brain. + +"What would you say to me, I wonder," he said at last, "if _I_ were to +try the part?" + +He spoke in a bantering tone, poking at the black London earth with +his stick. + +"What part?" + +"Well, it seems to me I might put the case. One wants to argue the thing +in a common-sense way. I don't feel towards this clause as I did towards +the others. I know a good many men don't." + +He turned to her with a light composure. + +She stared in bewilderment. + +"I don't understand." + +"Well; why shouldn't one put the case? We have always counted on the +hostility of the country. But the country seems to be coming round. Some +of us now feel the Bill should have its chance--we are inclined to let +Ministers take the responsibility. But, gracious heavens!--to suppose the +House would pay any attention to me!" + +He took up a stone and jerked it over the wall. She did not speak for a +moment. At last she said: + +"It would be a grave thing for _you_ to do." + +He turned, and their eyes met, hers full of emotion, and his hesitating +and reflective. Then he laughed, his pride stung a little by her +expression. + +"You think I should do myself more harm, than good to anybody else?" + +"No.--Only it would be serious," she repeated after a pause. + +Instantly he dropped the subject as far as his own action was +concerned. He led her back into discussion of other people, and of the +situation in general. + +Then suddenly, as they talked, a host of thoughts fled cloud-like, +rising and melting, through Marcella's memory. She remembered with what +prestige--considering his youth and inexperience--he had entered +Parliament, the impression made by the short and brilliant campaign of +his election. Now, since the real struggle of the session had begun, his +energies seemed to have been unaccountably in abeyance, and eclipse. +People she noticed had ceased to talk of him. But supposing, after all, +there had been a crisis of mind and conviction underlying it?--supposing +that now, at the last moment, in a situation that cried out for a +leader, something should suddenly release his powers and gifts to do +their proper work-- + +It vexed her to realise her own excitement, together with an odd +shrinking and reluctance that seemed to be fighting with it. All in a +moment, to Tressady's astonishment, she recalled the conversation to the +point where it had turned aside. + +"And you think--you _really_ think"--her voice had a nervous appealing +note--"that even at this eleventh hour--No, I don't understand!--I +_can't_ understand!--why, or how you should still think it possible to +change things enough!" + +He felt a sting of pleasure, and the passing sense of hurt pride was +soothed. At least he had conquered her attention, her curiosity! + +"I am sure that anything might still happen," he said stubbornly. + +"Well, only let it be settled!" she said, trying to speak lightly, "else +there will be nothing left of some of us." + +She raised her hand, and pushed back her hair with a childish gesture of +weariness, that was quite unconscious, and therefore touching. + +As she spoke, indeed, the thought of a strong man harassed with overwork, +and patiently preparing to lay down his baffled task, and all his +cherished hopes, captured her mind, brought a quick rush of tears even to +her eyes. Tressady looked at her; he saw the moisture in the eyes, the +reddening of the cheek, the effort for self-control. + +"Why do you let yourself feel it so much?" he said resentfully; "it is +not natural, nor right." + +"That's our old quarrel, isn't it?" she answered, smiling. + +He was staring at the ground again, poking with his stick. + +"There are so many things one _must_ feel," he said in a bitter low +voice; "one may as well try to take politics calmly." + +She looked down upon him, understanding, but not knowing how to meet him, +how to express herself. His words and manner were a confession of +personal grief,--almost an appeal to her,--the first he had ever made. +Yet how to touch the subject of his marriage! She shrank from it +painfully. What ominous, disagreeable things she had heard lately of the +young Lady Tressady from people she trusted! Why, oh! why had he ruined +his own life in such a way! + +And with the yearning towards all suffering which was natural to her, +there mingled so much else--inevitable softness and gratitude for that +homage towards herself, which had begun to touch and challenge all the +loving, responsive impulse which was at the root of her character--an +eager wish to put out a hand and guide him--all tending to shape in her +this new longing to rouse him to some critical and courageous action, +action which should give him at least the joy that men get from the +strenuous use of natural powers, from the realisation of themselves. And +through it all the most divinely selfish blindness to the real truth of +the situation! Yet she tried not to think of Maxwell--she wished to think +only of and for her friend. + +After his last words they stood side by side in silence for a few +moments. But the expression of her eyes, of her attitude, was all +sympathy. He must needs feel that she cared, she understood, that his +life, his pain, his story mattered to her. At last she said, turning her +face away from him, and from the few people who had not yet left the +garden to go and listen to some music that was going on in the +drawing-room: + +"Sometimes, the best way to forget one's own troubles--don't you +think?--is to put something else first for a time--perhaps in your +case, the public life and service. Mightn't it be? Suppose you thought it +all really out, what you have been saying to me--gave yourself up to +it--and then _determined_. Perhaps afterwards--" + +She paused--overcome with doubt, even shyness--and very pale too, as she +turned to him again. But so beautiful! The very perplexity which spoke in +the gently quivering face as it met his, made her lovelier in his eyes. +It seemed to strike down some of the barrier between them, to present her +to him as weaker, more approachable. + +But after waiting a moment, he gave a little harsh laugh. + +"Afterwards, when one has somehow settled other people's affairs, one +might see straighter in one's own? Is that what you mean?" + +"I meant," she said, speaking with difficulty, "what I have often +found--myself--that it helps one sometimes, to throw oneself altogether +into something outside one's own life, in a large disinterested way. +Afterwards, one comes back to one's own puzzles--with a fresh strength +and hope." + +"Hope!" he said despondently, with a quick lifting of the shoulders. +Then, in another tone-- + +"So that's your advice to me--to take this thing seriously--to take +myself seriously--to think it out?" + +"Yes, yes," she said eagerly; "don't trifle with it--with what you might +think and do--till it is too late to think and do anything." + +Suddenly it flashed across them both how far they had travelled since +their first meeting in the spring. Her mind filled with a kind of dread, +an uneasy sense of responsibility--then with a tremulous consciousness of +power. It was as though she felt something fluttering like a bird in her +hands. And all the time there echoed through her memory a voice speaking +in a moonlit garden--"You know--you don't mind my saying it?--nobody is +ever converted--politically--nowadays." + +No, but there may be honest advance and change--why not? And if she had +influenced him--was it not Maxwell's work and thought that had spoken +through her? + +"Well, anyway," said Tressady's voice beside her, "whatever +happens--you'll believe--" + +"That you won't help to give us the _coup de grace_ unless you must?" she +said, half laughing, yet with manifest emotion. "Anyway, I should have +believed that." + +"And you really care so much?" he asked her again, looking at her +wondering. + +She suddenly dropped her head upon her hands. They were alone now in the +moonlit garden, and she was leaning over the low wall that divided them +from the school enclosure. But before he could say anything--before he +could even move closer to her--she had raised her face again, and drawn +her hand rapidly across her eyes. + +"I suppose one is tired and foolish after all these weeks," she said, +with a breaking voice--"I apologise. You see when one comes to see +everything through another's eyes--to live in another's life--" He felt +a sudden stab, then a leap of joy--hungry, desolate joy--that she should +thus admit him to the very sanctuary of her heart--let him touch the +"very pulse of the machine." At the same moment that it revealed the +eternal gulf between them, it gave him a delicious passionate sense of +intimity--of privilege. + +"You have--a marvellous idea of marriage"--he said, under his breath, as +he moved slowly beside her towards the house. + +She made no answer. In another minute she was talking to him of +indifferent things, and immediately afterwards he found himself parted +from her in the crowd of the drawing-room. + +When the party dispersed and he was walking alone towards Aldgate through +the night, he could do nothing but repeat to himself fragments of what +she had said to him--lost all the time in a miserable yearning memory of +her eyes and voice. + +His mind was made up. And as he lay sleepless and solitary through the +night, he scarcely thought any more of the strait to which his married +life had come. Forty-eight hours hence he should have time for that. For +the present he had only to "think out" how it might be possible for him +to turn doubt and turmoil into victory, and lay the crown of it at +Marcella Maxwell's feet. + +Meanwhile Marcella, on her return to St. James's Square, put her hands on +Maxwell's shoulders, and said to him, in a voice unlike herself: "Sir +George Tressady was at the party to-night. I _think_ he may be going to +throw Lord Fontenoy over. Don't be surprised if he speaks in that sense +to-morrow." + +Maxwell looked extraordinarily perturbed. + +"I hope he will do nothing of the kind," he said, with decision. "It will +do him enormous harm. All the conviction he has ever shown has been the +other way. It will be thought to be a mere piece of caprice and +indiscipline." + +Marcella said nothing. She walked away from him, her hands clasped behind +her, her soft skirt trailing--a pale muse of meditation--meditation in +which for once she did not invite him to share. + +"Tressady, by all that's wonderful!" said a member of Fontenoy's party to +his neighbour. "What's _he_ got to say?" + +The man addressed bent forward, with his hands on his knees, to look +eagerly at the speaker. + +"I knew there was something up," he said. "Every time I have come across +Tressady to-day he has been deep with one or other of those fellows"--he +jerked his head towards the Liberal benches. "I saw him buttonholing +Green in the Library, then with Speedwell on the Terrace. And just look +at their benches! They're as thick as bees! Yes, by George! there _is_ +something up." + +His young sportsman's face flushed with excitement, and he tried hard +through the intervening heads to get a glimpse of Fontenoy. But nothing +was to be seen of the leader but a hat jammed down over the eyes, a +square chin, and a pair of folded arms. + +The House, indeed, throughout the day had worn an aspect which, to the +experienced observer--to the smooth-faced Home Secretary, for instance, +watching the progress of this last critical division--meant that +everything was possible, the unexpected above all. Rumours gathered and +died away. Men might be seen talking with unaccustomed comrades; and +those who were generally most frank had become discreet. It was known +that Fontenoy's anxiety had been growing rapidly; and it was noticed that +he and the young viscount who acted as the Whip of the party had kept an +extraordinarily sharp watch on all their own men through the dinner-hour. + +Fontenoy himself had spoken before dinner, throwing scorn upon the +clause, as the ill-conceived finish of an impossible Bill. So the +landlords were to be made the executants, the police, of this precious +Act? Every man who let out a tenement-house in workmen's dwellings was to +be haled before the law and punished if a tailor on his premises did his +work at home, if a widow took in shirtmaking to keep her children. Pass, +for the justice or the expediency of such a law in itself. But who but a +madman ever supposed you could get it carried out! What if the landlords +refused or neglected their part? _Quis custodiet?_ And was Parliament +going to make itself ridiculous by setting up a law, which, were it a +thousand times desirable, you simply could not enforce? + +The speech was delivered with amazing energy. It abounded in savage +epigram and personality; and a month before it would have had great +effect. Every Englishman has an instinctive hatred of paper reforms. + +During the dinner-hour Tressady met Fontenoy in the Lobby, and +suddenly stopped to speak. The young man was deeply flushed and +holding himself stiffly erect. "If you want me," he said--"you will +find me in the Library. I don't want to spring anything upon you. You +shall know all I know." + +"Thank you," said the other with slow bitterness--"but we can look after +ourselves. I think you and I understood each other this morning." + +The two men parted abruptly. Tressady walked on, stung and excited afresh +by the memory of the hateful half hour he had spent that morning in +Fontenoy's library. For after all, when once he had come to his decision, +he had tried to behave with frankness, with consideration. + +Fontenoy hurried on to look for the young viscount with the curls and +shoulders, and the two men stood about the inner lobby together, Fontenoy +sombrely watching everybody who came out or in. + +It was about ten o'clock when Tressady caught the Speaker's eye. He +rose in a crowded House, a House conscious not only that the division +shortly to be taken would decide the fate of a Government, but vaguely +aware, besides, that something else was involved--one of those +personal incidents that may at any moment make the dullest piece of +routine dramatic, or rise into history by the juxtaposition of some +great occasion. + +The House had not yet made up its opinion about him as a speaker. He had +done well; then, not so well. And, moreover, it was so long since he had +taken any part in debate that the House had had time to forget whatever +qualities he might once have shown. + +His bearing and voice won him a first point. For youth, well-bred and +well-equipped, the English House of Commons has always shown a +peculiar indulgence. Then members began to bend eagerly forward, to +crane necks, to put hands to ears. The Treasury Bench was seen to be +listening as one man. + +Before the speech was over many of those present had already recognised +in it a political event of the first order. The speaker had traced with +great frankness his own relation to the Bill--from an opinion which was +but a prejudice, to a submission which was still half repugnance. He drew +attention to the remarkable and growing movement in support of the +Maxwell policy which was now spreading throughout the country, after a +period of coolness and suspended judgment; he pointed to the probable +ease with which, as it was now seen, the "harassed trades" would adapt +themselves to the new law; he showed that the House, in at least three +critical divisions, and under circumstances of enormous difficulty, had +still affirmed the Bill; that the country, during the progress of the +measure, had rallied unmistakably to the Government, and that all that +remained was a question of machinery. That being so, he--and, he +believed, some others--had reconsidered their positions. Their electoral +pledges, in their opinion, no longer held, though they would be ready at +any moment to submit themselves to consequences, if consequences there +were to be. + +Then, taking up the special subject-matter of the clause, he threw +himself upon his leader's speech with a nervous energy, an information, +and a resource which held the House amazed. He tore to pieces +Fontenoy's elaborate attack, showed what practical men thought of the +clause, and with what careful reliance upon their opinion and their +experience it had been framed; and, finally--with a reference not +lacking in a veiled passion that told upon the House, to those "dim +toiling thousands" whose lot, "as it comes to work upon the mind, is +daily perplexing if not transforming the thoughts and ideals of such men +as I"--he, in the plainest terms, announced his intention of voting with +the Government, and sat down, amid the usual mingled storm, in a +shouting and excited House. + +The next hour passed in a tumult. One speaker after another got up from +the Liberal benches--burly manufacturers and men of business, who had so +far held a strong post in the army of resistance--to tender their +submission, to admit that the fight had gone far enough, that the country +was against them, and that the Bill must be borne. What use, too, in +turning out a Government which would either be sent back with redoubled +strength or replaced by combinations that had no attractions whatever +from men of moderate minds? Sadness reigned in the speeches of this +Liberal remnant; nor could the House from time to time forbear to jeer +them. But they made their purpose plain, and the Government Whip, +standing near the door, gleefully struck off name after name from his +Opposition list. + +Then followed the usual struggle between the division that all men +wanted and the speakers that no man could endure. But at last the bell +was rung, the House cleared. As Tressady turned against the stream of +his party, Fontenoy, with a sarcastic smile, stood elaborately aside to +let him pass. + +"We shall soon know what you have cost us," he said hoarsely in +Tressady's ear; then, advancing a little towards the centre of the +floor, he looked up markedly and deliberately at the Ladies' Gallery. +Tressady made no reply. He held his fair head higher than usual as he +passed on his unaccustomed way to the Aye Lobby. Many an eager eye +strained back to see how many recruits would join him as he reached the +Front Opposition Bench; many a Parliamentary Nestor watched the young +man's progress with a keenness born of memory--memory that burnt anew +with the battles of the past. + +"Do you remember Chandos," said one old man to another--"young Chandos, +that went for Peel in '46 against his party? It was my first year in +Parliament. I can see him now. He was something like this young fellow." + +"But _his_ ratting changed nothing," said his companion, with an uneasy +laugh; and they both struggled forward among the Noes. + +Twenty minutes later the tellers were at the table, and the moment that +was to make or mar a great Ministry had come. + +"Ayes, 306; Noes, 280. The Ayes have it!" + +"By Jove, he's done it!--the Judas!" cried a young fellow, crimson with +excitement, who was standing beside Fontenoy! + +"Yes--he's done it!" said Fontenoy, with grim composure, though the hand +that held his hat shook. "The curtain may now fall." + +"Where is he?" shouted the hot bloods around him, hooting and groaning, +as their eyes searched the House for the man who had thus, in an +afternoon, pulled down and defeated all their hopes. + +But Tressady was nowhere to be seen. He had left the House just as the +great news, surging like a wave through Lobby and corridor, reached a +group of people waiting in a Minister's private room--and Marcella +Maxwell knew that all was won. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +"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." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +The door opened silently, and there came in a figure that for a moment +was hardly recognised by either Maxwell or his wife. Shrunken, pale, and +grief-stricken, Ancoats's poor mother entered, her eye seeking eagerly +for Maxwell, perceiving nothing else. She was in black, her veil +hurriedly thrown back, and the features beneath it were all blurred by +distress and fatigue. + +Marcella hurried to her. Mrs. Allison took her hand in both her own with +the soft, appealing motion habitual to her, then said hastily, still +looking at Maxwell: + +"Maxwell, the boy has gone. He left me two days ago. This morning, in my +trouble, I sent for Lord Fontenoy, my kind, kind friend. And he persuaded +me to come to you at once. I begged him to come too--" + +She glanced timidly from one to the other, implying many things. + +But even with this preface, Maxwell's greeting of his defeated +antagonist was ceremony itself. The natural instinct of such a man is to +mask victory in courtesy. But a paragraph that morning in Fontenoy's +paper--a paragraph that he happened to have seen in Lord Ardagh's +room--had appealed to another natural instinct, stronger and more +primitive. It amazed him that even this emergency and Mrs. Allison's +persuasions could have brought the owner of the paper within his doors +on this particular morning. + +Fontenoy, immersed in the correspondence of the morning, had not yet +chanced to see the paragraph, which was Harding Watton's. Yet, if he had, +he could not have shown a more haughty and embarrassed bearing. He was +there under a compulsion he did not know how to resist, a compulsion of +tears and grief; but the instinct for manners, which so often upon +occasion serves the man of illustrious family, as well, almost, as good +feeling or education may serve another, had been for the time weakened in +him by the violences and exhaustion of the political struggle, and he did +not feel certain that he could trust himself. He was smarting still +through every nerve, and the greeting especially that Maxwell's tall wife +extended to him was gall and bitterness. She meanwhile, as she advanced +towards him, was mostly struck with the perfection of his morning dress. +The ultra-correctness and strict fashion that he affected in these +matters were generally a surprise to those who knew him only by +reputation. + +After five minutes' question and answer the Maxwells understood something +of the situation. A servant of Ancoats's had been induced to disclose +what he knew. There could be no question that the young fellow had gone +off to Normandy, where he possessed a chalet close to Trouville, in the +expectation that his fair lady would immediately join him there. She had +not yet started. So much Fontenoy had already ascertained. But she had +thrown up a recent engagement within the last few days, and before +Ancoats's flight all Fontenoy's information had pointed to the likelihood +of a _coup_ of some sort. As for the boy himself, he had left his mother +at Castle Luton, three days before, on the pretext of a Scotch visit, and +had instead taken the evening train to Paris, leaving a letter for his +mother in which the influence of certain modern French novels of the +psychological kind could perhaps be detected. "The call of the heart that +drives me from you," wrote this incredible young man, "is something +independent of myself. I wring my hands, but I follow where it leads. +Love has its crimes,--that I admit,--but they are the only road to +experience. And experience is all I care to live for! At any rate, I +cannot accept the limits that you, mother, would impose upon me. Each of +us must be content to recognise the other's personality. I have tried to +reconcile you to an affection that must be content to be irregular. You +repel it and me, under the influence of a bigotry in which I have ceased +to believe. Suffer me, then, to act for myself in this respect. At any +time that you like to call upon me I will be your dutiful son, so long as +this matter is not mentioned between us. And let me implore you not to +bring in third persons. They have already done mischief enough. Against +them I should know how to protect myself." + +Maxwell returned the letter with a disgust he could hardly repress. +Everything in it seemed to him as pinchbeck as the passion itself. Mrs. +Allison took it with the same miserable look, which had in it, Marcella +noticed, a certain strange sternness, as of some frail creature nerving +itself to desperate things. + +"Now what shall we do?" said Maxwell, abruptly. + +Fontenoy moved forward. "I presume you still command the same persons you +set in motion before? Can you get at them to-day?" + +Maxwell pondered. "Yes, the clergyman. The solicitor-brother is too far +away. Your idea is to stop the girl from crossing?" + +"If it were still possible." Fontenoy dropped his voice, and his gesture +induced Maxwell to follow him to the recess of a distant window. + +"The chief difficulty, perhaps," said Fontenoy, resuming, "concerns the +lad himself. His mother, you will understand, cannot run any risk of +being brought in contact with that woman. Nor is she physically fit for +the voyage; but someone must go, if only to content her. There has been +some wild talk of suicide, apparently--mere bombast, of course, like so +much of it, but she has been alarmed." + +"Do you propose, then, to go yourself?" + +"I am of no use," said Fontenoy, decisively. + +Maxwell had cause to know that the statement was true, and did not press +him. They fell into a rapid consultation. + +Meanwhile, Marcella had drawn Mrs. Allison to the sofa beside her, and +was attempting a futile task of comfort. Mrs. Allison answered in +monosyllables, glancing hither and thither. At last she said in a low, +swift voice, as though addressing herself, rather than her companion, "If +all fails, I have made up my mind. I shall leave his house. I can take +nothing more from him." + +Marcella started. "But that would deprive you of all chance, all hope of +influencing him," she said, her eager, tender look searching the other +woman's face. + +"No; it would be my duty," said Mrs. Allison, simply, crossing her hands +upon her lap. Her delicate blue eyes, swollen with weeping, the white +hair, of which a lock had escaped from its usual quiet braids and hung +over her blanched cheeks, her look at once saintly and indomitable--every +detail of her changed aspect made a chill and penetrating impression. +Marcella began to understand what the Christian might do, though the +mother should die of it. + +Meanwhile she watched the two men at the other side of the room, with a +manifest eagerness for their return. Presently, indeed, she half rose +and called: + +"Aldous!" + +Lord Maxwell turned. + +"Are you thinking of someone who might go to Trouville?" she asked him. + +"Yes, but we can hit on no one," he replied, in perplexity. + +She moved towards him, bearing herself with a peculiar erectness +and dignity. + +"Would it be possible to ask Sir George Tressady to go?" she said +quietly. + +Maxwell looked at her open-mouthed for an instant. Fontenoy, behind him, +threw a sudden, searching glance at the beautiful figure in grey. + +"We all know," she said, turning back to the mother, "that Ancoats likes +Sir George." + +Mrs. Allison shrunk a little from the clear look. Fontenoy's rage of +defeat, however modified in her presence, had nevertheless expressed +itself to her in phrases and allusions that had both perplexed and +troubled her. _Had_ Marcella indeed made use of her beauty to decoy a +weak youth from his allegiance? And now she spoke his name so simply. + +But the momentary wonder died from the poor mother's mind. + +"I remember," she said sadly, "I remember he once spoke to me very kindly +about my son." + +"And he thought kindly," said Marcella, rapidly; "he is kind at heart. +Aldous! if Cousin Charlotte consents, why not at least put the case to +him? He knows everything. He might undertake what we want, for her +sake,--for all our sakes,--and it might succeed." + +The swift yet calm decision of her manner completed Maxwell's +bewilderment. + +His eyes sought hers, while the others waited, conscious, somehow, of a +dramatic moment. Fontenoy's flash of malicious curiosity made him even +forget, while it lasted, the little tragic figure on the sofa. + +"What do you say, Cousin Charlotte?" said Maxwell at last. + +His voice was dry and business-like. Only the wife who watched him +perceived the silent dignity with which he had accepted her appeal. + +He went to sit beside Mrs. Allison, stooping over her, while they talked +in a low key. Very soon she had caught at Marcella's suggestion, with an +energy of despair. + +"But how can we find him?" she said at last, looking helplessly round +the room, at the very chair, among others, where Tressady had just +been sitting. + +Maxwell felt the humour of the situation without relishing it. + +"Either at his own house," he said shortly, "or the House of Commons." + +"He may have left town this morning. Lord Fontenoy thought"--she looked +timidly at her companion--"that he would be sure to go and explain +himself to his constituents at once." + +"Well, we can find out. If you give me instructions,--if you are sure +this is what you want,--we will find out at once. Are you sure?" + +"I can think of nothing better," she said, with a piteous gesture. +"And if he goes, I have only one message to give him. Ancoats knows +that I have exhausted every argument, every entreaty. Now let him tell +my son"--her voice grew firm, in spite of her look of anguish--"that +if he insists on surrendering himself to a life of sin I can bear him +company no more. I shall leave his house, and go somewhere by myself, +to pray for him." + +Maxwell tried to soothe her, and there was some half-whispered talk +between them, she quietly wiping away her tears from time to time. + +Meanwhile, Marcella and Fontenoy sat together a little way off, he at +first watching Mrs. Allison, she silent, and making no attempt to play +the hostess. Gradually, however, the sense of her presence beside him, +the memory of Tressady's speech, of the scene in the House of the night +before, began to work in his veins with a pricking, exciting power. His +family was famous for a certain drastic way with women; his father, the +now old and half-insane Marquis, had parted from his mother while +Fontenoy was still a child, after scenes that would have disgraced an +inn parlour. Fontenoy himself, in his reckless youth, had simply avoided +the whole sex, so far as its reputable members were concerned; till one +woman by sympathy, by flattery perhaps, by the strange mingling in +herself of iron and gentleness, had tamed him. But there were brutal +instincts in his blood, and he became conscious of them as he sat beside +Marcella Maxwell. + +Suddenly he broke out, bending forward, one hand on his knee, the other +nervously adjusting the eyeglass without which he was practically blind. + +"I imagine your side had foreseen last night better than we had?" + +She drew herself together instantly. + +"One can hardly say. It was evident, wasn't it, that the House as a whole +was surprised? Certainly, no one could have foreseen the numbers." + +She met his look straight, her white hand playing with Mrs. +Allison's card. + +"Oh! a slide of that kind once begun goes like the wind," said Fontenoy. +"Well, and are you pleased with your Bill--not afraid of your +promises--of all the Edens you have held out?" + +The smile that he attempted roused such ogerish associations in Marcella, +she must needs say something to give colour to the half-desperate laugh +that caught her. + +"Did you suppose we should be already _en penitence?_" she asked him. + +The man's wrath overcame him. So England--all the serious forces of the +country--were to be more and more henceforward at the mercy of this kind +of thing! He had begun the struggle with a scornful disbelief in current +gossip. He--politically and morally the creation of a woman--had yet not +been able to bring himself to fear a woman. And now he sat there, +fiercely saying to himself that this woman, playing the old game under +new names, had undone him. + +"Ah! I see," he said. "You are of the mind of the Oxford don--never +regret, never retract, never apologise?" + +The small, reddish eyes, like needle-points, fixed the face before him. +She looked up, her beautiful lips parting. She felt the insult--marvelled +at it! On such an errand, in her own house! Scorn was almost lost in +astonishment. + +"A quotation which nobody gets right--isn't it so?" she said calmly. "If +a wise man said it, I suppose he meant, 'Don't explain yourself to the +wrong people,' which is good advice, don't you think?" + +She rose as she spoke, and moved away from him, that she might listen to +what her husband was saying. Fontenoy was left to reflect on the folly of +a man who, being driven to ask a kindness of his enemy, cannot keep his +temper in the enemy's house. Yet his temper had been freshly tried since +he entered it. The whole suggestion of Tressady's embassy was to himself +galling in the extreme. "There is a meaning in it," he thought; "of +course she thinks it will save appearances!" There was no extravagance, +no calumny, that this cold critic of other men's fervours was not for the +moment ready to believe. + +Nevertheless, as he threw himself back in his chair, and his eye caught +Mrs. Allison's bent figure on the other side of the room, he knew that he +must needs submit--he did submit--to anything that could give that torn +heart ease. Of his two passions, one, the passion for politics, seemed +for the moment to have lost itself in disgust and disappointment; to the +other he clung but the more strongly. Once or twice in her talk with +Maxwell, Mrs. Allison raised her gentle eyes and looked across to +Fontenoy. "Are you there, my friend?" the glance seemed to say, and a +thrill spread itself through the man's rugged being. Ah, well! the +follies of this young scapegrace must wear themselves out in time, and +either he would marry and so free his mother, or he would so outrage her +conscience that she would separate herself from him. Then would come +other people's rewards. + +Presently, indeed, Mrs. Allison rose from her seat and advanced to him +with hurried steps. + +"We have settled it, I think; Maxwell will do all he can. It seems hard +to trust so much to a stranger like Sir George Tressady, but if he will +go--if Ancoats likes him? We must do the best, mustn't we?" + +She raised to him her delicate, small face, in a most winning dependence. +Fontenoy did not even attempt resistance. + +"Certainly--it is not a chance to lose. May I suggest also"--he looked +at Maxwell--"that there is no time to lose?" + +"Give me ten minutes, and I am off," said Maxwell, hurriedly carrying a +bundle of unopened letters to a distance. He looked through them, to see +if anything especially urgent required him to give instructions to his +secretary before leaving the house. + +"Shall I take you home?" said Fontenoy to Mrs. Allison. + +She drew her thick veil round her head and face, and said some tremulous +words, which unconsciously deepened the gloom on Fontenoy's face. +Apparently they were to the effect that before going home she wished to +see the Anglican priest in whom she especially confided, a certain Father +White, who was to all intents and purposes her director. For in his +courtship of this woman of fifty, with her curious distinction and her +ethereal charm, which years seemed only to increase, Fontenoy had not one +rival, but two--her son and her religion. + +Fontenoy's fingers barely touched those of Maxwell and his wife. As he +closed the door behind Mrs. Allison, leaving the two together, he said to +himself contemptuously that he pitied the husband. + +When the latch had settled, Maxwell threw down his letters and crossed +the room to his wife. + +"I only half understood you," he said, a flush rising in his face. "You +really mean that we, on this day of all days--that I--am to personally +ask this kindness of George Tressady?" + +"I do!" she cried, but without attempting any caress. "If I could only go +and ask it myself!" "That would be impossible!" he said quickly. + +"Then you, dear husband--dear love!--go and ask it for me! Must we +not--oh! do see it as I do!--must we not somehow make it possible to be +friends again, to wipe out that--that half-hour once for all?"--she threw +out her hand in an impetuous gesture. "If you go, he will feel that is +what we mean--he will understand us at once--there is nothing vile in +him--nothing! Dear, he never said a word to me I could resent till this +morning. And, alack, alack! was it somehow my fault?" She dropped her +face a moment on the back of the chair she held. "How I am to play my own +part--well! I must think. But I cannot have such a thing on my heart, +Aldous--I cannot!" + +He was silent a moment; then he said: + +"Let me understand, at least, what it is precisely that we are doing. Is +the idea that it should be made possible for us all to meet again as +though nothing had happened?" + +She shrank a moment from the man's common sense; then replied, +controlling herself: + +"Only not to leave the open sore--to help him to forget! He must know--he +does know"--she held herself proudly--"that I have no secrets from you. +So that when the time comes for remembering, for thinking it over, he +will shrink from you, or hate you. Whereas, what I want"--her eyes filled +with tears--"is that he should _know_ you--only that! I ought to have +brought it about long ago." + +"Are you forgetting that I owe him this morning my political existence?" + +The voice betrayed the inner passion. + +"He would be the last person to remember it!" she cried. "Why not take it +quite, quite simply?--behave so as to say to him, without words, 'Be our +friend--join with us in putting out of sight what hurts us no less than +you to think of. Shut the door upon the old room--pass with us into a +new!'--oh! if I could explain!" + +She hid her face in her hands again. + +"I understand," he said, after a long pause. "It is very like you. I am +not quite sure it is very wise. These things, to my mind, are best left +to end themselves. But I promised Mrs. Allison; and what you ask, dear, +you shall have. So be it." + +She lifted her head hastily, and was dismayed by the signs of +agitation in him as he turned away. She pursued him timidly, laying +her hand on his arm. + +"And then--" + +Her voice sank to its most pleading note. He caught her hand; but she +withdrew herself in haste. + +"And then," she went on, struggling for a smile, "then you and I have +things to settle. Do you think I don't know that I have made all your +work, and all your triumph, gall and bitterness to you--do you think I +don't know?" + +She gazed at him with a passionate intensity through her tears, yet by +her gesture forbidding him to come near her. What man would not have +endured such discomforts a thousand times for such a look? + +He stooped to her. + +"We are to talk that out, then, when I come back?--Please give these +letters to Saunders--there is nothing of importance. I will go first to +Tressady's house." + + * * * * * + +Maxwell drove away through the sultry streets, his mind running on his +task. It seemed to him that politics had never put him to anything so +hard. But he began to plan it with his usual care and precision. The +butler who opened the door of the Upper Brook Street house could only say +that his master was not at home. + +"Shall I find him, do you imagine, at the House of Commons?" + +The butler could not say. But Lady Tressady was in, though just on the +point of going out. Should he inquire? + +But the visitor made it plain that he had no intention of disturbing Lady +Tressady, and would find out for himself. He left his card in the +butler's hands. + +"Who was that, Kenrick?" said a sharp voice behind the man as the hansom +drove away. Letty Tressady, elaborately dressed, with a huge white hat +and lace parasol, was standing on the stairs, her pale face peering out +of the shadows. The butler handed her the card, and telling him to get +her a cab at once, she ran up again to the drawing-room. + +Meanwhile Maxwell sped on towards Westminster, frowning over his problem. +As he drove down Whitehall the sun brightened to a naked midday heat, +throwing its cloak of mists behind it. The gilding on the Clock Tower +sparkled in the light; even the dusty, airless street, with its withered +planes, was on a sudden flooded with gaiety. Two or three official or +Parliamentary acquaintances saluted the successful minister as he passed; +and each was conscious of a certain impatience with the gravity of the +well-known face. That a great man should not be content to look victory, +as well as win it, seemed a kind of hypocrisy. + +In the House of Commons, a few last votes and other oddments of the now +dying session were being pushed through to an accompaniment of empty +benches. Tressady was not there, nor in the library. Maxwell made his way +to the upper lobby, where writing-tables and materials are provided in +the window-recesses for the use of members. + +He had hardly entered the lobby before he caught sight at its further end +of the long straight chin and fair head of the man he was in quest of. +And almost at the same moment, Tressady, who was sitting writing amid a +pile of letters and papers, lifted his eyes and saw Lord Maxwell +approaching. + +He started, then half rose, scattering his papers. Maxwell bowed as he +neared the table, then stopped beside it, without offering his hand. + +"I fear I may be disturbing you," he said, with simple but cold courtesy. +"The fact is I have come down here on an urgent matter, which may perhaps +be my excuse. Could you give me twenty minutes, in my room?" + +"By all means," said Tressady. He tried to put his papers together, but +to his own infinite annoyance his hand shook. He seemed hardly to know +what to do with them. + +"Do not let me hurry you," said Maxwell, in the same manner. "Will you +follow me at your leisure?" + +"I will follow you immediately," said Tressady; "as soon as I have put +these under lock and key." + +His visitor departed. Tressady remained standing a moment by the table, +his blue eyes, unusually wide open, fixed absently on the river, a dark +red flush overspreading the face. Then he rapidly threw his papers +together into a black bag that stood near, and walked with them to his +locker in the wall. + +For an hour after he left Marcella Maxwell he had wandered blindly up +and down the Green Park; at the end of it a sudden impulse had driven +him to the House, as his best refuge both from Letty and himself. There +he found waiting for him a number of letters, and a sheaf of telegrams +besides from his constituency, with which he had just begun to grapple +when Maxwell interrupted him. Some hours of hard writing and thinking +might, he thought, bring him by reaction to some notion of what to do +with the next days and nights--how to take up the business of his +private life again. + +Now, as he withdrew his key from the lock, in a corridor almost empty of +inhabitants, abstraction seized him once more. He leant against the wall +a moment, with his hands in his pockets, seeing her face--the tears on +her cheek--feeling the texture of her dress against his lips. Barely two +hours ago! No doubt she had confided all to Maxwell in the interval. The +young fellow burnt with mingled rage and shame. This interview with the +husband seemed to transform it all to vaudeville, if not to farce. How +was he to get through it with any dignity and self-command? Moreover, a +passionate resentment towards Maxwell developed itself. His telling of +his secret had been no matter for a common scandal, a vulgar jealousy. +_She_ knew that--she could not have so misrepresented him. A sense of the +situation to which he had brought himself on all sides made his pride +feel itself in the grip of something that asked his submission. Yet why, +and to whom? + +He walked along through the interminable corridors towards Maxwell's room +in the House of Lords, a prey to what afterwards seemed to him the +meanest moment of his life. Little knowing the pledges that a woman had +given for him, he did say to himself that Maxwell owed him much--that he +was not called upon to bear everything from a man he had given back to +power. And all the time his thoughts built a thorn-hedge about her face, +her pity. Let him see them no more, not even in the mirror of the mind. +Great heaven! what harm could such as he do to her? + +By the time he reached Maxwell's door he seemed to himself as hard and +cool as usual. As he entered, the minister was standing by an oriel +window, overlooking the river, turning over the contents of a +despatch-box that had just been brought him. He advanced at once; and +Tressady noticed that he had already dismissed his secretary. + +"Will you sit by the window?" said Maxwell. "The day promises to be +extraordinarily hot." + +Tressady took the seat assigned him. Maxwell's grey eye ran over the +young man's figure and bearing. Then he bent forward from a chair on the +other side of a small writing-table. + +"You will probably have guessed the reason of my intrusion upon you--you +and I have already discussed this troublesome affair--and the kind manner +in which you treated our anxieties then--" + +"Ancoats!" exclaimed Tressady, with a start he could not control. "You +wish to consult me about Ancoats?" + +A flash of wonder crossed the other's mind. "He imagined--" Instinctively +Maxwell's opening mildness stiffened into a colder dignity. + +"I fear we may be making an altogether improper claim upon you," he said +quietly; "but this morning, about an hour ago, Ancoats's mother came to +us with the news that he had left her two days ago, and was now +discovered to be at Trouville, where he has a chalet, waiting for this +girl, of whom we all know, to join him. You will imagine Mrs. Allison's +despair. The entanglement is in itself bad enough. But she--I think you +know it--is no ordinary woman, nor can she bring any of the common +philosophy of life to bear upon this matter. It seems to be sapping her +very springs of existence, and the impression she left upon myself--and +upon Lady Maxwell"--he said the words slowly--"was one of the deepest +pity and sorrow. As you also know, I believe, I have till now been able +to bring some restraining influence to bear upon the girl, who is of +course not a girl, but a very much married woman, with a husband always +threatening to turn up and avenge himself upon her. There is a good man, +one of those High Church clergymen who interest themselves specially in +the stage, who has helped us many times already. I have telegraphed to +him, and expect him here before long. We know that she has not yet left +London, and it may be possible again, at the eleventh hour, to stop her. +But that--" + +"Is not enough," said Tressady, quickly, raising his head. "You want +someone to grapple with Ancoats?" + +Face and voice were those of another man--attentive, normal, sympathetic. +Maxwell observed him keenly. + +"We want someone to go to Ancoats; to represent to him his mother's +determination to leave him for good if this disgraceful affair goes on; +to break the shock of the girl's non-arrival to him, if, indeed, we +succeed in stopping her; and to watch him for a day or two, in case there +should be anything in the miserable talk of suicide with which he seems +to have been threatening his mother." + +"Oh! Suicide! Ancoats!" said Tressady, throwing back his head. + +"We rate him, apparently, much the same," said Maxwell, drily. "But it +is not to be wondered at that the mother should be differently affected. +She sent you"--the speaker paused a moment--"what seemed to me a +touching message." + +Tressady bent forward. + +"'Tell him that I have no claim upon him--that I am ashamed to ask this +of him. But he once said some kind words to me about my son, and I know +that Ancoats desired his friendship. His help _might_ save us. I can say +no more.'" + +Tressady looked up quickly, reddening involuntarily. + +"Was Fontenoy there--did he agree?" + +"Fontenoy agreed," said Maxwell, in the same measured voice. "In fact, +you grasp our petition. To speak frankly, my wife suggested it, and I was +deputed to bear it to you. But I need not say that we are quite prepared +to find that you are not able to do what we have ventured to ask of you, +or that your engagements will not permit it." + +A strange gulp rose in Tressady's throat. He understood--oh! he +understood her--perfectly. + +He leant back in his chair, looking through the open window to the +Thames. A breeze had risen and was breaking up the thunderous sky into +gay spaces of white and blue. The river was surging and boiling under the +tide, and strings of barges were mounting with the mounting water, +slipping fast along the terrace wall. The fronts of the various buildings +opposite rose in shadow against the dazzling blue and silver of the +water. Here over the river, even for this jaded London, summer was still +fresh; every mast and spar, every track of boat or steamer in the burst +of light, struck the eye with sharpness and delight. + +Each line and hue printed itself on Tressady's brain. Then he turned +slowly to his companion. Maxwell sat patiently waiting for his reply; and +for the first time Tressady received, as it were, a full impression of a +personality he had till now either ignored or disliked. In youth Maxwell +had never passed for a handsome man. But middle life and noble habit were +every year giving increased accent and spiritual energy to the youth's +pleasant features; and Nature as she silvered the brown hair, and drove +deep the lines of thought and experience, was bringing more than she took +away. A quiet, modest fellow Maxwell would be to the end; not witty; not +brilliant; more and more content to bear the yoke of the great +commonplaces of life as subtlety and knowledge grew; saying nothing of +spiritual things, only living them--yet a man, it seemed, on whom England +would more and more lay the burden of her fortunes. + +Tressady gazed at him, shaken with new reverences, new compunctions. +Maxwell's eyes were drawn to his--mild, penetrating eyes, in which for an +instant Tressady seemed to read what no words would ever say to him. Then +he sprang up. + +"There is an afternoon train put on this month. I can catch it. Tell me, +if you can, a few more details." + +Maxwell took out a half-sheet of notes from his pocket, and the two men +standing together beside the table went with care into a few matters it +was well for Tressady to know. Tressady threw a quick intelligence into +his questions that inevitably recalled to Maxwell the cut-and-thrust of +his speech on the preceding evening; nor behind his rapid discussion of a +vulgar business did the constrained emotion of his manner escape his +companion. + +At last all was settled. At the last moment an uneasy question rose in +Maxwell's mind. "Ought _we_, at such a crisis, to be sending him away +from his wife?" But he could not bring himself to put it, even lightly, +into words, and as it happened Tressady did not leave him in doubt. + +"I am glad you caught me," he said nervously, in what seemed an awkward +pause, while he looked for his hat, forgetting where he had put it. "I +was intending to leave London to-night. But my business can very well +wait till next week. Now I think I have everything." + +He gathered up a new Guide-Chaix that Maxwell had put into his hand, saw +that the half-sheet of notes was safely stowed into his pocket-book, and +took up his hat and stick. As he spoke, Maxwell had remembered the +situation and Mrs. Allison's remark. No doubt Tressady had proposed to go +north that night on a mission of explanation to his Market Malford +constituents, and it struck one of the most scrupulous of men with an +additional pang, that he should be thus helping to put private motives in +the way of public duty. But what was done was done. And it seemed +impossible that either should speak a word of politics. + +"I ought to say," said Tressady, pausing once more as they moved +together towards the door, "that I have not ultimately much hope for +Mrs. Allison. If this entanglement is put aside, there will be something +else. Trouville itself, in August, I should imagine, is a place of +_bonnes fortunes_ for the man who wants them, and Ancoats's mind runs to +such things." + +He spoke with a curious eagerness, like one who pleads that his good-will +shall not be judged by mere failure or success. + +Maxwell raised his shoulders. + +"Nothing that can happen will in the least affect our gratitude to +_you_," he said gravely. + +"Gratitude!" muttered the young man under his breath. His lip trembled. +He looked uncertainly at his companion. Maxwell did not offer his hand, +yet as he opened the door for his visitor there was a quiet cordiality +and kindness in his manner that made his renewed words of thanks sound +like a strange music in Tressady's ears. + + * * * * * + +When the minister was once more alone he walked back to the window, and +stood looking down thoughtfully on the gay pageant of the river. She was +right--she was always right. There was nothing vile in that young fellow, +and his face had a look of suffering it pained Maxwell to remember. Why +had he personally not come to know him better? "I think too little of +men, too much of machinery," he said to himself, despondently; +"unconsciously I leave the dealing with human beings far too often to +her, and then I wonder that a man sees and feels her as she is!" + +Yet as he stood there in the sunshine a feeling of moral relief stole +upon him, the feeling that rewards a man who has tried to deal greatly +with some common and personal strait. Some day, not yet, he would make +Tressady his friend. He calmly felt it to be within his power. + +Unless the wife!--He threw up his hand, and turned back to his +writing-table. What was to be done with that letter? Had Tressady +any knowledge of it? Maxwell could not conceive it possible that he +had. But, no doubt, it would come to his knowledge, as well as +Maxwell's reply. + +For he meant to reply, and as he glanced at the clock on his table he saw +that he had just half an hour before his clergyman-visitor arrived. +Instantly, in his methodical way, he sat down to his task, labouring it, +however, with toil and difficulty, when it was once begun. + +The few words he ultimately wrote ran as follows: + +"Dear Lady Tressady,--Your letter was a great surprise and a great pain +to me. I believe you will recognise before long that you wrote it under a +delusion, and that you have said in it both unkind and unjust things of +one who is totally incapable of wronging you or anyone else. My wife read +your letter, for she and I have no secrets. She will try and see you at +once, and I trust you will not refuse to see her. She will prove to you, +I think, that you have been giving yourself quite needless torture, for +which she has no responsibility, but for which she is none the less +sorrowful and distressed. + +"I have treated your letter in this way because it is impossible to +ignore the pain and trouble which drove you to write. I need not say that +if it became necessary for me to write or act in another way, I should +think only of my wife. But I will trust to the effect upon you of her own +words and character; and I cannot believe that you will misconstrue the +generosity that prompts her to go to you. + +"Is it not possible, also, that your misunderstanding of your husband +may be in its own way as grave as your misunderstanding of Lady Maxwell? +Forgive an intrusive question, and believe me, + +"Yours faithfully, + +"MAXWELL." + +He read it anxiously over and over, then took a hasty copy of it, and +finally sealed and sent it. He was but half satisfied with it. How was +one to write such a letter without argument or recrimination? The poor +thing had a vulgar, spiteful, little soul; that was clear from her +outpouring. It was also clear that she was miserable; nor could Maxwell +disguise from himself that in a sense she had ample cause. From that hard +fact, with all its repellent and unpalatable consequences, a weaker man +would by now have let his mind escape, would at any rate have begun to +minimise and make light of George Tressady's act of the morning. In +Maxwell, on the contrary, after a first movement of passionate resentment +which had nothing whatever in common with ordinary jealousy, that act was +now generating a compelling and beneficent force, that made for healing +and reparation. Marcella had foreseen it, and in her pain and penitence +had given the impulse. For all things are possible to a perfect +affection, working through a nature at once healthy and strong. + +Yet when Maxwell was once more established in his room at the Privy +Council, overwhelmed with letters, interviews, and all the routine of +official business, those who had to do with him noticed an unusual +restlessness in their even-tempered chief. In truth, whenever his work +left him free for a moment, all sorts of questions would start up in his +mind: "Is she there? Is that woman hurting and insulting her? Can I do +nothing? My love! my poor love!" + + * * * * * + +But Marcella's plans so far had not prospered. + +When George Tressady, after hastily despatching his most urgent business +at the House, drove up to his own door in the afternoon just in time to +put his things together and catch a newly-put-on dining-train to Paris, +he found the house deserted. The butler reminded him that Letty +accompanied by Miss Tulloch had gone to Hampton Court to join a river +party for the day. George remembered; he hated the people she was to be +with, and instinct told him that Cathedine would be there. + +A rush of miserable worry overcame him. Ought he to be leaving her? + +Then, in the darkness of the hall, he caught sight of a card lying on the +table. _Her card_! Amazement made him almost dizzy, while the man at his +arm explained. + +"Her ladyship called just after luncheon. She thought she would have +found my lady in--before she went out. But her ladyship is coming again, +probably this evening, as she wished to see Lady Tressady particularly." + +Tressady gave the man directions to pack for him immediately, then took +the card into his study, and stood looking at it in a tumult of feeling. +Ah! let him begone--out of her way! Oh, heavenly goodness and compassion! +It seemed to him already that an angel had trodden this dark house, and +that another air breathed in it. + +That was his first thought. Then the rush of sore longing, of unbearable +self-contempt, stirred all his worser self to life again. Had she not +better after all have left him and Letty alone! What did such lives as +theirs matter to her? + +He ran upstairs to make his last preparations, wrote a few lines to Letty +describing Mrs. Allison's plight and the errand on which he was bound, +and in half an hour was at Charing Cross. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +"Did you ring, my lady?" + +"Yes. Kenrick, if Lady Maxwell calls to see me to-night, you will say, +please, that I am particularly engaged, and unable to receive anyone." + +Letty Tressady had just come in from her river party. Dressed in a +delicate gown of lace and pale green chiffon, she was standing beside her +writing-table with Lady Maxwell's card in her hand. Kenrick had given it +to her on her arrival, together with the message which had accompanied +it, and she had taken a few minutes to think it over. As she gave the man +his order, the energy of the small figure, as it half turned towards the +door, the brightness of the eyes under the white veil she had just thrown +back, no less than the emphasis of her tone, awakened in the butler the +clear perception that neither the expected visit nor his mistress's +directions were to be taken as ordinary affairs. After he left the +drawing-room, Grier passed him on the stairs. He gave her a slight +signal, and the two retired to some nether region to discuss the secrets +of their employers. + +Meanwhile Letty, having turned on the electric light in the room, walked +to the window and set it half open behind the curtain. In that way she +would hear the carriage approaching, it was between eight and nine +o'clock. No doubt Lady Maxwell would drive round after dinner. + +Then, still holding the card lightly in her hand, she threw herself on +the sofa. She was tired, but so excited that she could not rest--first, +by the memory of the day that had just passed; still more by the thought +of the rebuff she was about to administer to the great lady who had +affronted her. No doubt her letter had done its work. The remembrance of +it tilled her with an uneasy joy. Did George know of it by now? She did +not care. Lady Maxwell, of course, was coming to try and appease her, to +hush it up. There had been a scene, it was to be supposed, between her +and her stiff husband. Letty gloated over the dream of it. Tears, +humiliation, reproaches, she meted them all out in plenty to the woman +she hated. Nor would things end there. Why, London was full of gossip! +Harding's paragraph--for of course it was Harding's--had secured that. +How clever of him! Not a name!--not a thing that could be taken hold +of!--yet so clear. Well!--if she, Letty, was to be trampled on and set +aside, at any rate other people should suffer too. + +So George had gone off to France, leaving her alone, without "Good-bye." +She did not believe a word of his excuse; and, if it were true, it was +only another outrage that he should have thought twice of such a matter +at such a crisis. But it was probably a mere device of his and +_hers_--she would find out for what. + +Her state of tension was too great to allow her to stay in the same place +for more than a few minutes. She got up, and went to the glass before the +mantelpiece. Taking out the pins that held her large Gainsborough hat, +she arranged her hair with her hands, putting the curls of the fringe in +their right place, fastening up some stray ends. She had given orders, as +we have seen, to admit no one, and was presumably going to bed. +Nevertheless, her behaviour was instinctively the behaviour of one who +expects a guest. + +When, more or less to her satisfaction, she had restored the symmetry of +the little curled and crimped head, she took her face between her hands, +and stared at her own reflection. Memories of the party she had just +left, of the hot river, the slowly filling locks, the revelry, the +champagne, danced in her mind, especially of a certain walk through a +wood. She defiantly watched the face in the glass grow red, the eyelids +quiver. Then, like the tremor from some volcanic fire far within, a +shudder ran through her. She dropped her head on her hands. She +hated--_hated_ him! Was it to-morrow evening she had told him he might +come? She would go down to Ferth. + +Wheels in the quiet street! Letty flew to the window like an excited +child, her green and white twinkling through the room. + +A brougham, and a tall figure in black stepping slowly out of it. Letty +sheltered herself behind a curtain, held her breath, and listened. + +Presently her lower lip dropped a little. What was Kenrick about? The +front door had closed, and Lady Maxwell had not re-entered her carriage. + +She opened the drawing-room door with care, and was stooping over the +banisters when she saw Kenrick on the stairs. He seemed to be coming +from the direction of George's study. + +"What have you been doing?" she asked him in a hard under-voice, looking +at him angrily. "I told you not to let Lady Maxwell in." + +"I told her, my lady, that you were engaged and could see no one. Then +her ladyship asked if she might write a few lines to you and send them +up, asking when you would be able to see her. So I showed her into Sir +George's study, my lady, and she is writing at Sir George's desk." + +"You should have done nothing of the sort," said Letty, sharply. "What is +that letter?" + +She took it from his hand before the butler, somewhat bewildered by the +responsibilities of his position, could explain that he had just found it +in the letterbox, where it might have been lying some little time, as he +had heard no knock. + +She let him go downstairs again, to await Lady Maxwell's exit, and +herself ran back to read her letter, her heart beating, for the address +of the sender was on the envelope. + +When she had finished she threw it down, half suffocating. + +"So I am to be lectured and preached to besides. Good heavens! In his +lofty manner, I suppose, that people talk of. Prig--odious, +insufferable prig! So I have mistaken George, have I? My own husband! +And insulted her--_her_! And she is actually downstairs, writing to me, +in my own house!" + +She locked her hands, and began stormily to pace the room again. The +image of her rival, only a few feet from her, bending over George's +table, worked in her with poisonous force. Suddenly she swept to the bell +and rang it. A door opened downstairs. She ran to the landing. + +"Kenrick!" + +"Yes, my lady." She heard a pause, and the soft rustle of a dress. + +"Tell Lady Maxwell, please"--she struggled hard for the right, the +dignified tone--"that if it is not too late for her to stay, I am now +able to see her." + +She hurried back into the drawing-room and waited. _Would_ she come? +Letty's whole being was now throbbing with one mad desire. If Kenrick +let her go! + +But steps approached; the door was thrown open. + +Marcella Maxwell came in timidly, very pale, the dark eyes shrinking from +the sudden light of the drawing-room. She was bareheaded, and wore a long +cloak of black lace over her white evening dress. Letty's flash of +thought as she saw her was twofold: first, hatred of her beauty, then +triumph in the evident nervousness with which her visitor approached her. + +Without making the slightest change of position, the mistress of the +house spoke first. + +"Will you please tell me," she said, in her sharpest, thinnest voice, "to +what I owe the honour of this visit?" + +Marcella paused half-way towards her hostess. + +"I read your letter to my husband," she said quietly, though her voice +shook, "and I thought you would hardly refuse to let me speak to you +about it." + +"Then perhaps you will sit down," said Letty, in the same voice; and she +seated herself. + +If she had wished to heighten the effect of her reception by these small +discourtesies she did not succeed. Rather, Marcella's self-possession +returned under them. She looked round simply for a chair, brought one +forward within speaking distance of her companion, moving once more, in +her thin, tall grace, with all that unconscious dignity Letty had so +often envied and admired from a distance. + +But neither dignity nor grace made any bar to the emotion that filled +her. She bent forward, clasping her hands on her knee. + +"Your letter to my husband made me so unhappy--that I could not help +coming," she said, in a tone that was all entreaty, all humbleness. +"Not--of course--that it seemed to either of us a true or just account of +what had happened"--she drew herself up gently--"but it made me +realise--though indeed I had realised it before I read it--that in my +friendship with your husband I had been forgetting--forgetting those +things--one ought to remember most. You will let me put things, won't +you, in my own way, as they seem to me? At Castle Luton Sir George +attracted me very much. The pleasure of talking to him there first made +me wish to try and alter some of his views--to bring him across my poor +people--to introduce him to our friends. Then, somehow, a special bond +grew up between him and me with regard to this particular struggle in +which my husband and I"--she dropped her eyes that she might not see +Letty's heated face--"have been so keenly interested. But what I ought to +have felt--from the very first--was, that there could be, there ought to +have been, something else added. Married people "--she spoke hurriedly, +her breath rising and falling--"are not two, but one--and my first step +should have been to come--and--and ask you to let me know you too--to +find out what your feelings were, whether you wished for a +friendship--that--that I had perhaps no right to offer to Sir George +alone. I have been looking into my own heart"--her voice trembled +again--"and I see that fault, that great fault. To be excluded myself +from any strong friendship my husband might make, would be agony to me!" +The frank, sudden passion of her lifted eyes sent a thrill even through +Letty's fierce and hardly, kept silence. "And that I wanted to say to +you, first of all. I wronged my own conception of what marriage should +be, and you were quite, quite right to be angry!" + +"Well, I think it's quite clear, isn't it, that you forgot from the +beginning George had a wife?" cried Letty, in her most insulting voice. +"That certainly can't be denied. Anybody could see that at Castle Luton!" + +Marcella looked at her in perplexity. What could suggest to her how to +say the right word, touch the right chord? Would she be able to do more +than satisfy her own conscience and then go, leaving this strange little +fury to make what use she pleased of her visit and her avowals? + +She shaded her eyes with her hand a moment, thinking. Then she said: + +"Perhaps it is of no use for me to ask you to remember how full our +minds--my husband's and mine--have been of one subject--one set of +ideas. But, if I am not keeping you too long, I should like to give you +an account, from my point of view, of the friendship between Sir George +and myself. I think I can remember every talk of ours, from our first +meeting in the hospital down to--down to this morning." + +"This morning!" cried Letty, springing up. "This _morning_! He went to +you to-day?" + +The little face convulsed with passion raised an intolerable distress +in Marcella. + +"Yes, he came to see me," she said, her dark eyes, full of pain, full, +too, once more, of entreaty, fixed upon her interrogator. "But do let me +tell you! I never saw anyone in deeper trouble--trouble about +you--trouble about himself." + +Letty burst into a wild laugh. + +"Of course! No doubt he went to complain of me--that I flirted--that I +ill-treated his mother--that I spent too much money--and a lot of other +pleasant little things. Oh! I can imagine it perfectly. Besides that, I +suppose he went to be thanked. Well, he deserved _that_. He has thrown +away his career to please you; so if you didn't thank him, you ought! +Everybody says his position in Parliament now isn't worth a straw--that +he must resign--which is delightful, of course, for his wife. And I saw +it all from the beginning--I understood exactly what you _wanted_ to do +at Castle Luton--only I couldn't believe then--I was only six weeks +married--" + +A wave of excitement and self-pity swept over her. She broke off +with a sob. + +Marcella's heart was wrung. She knew nothing of the real Letty Tressady. +It was the wife as such, slighted and set aside, that appealed to the +imagination, the remorse of this happy, this beloved woman. She rose +quickly, she held out her hands, looking down upon the little venomous +creature who had been pouring these insults upon her. + +"Don't--_don't_ believe such things," she said, with sobbing breath. "I +never wronged you consciously for a moment. Can't you believe that Sir +George and I became friends because we cared for the same kind of +questions; because I--I was full of my husband's work and everything that +concerned it; because I liked to talk about it, to win him friends. If it +had ever entered my mind that such a thing could pain and hurt you--" + +"Where have you sent him to-day?" cried Letty, peremptorily, interrupting +her, while she drew her handkerchief fiercely across her eyes. + +Instantly Marcella was conscious of the difficulty of explaining her own +impulse and Maxwell's action. + +"Sir George told me," she said, faltering, "that he must go away from +London immediately, to think out some trouble that was oppressing him. +Only a few minutes after he left our house we heard from Mrs. Allison +that she was in great distress about her son. She came, in fact, to beg +us to help her find him. I won't go into the story, of course; I am sure +you know it. My husband and I talked it over. It occurred to us that if +Maxwell went to him--to Sir George--and asked him to do us and her this +great kindness of going to Ancoats and trying to bring him back to his +mother, it would put everything on a different footing. Maxwell would +get to know him,--as I had got to know him. One would find a way--to +silence the foolish, unjust things--that have been said--I suppose--I +don't know--" + +She paused, confused by the difficulties in her path, her cheeks hot and +flushed. But the heart knew its own innocence. She recovered herself; she +came nearer. + +"--If only--at the same time--I could make you realise how truly--how +bitterly--I had felt for any pain you might have suffered--if I could +persuade you to look at it all--your husband's conduct and mine--in its +true light, and to believe that he cares--he _must_ care--for nothing in +the world so much as his home--as you and your happiness!" + +The nobleness of the speaker, the futility of the speech, were about +equally balanced! Candour was impossible, if only for kindness' sake. And +the story, so told, was not only unconvincing, it was hardly intelligible +even, to Letty. For the two personalities moved in different worlds, and +what had seemed to the woman who was all delicate impulse and romance the +natural and right course, merely excited in Letty, and not without +reason, fresh suspicion and offence. If words had been all, Marcella had +gained nothing. + +But a strange tumult was rising in Letty's breast. There was something in +this mingling of self-abasement with an extraordinary moral richness and +dignity, in these eyes, these hands that would have so gladly caught and +clasped her own, which began almost to intimidate her. She broke out +again, so as to hold her own bewilderment at bay: + +"What right had you to send him away--to plan anything for _my_ husband +without my consent? Oh, of course you put it very finely; I daresay you +know about all sorts of things _I_ don't know about; I'm not clever, I +don't talk politics. But I don't quite see the good of it, if it's only +to take husbands away from their wives. All the same, I'm not a +hypocrite, and I don't mean to pretend I'm a meek saint. Far from it. +I've no doubt that George thinks he's been perfectly justified from the +beginning, and that I have brought everything upon myself. Well! I don't +care to argue about it. Don't imagine, please, that I have been playing +the deserted wife all the time. If people injure me, it's not my way to +hold my tongue, and I imagine that, after all, I do understand my own +husband, in spite of Lord Maxwell's kind remarks!" She pointed scornfully +to Maxwell's letter on the table. "But as soon as I saw that nothing I +said mattered to George, and that his whole mind was taken up with your +society, why, of course, I took my own measures! There are other men in +the world--and one of them happens to amuse me particularly at this +moment. It's your doing and George's, you see, if he doesn't like it!" + +Marcella recoiled in sudden horror, staring at her companion with wide, +startled eyes. Letty braved her defiantly, her dry lips drawn into a +miserable smile. She stood, looking very small and elegant, beside her +writing-table, her hand, blazing with rings, resting lightly upon it, the +little, hot withered face alone betraying the nerve tension behind. + +The situation lasted a few seconds, then with a quick step Marcella +hurried to a chair on the further side of the room, sank into it, and +covered her face with her hands. + +Letty's heart seemed to dip, as it were, into an abyss. But there was a +frenzied triumph in the spectacle of Marcella's grief and tears. + +_Marcella Maxwell_--thus silenced, thus subdued! The famous name, with +all that it had stood for in Letty's mind, of things to be envied and +desired, echoed in her ear, delighted her revenge. She struggled to +maintain her attitude. + +"I don't know why what I said should make you so unhappy," she said +coldly, after a pause. + +Marcella did not reply. Presently Letty saw that she was resting her +cheek on her hand and gazing before her into vacancy. At last she turned +round, and Letty could satisfy herself that in truth her eyes were wet. + +"Is there no one," asked the full, tremulous voice, "whom you care for, +whom you would send for now to advise and help you?" + +"Thank you!" said Letty, calmly, leaning against the little +writing-table, and beating the ground slightly with her foot. "I don't +want them. And I don't know why you should trouble yourself about it." + +But for the first time, and against its owner's will, the hard +tone wavered. + +Marcella rose impetuously again, and came towards her. + +"When one thinks of all the long years of married life," she said, still +trembling, "of the children that may come--" + +Letty lifted her eyebrows. + +"If one happened to wish for them. But I don't happen to wish for them, +never did. I daresay it sounds horrid. Anyway, one needn't take that into +consideration." + +"And your husband? Your husband, who must be miserable, whose great gifts +will be all spoiled unless you will somehow give up your anger and make +peace. And instead of that, you are only thinking of revenging yourself, +of making more ruin and pain. It breaks one's heart! And it would need +such a _little_ effort on your part, only a few words written or spoken, +to bring him back, to end all this unhappiness!" + +"Oh! George can take care of himself," said Letty, provokingly; "so can +I. Besides, you have sent him away." + +Marcella looked at her in despair. Then silently she turned away, and +Letty saw that she was searching for some gloves and a handkerchief she +had been carrying in her hand when she came in. + +Letty watched her take them up, then said suddenly, "Are you going away?" + +"It is best, I think. I can do nothing." + +"I wish I knew why you came to see me at all! They say, of course, +you are very much in love with Lord Maxwell. Perhaps--that made you +sorry for me?" + +Marcella's pride leapt at the mention by those lips of her own married +life. Then she drove her pride down. + +"You have put it better than I have been able to do, all the time." Her +mouth parted in a slight, sad smile--"Good-night." + +Letty took no notice. She sat down on the arm of a chair near her. Her +eyes suddenly blazed, her face grew dead-white. + +"Well, if you want to know--" she said--"no, don't go--I don't mean to +let you go just yet--I _am_ about the most miserable wretch going! There, +you may take it or leave it; it's true. I don't suppose I cared much +about George when I married him; plenty of girls don't. But as soon as he +began to care about _you_,--just contrariness, I suppose,--I began to +feel that I could kill anybody that took him from me, and kill myself +afterwards! Oh, good gracious! there was plenty of reason for his getting +tired of me. I'm not the sort of person to let anyone get the whip-hand +of me, and I _would_ spend his money as I liked, and I _would_ ask the +persons I chose to the house; and, above all, I wasn't going to be +pestered with looking after and giving up to his _dreadful_ mother, who +made my life a burden to me. Oh! why do you look so white? Well, I +daresay it does sound atrocious. I don't care. Perhaps you'll be still +more horrified when you know that they came round this afternoon, when I +was out and George was gone, to tell me that Lady Tressady was +frightfully ill--dying, I think my maid said. And I haven't given it +another thought since--not one--till now"--she struck one hand against +the other--"because directly afterwards the butler told me of your visit +this afternoon, and that you were coming again--and I wasn't going to +think of anything else in the world but you, and George. No, don't look +like that, don't come near me--I'm not mad. I assure you I'm not mad! But +that's all by the way. What was I saying? Oh! that George had cause +enough to stop caring about me. Of course he had; but if he's lost to +me--I shall give him a good deal more cause before we've done. That +other man--you know him--Cathedine--gave me a kiss this afternoon, when +we were in a wood together"--the same involuntary shudder overtook her, +while she still held her companion at arm's length. "Oh, he is a +brute--a _brute_! But what do I care what happens to me? It's so strange +I don't--rather creditable, I think--for after all I like parties, and +being asked about. But now George hates me--and let you send him away +from me--why, of course, it's all simple enough! I--Don't--don't come. I +shall never, never forgive--it's just being tired--" + +But Marcella sprang forward. Mercifully, there is a limit to nerve +endurance, and Letty in her raving had overpassed it. She sank gasping on +a sofa, still putting out her hand as though to protect herself. But +Marcella knelt beside her, the tears running down her cheeks. She put her +arms--arms formed for tenderness, for motherliness--round the girl's +slight frame. "Don't--don't repulse me," she said, with trembling lips, +and suddenly Letty yielded. She found herself sobbing in Lady Maxwell's +embrace, while all the healing, all the remorse, all the comfort that +self-abandonment and pity can pour out on such a plight as hers, +descended upon her from Marcella's clinging touch, her hurried, +fragmentary words. Assurances that all could be made right entreaties for +gentleness and patience--revelations of her own inmost heart as a wife, +far too sacred for the ears of Letty Tressady--little phrases and +snatches of autobiography steeped in an exquisite experience: the nature +Letty had rained her blows upon, kept nothing back, gave her all its +best. How irrelevant much of it was!--chequered throughout by those +oblivions, and optimisms, and foolish hopes by which such a nature as +Marcella's protects itself from the hard facts of the world. By the time +she had ranged through every note of entreaty and consolation, Marcella +had almost persuaded herself and Letty that George Tressady had never +said a word to her beyond the commonplaces of an ordinary friendship; she +had passionately determined that this blurred and spoiled marriage could +and should be mended, and that it lay with her to do it; and in the +spirit of her audacious youth she had taken upon herself the burden of +Letty's character and fate, vowing herself to a moral mission, to a long +patience. The quality of her own nature, perhaps, made her bear Letty's +violences and frenzies more patiently than would have been possible to a +woman of another type; generous remorse and regret, combined with her +ignorance of Letty's history and the details of Letty's life, led her +even to look upon these violences as the effects of love perverted, the +anguish of a jealous heart. Imagination, keen and loving, drew the +situation for her in rapid strokes, draped Letty in the subtleties and +powers of her own heart, and made forbearance easy. + +As for Letty, her whole being surrendered itself to a mere ebb and flow +of sensations. That she had been able thus to break down the barriers of +Marcella's stateliness filled her all through, in her passion as in her +yielding, with a kind of exultation. A vision of a tall figure in a white +and silver dress, sitting stiff and unapproachable beside her in the +Castle Luton drawing-room, fled through her mind now and then, only +to make the wonder of this pleading voice, these confidences, this +pity, the more wonderful. But there was more than this, and better +than this. Strange up-wellings of feelings long trampled on and +suppressed--momentary awakenings of conscience, of repentance, of +regret--sharp realisations of an envy that was no longer ignoble but +moral, softer thoughts of George, the suffocating, unwilling recognition +of what love meant in another woman's life--these messengers and +forerunners of diviner things passed and repassed through the spaces of +Letty's soul as she lay white and passive under Marcella's yearning look. +There was a marvellous relief besides, much of it a physical relief, in +this mere silence, this mere ceasing from angry railing and offence. + +Marcella was still sitting beside her, holding her hands, and talking in +the same low voice, when suddenly the loud sound of a bell clanged +through the house. Letty sprang up, white and startled. + +"What can it be? It's past ten o'clock. It can't be a telegram." + +Then a guilty remembrance struck her. She hurried to the door as +Kenrick entered. + +"Lady Tressady's maid would like to see you, my lady. They want Sir +George's address. The doctors think she will hardly live over to-morrow." + +And behind Kenrick, Justine, the French maid, pushed her way in, weeping +and exclaiming. Lady Tressady, it seemed, had been in frightful pain all +the afternoon. She was now easier for the moment, though dangerously +exhausted. But if the heart attacks returned during the next twenty-four +hours, nothing could save her. The probability was that they would +return, and she was asking piteously for her son, who had seen her, +Justine believed, the day before these seizures began, just before his +departure for Paris, and had written. "Et la pauvre ame!" cried the +Frenchwoman at last, not caring what she said to this amazing +daughter-in-law, "elle est la toujours, quand les douleurs s'apaisent un +peu, ecoutant, esperant--et personne ne vient--_personne_! Voulez-vous +bien, madame, me dire ou on peut trouver Sir George?" + +"Poste Restante, Trouville," said Letty, sullenly. "It is the only +address that I know of." + +But she stood there irresolute and frowning, while the French girl, +hardly able to contain herself, stared at the disfigured face, demanding +by her quick-breathing silence, by her whole attitude, something else, +something more than Sir George's address. + +Meanwhile Marcella waited in the background, obliged to hear what passed, +and struck with amazement. It is perhaps truer of the moral world than +the social that one half of it never conceives how the other half lives. +George Tressady's mother--alone--dying--in her son's absence--and Letty +Tressady knew nothing of her illness till it had become a question of +life and death, and had then actually refused to go--forgotten the +summons even! + +When Letty, feverish and bewildered, turned back to the companion +whose heart had been poured out before her during this past hour of +high emotion, she saw a new expression in Lady Maxwell's eyes from +which she shrank. + +"Ought I to go?" she said fretfully, almost like a peevish child, putting +her hand to her brow. + +"My carriage is downstairs," said Marcella, quickly. "I can take you +there at once. Is there a nurse?" she asked, turning to the maid. + +Oh, yes; there was an excellent nurse, just installed, or Justine could +not have left her mistress; and the doctor close by could be got at a +moment's notice. But the poor lady wanted her son, or at least some one +of the family,--Justine bit her lip, and threw a nervous side glance at +Letty,--and it went to the heart to see her. The girl found relief in +describing her mistress's state to this grave and friendly lady, and +showed more feeling and sincerity in speaking of it than might have been +expected from her affected dress and manner. + +Meanwhile Letty seemed to be wandering aimlessly about the room. Marcella +went up to her. + +"Your hat is here, on this chair. I have a shawl in the carriage. Won't +you come at once, and leave word to your maid to bring after you what +you want? Then I can go on, if you wish it, and send your telegram to +Sir George." + +"But you wanted him to do something?" said Letty, looking at her +uncertainly. + +"Mothers come first, I think!" said Marcella, with a smile of wonder. +"It is best to write it before we go. Will you tell me what to say?" + +She went to the writing-table, and had to write the telegram with small +help from Letty, who in her dazed, miserable soul was still fighting some +demonic resistance or other to the step asked of her. Instinctively and +gradually, however, Marcella took command of her. A few quiet words to +Justine sent her to make arrangements with Grier. Then Letty found a +cloak that had been sent for being drawn round her shoulders, and was +coaxed to put on her hat. In another minute she was in the Maxwells' +brougham, with her hand clasped in Marcella's. + +"They will want me to sit up," she said, dashing an irrelevant tear from +her eyes, as they drove away. "I am so tired--and I hate illness!" + +"Very likely they won't let you see her to-night. But you will be there +if the illness comes on again. You would feel it terribly if--if she died +all alone, with Sir George away." + +"Died!" Letty repeated, half angrily. "But that would be so +horrible--what could I do?" + +Marcella looked at her with a strange smile. + +"Only be kind, only forget everything but her!" + +The softness of her voice had yet a severity beneath it that Letty felt, +but had no spirit to resent, Rather it awakened an uneasy and painful +sense that, after all, it was not she who had come off conqueror in this +great encounter. The incidents of the last half-hour seemed in some +curious way to have reversed their positions. Letty, smarting, felt that +her relation to George's dying mother had revealed her to Lady Maxwell +far more than any wild and half-sincere confessions could have done. Her +vanity felt a deep inner wound, yet of a new sort. At any rate, +Marcella's self-abasement was over, and Letty instinctively realised that +she would never see it again, while at the same time a new and clinging +need had arisen in herself. The very neighbourhood of the personality +beside her had begun to thrill and subjugate her. She had been conscious +enough before--enviously, hatefully conscious--of all the attributes and +possessions that made Maxwell's wife a great person in the world of +London. What was stealing upon her now was glamour and rank and influence +of another kind. + +Not unmixed, no doubt, with more mundane thoughts! No ordinary preacher, +no middle-class eloquence perhaps would have sufficed--nothing less +dramatic and distinguished than the scene which had actually passed, than +a Marcella at her feet. Well! there are many modes and grades of +conversion. Whether by what was worst in her, or what was best; whether +the same weaknesses of character that had originally inflamed her had now +helped to subdue her or no, what matter? So much stood--that one short +hour had been enough to draw this vain, selfish nature within a moral +grasp she was never again to shake off. + +Meanwhile, as they drove towards Warwick Square Marcella's only thought +was how to hand her over safe to her husband. A sense of agonised +responsibility awoke in the elder woman at the thought of Cathedine. But +no more emotion--only common sense and gentleness. + +As they neared Warwick Square, Letty withdrew her hand. + +"I don't suppose you will ever want to see me again," she said huskily, +turning her head away. + +"Do you think that very possible between two people who have gone +through such a time as you and I have?" said Marcella, pale, but +smiling. "When may I come to see you to-morrow? I shall send to inquire, +of course, very early." + +Some thought made Letty's breath come quickly. "Will you come in the +afternoon--about four?" she said hastily. "I suppose I shall be here." +They were just stopping at the door in Warwick Square. "You said you +would tell me--" + +"I have a great deal to tell you.... I will come, then, and see if you +can be spared.... Good-night. I trust she will be better! I will go on +and send the telegram." + +Letty felt her hand gravely pressed, the footman helped her out, and +in another minute she was mounting the stairs leading to Lady +Tressady's room, having sent a servant on before her to warn the nurse +of her arrival. + +The nurse came out, finger on lip. She was very glad to see Lady +Tressady, but the doctor had left word that nothing whatever was to be +allowed to disturb or excite his patient. Of course, if the attack +returned--But just now there was hope. Only it was so difficult to keep +her quiet. Instead of trying to sleep, she was now asking for Justine, +declaring that Justine must read French novels aloud to her, and bring +out two of her evening dresses, that she might decide on some +alteration in the trimmings. "I daren't fight with her," said the +nurse, evidently in much perplexity. "But if she only raises herself in +bed she may kill herself." + +She hurried back to her patient, promising to inform the daughter-in-law +at once if there was a change for the worse, and Letty, infinitely +relieved, made her way to the spare room of the house, where Grier was +already unpacking for her. + +After a hasty undressing she threw herself into bed, longing for sleep. +But from a short nightmare dream she woke up with a start. Where was she? +In her mother-in-law's house,--she could actually hear the shrill +affected voice laughing and talking in the room next door,--and brought +there by Marcella Maxwell! The strangeness of these two facts kept her +tossing restlessly from side to side. And where was George? Just arrived +at Paris, perhaps. She thought of the glare and noise of the Gare du +Nord--she heard his cab rattling over the long stone-paved street +outside. In the darkness she felt a miserable sinking of heart at the +thought of his going with every minute farther, farther away from her. +Would he ever forgive her that letter to Lord Maxwell, when he knew of +it? Did she want him to forgive her? + +A mood that was at once soft and desolate stole upon her, and made her +cry a little. It sprang, perhaps, from a sense of the many barriers she +had heaped up between herself and happiness. The waves of feeling, half +self-assertive, half repentant, ebbed and flowed. One moment she yearned +for the hour when Marcella was to come to her; the next, she hated the +notion of it. So between dream and misery, amid a maze of thought without +a clue, Letty's night passed away. By the time the morning dawned, the +sharp conviction had shaped itself within her that she had grown older, +that life had passed into another stage, and could never again be as it +had been the day before. Two emotions, at least, or excitements, had +emerged from all the rest and filled her mind--the memory of the scene +with Marcella, and the thought of George's return. + + + + +PART III + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +"My dear, you don't mean to say you have had her here for ten days?" + +The speaker was Betty Leven, who had just arrived at Maxwell Court, and +was sitting with her hostess under the cedars in front of the magnificent +Caroline mansion, which it was the never-ending task of Marcella's life +to bring somehow into a democratic scheme of things. + +A still September afternoon, lightly charged with autumn mists, lay +gently on the hollows of the park. Betty was in her liveliest mood and +her gayest dress. Her hat, a marvel in poppies, was perched high upon no +less ingenious waves and frettings of hair. Her straw-coloured gown, +which was only simple for the untrained eye, gave added youth even to +her childish figure; and her very feet, clothed in the smallest and most +preposterous of shoes, had something merry and provocative about them, +as they lay crossed upon the wooden footstool Marcella had pushed +towards her. + +The remark just quoted followed upon one made by her hostess, to the +effect that Lady Tressady would be down to tea shortly. + +"Now, Betty," said Marcella, seriously, though she laughed, "I meant to +have a few words with you on this subject first thing--let's have them. +Do you want to be very kind to me, or do you ever want me to be very +nice to you?" + +Betty considered. + +"You can't do half as much for me now as you once could, now that Frank's +going to leave Parliament," she remarked, with as much worldly wisdom as +her face allowed. "Nevertheless, the quality of my nature is such that, +sometimes, I might even be nice to you for nothing. But information +before benevolence--why have you got her here?" + +"Because she was fagged and unhappy in London, and her husband had gone +to take his mother abroad, after first doing Maxwell a great kindness," +said Marcella,--not, however, without embarrassment, as Betty saw,--"and +I want you to be kind to her." + +"Reasons one and two no reasons at all," said Betty, meditating; "and the +third wants examining. You mean that George Tressady went after Ancoats?" + +Marcella raised her shoulders, and was silent. + +"If you are going to be stuffy and mysterious," said Betty, with +vivacity, "you know what sort of a hedgehog I can be. How can you expect +me to be nice to Letty Tressady unless you make it worth my while?" + +"Betty, you infant! Well, then, he did go after Ancoats--got him safely +away from Trouville, brought him to Paris to join Mrs. Allison, and, in +general, has laid us all under very great obligations. Meanwhile, she was +very much tired out with nursing her mother-in-law--" + +"Oh, and such a mother-in-law--such a jewel!" ejaculated Betty. + +"And I brought her down here to rest, till he should come back from +Wildheim and take her home. He will probably be here to-night." + +The speaker reddened unconsciously during her story, a fact not +lost on Betty. + +"Well, I knew most of that before," said Betty, quietly. "And what sort +of a time have you been having this ten days?" + +"I have been very glad to have her here," came the quick reply. "I ought +to have known her long ago." + +Betty looked at the speaker with a half-incredulous smile. + +"You have been 'collecting' her, I suppose, as Hallin collects grasses. +Of course, what I pine to know is what sort of a time _she's_ had. You're +not the easiest person in the world to get on with, my lady." + +"I know that," said Marcella, sighing; "but I don't think she has +been unhappy." + +Betty's green eyes opened suddenly to the light. + +"Are you ever going to tell me the truth? Have you got her under your +thumb? Does she adore you?" + +"Betty, don't be an idiot!" + +"I expect she does," said Betty, thoughtfully, a myriad thoughts and +conjectures passing through her quick brain as she studied her friend's +face and attitude. "I see exactly what fate is going to happen to you in +middle life. Women couldn't get on with you when you were a girl--you +didn't like them, nor they you; and now everywhere I hear the young women +beginning to talk about you, especially the young married women; and in a +few years you will have them all about you like a cluster of doves, +cooing and confessing, and making your life a burden to you." + +"Well, suppose you begin?" said Marcella, with meaning. "I'm quite ready. +How are Frank's spirits since the great decision?" + +"Frank's spirits?" said Betty. She leisurely took off her glove. "Frank's +spirits, my dear, if you wish to know, are simply an affront to his wife. +My ruined ambitions appear to affect him as Parrish's food does the baby. +I prophesy he will have gained a stone by Christmas." + +For the great step had been taken. Betty had given way, and Frank was to +escape from politics. For three years Betty had held him to his task--had +written his speeches, formed his opinions, and done her very best to +train him for a statesman. But the young man had in truth no opinions, +save indeed whatever might be involved in the constant opinion that +Heaven had intended him for a country gentleman and a sportsman, and for +nothing else. And at last a mixture of revolt and melancholy had served +his purpose. Betty was subdued; the Chiltern Hundreds were in sight. The +young wife, with many sighs, had laid down all dreams of a husband on the +front bench. But--in compensation--she had regained her lover, and the +honeymoon shone once more. + +"Frank came to see me yesterday," said Marcella, smiling. + +Betty sprang forward. + +"What did he say? Didn't he tell you I was an angel? Now there's a +bargain! Repeat to me every single word he said, and I will devote +myself, body and bones, to Letty Tressady." + +"Hush!" said Marcella, laying two fingers on the pretty mouth. "Here +she comes." + +Letty Tressady, in fact, had just emerged from a side-door of the house, +and was slowly approaching the two friends on the terrace. Lady Leven's +discerning eye ran over the advancing figure. Marcella heard her make +some exclamation under her breath. Then she rose with little, hurrying +steps, and went to greet the newcomer with a charming ease and kindness. + +Letty responded rather nervously. Marcella looked up with a smile, and +pointed to a low chair, which Letty took with a certain stiffness. It was +evident to Marcella that she was afraid of Lady Leven, who had, indeed, +shown a marked indifference to her society at Castle Luton. + +But Betty was disarmed. The "minx" had lost her colour, and, for the +moment, her prettiness. She looked depressed, and talked little. As to +her relation to Marcella Betty's inquisitive brain indulged itself in a +score of conjectures. "How like her!" she thought to herself, "to forget +the wife's existence to begin with, and then to make love to her by way +of warding off the husband!" + +Meanwhile, aloud, Lady Leven professed herself exceedingly dissatisfied +with the entertainment provided for her. Where were the gentlemen? What +was the good of one putting on one's best frock to come down to a Maxwell +Court Saturday to find only a "hen tea-party" at the end? Marcella +protested that there were only too many men somewhere on the premises +already, and more--with their wives--were arriving by the next train. +But Maxwell had taken off such as had already appeared for a long +cross-country walk. + +Betty demanded the names, and Marcella gave them obediently. Betty +perceived at once that the party was the party of a political chief +obliged to do his duty. She allowed herself a good many shrugs of her +small shoulders. "Oh, Mrs. Lexham,--very charming, of course,--but what's +the good of being friends with a person who has five hundred people in +London that call her Kelly? Lady _Wendover_? I ought to have had notice. +A good mother? I should think she is! That's the whole point against her. +She always gives you the idea of having reared fifteen out of a possible +twelve. To see her beaming on her offspring makes me positively ashamed +of being in the same business myself. Don't you agree, Lady Tressady?" + +But Letty, whose chief joy a month before would have been to dart in on +such a list with little pecking proofs of acquaintance, was leaning back +listlessly in her chair, and could only summon a forced smile for answer. + +"And Sir George, too, is coming to-night, isn't he?" said Lady Leven. + +"Yes, I expect my husband to-night," said Letty, coldly, without looking +at her questioner. Betty glanced quickly at the expression of the eyes +which were bent upon the further reaches of the park; then, to Letty's +astonishment, she bent forward impulsively and laid her little hand on +Lady Tressady's arm. + +"Do you mind telling me," she said in a loud whisper, with a glance over +her shoulder, "your candid opinion of _her_ as a country lady?" + +Letty, taken aback, turned and laughed uneasily; but Betty went rattling +on. "Have you found out that she treats her servants like hospital +nurses; that they go off and on duty at stated hours; that she has +workshops and art schools for them in the back premises; and that the +first footman has just produced a cantata which has been sent in to the +committee of the Worcester Festival (Be quiet, Marcella; if it isn't +that, it's something near it); that she teaches the stable boys and the +laundry maids old English dances, and the _pas de quatre_ once a +fortnight, and acts showman to her own pictures for the benefit of the +neighbourhood once a week? I came once to see how she did it, but I found +her and the Gairsley ironmonger measuring the ears of the Holbeins--it +seems you can't know anything about pictures now unless you have measured +all the ears and the little fingers, which I hope you know; I didn't!--so +I fled, as she hadn't a word to throw to me, even as one of the public. +Then perhaps you don't know that she has invented a whole, new, and +original system of game-preserving--she and Frank fight over it by the +hour--that she has upset all the wage arrangements of the county--that, +perhaps, you do know, for it got into the papers--and a hundred other +trifles. Has she revealed these things?" + +Letty looked in perplexity from Betty's face, full of sweetness and +mirth, to Marcella's. + +"She hasn't talked about them," she said, hesitating. "Of course, I +haven't understood a good many things that are done here--" + +"Don't try," said Marcella, first laughing and then sighing. + +Nothing appeased, Lady Leven chattered away, while Letty watched her +hostess in silence. She had come down to the Court gloating somewhat, in +spite of her very real unhappiness, over the prospect of the riches and +magnificence she was to find there. And to discover that wealth might be +merely the source of one long moral wrestle to the people who possessed +it, burdening them with all sorts of problems and remorses that others +escaped, had been a strange and, on the whole, jarring experience to her. +Of course there must be rich and poor; of course there must be servants +and masters. Marcella's rebellion against the barriers of life had been a +sort of fatigue and offence to Letty ever since she had been made to feel +it. And daily contact with the simple, and even Spartan, ways of living +that prevailed--for the owners of it, at least--in the vast house, with +the overflowing energy and humanity that often made its mistress a +restless companion, and led her into a fair percentage of mistakes--had +roused a score of half-scornful protests in the small, shrewd mind of her +guest. Nevertheless, when Marcella was kind, when she put Letty on the +sofa, insisting that she was tired, and anxiously accusing herself of +some lack of consideration or other; when she took her to her room at +night, seeing to every comfort, and taking thought for luxuries that in +her heart she despised; or when, very rarely, and turning rather pale, +she said a few words--sweet, hopeful, encouraging--about George's return, +then Letty was conscious of a strange leap of something till then +unknown, something that made her want to sob, that seemed to open to her +a new room in the House of Life. Marcella had not kissed her since the +day of their great scene; they had been "Lady Maxwell" and "Lady +Tressady" to each other all the time, and Letty had but realised her own +insolences and audacities the more, as gradually the spiritual dignity of +the woman she had raved at came home to her. But sometimes when Marcella +stood beside her, unconscious, talking pleasantly of London folk or +Ancoats, or trying to inform herself as to Letty's life at Ferth, a +half-desolate intuition would flash across the younger woman of what it +might be to be admitted to the intimate friendship of such a nature, to +feel those long, slender arms pressed about her once more, not in pity or +remonstrance, as of one trying to exorcise an evil spirit, but in mere +love, as of one asking as well as giving. The tender and adoring +friendship of women for women, which has become so marked a feature of +our self-realising generation, had passed Letty by. She had never known +it. Now, in these unforeseen circumstances, she seemed to be trembling +within reach of its emotion; divining it, desiring it, yet forced onward +to the question, "What is there in me that may claim it?" + +Marcella, indeed, after their first stormy interview, had once more +returned to the subject of it. She had told the story of her friendship +with George Tressady, very gently and plainly, in a further conversation, +held between them at the elder Lady Tressady's house during that odd +lady's very odd convalescence; till, indeed, she reached the last scene. +She could not bring herself to deliver the truth of that. Nor was it +necessary. Letty's jealousy had guessed it near enough long ago. But when +all else was told, Letty had been conscious at first of a half-sore +resentment that there was so little to tell. In her secret soul she knew +very well what had been the effect on George. Her husband's mind had been +gradually absorbed by another ideal in which she had no part; nor could +she deny that he had suffered miserably. The memory of his face as he +asked her to "forgive him" when she fled past him on that last wretched +night was enough. But suffered for what? A few talks about politics, a +few visits to poor people, an office of kindness after a street accident +that any stranger must have rendered, a few meetings in the House and +elsewhere! + +Letty's vanity was stabbed anew by the fact that Lady Maxwell's +offence was so small. It gave her a kind of measure of her own hold +upon her husband. + +Once, indeed, Marcella's voice and colour had wavered when she made +herself describe how, on the Mile End evening, she had been conscious of +pressing the personal influence to gain the political end. But good +heavens!--Letty hardly understood what the speaker's evident compunction +was about. Why, it was all for Maxwell! What had she thought of all +through but Maxwell? Letty's humiliation grew as she understood, and as +in the quiet of Maxwell Court she saw the husband and wife together. + +Her anger and resentment might very well only have transferred themselves +the more hotly to George. But this new moral influence upon her had a +kind of paralysing effect. The incidents of the weeks before the crisis +excited in her now a sick, shamed feeling whenever she thought of them. +For contact with people on a wholly different plane of conduct, if such +persons as Letty can once be brought to submit to it, will often produce +effects, especially on women, like those one sees produced every day by +the clash of two standards of manners. It means simply the recognition +that one is unfit to be of certain company, and perhaps there are few +moral ferments more penetrating. Probably Letty would have gone to her +grave knowing nothing of it, but for the accident which had opened to her +the inmost heart of a woman with whom, once known, not even her vanity +dared measure itself. + +George and she had already met since the day when he had gone off to +Paris in search of Ancoats. The telegram sent to him by Marcella on the +night of his mother's violent illness had, indeed, been recalled next +day. Lady Tressady, following the idiosyncrasies of her disease, sprang +from death to life--and life of the sprightliest kind--in the course of a +few hours. The battered, grey-haired woman--so old, do what she would, +under the betraying hand of physical decay!--no sooner heard that George +had been sent for than she at once and peremptorily telegraphed to him +herself to stay away. "I'm not dead yet," she wrote to him afterwards, +"in spite of all the fuss they've made with me. I was simply ashamed to +own such a cadaverous-looking wretch as you were when you came here last, +and if you take my advice you'll stay at Trouville with Lord Ancoats and +amuse yourself. As to that young man, of course it's no good, and his +mother's a great fool to suppose that you or anybody else can prevent +his enjoying himself. But these High Church women are so extraordinary." + +Letty, indeed, remembering her mother-in-law's old ways, and finding +them little changed as far as she herself was concerned, was puzzled and +astonished by the new relations between mother and son. On the smallest +excuse or none, Lady Tressady, a year before, would have been ready to +fetch him back from furthest land without the least scruple. Now, +however, she thought of him, or for him, incessantly. And one day Letty +actually found her crying over an official intimation from the lawyer +concerned that another instalment of the Shapetsky debt would be due +within a month. But she angrily dried her tears at sight of Letty, and +Letty said nothing. + +George, however, came back within about ten days of his departure, having +apparently done what he was commissioned to do, though Letty took so +little interest in the Ancoats affair that she barely read those portions +of his letters in which he described the course of it. His letters, +indeed, with the exception of a few ambiguous words here and there, dealt +entirely with Trouville, Ancoats, or the ups and downs of public opinion +on the subject of his action and speech in the House. Letty could only +gather from a stray phrase or two that he enjoyed nothing; but evidently +he could not yet bring himself to speak of what had happened. + +When he did come back, the husband and wife saw very little of each +other. It was more convenient that he should stay in Upper Brook Street +while she remained at her mother-in-law's; and altogether he was hardly +three days in London. He rushed up to Market Malford to deliver his +promised speech to his constituents, and immediately afterwards, on the +urgent advice of the doctors, he went off to Wildheim with his mother and +the elderly cousin whose aid he had already invoked. Before he went, he +formally thanked his wife--who hardly spoke to him unless she was +obliged--for her attention to his mother, and then lingered a little, +looking no less "cadaverous," certainly, than when he had gone away, and +apparently desiring to say more. + +"I suppose I shall be away about a fortnight," he said at last, "if one +is to settle her comfortably. You haven't told me yet what you would like +to do. Couldn't you get Miss Tulloch to go down with you to Ferth, or +would you go to your people for a fortnight?" + +He was longing to ask her what had come of that promised visit of Lady +Maxwell's. But neither by letter nor by word of mouth had Letty as yet +said a word of it. And he did not know how to open the subject. During +the time that he was with his wife and mother, nothing was seen of +Marcella in Warwick Square, and an interview that he was to have had with +Maxwell, by way of supplement to his numerous letters, had to be +postponed because of overcrowded days on both sides. So that he was still +in the dark. + +Letty at first made no answer to his rather lame proposals for her +benefit. But just as he was turning away with a look of added +worry, she said: + +"I don't want to go home, thank you, and I still less want to go +to Ferth." + +"But you can't stay in London. There isn't a soul in town; and it would +be too dull for you." + +He gazed at her in perplexity, praying, however, that he might not +provoke a scene, for the carriage that was to take him and his mother to +the station was almost at the door. + +Letty rose slowly, and folded up some embroidery she had been +playing with. Then she took a note from her work-basket, and laid it +on the table. + +"You may read that if you like. That's where I'm going." + +And she quickly went out of the room. + +George read the note. His face flushed, and he hurriedly busied himself +with some of his preparations for departure. When his wife came into the +room again he went up to her. + +"You could have done nothing so likely to save us both," he said huskily, +and then could think of nothing more to say. He drew her to him as though +to kiss her, but a blind movement of the old rage with him or +circumstance leapt in her, and she pulled herself away. The thought of +that particular moment had done more perhaps than anything else to thin +and whiten her since she had been at Maxwell Court. + +And now he would be here to-night. She knew both from her host himself +and from George's letters that Lord Maxwell had specially written to him +begging him to come to the Court on his return, in order to join his wife +and also to give that oral report of his mission for which there had been +no time on his first reappearance. Maxwell had spoken to her of his wish +to see her husband, without a tone or a word that could suggest anything +but the natural friendliness and good-will of the man who has accepted a +signal service from his junior. But Letty avoided Maxwell when she could; +nor would he willingly have been left alone with this thin, sharp-faced +girl whose letter to him had been like the drawing of an ugly veil from +nameless and incredible things. He was sorry for her; but in his strong, +deep nature he felt a repulsion for her he could not explain; and to +watch Marcella with her amazed him. + + * * * * * + +Immediately after tea, Lady Leven's complaints of her entertainment +became absurd. Guests poured in from the afternoon train, and a variety +of men, her husband foremost among them, were soon at her disposal, +asking nothing better than to amuse her. + +Letty Tressady meanwhile looked on for a time at the brilliant crowd +about her on the terrace, with a dull sense of being forgotten and of no +account. She said to herself sullenly that of course no one would want to +talk to her; it was not her circle, and she had even few acquaintances +among them. + +Then, to her astonishment, she began to find herself the object of an +evident curiosity and interest to many people among the throng. She +divined that her name was being handed from one to the other, and she +soon perceived that Marcella had been asked to introduce to her this +person and that, several of them men and women whose kindness, a few +weeks before, would have flattered her social ambitions to the highest +point. Colour and nerve returned, and she found herself sitting up, +forgetting her headache, and talking fast. + +"I am delighted to have this opportunity of telling you, Lady Tressady, +how much I admired your husband's great speech," said the deep and +unctuous voice of the grey-haired Solicitor-General as he sank into a +chair beside her. "It was not only that it gave us our Bill, it gave the +House of Commons a new speaker. Manner, voice, matter--all of it +excellent! I hope there'll be no nonsense about his giving up his seat. +Don't you let him! He will find his feet and his right place before long, +and you'll be uncommonly proud of him before you've done." + +"Lady Tressady, I'm afraid you've forgotten me," said a plaintive voice; +and, on turning, Letty saw the red-haired Lady Madeleine asking with +smiles to be remembered. "Do you know, I was lucky enough to get into the +House on the great day? What a scene it was! You were there, of course?" + +When Letty unwillingly said "No," there was a little chorus of +astonishment. + +"Well, take my advice, my dear lady," said the Solicitor-General, +speaking with lazy patronage somewhere from the depths of comfort,--he +was accustomed to use these paternal modes of speech to young +women,--"don't you miss your husband's speeches. We can't do without our +domestic critics. But for the bad quarters of an hour that lady over +there has given me, I should be nowhere." + +And he nodded complacently towards the wife as stout as himself, who was +sitting a few yards away. She, hearing her name, nodded back, with smiles +aside to the bystanders. Most of the spectators, however, were already +acquainted with a conjugal pose which was generally believed to be not +according to facts, and no one took the cue. + +Then presently Mr. Bennett--the workmen's member from the North--was at +Letty's elbow saying the most cordial things of the absent George. Bayle, +too, the most immaculate and exclusive of private secretaries, who was at +the Court on a wedding visit with a new wife, chose to remember Lady +Tressady's existence for the first time for many months, and to bestow +some of his carefully adapted conversation upon her. While, last of all, +Edward Watton came up to her with a cousinly kindness she had scarcely +yet received from him, and, drawing a chair beside her, overflowed with +talk about George, and the Bill, and the state of things at Market +Malford. In fact, it was soon clear even to Letty's bewildered sense that +till her husband should arrive she was perhaps, for the moment, the +person of most interest to this brilliant and representative gathering of +a victorious party. + +Meanwhile she was made constantly aware that her hostess remembered her. +Once, as Marcella passed her, after introducing someone to her, Letty +felt a hand gently laid on her shoulder and then withdrawn. Strange waves +of emotion ran through the girl's senses. When would George be here? +About seven, she thought, when they would all have gone up to dress. He +would have arrived from Wildheim in the morning, and was to spend the day +doing business in town. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Letty was lying on a sofa in her bedroom. Her maid was to come to her +shortly, and she was impatiently listening to every sound that approached +or passed her door. The great clock in the distant hall struck seven, and +it seemed to her intolerably long before she heard movements in the +passage, and then Maxwell's voice outside. + +"Here is your room, Sir George. I hope you don't mind a few ghosts! It is +one of the oldest bits of the house." + +Letty sprang up. She heard the shutting of the passage door, then +immediately afterwards the door from the dressing-room opened, and George +came through. + +"Well!" she said, staring at him, her face flushing; "surely you are +very late?" + +He came up to her, and put his arms round her, while she stood passive. +"Not so very," he said, and she could hear that his voice was unsteady. +"How are you? Give me a kiss, little woman--be a little glad to see me!" + +He looked down upon her wistfully. On the journey he had been conscious +of great weariness of mind and body, a longing to escape from struggle, +to give and receive the balm of kind looks and soft words. He had come +back full of repentance towards her, if she had only known, full too of a +natural young longing for peace and good times. + +She let him kiss her, but as he stooped to her it suddenly struck her +that she had never seen him look so white and worn. Still; after all this +holiday-making! Why? For love of a woman who never gave him a thought, +except of pity. Bitterness possessed her. She turned away indifferently. + +"Well, you'll only just have time to dress. Is someone unpacking for +you?" + +He looked at her. + +"Is that all you have to say?" + +She threw back her head and was silent. + +"I was very glad to come back to you," he said, with a sigh, "though I--I +wish it were anywhere else than here. But, all things considered, I did +not see how to refuse. And you have been here the whole fortnight?" + +"Yes." + +"Have you"--he hesitated--"have you seen a great deal of Lady Maxwell?" + +"Well, I suppose I have--in her own house." Then she broke out, her +heart leaping visibly under her light dressing-gown. "I don't blame +_her_ any more, if you want to know that; she doesn't think of anyone in +the world but him." + +The gesture of her hand seemed to pursue the voice that had been just +speaking in the corridor. + +He smiled. + +"Well, at least I'm glad you've come to see that!" he said quietly. "And +is that all?" + +He had walked away from her, but at his renewed question he turned +back quickly, his hands in his pockets. Something in the look of him +gave her a moment of pleasure, a throb of possession. But she showed +nothing of it. + +"No, it's not all"--her pale blue eyes pierced him. "Why did you go and +see her that morning, and why have you never told me since?" + +He started, and shrugged his shoulders. + +"If you have been seeing much of her," he replied, after a pause, "you +probably know as much as I could tell you." + +"No," she said steadily; "she has told me much about +everything--but that." + +He walked restlessly about for a few seconds, then returned, holding out +his hands. + +"Well, my dear, I said some mad and miserable things. They are as dead +now as if they had never been spoken. And they were not love-making--they +were crying for the moon. Take me, and forget them. I am an +unsatisfactory sort of fellow, but I will do the best I can." + +"Wait a bit," she said, retreating, and speaking with a hard +incisiveness. "There are plenty of things you don't know. Perhaps you +don't know, for instance, that I wrote to Lord Maxwell? I sat up writing +it that night--he got it the same morning you saw her." + +"You wrote to Maxwell!" he said in amazement--then, under his breath--"to +complain of her. My God!" + +He walked away again, trying to control himself. + +"You didn't suppose," she said huskily, "I was going to sit down calmly +under your neglect of me? I might have been silly in not--not seeing what +kind of a woman she was; that's different--besides, of course, she ought +to have thought more about me. But _that's_ not all!" + +Her hand shook as she stood leaning on the sofa. George turned, and +looked at her attentively. + +"The day you left I went to Hampton Court with the Lucys. Cathedine was +there. Of course I flirted with him all the time, and as we were going +through a wood near the river he said abominable things to me, and +kissed me." + +Her brows were drawn defiantly. Her eyes seemed to be riveted to his. He +was silent a moment, the colour dyeing his pale face deep. Then she heard +his long breath. + +"Well, we seem to be about quits," he said, in a bitter voice. "Have you +seen him since?" + +"No. That's Grier knocking--you'd better go and dress." + +He paused irresolutely. But Letty said, "Come in," and he retreated into +his dressing-room. + +Husband and wife hurried down together, without another word to each +other. When George at last found himself at table between Lady Leven and +Mr. Bayle's new and lively wife, he had never been so grateful before to +the ease of women's tongues. In his mental and physical fatigue, he could +scarcely bear even to let himself feel the strangeness of his presence in +this room--at her table, in Maxwell's splendid house. _Not_ to +feel!--somehow to recover his old balance and coolness--that was the cry +of the inner man. + +But the situation conquered him. _Why_ was he here? It was barely a month +since in her London drawing-room he had found words for an emotion, a +confession it now burnt him to remember. And here he was, breaking bread +with her and Maxwell, a few weeks afterwards, as though nothing lay +between them but a political incident. Oh! the smallness, the triviality +of our modern life! + +Was it only four weeks, or nearly? What he had suffered in that time! An +instant's shudder ran through him, during an interval, while Betty's +unwilling occupation with her left-hand neighbour left memory its chance. +All the flitting scenes of the past month, Ancoats's half-vicious +absurdities, the humours of the Trouville beach, the waves of its grey +sea, his mother's whims and plaints, the crowd and heat of the little +German watering-place where he had left her--was it he, George Tressady, +that had been really wrestling with these things and persons, walking +among them, or beside them? It seemed hardly credible. What was real, +what remained, was merely the thought of some hours of solitude, beside +the Norman sea, or among the great beech-woods that swept down the hills +about Bad Wildheim. Those hours--they only--had stung, had penetrated, +had found the shrinking core of the soul. + +What in truth was it that had happened to him? After weeks of a growing +madness he had finally lost his self-command, had spoken passionately, +as only love speaks, to a married woman, who had no thought for any man +in the world but her husband, a woman who had immediately--so he had +always read the riddle of Maxwell's behaviour--reported every incident +of his conversation with her to the husband, and had then tried her +best, with an exquisite kindness and compunction, to undo the mischief +her own charm had caused. For that effort, in the first instance, +George, under the shock of his act and her pain, had been, at intervals, +speechlessly grateful to her; all his energies had gone into pitiful, +eager response. Now, her attempt, and Maxwell's share in it, seemed to +have laid him under a weight he could no longer bear. His acceptance of +Maxwell's invitation had finally exhausted his power of playing the +superhuman part to which she had invited him. He wished with all his +heart he had not accepted it! From the moment of her greeting--with its +mixture of shrinking and sweetness--he had realised the folly, the +humiliation even, of his presence in her house. He could not rise--it +was monstrous, ludicrous almost, that she should wish it--to what she +seemed to ask of him. + +What had he been in love with? He looked at her once or twice in +bewilderment. Had not she herself, her dazzling, unconscious purity, +debarred him always from the ordinary hopes and desires of the sensual +man? His very thought had moved in awe of her, had knelt before her. +Throughout there had been this half-bitter glorying in the strangeness of +his own case. The common judgment in its common vileness mattered nothing +to him. He had been in love with love, with grace, with tenderness, with +delight. He had seen, too late, a vision of the _best_; had realised +what things of enchantment life contains for the few, for the +chosen--what woman at her richest can be to man. And there had been a cry +of personal longing--personal anguish. + +Well!--it was all done with. As for friendship, it was impossible, +grotesque. Let him go home, appease Letty, and mend his life. He +constantly realised now, with the same surprise, as on the night before +his confession, the emergence within himself, independent as it were of +his ordinary will, and parallel with the voice of passion or grief, of +some new moral imperative. Half scornfully he discerned in his own nature +the sort of paste that a man inherits from generations of decent dull +forefathers who have kept the law as they understood it. He was conscious +of the same "ought" vibrating through the moral sense as had governed +their narrower lives and minds. It is the presence or the absence indeed +of this dumb compelling power that in moments of crisis differentiates +one man from another. He felt it; wondered perhaps that he should feel +it; but knew, nevertheless, that he should obey it. Yes, let him go home, +make his wife forgive him, rear his children--he trusted to God there +would be children!--and tame his soul. How strange to feel this tempest +sweeping through him, this iron stiffening of the whole being, amid this +scene, in this room, within a few feet of that magic, that voice-- + + * * * * * + +"Thank goodness I have got rid of my man at last!" said Betty's laughing +whisper in his ear. "Three successive packs of hounds have I followed +from their cradles to their graves. Make it up to me, Sir George, at +once! Tell me everything I want to know!" + +George turned to her smiling. + +"About Ancoats?" + +"Of course. Now don't be discreet!--I know too much already. How did he +receive you?" + +George laughed--not noticing that instead of laughing with him, little +Betty was staring at him open-eyed over her fan. + +"To begin with, he invited me to fight--coffee and pistols before +eight, on the following morning, in the garden of his chalet, which +would not have been at all a bad place, for he is magnificently +installed. I came from his enemies, he said. They had prevented the +woman he loved from joining him, and covered him with ridicule. As +their representative I ought to be prepared to face the consequences +like a man. All this time he was storming up and down, in a marvellous +blue embroidered smoking suit--" + +"Of course, to go with the hair," put in Betty. + +"I said I thought he'd better give me some dinner before we talked it +out. Then he looked embarrassed and said there were friends coming. I +replied, '_Tant mieux.'_ He inquired fiercely whether it was the part of +a gentleman to thrust himself where he wasn't wanted. I kept my temper, +and said I was too famished to consider. Then he haughtily left the room, +and presently a servant came and asked for my luggage, which I had left +at the station, and showed me a bedroom. Ancoats, however, appeared again +to invite me to withdraw, and to suggest the names of two seconds who +would, he assured me, be delighted to act for me. I pointed out to him +that I was unpacked, and that to turn me out dinnerless would be simply +barbarous. Then, after fidgeting about a little, he burst out laughing in +an odd way, and said, 'Very well--only, mind, I didn't ask you.' Sure +enough, of course I found a party." + +George paused. + +"You needn't tell me much about the party," said Betty, nervously, +"unless it's necessary." + +"Well, it wasn't a very reputable affair, and two young women were +present." + +"No need to talk about the young women," said Betty, hastily. + +George bowed submission. + +"I only mentioned them because they are rather necessary to the story. +Anyway, by the time the company was settled Ancoats suddenly threw off +his embarrassment, and, with some defiant looks at me, behaved himself, I +imagine, much as he would have done without me. When all the guests were +gone, I asked him whether he was going to keep up the farce of a _grande +passion_ any more. He got in a rage and vowed that if 'she' had come, of +course all those creatures, male and female, would be packed off. I +didn't suppose that he would allow the woman he loved to come within a +mile of them? I shrugged my shoulders and declined to suppose anything +about his love affairs, which seemed to me too complicated. Then, of +course, I had to come to plain speaking, and bring in his mother." + +"That she should have produced such a being!" cried Betty; "that he +should have any right in her at all!" + +"That she should keep such a heart for him!" said George, raising his +eyebrows. "He turned rather white, I was relieved to see, when I told him +from her that she would leave his house if the London affair went on. +Well, we walked up and down in his garden, smoking, the greater part of +the night, till I could have dropped with fatigue. Every now and then +Ancoats would make a dash for the brandy and soda on the verandah; and in +between I had to listen to tirades against marriage, English prudery, and +English women,--quotations from Gautier and Renan,--and Heaven knows +what. At last, when we were both worn out, he suddenly stood still and +delivered his ultimatum. 'Look here--if you think I've no grievances, +you're much mistaken. Go back and tell my mother that if she'll marry +Fontenoy straight away I'll give up Marguerite!' I said I would deliver +no such impertinence. 'Very well,' he said; 'then I will. Tell her I +shall be in Paris next week, and ask her to meet me there. When are you +going?' 'Well,' I said, rather taken aback, 'there is such an institution +as the post. Now I've come so far, suppose you show me Trouville for a +few days?' He muttered something or other, and we went to bed. +Afterwards, he behaved to me quite charmingly, would not let me go, and I +ended by leaving him at the door of an hotel in Paris where he was to +meet his mother. But on the subject of Fontenoy it is an _idee fixe_. He +chafes under the whole position, and will yield nothing to a man who, as +he conceives, has no _locus standi_. But if his pride were no longer +annoyed by its being said that his mother had sacrificed her own +happiness to him, and if the situation were defined, I _think_ he might +be more amenable. I think they might marry him." + +"That's how the man puts it!" said Betty, tightening her lip. "Of course +_any_ marriage is desirable for _any_ woman!" + +"I was thinking of Mrs. Allison," said George, defensively. "One can't +think of a Lady Ancoats till she exists." + +"_Merci!_ Never mind. Don't apologise for the masculine view. It has to +be taken with the rest of you. Do you understand that matrimony is in the +air here to-night? Have you been talking to Lady Madeleine?" + +"No, not yet. But how handsome she's grown! I see Naseby's not far off." + +George turned smiling to his companion. But, as he did so, again +something cold and lifeless in his own face and in the expression +underlying the smile pricked little Betty painfully. Marcella had made +her no confidences, but there had been much gossip, and Letty Tressady's +mere presence at the Court set the intimate friend guessing very near +the truth. + +She did her best to chatter on, so as to keep him at least +superficially amused. But both became more and more conscious of two +figures, and two figures only, at the crowded table--Letty Tressady, +who was listening absently to Edward Watton with oppressed and indrawn +eyes, and Lady Maxwell. + +George, indeed, watched his wife constantly. He hungered to know more of +that first scene between her and Lady Maxwell, or he thought with bitter +repulsion of the letter she had confessed to him. Had he known of it,--in +spite of that strange, that compelling letter of Maxwell's, so reticent, +and yet in truth so plain,--he could hardly have come as a guest to +Maxwell's house. As for her revelations about Cathedine, he felt little +resentment or excitement. For the future a noxious brute had to be kept +in order--that was all. It was his own fault, he supposed, much more than +hers. The inward voice, as before, was clear enough. "I must just take +her home and be good to her. _She_ shirked nothing--now, no doubt, she +expects me to do my part." + +"Do you notice those jewels that Lady Maxwell is wearing to-night?" said +Betty at last, unable to keep away from the name. + +"I imagine they are a famous set?" + +"They belonged to Marie Antoinette. At last Maxwell has made her have +them cleaned and reset. What a pity to have such desperate scruples as +she has about all your pretty things!" + +"Must diamonds and rubies, then, perish out of the world?" he asked her, +absently, letting his eyes rest again upon the beautiful head and neck. + +Betty made some flippant rejoinder, but as she watched him, she +was not gay. + + * * * * * + +George had had but a few words with his hostess before dinner, and +afterwards a short conversation was all that either claimed. She had +hoped and planned so much! On the stage of imagination before he +came--she had seen his coming so often. All was to be forgotten and +forgiven, and this difficult visit was to lead naturally and without +recall to another and happier relation. And now that he was here she felt +herself tongue-tied, moving near him in a dumb distress. Both realised +the pressure of the same necessities, the same ineluctable facts; and +tacitly, they met and answered each other, in the common avoidance of a +companionship which could after all avail nothing. Once or twice, as they +stood together after dinner, he noticed amid her gracious kindness, her +inquiries after Mrs. Allison or his mother, the search her eyes made for +Letty, and presently she began to talk with nervous, almost appealing, +emphasis--with a marked significance and intensity indeed--of Letty's +fatigue after her nursing, and the need she had for complete change and +rest. George found himself half resenting the implications of her manner, +as the sentences flowed on. He felt her love of influence, and was not +without a hidden sarcasm. In spite of his passionate gratitude to her, he +must needs ask himself, did she suppose that a man or a marriage was to +be remade in a month, even by her plastic fingers? Women envisaged these +things so easily, so childishly, almost. + +When he moved away, a number of men who had already been talking to him +after dinner, and some of the most agreeable women of the party besides, +closed about him, making him, as it were, the centre of a conversation +which was concerned almost entirely with the personalities and chances +of the political moment. He was scarcely less astonished than Letty had +been by his own position amongst the guests gathered under Maxwell's +roof. Never had he been treated with so much sympathy, so much deference +even. Clearly, if he willed it so, what had seemed the dislocation might +only be the better beginning of a career. Nonsense! He meant to throw it +all up as soon as Parliament met again in February. The state of his +money affairs alone determined that. The strike was going from bad to +worse. He must go home and look after his own business. It was a folly +ever to have attempted political life. Meanwhile he felt the stimulus of +his reception in a company which included some of the keenest brains in +England. It appealed to his intelligence and virility, and they +responded. Letty once, glancing at him, saw that he was talking briskly, +and said to herself, with contradictory bitterness, that he was looking +as well as ever, and was going, she supposed, to behave as if nothing +had happened. + +"What is the matter with you to-night, my lady?" said Naseby, taking a +seat beside his hostess. "May I be impertinent and guess?--you don't like +your gems? Lady Leven has been telling me tales about them. They are the +most magnificent things I ever saw. I condole with you." + +She turned rather listlessly to meet his bantering look. + +"'Come you in friendship, or come you in war?'" she said, pointing to a +seat beside her. "I have no fight in me. But I have a great many things +to say to you." + +He reddened for an instant, then recovered himself. + +"So have I to you," he said briskly. "In the first place, I have some +fresh news from Mile End." + +She half laughed, as who should say, "You put me off," then surrendered +herself with eagerness to the pleasure of his report. At the moment of +his approach, under pretence of talking to an elderly cousin of +Maxwell's, she had been lost in such an abstraction of powerless pity for +George Tressady--whose fair head, somehow, never escaped her, wherever it +moved--that she had hardly been able to bear with her guests or the +burden of the evening. + +But Naseby roused her. And, indeed, his story so far was one to set the +blood throbbing in the veins of a creature who, on one side pure woman, +was on the other half poet, half reformer. Since the passage of the +Maxwell Bill, indeed, Naseby and a few friends of his, some "gilded +youths" like himself, together with some trade-union officials of a long +experience, had done wonders. They had been planning out the industrial +reorganisation of a whole district, through its two staple trades, with +the enthusiastic co-operation of the workpeople themselves; and the +result so far struck the imagination. Everywhere the old workshops were +to be bought up, improved, or closed; everywhere factories in which life +might be decent, and work more than tolerable, were to be set up; +everywhere the prospective shortening of hours, and the doing away with +the most melancholy of the home trades was working already like the +incoming of a great slowly surging tide, raising a whole population on +its breast to another level of well-being and of hope. + +Most of what had been done or designed was of course already well known +to Maxwell's wife; she had indeed given substantial help to Naseby +throughout. But Naseby had some fresh advances to report since she was +last in East London, and she drank them in with an eagerness, which +somehow assuaged a hidden smart; while he wondered a little perhaps in +his philosopher's soul at the woman of our English day, with her +compunctions and altruisms, her entanglement with the old scheme of +things, her pining for a new. It had often seemed to him that to be a +Nihilist nurse among a Russian peasantry would be an infinitely easier +task than to reconcile the social remorses and compassions that tore his +companion's mind with the social pageant in which her life, do what she +would, must needs be lived. He knew that, intellectually, she no more +than Maxwell saw any way out of unequal place, unequal spending, unequal +recompense, if civilisation were to be held together; but he perceived +that morally she suffered. Why? Because she and not someone else had been +chosen to rule the palace and wear the gems that yet must be? In the end, +Naseby could but shrug his shoulders over it. Yet even his sceptical +temper made no question of sincerity. + +When all his budget was out, and her comments made, she leant back a +little in her chair, studying him. A smile came to play about her lips. + +"What do you want to say to me?" he asked her quickly. + +She looked round her to see that they were not overheard. + +"When did you see Madeleine last?" + +"At her brother's house, a fortnight ago." + +"Was she nice to you?" + +He bit his lip, and drew his brows a little together, under her scrutiny. + +"Do you imagine I am going to be cross-examined like this?" + +"Yes--reply!" + +"Well, I don't know what her conception of 'niceness' may be; it didn't +fit mine. She had got it into her head that I 'pitied' her, which seemed +to be a crime. I didn't see how to disprove it, so I came away." + +He spoke with a dry lightness, but she perceived anxiety and unrest under +his tone. She bent forward. + +"Do you know where Madeleine is now?" + +"Not in the least." + +"In the Long Gallery. I sent her there." + +"Upon my word!" he said, after a pause. "Do you want to rule us all?" +His cheek had flushed again; his look was half rebellious. + +A flash of pain struck through her brightness. + +"No, no!" she said, protesting. "But I know--you don't!" + +He rose deliberately, and bowed with the air of obeying her commands. +Then suddenly he bent down to her. + +"I knew perfectly well that she was in the Long Gallery! But I also knew +that Mrs. Bayle had chosen to join her there. The coast, you may +perceive, is now clear." + +He walked away. Marcella looked round, and saw an elegant little bride, +Mr. Bayle's new wife, rustling into the room again. She leant back in +her chair, half laughing, yet her eyes were wet. The new joy brought a +certain ease to old regrets. Only that word "rule" rankled a little. + +Yet the old regrets were all sharp and active again. It seemed to be +impossible now to talk with George Tressady, to make any real breach in +the barrier between them; but how impossible also not to think of +him!--of the young fellow, who had given Maxwell his reward, and said to +herself such sad, such agitating things! She did think of him. Her heart +ached to serve him. The situation made a new and a very troubling appeal +to her womanhood. + + * * * * * + +The night was warm, and still, and the windows were open to it as they +had been on that May night at Castle Luton. Maxwell came to look for +Tressady, and took him out upon a flagged terrace that ran the length of +the house. + +They talked first of the Ancoats incident, George supplementing his +letters by some little verbal pictures of Ancoats's life and surroundings +that made Maxwell laugh grimly from time to time. As to Mrs. Allison, +Maxwell reported that Ancoats seemed to have gained his point. There was +talk of the marriage coming off some time in the winter. + +"Well, Fontenoy has earned his prize," said George. + +"There are more than twelve years between them. But she seems to be one +of the women who don't age. I have seen her go through griefs that +would kill most women; and it has been like the passage of a storm over +a flower." + +"Religion, I suppose, carried to that point, protects one a good deal," +said George, not, in truth, feeling much interest in the matter or in +Mrs. Allison now that his task was done. + +"And especially religion of the type that allows you to give your soul +into someone else's keeping. There is no such anodyne," said Maxwell, +musing. "I have often noticed how Catholic women keep their youth and +softness. But now, do allow me a few words about yourself. Is what I hear +about your withdrawal from Parliament irrevocable?" + +George's reply led to a discussion in which Maxwell, without any attempt +at party proselytism, endeavoured to combat all that he could understand +of the young man's twofold disgust, disgust with his own random +convictions no less than with the working of the party machine. + +"Where do I belong?" he said. "I don't know myself. I ought never to have +gone in. Anyway, I had better stand aside for a time." + +"But evidently the Malford people want to keep you." + +"Well, and of course I shall consult their convenience as much as I can," +said George, unwillingly, but would say no more. + +Nothing, indeed, could be more flattering, more healing, than all that +was implied in Maxwell's earnestness, in the peculiar sympathy and +kindness with which the elder man strove to win the younger's confidence; +but George could not respond. His whole inner being was too sore; and his +mind ran incomparably more upon the damnable letter that must be lying +somewhere in the archives of the memory of the man talking to him, than +upon his own political prospects. The conversation ended for Maxwell in +mere awkwardness and disappointment,--deep disappointment if the truth +were known. Once roused his idealism was little less stubborn, less +wilful than Marcella's. + +When the ladies withdrew, a brilliant group of them stood for a moment on +the first landing of the great oak staircase, lighting candles and +chattering. Madeleine Penley took her candle absently from Marcella's +hand, saying nothing. The girl's curious face under its crown of gold-red +hair was transformed somehow to an extraordinary beauty. The frightened +parting of the lips and lifting of the brows had become rather a look of +exquisite surprise, as of one who knows at last "the very heart of love." + +"I am coming to you, presently," murmured Marcella, laying her cheek +against the girl's. + +"Oh, _do_ come!" said Madeleine, with a great breath, and she walked +away, unsteadily, by herself, into the darkness of the tapestried +passage, her white dress floating behind her. + +Marcella looked after her, then turned with shining eyes to Letty +Tressady. Her expression changed. + +"I am afraid your headache has been very bad all the evening," she said +penitently. "Do let me come and look after you." + +She went with Letty to her room, and put her into a chair beside the wood +fire, that even on this warm night was not unwelcome in the huge place. +Letty, indeed, shivered a little as she bent towards it. + +"Must you go so early?" said Marcella, hanging over her. "I heard Sir +George speak of the ten o'clock train." + +"Oh, yes," said Letty, "that will be best." + +She stared into the fire without speaking. Marcella knelt down +beside her. + +"You won't hate me any more?" she said, in a low, pleading voice, taking +two cold hands in her own. + +Letty looked up. + +"I should like," she said, speaking with difficulty, "if you cared--to +see you sometimes." + +"Only tell me when," said Marcella, laying her lips lightly on the hands, +"and I will come." Then she hesitated. "Oh, do believe," she broke out at +last, but still in the same low voice, "that all can be healed! Only show +him love,--forget everything else,--and happiness must come. Marriage is +so difficult--such an art--even for the happiest people, one has to learn +it afresh day by day." + +Letty's tired eyes wavered under the other's look. + +"I can't understand it like that," she said. Then she moved restlessly in +her chair. "Ferth is a terrible place! I wonder how I shall bear it!" + + * * * * * + +An hour later Marcella left Madeleine Penley and went back to her own +room. The smile and flush with which she had received the girl's last +happy kisses disappeared as she walked along the corridor. Her head +drooped, her arms hung listlessly beside her. + +Maxwell found her in her own little sitting-room almost in the dark. He +sat down by her and took her hand. + +"You couldn't make any impression on him as to Parliament?" she asked +him, almost whispering. + +"No. He persists that he must go. I think his private circumstances at +Ferth have a great deal to do with it." + +She shook her head. She turned away from him, took up a paper-knife, and +let it fall on the table beside her. He thought that she must have been +in tears, before he found her, and he saw that she could find no words in +which to express herself. Lifting her hand to his lips, he held it there, +silently, with a touch all tenderness. + +"Oh, why am I so happy!" she broke out at last, with a sob, almost +drawing her hand away. "Such a life as mine seems to absorb and batten +upon other people's dues--to grow rich by robbing their joy, joy that +should feed hundreds and comes all to me! And that besides I should +actually bruise and hurt--" + +Her voice failed her. + +"Fate has a way of being tolerably even, at last," said Maxwell, slowly, +after a pause. "As to Tressady, no one can say what will come of it. He +has strange stuff in him--fine stuff I think. He will pull himself +together. And for the wife--probably, already he owes you much! I saw her +look at you to-night--once as you touched her shoulder. Dear!--what +spells have you been using?" + +"Oh! I will do all I can--all I can!" Marcella repeated in a low, +passionate voice, as one who makes a vow to her own heart. + +"But after to-morrow he will not willingly come across us again," said +Maxwell, quietly. "That I saw." + +She gave a sad and wordless assent. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +Letty Tressady sat beside the doorway of one of the small red-brick +houses that make up the village of Ferth. It was a rainy October +afternoon, and through the door she could see the black main street +--houses and road alike bedabbled in wet and mire. At one point in the +street her eye caught a small standing crowd of women and children, most +of them with tattered shawls thrown over their heads to protect them from +the weather. She knew what it meant. They were waiting for the daily +opening of the soup kitchen, started in the third week of the great +strike by the Baptist minister, who, in the language of the Tory paper, +was "among the worst firebrands of the district." There was another soup +kitchen further down, to which George had begun to subscribe immediately +on his return to the place. She had thought it a foolish act on his part +thus to help his own men to fight him the better. But--now, as she +watched the miserable crowd outside the Baptist chapel, she felt the +teasing pressure of those new puzzles of her married life which had so +far done little else, it seemed, than take away her gaiety and her power +of amusing herself. + +Near her sat an oldish woman with an almost toothless mouth, who was +chattering to her in a tone that Letty knew to be three parts +hypocritical. + +"Well, the treuth is the men is that fool 'ardy when they gets a thing +into their yeds, there's no taakin wi un. There's plenty as done like the +strike, my lady, but they dursent say so--they'd be afeard o' losin the +skin off their backs, for soom o' them lads o' Burrows's is a routin +rough lot as done keer what they doos to a mon, an yo canna exspeck a +quiet body to stan up agen 'em. Now, my son, ee comes in at neet all +slamp and downcast, an I says to 'im, 'Is there noa news yet o' the Jint +Committee, John?' I ses to un. 'Noa, mither,' ee says, 'they're just +keepin ov it on.' An ee do seem so down'earted when ee sees the poor +soart ov a supper as is aw I can gie un to 'is stomach. Now, _I'm_ wun o' +thoase as _wants_ nuthin. The doctor ses, 'Yo've got no blude in yer, +Missus 'Ammersley, what 'ull yer 'ave?' An I says, '_Nuthin!_ it's sun +cut, an it's sun cooked, _nuthin!_' Noa, I've niver bin on t' parish--an +I _might_--times. An I don't 'old wi strikes. Lor, it is a poor pleace, +is ours--ain't it?--an nobbut a bit o' bread an drippin for supper." + +The old woman threw her eyes round her kitchen, bringing them back slyly +to Letty's face. Letty ended by leaving some money with her, and walking +away as dissatisfied with her own charity as she was with its recipient. +Perhaps this old body was the only person in the village who would have +begged of "Tressady's wife" at this particular moment. Letty, moreover, +had some reason to believe that her son was one of the roughest of +Burrows's bodyguard; while the old woman was certainly no worse off than +any of her neighbours. + +Outside, she was disturbed to find as she walked home, that the street +was full of people, in spite of the rain--of gaunt men and pinched +women, who threw her hostile and sidelong glances as she passed. She +hurried through them. How was it that she knew nothing of them--except, +perhaps, of the few toadies and parasites among them? How was one to +penetrate into this ugly, incomprehensible world of "the people"? The +mere idea of trying to do so filled her with distaste and ennui. She was +afraid of them. She wished she had not stayed so long with that old +gossip, Mrs. Hammersley, and that there were not so many yards of dark +road between her and her own gate. Where was George? She knew that he +had gone up to the pits that afternoon to consult his manager about some +defect in the pumping arrangements. She wished she had secured his +escort for the walk home. + +But before she left the village she paused irresolutely, then turned down +a side street, and went to see Mary Batchelor, George's old nurse, the +mother who had lost her only son in his prime. + +When, a few minutes later, she came up the lane, she was flatly conscious +of having done a virtuous thing--several virtuous things--that afternoon, +but certainly without any pleasure in them. She did not get on with Mary, +nor Mary with her. The tragic absorption of the mother--little abated +since the spring--in her dead boy seemed somehow to strike Letty dumb. +She felt pity, but yet the whole emotion was beyond her, and she shrank +from it. As for Mary, she had so far received Lady Tressady's visits with +a kind of dull surprise, always repeated and not flattering. Letty +believed that, in her inmost heart, the broken woman was offended each +time that it was not George who came. Moreover, though she never said a +word of it to Tressady's wife, she was known to be passionately on the +side of the strikers, and her manner gave the impression that she did not +want to be talking with their oppressors. Perhaps it was this feeling +that had reconciled her to the loutish lad who lived with her, and had +been twice "run in" by the police for stone-throwing at non-union men +since the beginning of the strike. At any rate, she took a great deal +more notice of him than she had done. + +No--they were not very satisfactory, these attempts of Letty's in the +village. She thought of them with a kind of inner exasperation as she +walked home. She had been going to a few old and sick people, and trying +to ignore the strike. But at bottom she felt an angry resentment towards +these loafing, troublesome fellows, who filled the village street when +they ought to have been down in the pits--who were starving their own +children no less than disturbing and curtailing the incomes of their +betters. Did they suppose that people were going to run pits for them for +nothing? Their drink and their religion seemed to her equally hideous. +She hated the two Dissenting ministers of the place only less than +Valentine Burrows himself, and delighted to pass their wives with her +head high in air. + +With these general feelings towards the population in her mind, why +these efforts at consolation and almsgiving? Well, the poor old people +were not responsible; but she did not see that any good had come of it. +She had said nothing about her visits to George, nor did-she suppose +that he had noticed them. He had been so incessantly busy since their +arrival with conferences and committees that she had seen very little of +him. It was generally believed that the strike was nearing its end, and +that the men were exhausted; but she did not think that George was very +hopeful yet. + +Presently, as she neared a dark slope of road, bordered with trees on +one side and the high "bank" of the main pit on the other, her thoughts +turned back to their natural and abiding subject--herself. Oh, the +dulness of life at Ferth during the last three weeks! She thought of +her amusements in town, of the country houses where they might now be +staying but for George's pride, of Cathedine, even; and a rush of +revolt and self-pity filled her mind. George always away, nothing to do +in the ugly house, and Lady Tressady coming directly--she said to +herself, suffocating, her small hands stiffening, that she felt fit to +kill herself. + +Half-way down the slope she heard steps behind her in the gathering +darkness, and at the same moment something struck her violently on the +shoulder. She cried out, and clutched at some wooden railings along the +road for support, as the lump of "dirt" from the bank which had been +flung at her dropped beside her. + +"Letty, is that you?" shouted a voice from the direction of the +village--her husband's voice. She heard running. In a few seconds George +had reached her and was holding her. + +"What is it struck you? I see! Cowards! _damned_ cowards! Has it broken +your arm? Try and move it." + +Sick with pain she tried to obey him. "No," she said faintly; "it is not +broken--I think not." + +"Good!" he cried, rejoicing; "probably only a bad bruise. The brute +mercifully picked up nothing very hard"--and he pushed the lump with +his foot. "Take my scarf, dear; let me sling it. Ah!--what was that? +Letty! can you be brave--can you let me go one minute? I sha'n't be out +of your sight." + +And he pointed excitedly to a dark spot moving among the bushes along the +lower edge of the "bank." + +Letty nodded. "I can stay here." + +George leapt the palings and ran. The dark spot ran too, but in queer +leaps and bounds. There was the sound of a scuffle, then George returned, +dragging something or someone behind him. + +"I knew it," he said, panting, as he came within earshot of his wife; "it +was that young ruffian, Mary Batchelor's grandson! Now you stand still, +will you? I could hold two of the likes of you with one hand. Madan!" + +He had but just parted from his manager on the path which led sideways up +the "bank," and waited anxiously to see if his voice would reach the +Scotchman's ears. But no one replied. He shouted again; then he put two +fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly towards the pit, holding the +struggling lad all the time. + +At the same moment a couple of heavily built men, evidently colliers, +came down the road from the village. George at once called to them from +across the palings. + +"Here, you there! this young rascal has been throwing a lump of dirt at +Lady Tressady, and has hit her badly on the arm. Will you two just walk +him up to the police-station for me, while I take my wife home?" + +The two men stopped and stared at the lady by the railings and at Sir +George holding the boy, whose white but grinning face was just visible in +the growing dusk. + +"Noa," said one of them at last, "it's noa business ov ourn--is +it, Bill?" + +"Noa," said the other, stolidly; and on they tramped. + +"Oh, you heroes!" George flung after them. "Attacking a woman in the dark +is about what you understand!--Madan!" + +He whistled again, and this time there was a hurrying from overhead. + +"Sir George!" + +"Come down here, will you, at once!" + +In a few more minutes the boy was being marched up the road to the +police-station in charge of the strong-wristed Scotch manager, and George +was free to attend to Letty. + +He adjusted a sling very fairly, then made her cling to him with her +sound arm; and they were soon inside their own gates. + +"You can't climb this hill," he said to her anxiously. "Rest at the +lodge, and let me go for the brougham." + +"I can walk perfectly well--and it will be much quicker." + +Involuntarily, he was surprised to find her rather belittling than +exaggerating the ill. As they climbed on in the dark, he helping her as +much as he could, both could not but think of another accident and +another victim. Letty found herself imagining again and again what the +scene with Lady Maxwell, after the East End meeting, might have been +like; while, as for him, a face drew itself upon the rainy dusk, which +the will seemed powerless to blot out. It was a curious and unwelcome +coincidence. His secret sense of it made him the more restlessly kind. + +"What were you in the village for?" he asked, bending to her; "I did not +know you had anything to do there!" + +"I had been to see old Bessie Hammersley and Mrs. Batchelor," she +said, in a tone that tried to be stiff or indifferent. "Bessie begged, +as usual." + +"That was very good of you. Have you been doing visiting, then, during +all these days I have been away?" + +"Yes--a few people." + +George groaned. + +"What's the use of it--or of anything? They hate us and we them. This +strike begins to eat into my very being. And the men will be beaten soon, +and the feeling towards the employers will be worse than ever." + +"You are sure they will be beaten?" + +"Before Christmas, anyway. I daresay there will be some bad times first. +To think a woman even can't walk these roads without danger of +ill-treatment! How is one to have any dealings with the brutes, or any +peace with them?" + +His rage and bitterness made her somehow feel her bruises less. She even +looked up in protest. + +"Well, it was only a boy, and you used to think he wasn't all there." + +"Oh! all there!" said George, scornfully. "There'd be half of them in +Bedlam if one had to make that excuse for them. There isn't a day passes +without some devilry against the non-union men somewhere. It was only +this morning I heard of two men being driven into a reservoir near +Rilston, and stoned in the water." + +"Perhaps we should do the same," she said unwillingly. + +"Lean on me more heavily--we shall soon be there. You think we should be +brutes too? Probably. We seem to be all brutes for each other--that's the +charming way this competitive world is managed. So you have been looking +after some of the old people, have you? You must have had a dull time of +it this last three weeks--don't think I don't know that!" + +He spoke with emotion. He thought he felt her grasp waver a little on his +arm, but she did not speak. + +"Suppose--when this business was over--I were to cut the whole +concern--let the pits and the house, and go right away? I daresay I +could." + +"Could you?" she said eagerly. + +"We shouldn't get so much money, you know, as in the best years. But +then it would be certain. What would you say to a thousand a year less?" +he asked her, trying to speak lightly. + +"Well, it doesn't seem easy to get on with what we have--even if we had +it," she said sharply. + +He understood the reference to his mother's debts, and was silent. + +But evidently the recollection, once introduced, generated the usual heat +and irritation in her, for, as they neared the front door, she suddenly +said, with an acerbity he had not heard for some weeks: + +"Of course, to have a country house, and not to be able to spend a +farthing upon it--to ask your friends, or have anything decent--is enough +to make anyone sick of it. And, above all, when we needn't have been here +at all this October--" + +She stopped, shrinking from the rest of the sentence, but not before he +had time to think, "She say _that_!--monstrous!" + +Aloud he coldly replied: + +"It is difficult to see where I could have been but here, this October." + +Then the door opened, and the light showed her to him pale, with lips +tight pressed from the pain of her injury. Instantly he forgot everything +but his natural pity and chivalry towards women. He led her in, and half +carried her upstairs. A little later she was resting on her bed, and he +had done everything he could for her till the doctor should come. She +seemed to have passed into an eclipse of temper or moodiness, and he got +little gratitude. + +The evening post brought her a letter which he took up to her himself. +He knew the clear, rapid hand, and he knew, too, that Letty had received +many such during the preceding month. He stood beside her a moment, +almost on the point of asking her to let him see it. But the words died +on his lips. And, perceiving that she would not read it while he was +there, he went away again. + +When he returned, carrying a new book and asking if he should read to +her, he found her lying with her cheek on her hand, staring into the +fire, and so white and miserable that his heart sank. Had he married her, +a girl of twenty-four, only to destroy her chance of happiness +altogether? A kind of terror seized him. He had been "good to her," so +far as she and his business had allowed him, since their return; there +had been very little outward jarring; but no one knew better than he that +there had not been one truly frank or reconciling moment. + +His own inner life during these weeks had passed in one obscure +continuous struggle--a sort of dull fever of the soul. And she had simply +held herself aloof from him. + +He knelt down beside her, and laid his face against hers. + +"Don't look so unhappy!" he said in a whisper, caressing her free hand. +She did not answer or make any response till, as he got up again in a +kind of despair as to what to do or say next, she hastily asked: + +"Has the constable been up here to see you?" + +He looked at her in surprise. + +"Yes. It is all arranged. The lad will be brought up before the +magistrates on Thursday." + +She fidgeted, then said abruptly: + +"I should like him to be let off." + +He hesitated. + +"That's very nice of you, but it wouldn't be very good for the district." + +She did not press the matter, but as he moved away she said fretfully: + +"I wish you'd read to me. The pain's horrid." + +Thankful, in his remorse, to do anything for her, he tried to amuse and +distract her as he best could. But in the middle of a magazine story she +interrupted him: + +"Isn't it the day after to-morrow your mother's coming?" + +"According to her letter this morning." He put down the book. "But I +don't think you'll be at all fit to look after her. Shall I write +to-night and suggest that she stays in London a little?" + +"No. I shall be all right, the doctor says. I want to tell +Esther"--Esther was the housemaid--"_not_ to get the Blue Room ready for +her. I looked in to-day, and it seemed damp. The back room over the +dining-room is smaller, but it's much warmer." + +She turned to look at him with a rather flushed face. + +"You know best," he said, smiling. "I am sure it will be all right. But I +sha'n't let her come unless you are better." + +He went on reading till it grew late, and it seemed to him she was +dropping off to sleep. He was stealing off by way of the large +dressing-room near by, where he had been installed since their return, +when, she said faintly, "Good-night!" + +He returned, and felt the drawing of her hot hand. He stooped and kissed +her. Then she turned away from him, and seemed to go instantly to sleep. + +He went downstairs to his library, and gathered about him some documents +he had brought back from the last meeting of the masters' committee, +which had to be read. But in reality he spent an hour of random thought. +When would she herself tell him anything of her relations to Lady +Maxwell, of the nature and causes of that strange subjection which, as +he saw quite plainly, had been brought about? She must know that he +pined to know; yet she held her secret only the more jealously, no doubt +to punish him. + +He thought of her visits to the village, half humorously, half sadly; +then of her speech about the Blue Room and his mother. They seemed to him +signs of some influence at work. + +But at last he turned back to his papers with a long impatient sigh. The +clear pessimism with which he was wont to see facts that concerned +himself maintained that all the surrounding circumstance of the case was +as untoward as it could be--this dull house, a troubled district, his +money affairs, the perpetual burden of his mother, Letty's own thirst for +pleasure, and the dying down in himself of the feelings that might +once--possibly--have made up to her for a good deal. The feelings might +be simulated. Was the woman likely to be deceived? That she was capable +of the fiercest jealousy had been made abundantly plain; and such a +temper once roused would find a hundred new provocations, day by day, in +the acts and doings of a husband who had ceased to be a lover. + +Two days later Lady Tressady arrived, with Justine, and her dogs, and +all her paraphernalia. She declared herself better, but she was a mere +shadow of the woman who had tormented George with her debts and +affectations at Malford House a twelvemonth before. She took Ferth +discontentedly, as usual, and was particularly cross with Letty's +assignment to her of the back room, instead of the larger spare room to +the front of the house. + +"Damp?--nonsense!" she said to Justine, who was trying to soothe her on +the night she arrived. "I suppose Lady Tressady has some friend of her +own coming to stay--that's, of _course_, what it is. _C'est parfaitement +clair, je te dis--parfaitement!_" + +The French maid reminded her that her daughter-in-law had said, on +showing her the room, she had only to express a wish to change, and the +arrangements should be altered at once. + +"I daresay," cried Lady Tressady. "But I shall ask _no_ favours of +her--and that, of course, she knew." + +"But, miladi, I need only speak to the housemaid." + +"Thank you! Then afterwards, whenever I had a pain or a finger-ache, it +would be, 'I told you so!' No! she has managed it very cleverly--very +cleverly indeed!--and I shall let it alone." + +Thenceforward, however, there were constant complaints of everything +provided for her--room, food, the dulness of the place, the manners of +her daughter-in-law. Whether it was that her illness had now reached a +stage when the will could no longer fight against it, and its only effect +was demoralising; or whether the strange flash of courage and natural +affection struck from the volatile nature by the first threat of death +could not in any case have maintained itself, it is hard to say. At any +rate, George also found it hard to keep up his new and better ways with +her. The fact was, he suffered through Letty. In a few days his +sympathies were all with her, and to his amazement he perceived before +long that, in spite of occasional sharp speeches and sulky moments that +only an angel could have forborne, she was really more patient under his +mother's idiosyncrasies than he was. Yet Lady Tressady, even now, was +rarely unmanageable in his presence, and could still restrain herself if +it was a question of his comfort and repose; whereas, it was clear that +she felt a cat-like impulse to torment Letty whenever she saw her. + +One recent habit, however, bore with special heaviness on himself. Oddly +enough, it was a habit of religious discussion. Lady Tressady in health +had never troubled herself in the least as to what the doctors of the +soul might have to say, and had generally gaily professed herself a +sceptic in religious matters, mostly, as George had often thought, for +the sake of escaping all inconvenient restrictions--such as family +prayers, or keeping Sunday, or observing Lent--which might have got in +the way of her amusements. + +But, now, poor lady, she was all curiosity and anxiety about this strange +other side of things, and inclined, too, to be rather proud of the +originality of her inquiries on the subject. So that night after night +she would keep George up, after an exhausting day, till the small hours, +while she declared her own views "on God, on Nature, and on Human Life," +and endeavoured to extract his. This latter part of the exercise was +indeed particularly attractive to her; no doubt because of its +difficulty. George had been a singularly reserved person in these +respect's all his life, and had no mind now to play the part of a +coal-seam for his mother to "pike" at. But "pike" she would incessantly. + +"Now, George, look here! what do you _really_ think about a future life? +Now don't try and get out of it! And don't just talk nonsense to me +because you think I'm ill. I'm not a baby--I really am not. Tell +me--seriously--what you think. Do you honestly expect there _is_ a +future life?" + +"I've told you before, mother, that I have no particular thoughts on that +subject. It isn't in my line," George would say, smiling profanely, but +uneasily, and wondering how long this bout of it might be going to last. + +"Don't be shocking, George! You _must_ have some ideas about it. Now, +don't hum and haw--just tell me what you think." And she would lean +forward, all urgency and expectation. + +A pause, during which George could think only of the ghastly figure on +the sofa. She sat upright, generally, against a prop of cushions, +dressed in a white French tea-gown, slim enough to begin, with, but far +too large now for the shrunk form--a bright spot of rouge on either +pinched cheek, and the dyed "fringe" and "coils" covering all the once +shapely head. Meanwhile her hand would play impatiently on her knee. +The hand was skin and bone; and the rings with which it was laden would +often slip off from it to the floor--a diversion of which George was +always prompt to avail himself. + +"Why don't you talk to Mr. Fearon, mother?" he would say gently at last. +"It's his business to discuss these things." + +"Talk to a clergyman! thank you! I hope I have more respect for my own +intelligence. What can a priest do for you? What does he know more than +anybody else? But I do want to know what my own son thinks. Now, George, +just answer me. If there _is_ a future life"--she spread out her hand +slowly on her lap--"what do you suppose your father's doing at this +moment? That's a thing I often think of, George. I don't think I want a +future life if it's to be just like the past. You know--you remember how +he used to be--poking about the house, and going down to the pits, +and--and--swearing at the servants, and having rows with me about the +accounts--and all his dear dreadful little ways? Yet, what else in the +world can you imagine him doing? As to singing hymns!" + +She raised her hands expressively. + +George laughed, and puffed away at his cigarette. But as he still said +nothing Lady Tressady began to frown. + +"That's the way you always get out of my questions," she said fretfully; +"it's so provoking of you." + +"I've recommended you to the professional," he said, patting her hand. +"What else could I do?" + +Her thin cheek flamed. + +"As if we couldn't be certain, anyway," she cried, "that the Christians +don't know anything about it. As M. d'Estrelles used to say to me at +Monte Carlo, if there's one thing clear, it is that we needn't bother +ourselves with _their_ doctrines!" + +"Needn't we?" said George. Then he looked at her, smiling. "And you think +M. d'Estrelles was an authority?" + +Odd recollections began to run through his mind of this elderly +French admirer of his mother's, whom he had seen occasionally +flitting about their London lodgings when, as a boy, he came up from +Eton for his _exeat_. + +"Oh! don't you scoff, George," said his mother, angrily. "M. d'Estrelles +was a very clever man, though he did gamble like a fool. Everybody said +his memory was marvellous. He used to quote me pages out of Voltaire and +the rest of them on the nights when we walked up and down the gardens at +Monte Carlo, after he'd cleared himself out. He always said he didn't see +why these things should be kept from women--why men shouldn't tell women +exactly what they think. And I know he'd been a Catholic in his youth, so +he'd had experience of both. However, I don't care about M. d'Estrelles. +I want your opinions. Now, George!"--her voice would begin to break--"how +can you be so unkind. You might really compose my mind a little, as the +doctors say!" + +And through her incorrigible levity he would see for a moment the terror +which always possessed her raise its head. Then it would be time for him +to go and put his arm round her, and try and coax her to bed. + +One night, after he had taken her upstairs, he came down so wearied and +irritable that he put all his letters aside, and tried to forget himself +in some miscellaneous reading. + +His knowledge of literature was no more complete than his character. +Certain modern English poets--Rossetti, Morris, Keats, and Shelley--he +knew almost by heart. And in travels and biography--mostly of men of +action--he had, at one time or another, read voraciously. But "the +classics he had not read," as with most of us, would have made a list of +lamentable length. + +Since his return to Ferth, however, he had browsed a good deal among the +books collected by his grandfather, mostly by way of distracting himself +at night from the troubles and worries of the day. + +On this particular night there were two books lying on his table. One was +a volume of Madame de Sevigne, the other St. Augustine's "Confessions." +He turned over first one, then the other. + +"Au reste, ma fille, une de mes grandes envies, ce serait d'etre devote; +je ne suis ni an Dieu, ni an Diable; cet etat m'ennuie, quoiqu' entre +nous je le trouve le plus naturel du monde. On n'est point an Diable +parce qu'on craint Dieu, et qu' an fond on a un principe de religion; on +n'est point a Dieu aussi, parce que sa loi paroit dure, et qu' on n'aime +point a se detruire soi-meme." + +"Admirable!" he thought to himself, "_admirable!_ We are all there--my +mother and I--three parts of mankind." + +But on a page of the other book he had marked these lines--for the +beauty of them: + +"Beatus qui amat te, et amicum in te, et inimicum propter te. Solus enim +nullum eorum amittit, cui omnes in illo cari sunt qui non amittitur." + +He hung over the fire, pondering the two utterances. + +"A marvellous music," he thought of the last. "But I know no more what it +means than I know what a symphony of Brahms' means. Yet some say they +know. Perhaps of _her_ it might be true." + +The weeks ran on. Outside, the strike was at its worst, though George +still believed the men would give in before Christmas. There was hideous +distress, and some bad rioting in different parts of the country. Various +attempts had been made by the employers to use and protect non-union +labour, but the crop of outrage they had produced had been too +threatening: in spite of the exasperation of the masters they had been +perforce let drop. The Press and the public were now intervening in good +earnest--"every fool thinks he can do our business for us," as George +would put it bitterly to Letty. Burrows was speaking up and down the +district with a superhuman energy, varied only by the drinking-bouts to +which he occasionally succumbed; and George carried a revolver with him +when he went abroad. + +The struggle wore him to death; the melancholy of his temperament had +never been so marked. At the same time Letty saw a doggedness in him, a +toughness like Fontenoy's own, which astonished her. Two men seemed to be +fighting in him. He would talk with perfect philosophy of the miners' +point of view, and the physical-force sanction by which the lawless among +them were determined to support it; but at the same time he belonged to +the stiffest set among the masters. + +Meanwhile, at home, friction and discomfort were constantly recurring. +In the course of three or four weeks Lady Tressady had several attacks +of illness, and it was evident that her weakness increased rapidly. And +with the weakness, alas! the ugly incessant irritability, that dried up +the tenderness of nurses, and made a battleground of the sick-room. +Though, indeed, she could never be kept in her room; she resented being +left a moment alone. She claimed, in spite of the anxieties of the +moment, to be constantly amused; and though George could sometimes +distract and quiet her, nothing that Letty did, or said, or wore was +ever tolerable to a woman who merely saw in this youth beside her a +bitter reminder of her own. + +At last, one day early in November, came a worse turn than usual. The +doctor was in the house most of the day, but George had gone off before +the alarm to a place on the further side of the county, and could not be +got at till the evening. + +He came in to find Letty waiting for him in the hall. There had been a +rally; the doctor had gone his way marvelling, and it was thought there +was no immediate danger. + +"But oh, the pain!" said Letty, under her breath, pressing her hands +together, and shivering. Her eyes were red, her cheeks pale; he saw that +she was on the point of exhaustion; and he guessed that she had never +seen such a sight before. + +He ran up to visit his mother, whom he found almost speechless from +weakness, yet waiting, with evident signs of impatience and temper, for +her evening food. And while he and Letty were at their melancholy dinner +together, Justine came flying downstairs in tears. Miladi would not eat +what had been taken to her. She was exciting herself; there would be +another attack. + +Husband and wife hurried from the room. In the hall they found the butler +just receiving a parcel left by the railway delivery-cart. + +George passed the box with an exclamation and a shudder. It bore a large +label, "From Worth et Cie," and was addressed to Lady Tressady. But Letty +stopped short, with a sudden look of pleasure. + +"You go to her. I will have this unpacked." + +He went up and coaxed his mother like a child to take her soup and +champagne. And presently, just as she was revived enough to talk to +him, Letty appeared. Her mother-in-law frowned, but Letty came gaily up +to the bed. + +"There is a parcel from Paris for you," she said, smiling. "I have had it +opened. Would you like it brought in?" + +Lady Tressady first whimpered, and said it should go back--what did a +dying woman want with such things?--then demanded greedily to see it. + +Letty brought it in herself. It was a new evening gown of the softest +greens and shell-pinks, fit for a bride in her first season. To see the +invalid, ashen-grey, stretching out her hand to finger it was almost more +than George could stand. But Letty shook out the rustling thing, put on +the skirt herself that Lady Tressady might see, and paraded up and down +in it, praising every cut and turning with the most ingenious ardour. + +"I sha'n't wear it, of course, till after Christmas," said Lady Tressady +at last, still looking at it with half-shut covetous eyes. "Isn't it +_darling_ the way the lace is put on! Put it away. George!--it's the +_first_ I've had from him this year." + +She looked up at him appealingly. He stooped and kissed her. + +"I am so glad you like it, mother dear. Can't you sleep now?" + +"Yes, I think so. Good-night. And good-night, Letty." + +Letty came, and Lady Tressady held her hand, while the blue eyes, still +bearing the awful impress of suffering, stared at her oddly. + +"It was nice of you to put it on, Letty. I didn't think you'd have done +it. And I'm glad you think it's pretty. I wish you would have one made +like it. Kiss me." + +Letty kissed her. Then George slipped his wife's arm in his, and they +left the room together. Outside Letty turned suddenly white, and nearly +fell. George put his arms round her, and carried her down to his study. +He put her on the sofa, and watched her tenderly, rubbing the cold hands. + +"How you _could_," he said at last, in a low voice, when he saw that +she was able to talk; "how you _could!_ I shall never forget that +little scene." + +"You'd have done anything, if you'd seen her this morning," she said, +with her eyes still closed. + +He sat beside her, silent, thinking over the miseries of the last few +weeks. The net result of them--he recognised it with a leap of +surprise--seemed to have been the formation of a new and secret bond +between himself and Letty. During all the time he had been preparing +himself for the worst this strange thing had been going on. How had it +been possible for her to be, comparatively, so forbearing? He could see +nothing in his past knowledge of her to explain it. + +He recalled the effort and gloom with which she had made her first +preparations for Lady Tressady. Yet she had made them. Is there really +some mystic power, as the Christians say, in every act of self-sacrifice, +however imperfect,--a power that represents at once the impelling and the +rewarding God,--that generates, moreover, from its own exercise, the +force to repeat itself? Personally such a point of view meant little to +him, nor did his mind dwell upon it long. All that he knew was that some +angel had stirred the pool--that old wounds smarted less--that hope +seemed more possible. + +Letty knew quite well that he was watching her in a new way, that there +was a new clinging in his touch. She, little more than he, understood +what was happening to her. From time to time during these weeks of +painful tension there had been hours of wild rebellion, when she had +hated her surroundings, her mother-in-law, and her general ill-luck as +fiercely as ever. Then there had followed strange appeasements, and +inflowing calms--moments when she had been able somehow to express +herself to one who cared to listen who poured upon her in return a +sympathy which braced while it healed. + +Suddenly she opened her eyes. + +"Do you want to hear about that first time when she came to see me?" she +whispered, her look wavering under his. + +He flushed and hesitated. Then he kissed her hand. + +"No, not now. You are worn out. Another time. But I love you for thinking +of telling me." + +A feeling of rest and well-being stole over her. Mercifully he made no +protestations, and she asked for none, but there was a gentle moving of +heart towards heart. And the memory of that hour, that night, made one of +the chief barriers between her and despair in the time that followed. + +Two days later a painless death, death in her sleep, overtook Lady +Tressady. Her delicate face, restored to its true years, and framed in +its natural grey hair, seemed for the first time beautiful to George when +he saw her in her coffin. He could not remember admiring her, even when +he was a boy, and she was reckoned among the handsomest women of her day. +Parting with her was like the snapping of a strain that had pulled life +out of its true bearings and proportions. An immense, inevitable relief +followed. But after her death Letty never said a harsh word of her, and +George had a queer, humble feeling that after all he might be found to +owe her much. + +For as November and December passed away the relation between the husband +and wife steadily settled and improved. "We shall rub along," George +said to himself in his frank, secret thoughts--"in the end it will be +much better perhaps than either of us could have hoped." That no doubt +was the utmost that could ever be said; but it was much. + +The night after his mother's death, Letty abruptly, violently even, as +though worked up to it by an inner excitement, told him the story of her +wrestle with Marcella. Then, throwing some letters into his hand she +broke into sobbing and ran away from him. When he went to look for her +his own eyes were wet. "Who else could have done such a thing?" he said; +and Letty made no protest. + +The letters gave him food for thought for many a day afterwards. They +were little less of a revelation to him than the motives and personality +lying behind them had been to Letty. In spite of all that he had felt for +the woman who had written them, they still roused in him a secret and +abiding astonishment. We use the words "spiritual," "poetic" in relation +to human conduct; we talk as though all that the words meant were +familiarly understood by us; and yet when the spiritual or the poetic +comes actually to walk among us, slips into the forms and functions of +our common life, we find it amazing, almost inhuman. It gives us some +trouble to take it simply, to believe in it simply. + +Yet nothing in truth could be a more inevitable outcome of character and +circumstance than these letters of Marcella Maxwell to George Tressady's +wife. Marcella had suffered under a strong natural remorse, and to free +her heart from the load of it she had thrown herself into an effort of +reconciliation and atonement with all the passion, the subtlety, and the +resource of her temperament. She had now been wooing Letty Tressady for +weeks, nor had the eager contriving ability she had been giving to the +process missed its reward. Letty fresh from the new impressions made upon +her by Marcella at home, and Marcella as a wife, by a beauty she could no +longer hate, and a charm to which she had been forced to yield, had found +herself amid the loneliness and dulness of Perth gradually enveloped and +possessed anew by the same influence, acting in ways that grew week by +week more personal, and more subduing. + +What to begin with could be more flattering either to heart or vanity +than the persistence with which one of the most famous women of her +time--watched, praised, copied, attacked, surrounded, as Letty knew her +to be, from morning till night--had devoted herself first to the +understanding, then to the capturing, of the smaller, narrower life. The +reaction towards a natural reserve, a certain proud, instinctive +self-defence, which had governed Marcella's manner during a great part of +Letty's visit to the Court, had been in these letters deliberately broken +down--at first with effort, then more and more frankly, more and more +sweetly. Day after day, as Letty knew, Marcella had taken time from +politics, from society, from her most cherished occupations, to write to +this far-off girl, from whom she had nothing either to gain or to fear, +who had no claims whatever on her friendship, had things gone normally, +while thick about the opening of their relation to each other hung the +memory of Letty's insults and Letty's violence. + +And the letters were written with such abandonment! As a rule Marcella +was a hasty or impatient correspondent. She thought letters a waste of +time; life was full enough without them. But here, with Letty, she +lingered, she took pains. The mistress of Les Rochers writing to her +absent, her exacting Pauline, could hardly have been more eager to +please. She talked--at leisure--of all that concerned her--husband, +child, high politics, the persons she saw, the gaieties she bore with, +the books she read, the schemes in which she was busied; then, with +greater tenderness, greater minuteness, of the difficulties and tediums +of Letty's life at Ferth, as they had been dismally drawn out for her in +Letty's own letters. The animation, the eager kindness of it all went for +much; the amazing self-surrender, self-offering, implied in every page +for much more. + +Strange!--as he read the letters George felt his own heart beating. Were +they in some hidden way meant for him too?--he seemed to hear in them a +secret message--a woman's yearning, a woman's response. + +At any rate, the loving, reconciling effort had done its work. Letty +could not be insensible to such a flattery, a compliment so unexpected, +so bewildering--the heart of a Marcella Maxwell poured out to her for the +taking. She neither felt it so profoundly, nor so delicately as hundreds +of other women could have felt it. Nevertheless the excitement of it had +thrilled and broken up the hardnesses of her own nature. And with each +yielding on her part had come new capacity for yielding, new emotions +that amazed herself; till she found herself, as it were, groping in a +strange world, clinging to Marcella's hand, trying to express feelings +that had never visited her before, one moment proud of her new friend +with a pride half moral, half selfish, the next, ill at ease with her, +and through it all catching dimly the light of new ideals. + +One day, as George walked into Letty's sitting-room, to discuss some +small business of the afternoon, he saw on her writing-table that same +photograph of Lady Maxwell and her boy, whereof an earlier copy had come +to such a tragic end in Letty's hands. He walked up to it with an +exclamation; Letty was not in the room. Suddenly, however, she came in. +He made no attempt whatever to disguise that he had been looking at the +photograph; he bent over it indeed a moment longer, deliberately. Then, +walking away to the window, he began speaking of the matter which had +brought him to look for his wife. Letty answered absently. The colour had +rushed to her face. Her hands fidgeted with the books and papers on her +table, and her mind was full of fevered remembrance. + +Presently George, having settled the little point he came to speak of, +fell silent. But he still stood by the window, looking out through the +rain-splashed glass to the wintry valley below with its chimneys and +straggling village. Letty, who was pretending to write a note, raised her +head, looked at him--the quick breath beating through the parted lips, +the blue eyes half wild, half miserable. She was not nearly so pretty as +she had been a year before. George had often noticed it; it made part of +his remorse. But the face was more troubling, infinitely more human; +and, in truth, he knew it much better, was more sensitively alive to it, +so to speak, than he ever had been in the days of their courtship. + +Before he left the room he came back to her, put his arm round her +shoulders and kissed her hair. She did not raise her head or say +anything. But when he had gone she looked up with a sudden fierce sob, +took the photograph from its place, and thrust it angrily into the drawer +in front of her. Afterwards she sat for some minutes, motionless, with +her handkerchief at her lips, trying to choke down the tears that had +seized her. And last of all, with trembling fingers, she took out the +picture again, wrapped it in some soft tissue paper that lay near, as +though propitiating it, and once more put it out of sight. + +What had made her first ask Marcella for it, and then place it on her +table where George might, nay, must see it? Some vague wish, no doubt, to +"make up"; to punish herself, while touching him. But the recollection of +him, bending over the picture, tortured her, gripped her at the heart for +many a day afterwards. She let it be seen no more. Yet that week she +wrote more fully, more incoherently, more piteously to Marcella than ever +before. She talked, not without bitterness and injustice, of her bringing +up, asked what she should read, spread out her puzzles with the poor, or +with her household--half angrily, as though she were accusing someone. +For the first time, as it were, she was seeking a teacher in the art of +living. And though the tone was still querulous, she knew, and Marcella +presently dared to guess, that the ugly house on the hill had in truth +ceased to be in the least dull or burdensome to her. George went in and +out of it. And for the woman that has come to hunger for her husband's +step, there is no more ennui. + + * * * * * + +Letty indeed hardly knew the strength of her own position. The reading +of Lady Maxwell's letters to his wife had cleared a number of relics +and fragments from George's mind. The day of passion was done. +Yes!--but to see her frequently, to be brought back into any of the old +social or political relations to her and Maxwell, from this his pride +shrank no less than his conscience. Yet there was a large party in his +constituency, and belonging to it some of the men whose probity and +intelligence he had come to rate most highly, who were pressing him +hard not to resign in February, and, indeed, not to resign at all. The +few public meetings he had so far addressed had been stormy indeed, but +on the whole decidedly friendly to him, and it was urged that he must +at least present himself for re-election, in which case his expenses +should be borne, and he should be left as unpledged as possible. Since +the passage of the Bill Fontenoy's reactionary movement had lost ground +largely in the constituency; and the position of independent member +with a general leaning to the Government was no doubt easily open to +George Tressady. + +But his whole soul shrank from such a renewal of the effort of +politics--probably because of that something in him, that enfeebling, +paralysing something, which in all directions made him really prefer the +half to the whole, and see barriers in the way of all enthusiasms. +Nevertheless, the arguments he had to meet, and the kind persuasions he +had to rebut, made these weeks all the more trying to him. + +The second week of December came, the beginning of the end so far as the +strike was concerned. The men's resources were exhausted; the masters +stood unbroken. They had met the men in a joint committee; but they had +steadily refused arbitration from outside. At the beginning of this week, +rioting broke out in a district where the Union had least strength, +caused, no doubt, by the rage of impending failure. By the middle of the +following week, men were going in here and there, and the stampede of +defeat had begun. + +George, passing through the pinched and lowering faces that lined the +village, hated the triumph of his class. On the 21st, he rode over to a +neighbouring town, where local committees, both of masters and men, +were sitting, to see if there was any final news as to the pits of his +own valley. + +About eight o'clock in the evening Letty heard his horse's hoofs +returning. She knew that he was accustomed to ride in the dark, but the +rumours of violence and excitement that filled the air had unnerved her, +and she had been listening to every sound for some time past. + +When the door was open she ran out. + +"Yes, I'm late," said George, in answer to her remonstrances; "but it is +all right--it was worth waiting for. The thing's over. Some of the men go +down to-morrow week, and the rest as we can find room for them." + +"On the masters' terms?" + +"Of course--or all but." + +She clapped her hands. + +"Oh, for goodness' sake, don't!" he said, as he hung up his hat, and she, +supposing that he was irritable from over-fatigue, managed to overlook +the sharpness of his tone. + +Their Christmas passed in solitude. George, more and more painfully alive +to the disadvantages of Ferth as the home of a young woman with a natural +love of gaiety, had tried, in spite of their mourning, to persuade Letty +to ask some friends to spend Christmas week with them. She had refused, +however, and they were still alone when the end of the strike arrived. + +The day before the men were to go back to work, George returned late from +a last meeting of the employers. Letty had begun dinner, and when he +walked into the dining-room she saw at once that some unusual excitement +or strain had befallen him. + +"Let me have some food!" was all he would say in answer to her first +questions, and she let him alone. When the servants were gone he +looked up. + +"I have had a shindy with Burrows, dear--rather a bad one. But that's +all. I walked down to the station with Ashton"--Ashton was a +neighbouring magistrate and coal-owner--"and there we found Valentine +Burrows. Two or three friends were in charge of him, and it has been +given out lately that he has been suffering from nervous breakdown, +owing to his exertions. All that I could see was that he was drunker +than usual--no doubt to drown defeat. Anyway, directly he saw me he +made a scene--foamed and shouted. According to him, I am at the bottom +of the men's defeat. It is all my wild-beast delight in the sight of +suffering,--my love of 'fattening on the misery of the collier,'--my +charming villanies of all sorts--that are responsible for everything. +Altogether he reached a fine flight! Then he got violent--tried to get +at me with his knobbed stick. Ashton and I, and the men with him, +succeeded in quelling him without bothering the police.--I don't think +anything more will come of it." + +And he stretched out his hand to some salted almonds, helping himself +with particular deliberation. + +After dinner, however, he lay down on a sofa in Letty's sitting-room, +obliged to confess himself worn out. She made him comfortable, and after +she had given him a cushion, she suddenly bent over him from behind and +kissed him. + +"Come here!" he said, with a smile, throwing up his hand to catch her. +But with an odd blush and conscious look, she eluded him. + +When, a little later, she came to sit by him with some needle-work she +found him restless and inclined to talk. + +"I wonder if we are always to live in this state of war for one's +bread and butter!" he said, impatiently throwing down a newspaper he +had been reading. "It doesn't tend to make life agreeable--does it? +Yet what on earth--" + +He threw back his head, with a stiff protesting air, staring +across the room. + +Letty had the sudden impression that he was not talking to her at all, +but to some third person, unseen. + +"_Either_ capital gets its fair remuneration"--he went on in an +argumentative voice--"and ability its fair wages--_or_ the Marxian state, +labour-notes, and the rest of it. There is no half-way house--absolutely +none. As for me, I am not going to lend my capital for nothing--nor to +give my superintendence for nothing. And I don't ask exorbitant pay for +either. It is quite simple. My conscience is quite clear." + +"I should think so!" said Letty, resentfully. "I wonder whether +Marcella--is all for the men? She has never mentioned the strike in +her letters." + +As the Christian name slipped out, she flushed, and he was conscious of a +curious start. But the breaking through of a long reticence was +deliberate on Letty's part. + +"Very likely she is all for the men," he said drily, after a pause. "She +never could take a strike calmly. Her instinct always was to catch hold +of any stick that could beat the employers--Watton and I used often to +tease her about it." + +He threw himself back against the sofa, with a little laugh that was +musical in Letty's ear. It was the first time that Lady Maxwell's name +had been mentioned between them in this trivial, ordinary way. The +young wife sat alert and straight at her work, her cheek still pink, +her eyes bright. + +But after a silence, George suddenly sprang up to pace the little room, +and she heard him say, under his breath, "_But who am I, that I should +be coercing them and trampling on them!--men old enough to be my +father--driving them down to-morrow--while I sleep--for a dog's wage!_" + +"George, what is the matter with you?" she cried, looking at him in +real anxiety. + +"Nothing! _nothing!_--Darling, who's ill? I saw the old doctor on the +road home, and he threw me a word as he passed about having been +here--looked quite jolly over it. What's wrong--one of the servants?" + +Letty put down her work upon her knee and her hands upon it. She grew red +and pale; then she turned away from him, pressing her face into the back +of her chair. + +He flew to her, and she murmured in his ear. + + * * * * * + +What she said was by no means all sweetness. There was mingled with it +much terror and some anger. Letty was not one of the women who take +maternity as a matter of course. + +But emotion and natural feeling had their way. George was dissolved in +joy. He threw himself at her feet, resting his head against her knee. + +"If he doesn't have your eyes and hair I'll disinherit him," he said, +with a gaiety which seemed to have effaced all his fatigue. + +"I don't want him," was her pettish reply; "but if _she_ has your chin, +I'll put her out to nurse. Oh! how I hate the thought of it!" and she +shuddered. + +He caught her hand, comforting her. Then, putting up both his own, he +drew her down to him. + +"After all, little woman, it hasn't turned out so badly?" he said in her +ear, with sad appeal. Their lips met, trembling. Suddenly Letty broke +into passionate weeping. George sprang up, gathered her upon his knee, +and they sat for long, in silence, clinging to each other. + +At last Letty drew back from him, pushing a hand against his shoulder. + +"You know--you didn't care a bit for me--when you married me," she said, +half bitter, half crying. + +"Didn't I? And you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. + +"Oh! I don't remember!" she said hurriedly, and dropped her face on his +coat again. + +"Well, we are going to care for each other," he said in a low voice, +after a pause. "That's what matters now, isn't it?" + +She made no reply, but she put up a hand, and touched his face. He turned +his lips to the hand and kissed it tenderly. There was a sore, sad spot +in each heart; and neither dared to look forward. But tonight there was a +sense of belonging to each other in a new and sacred way, of being drawn +apart, separated from the world, husband and wife, together. Through +George's mind there wandered half-astonished thoughts about this strange +compelling power of marriage,--the deep grip it makes on life--the almost +mechanical way in which it bears down resistance, provided only that +certain compunctions, certain scruples still remain for it to work on. + +George slept lightly, being over-tired. All through the night the vision +of the beaten men going down sullenly to their first shift seemed to +hold him as though in a nightmare. + +Between seven and eight o'clock a sound startled him. He found himself +standing by his bed, struggling to wake and collect himself. + +A sound that had shaken the house, passing like a dull thud through the +valley? A horror seized him. He looked at Letty, who was fast asleep; +then he walked noiselessly into his dressing-room, and began to hurry on +his clothes. + +Five minutes later he was running down the hill at his full speed. It was +bitterly cold and still; the first snow lay on the grass, and a raw grey +veil hung over the hills. As he came in sight of the distant pit-bank he +saw a crowd of women swarming up it; a confused and hideous sound of +crying and shrieking came to his ears; and at the same moment a boy, +panting and dead-white, ran through the lodge-gates to meet him. + +"Where is it, Sprowston?" + +"Oh, sir, it's No. 2 pit. The damp's comin up the upcast, and the cage is +blown to pieces. But the down shaft's all right, and Mr. Madan and Mr. +Macgregor were starting down as I come away. There was eighty-six men and +boys went down first shift." + +George groaned, and rushed on. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +England knows these scenes too well! + +When Tressady, out of breath with running, reached the top of the bank, +and threw a hurried look in front of him, his feeling was that he had +seen everything before--the wintry dawn, the crowds of pale men and +weeping women ranged on either hand, the police keeping the ground round +the shafts clear for the mine officials--even the set white face of his +manager, who, with Macgregor the fireman and two hewers, had just emerged +from the cage that was waiting at the mouth of the downcast shaft. + +As soon as Madan saw Tressady rounding the corner of the engine-house he +hurried towards his employer. + +"Have you been down yet?" Tressady cried to him. + +"Just come up, sir. We got about fifty yards--air fairly good--then we +found falls along the main intake. We got over three or four, till the +damp rose on us too bad--we had a rough bit getting back. I thought you'd +be here by now. Macgregor thinks from the direction in which things were +lying that the blast had come from Holford's Heading or thereabouts." + +And the manager hastily opened a map of the colliery he was carrying in +his hand against the wall of the engine-house, and pointed to the spot. + +"How many men there?" + +"About thirty-two in the workings round about--as near as I can +reckon it." + +"Any sign of the rest? How many went down?" + +"Eighty-six. A cageful of men and lads--just them from the +shaft-bottom--got up immediately after the explosion. Since then, not a +sound from anyone! The uptake shaft is chock-full of damp. Mitchell, in +the fan-room, had to run for it at first, it was coming up so fast." + +"Good God!" said George, under his breath; and the two men eyed each +other painfully. + +"Have you sent for the inspector?" said Tressady, after a moment. + +"He ought to be here in five minutes now, sir." + +"Got some baulks together?" + +"The men are piling them by the shaft at this moment." + +"Fan uninjured?" + +"Yes, sir--and speed increased." + +Followed by Madan, Tressady walked up to the shaft, and himself +questioned Macgregor and the two hewers. + +Then he beckoned to Madan, and the two walked in close converse towards +the lamphouse, discussing a plan of action. As they passed slowly along +the bank the eyes of the miserable terror-stricken throng to either side +followed every movement. But there was not a sound from anyone. Once +Tressady looked up and caught the faces of some men near him--dark +faces, charged with a meaning that seemed instantly to stiffen his own +nerve for what he had to do. + +"I give Dixon three more minutes," he said, impatiently looking at his +watch; "then we go down without him." + +Dixon was the inspector. He was well known throughout the district, a +plucky, wiry fellow, who was generally at the pit's mouth immediately +after an accident, ready and keen to go with any rescue party on any +errand, however dangerous--purely, as he himself declared, for +professional and scientific reasons. In this case, he lived only a mile +away, on the further side of the village, so that Madan's messenger had +not far to go. + +As he spoke, George felt his arm clutched from behind. He turned, and saw +Mary Batchelor, who had come forward from a group of women. + +"Sir George! Listen 'ere, Sir George." Her lined face and tear-blurred +eyes worked with a passion of entreaty. "The boy went down at five with +the rest. Don't yer bear 'im no malice. Ee's a poor sickly creetur, an +the Lord an't give 'im the full use of his wits." + +George smiled at the poor thing's madness, and touched her kindly on +the shoulder. + +"Don't you trouble yourself, Mary; all that can be done will be done--for +everybody. We are only giving Mr. Dixon another minute; then we go down. +Look here"--he drew her inside the door of the lamproom, which happened +to be close by, for an open-mouthed group, eager to hear whatever he +might be saying, had begun to press about them. "Can you take this +message from me up to the house? There'll be no news here, you know, for +a long time, and I left Lady Tressady asleep." + +He tore a half-sheet from the letter in his pocket, scribbled a few words +upon it, and put it into Mary's hand. + +The woman, with her shawl over her head, ran past the lamphouse towards +the entrance-gate as fast as her age would let her, while George +rejoined Madan. + +"Ah, there he is!" + +For the small, lean figure of the inspector was already passing the gate. + +Tressady hurried to meet him. + +By the time the first questions and answers were over, Tressady, looking +round for Madan, saw that the manager was speaking angrily to a tall man +in a rough coat and corduroy trousers who had entered the pit premises in +the wake of Mr. Dixon. + +"You take yourself off, Mr. Burrows! You're not wanted here." + +"Madan!" called Tressady, "attend to Mr. Dixon, please. I'll see to +that man." + +And he walked up to Burrows, while the men standing near crowded over the +line they had been told to keep. + +"What do you want?" he said, as he reached the newcomer. + +"I have come to offer myself for the rescue party. I've been a working +miner for years. I've had special experience in accidents before. I can +beat anybody here in physical strength." + +As he spoke the great heavily built fellow looked round him, and a +murmur of assenting applause came from the bystanders. + +Tressady studied him. + +"Are you fit?" he said shortly. + +Burrows flushed. Tressady's penetrating look forced his own to meet it. + +"As fit as you are," was his haughty reply. + +"Well"--said Tressady, slowly, "we don't want to be refusing strong men. +If Madan'll have you, you shall come. Mind, we're all under his orders." + +He went to the manager, and said a word in his ear. Madan, in response, +vouchsafed neither look nor remark to the man, whom he hated apparently +more bitterly than his employer did. But he made no further objection to +his joining the search party. + +Presently all preparations were made. Picked bands of firemen and +timbermen descended first, with Madan at their head. Then George, Mr. +Dixon, a couple of local doctors who had hurried up to offer their +services, and Burrows. + +As they shot down into the darkness George was conscious of a strange +exhilaration. Working on the indications given him by the first exploring +party, his mind was alive with conjectures as to the cause of the +accident, and with plans for dealing with the various obstacles that +might occur. Never during these weeks of struggle and noise and +objurgation had he felt so fit, so strenuous. At the bottom of the shaft +he had even to remind himself, with a shudder, of the dead men who must +be waiting for them in these blank depths. + +For some little distance from the shaft nothing was to be seen that +spoke of an explosion. Some lamps in the porch of the shaft and along the +main roadway were burning as usual, and the "journey" of trucks, from +which the "hookers-on" and engine-men had escaped at the first sign of +danger, was standing laden in the entrance of the mine. The door of the +under-manager's cabin, near the base of the shaft, was open. Madan looked +into the little den, where the lamp was still burning on the wall, and +groaned. The young fellow who was generally to be found there was a great +friend of his, and they attended the same chapel together. A little +farther an open cupboard was noticed with a wisp of spun yarn hanging out +from it--inflammable stuff, quite untouched. But about thirty yards +farther they came upon the first signs of mischief. A heavy fall of roof +had to be scrambled over, and beyond it afterdamp was clearly +perceptible. + +Here there was an exclamation from Burrows, who was to the front, and the +first victim showed out of the dark in the pale glow-worm light of the +lamps turned upon him. A man lay on his side, close against the wall, +with an unlocked lamp in his hands, which were badly burnt. But no other +part of him was burnt, and it was clear that he had died of afterdamp in +trying to escape. He had evidently come from one of the nearer +work-places, and fallen within a few yards of safety. The inspector +pounced upon the lamp at once, while the doctors knelt by the body. But +in itself the lamp told little. If it were the illegal unlocking of a +lamp that caused the disaster, neither this lamp nor this man could be at +fault; for he had died clearly on the verge of the explosion area, and +from the after-effects of the calamity. But the inspector, who had +barely looked at the dead man, turned the lamp round in his hands, +dissatisfied. + +"Bad pattern! bad pattern! If I had my way I'd fine every manager whose +lamps _could_ be unlocked," he said to himself, but quite audibly. + +"The fireman may have unlocked it, sir, to re-light his own or someone +else's," said Madan, stiffly, put at once on his defence. + +"Oh! I know you're within your legal right, Mr. Madan," said the +inspector, briskly. "_I_ haven't the making of the laws." + +And he sat down on the floor, taking the lamp to pieces, and bending his +shrewd, black-eyed face over it, all the time that the doctors were +examining its owner. He was, perhaps, one of the most humane men in his +profession, but a long experience had led him to the conclusion that in +these emergencies the fragments of a lamp, or a "tamping," or a "shot," +matter more to the community than dead men. + +Meanwhile George crouched beside the doctors, watching them. The owner of +the lamp was a strong, fair-haired young man, without a mark on him +except for the burning of the hands, the eyes quietly shut, the face at +peace. One of the colliers in the search party had burst out crying when +he saw him. The lad was his nephew, and had been a favourite in the pit, +partly because of his prowess as a football player. But the young life +had gone out irrevocably. The doctor shook his head as he lifted himself, +and they left him there, in order not to waste any chance of getting out +the living first. + +Twenty yards farther on three more bodies were found, two oldish men and +a boy, very little burnt. They also had been killed in escaping, dragged +down by the inexorable afterdamp. + +A little beyond this group a fall of mingled stone and coal from the roof +blocked the way so heavily that the hewers and timbermen had to be set to +work to open out and shore up before a passage could be made. Meanwhile +the air in the haulage road was clearing fast, and George could sit on a +lump of stone and watch the dim light playing on the figures of the men +at work. The blows struck echoed from floor to roof; the work of the bare +arms and backs, as they swayed and jerked, woke a clamour in the mine. +Were there any ears still to listen for them beyond that mass? He could +scarcely keep a limb quiet, as he sat looking on, for impatience and +excitement. Burrows meanwhile was wielding a pick with the rest, and +George envied him the bodily skill and strength that, in spite of his +irregular ways of life, were still left to him. + +To restore the ventilation-current was their first object, and the +foremost pick had no sooner gained the roadway on the other side than a +strong movement of the air was perceptible. Madan's face cleared. The +ventilation circuit between the downcast and upcast shafts must be +already in some sort re-established. Let them only get a few more +"stoppings" and brattices put temporarily to rights, and the fan, working +at its increased speed, would soon drive the renewed air-currents forward +again, and make it possible to get all over the mine. The hole made was +quickly enlarged, and the rescuers scrambled through. + +But still fall after fall on the further side delayed their progress, +and the work of repairing the blown-out stoppings by such wood brattice +as could be got at, was long and tedious. The rescuers toiled and +sweated, pausing every now and then to draw upon the food and drink sent +up from behind; and the hours flew unheeded. At last, upon the further +side of one of the worst of these falls--a loose mingled mass of rock and +coal--they came on indications that showed them they had reached the +centre and heart of the disaster. A door leading on the right to one of +the side-roads of the pit known as Holford's Heading was blown outwards, +and some trucks from the heading had been dashed across the main intake, +and piled up in a huddled and broken mass against the farther wall. Just +inside that door lay victim after victim, mostly on their faces, poor +fellows! as they had come running out from their stalls at the noise of +the explosion, only to meet the fiery blast that killed them. Two or +three had been flung violently against the sides of the heading, and were +left torn, with still bleeding wounds, as well as charred and blackened +by the flame. Of sixteen men and boys that lay in this place of death, +not one had survived to hear the stifled words--half groans, half sobs, +of the comrades who had found them. + +"But, thank God! no torture, no _thought_," said George to himself as he +went from face to face; "an instant--a flash--then nothingness." + +Many of the men were well known to him. He had seen them last hanging +about the village street, pale with famine--the hatred in their eyes +pursuing him. + +He knelt down an instant beside an elderly man whom he could remember +since he was quite a boy--a weak-eyed, sallow fellow, much given to +preaching--much given, too, it was said, to beating his wife and +children, as the waves of excitement took him. Anyway, a fellow who could +feel, whose nerves stung and tormented him, even in the courses of +ordinary life. He lay with his eyes half open, the face terribly +scorched, the hands clenched, as though he still fought with the death +that had overcome him. + +George covered the man's face with a handkerchief as the doctor left the +body. "_He_ suffered," he said, under his breath. The doctor heard him, +and nodded sadly. + +Hark! What was that? A cry--a faint cry! + +"They're some of them alive in the end workings," cried Madan, with a sob +of joy. "Come on, my lads! come on!" + +And the party--all but Mr. Dixon--leaving the dead, pushed on through +the foul atmosphere, over heaps of fallen stone and coal, in quest of +the living. + +"Leave me a man," said Mr. Dixon, detaining the manager a moment. "I stay +here. You have enough with you. If I judge right, it all began here." + +A collier stayed with him, unwillingly, panting all the time under the +emotion of the rescue the man imagined but was not to see. + +For while the inspector measured and sketched, far up the heading, in +some disused workings off a side-dip or roadway, Burrows was the first to +come upon twenty-five men, eighteen of whom were conscious and uninjured. +Two of them had strength enough, as they heard the footsteps and shouts +approaching, to stagger out into the heading to meet their rescuers. One, +a long, thin lad, came forward with leaps and gambols, in spite of his +weakness, and fell almost at Tressady's feet. As he recognised the tall +man standing above him, his bloodless mouth twitched into a broad grin. + +"I say, give us a chance. Take me out--won't you?" + +It was Mary Batchelor's grandson. In retribution for the assault on Letty +the lad had been sentenced to three weeks' imprisonment, and George had +not seen him since. He stooped now, and poured some brandy down the boy's +throat. "We'll get you out directly," he said, "as soon as we've looked +to the others." + +"There's some on 'em not worth takin out," said the boy, clinging to +George's leg. "They're dead. Take me out first." Then, with another grin, +as George disengaged himself, "Some on em's prayin." + +Indeed, the first sight of that little group was a strange and touching +one. About a dozen men sat huddled round one of their number, a Wesleyan +class-leader, who had been praying with them and reciting passages from +St. John. All of them, young or old, were dazed and bent from the effects +of afterdamp, and scarcely one of them had strength to rise till they +were helped to their feet. Nevertheless, the cry which had been heard by +their rescuers had not been a cry for help, but the voices of the little +prayer-meeting raised feebly through the darkness in the Old Hundredth. + +A little distance from the prayer-meeting, the sceptics of the party +leant against the wall or lay along the floor, unheeding; while seven +men were unconscious, and possibly dying. Two or three young fellows +meanwhile, who had been least touched by the afterdamp, had "amused +themselves," as they said, by riding up and down the neighbouring level +on the "jummer" or coal-truck of one of them. + +"Weren't you afraid?" Tressady asked one of these, turning a curious look +at him, while the doctors were examining the worst cases, and rough men +were sobbing and shaking each other's hands off. + +"Noa," said the young hewer, his face, like something cut out in +yellowish wax, returning the light from Tressady's lamp. "Noa, theer was +cumpany. Old Moses, there--ee saved us." + +Old Moses was the leader of the prayer-meeting. He was a fireman besides, +who had been for twenty-six years in the mine. At the time of the +explosion, it appeared, he had been in a working close to that door on +the heading where death had done so ghastly and complete a work. But the +flame in its caprice had passed him by, and he and another man had been +able to struggle through the afterdamp back along the heading, just in +time to stem the rush of men and boys from the workings at the farther +end. These men were at the moment in a madness of terror, and ready even +to plunge into the white death-mist advancing to meet them, obeying only +the instinct of the trapped animal to "get out." But Moses was able to +control them, to draw them back by degrees along the heading till, in the +distant workings where they were found, the air was more tolerable, and +they could wait for rescue. + +George was the first to help the old fireman to his feet. But instead of +listening to any praises of his own conduct, he was no sooner clinging to +Tressady's arm than he called to Madan: + +"Mr. Madan, sir!" + +"Aye, Moses." + +"Have ye heard aught of them in the West Heading yet?" + +"No, Moses; we must get these fellows out first. We'll go there next." + +"I left thirty men and boys there this morning at half-past six. It was +fair thronged up with them." The old man's voice shook. + +Meanwhile Madan and the doctors were busy with the transport of the seven +unconscious men, some of whom were already dying. Each of them had to be +carried on his back by two men, and as soon as the sick procession was +organised it was seen that only three of the search party were left +free--Tressady, Burrows, and the Scotch fireman, Macgregor. + +Up the level and along the heading, past the point where Dixon was still +at work, over the minor falls that everywhere attested the range of the +explosion, and through the pools of water that here and there gathered +the drippings of the mine, the seven men were tenderly dragged or +carried, till at last the party regained the main intake or roadway. + +George turned to Madan. + +"You will have your hands full with these poor fellows. Macgregor and +I--Mr. Burrows, if he likes--will push on to the West Heading." + +Madan looked uneasy. + +"You'd better go up, Sir George," he said, in a low voice, "and let me +go on. You don't know the signs of the roof as I do. Eight or nine hours +after an explosion is the worst time for falls. Send down another shift, +sir, as quick as you can." + +"Why should you risk more than I?" said George, quietly. "Stop! What time +is it?" He looked at his watch. Five o'clock--nearly nine hours since +they descended! He might have guessed it at three, if he had been asked. +Time in the midst of such an experience contracts to a pin's point. But +the sight of the watch stirred a pang in him. + +"Send word at once to Lady Tressady," he said, in Madan's ear, drawing +the manager to one side. "Tell her I have gone on a little farther, and +may be another hour or two in getting back. If she is down at the bank, +beg her from me to go home. Tell her the chances are that we may find the +other men as safe as these." + +Madan acquiesced reluctantly. George then plundered him of some dry +biscuits--of some keys, moreover, that might be useful in opening one or +two locked doors farther up the workings. + +"Macgregor, you'll come?" + +"Aye, Sir George." + +"You, Mr. Burrows?" + +"Of course," said Burrows, carelessly, throwing back his handsome head. + +Some of the rescued men turned and looked hard at their agent and leader +with their sunken eyes. Others took no notice. His prestige had been lost +in defeat; and George had noticed that they avoided speech with him. No +doubt this rescue party had presented itself to the agent as an opening +he dare not neglect. + +"Come on, then," said George; and the three men turned back towards the +interior of the pit. + +Old Moses, from whose clutch George had just freed himself, stopped short +and looked after them. Then he raised a hoarse voice: + +"Be you going to the West Heading, Sir George?" + +"Yes," George flung back over his shoulder, already far away. + +"The Lord go with yer, Sir George!" + +No answer. The old man, breathing hard, caught hold of one of his +stronger comrades and tottered on towards the shaft. Two or three of his +fellows gathered round him. "Aye," said one of them, out of Madan's +hearing, "ee's been a-squeezing of us through the ground, ee ave, but +ee's a plucky lot, is the boss." + +"They do say as Burrers slanged 'im fine at the station yesterday," said +another, hoarsely. "Called 'im the devil untied, one man told me." + +The first speaker, still haggard and bowed from the poison in his blood, +made no reply, and the movement of old Moses' lips, as he staggered +forward, helped on by the two others, his head hanging on his breast, +showed that he was praying. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile George and his two companions pushed cautiously on, Macgregor +trying the roof with his lamp from time to time for signs of fire-damp. +Two seams of coal were worked in the mine, one of which was "fiery." No +naked lights, therefore, were allowed, and all "shots" or charges for +loosening the coal were electrically fired. + +As they walked, they spoke now and then of the possible cause of the +disaster: whereof Dixon, as they passed him, had bluntly declined to say +a word till his task was done. George, with the characteristic contempt +of intelligence for the blunderer, threw out a few caustic remarks as to +the obstinate disobedience or carelessness of a certain type of +miner--disobedience which, in his own experience even, had already led to +a score of fatal accidents. Burrows, irritated apparently by his tone, +took up a provoking line of reply. Suppose a miner, set to choose between +the risk of bringing the coal-roof down on his head for lack of a proper +light to work by, and the risk of "being blown to hell" by the opening of +his lamp, did a mad thing sometimes, who were other people that they +should blame him? His large, ox-like eyes, clear in the light of his +lamp, turned a scornful defiance on his companion. "Try it yourself, my +fine gentleman"--that was what the expression of them meant. + +"He doesn't only risk his own life," said George, shortly. "That's the +answer.--I say, Macgregor, isn't this the door to the Meadows Pit? If +anything cut us off from the shaft, and supposing we couldn't get round +yet by the return, we might have to try it, mightn't we?" + +Macgregor assented, and George as he passed stepped up to the heavy +wooden door, and tried one of the keys he held, that he might be sure of +opening it in case of need. + +The door had been unopened for long, and he shook it backwards and +forwards to make the key bite. + +Meanwhile Macgregor had lingered a little behind, while Burrows had +walked on. Suddenly, above the rattle of the door a cracking noise was +heard. A voice of agony rang through the roadway. + +"Run, Sir George! run!" + +A rattle like thunder roared through the mine. It was heard at the +pithead, and the people crowded there ran hither and thither in dismay, +thinking it was another explosion. + + * * * * * + +Hours passed. At last in George's numbed brain there was a faint stir of +consciousness. He opened his eyes slowly. + +Oh, horror! oh, cruelty! to come back from merciful nothingness and peace +to this burning anguish, not to be borne, of body and mind. "I had died," +he thought--"it was done with," and a wild, impotent rage, as against +some brutality done him, surged through him. + +A little later he made a first slight movement, which was answered at +once by another movement on the part of a man sitting near him. The man +bent over him in the darkness and felt for his pulse. + +"Burrows!" The whisper was just perceptible. + +"Yes, Sir George." + +"What has happened? Where is Macgregor? Give me some brandy--there, in my +inner pocket." + +"No; I have it. Can you swallow it? I have tried several times before, +but your mouth was set--it ran down my fingers." + +"Give it me." + +Their fingers met, George feeling for the flask. As he moved his arm a +groan of anguish broke from him. + +"Drink it--if you possibly can." + +George put all the power of his being into the effort to swallow a few +drops. Still the anguish! "O God, my back! and the legs--paralysed!" + +The words were only spoken in the brain, but it seemed to him that he +cried them aloud. For a moment or two the mind swam again; then the +brandy began to sting. + +He slid down a hand slowly, defying the pain it caused him, to feel his +right leg. The trouser round the thigh hung in ribbons, but the fragments +lying on the flesh were caked and hard; and beneath him was a pool. His +reason worked with difficulty, but clearly. "Some bad injury to the +thigh," he thought. "Much bleeding--probably the bleeding has dulled the +worst pain. The back and shoulders burnt--" + +Then, in the same hesitating, difficult way he managed to lift his hand +to his head, which ached intolerably. The right temple and the hair upon +it were also caked and wet. + +He let his hand drop. "How long have I--?" he thought. For already his +revived consciousness could hardly maintain itself; something from the +black tunnels of the mine seemed to be perpetually pressing out upon it, +threatening to drown it like a flood. + +"Burrows!"--he felt again with his hand--"where's Macgregor?" + +A sob broke from the darkness beside him. + +"Crushed in an instant. I heard one cry. Why not we, too?" + +"It was such a bad fall?" + +"The whole mine seemed to come down." George felt the shudder of the huge +frame. "I escaped; you must have been caught by some of it. Macgregor was +right underneath it. But there was an explosion besides." + +"Macgregor's lamp? Broken?" whispered George, after a pause. + +"Possibly. It couldn't have been much, or we should have been killed +instantly. I was only stunned--a bit scorched, too--not badly. You're the +lucky one. I shall die by inches." + +"Cheer up!" said George, faintly. "I can't last--but they'll find you." + +"What chance for either of us," said Burrows, groaning. "The return must +be blocked, too, or they'd have got round to us by now." + +"How long--" + +"God knows! To judge by the time I've been sitting--since I got you +here--it's night long ago." + +"Since you got me here?" repeated George, with feeble interrogation. + +"When I came to I was lying with my face in a dampish sort of hollow, and +I suppose the afterdamp had lifted a bit, for I could raise my head. I +felt you close by. Then I dragged myself on a bit, till I felt some +brattice. I got past that, found a dip where the air was better, came +back for you, and dragged you here. I thought you were dead at first; +then I felt your heart. And since we got here I've found an air-pipe up +here along the wall, and broken it." + +George was silent. But the better atmosphere was affecting him somewhat, +and consciousness was becoming clearer. Only, what seemed to him a loud +noise disturbed him--tortured the wound in his head. Then, gradually, as +he bent his mind upon it, he made out what it was--a slow drip or trickle +of water from the face of the wall. The contrast between his imagination +and the reality supplied him with a kind of measure of the silence that +enwrapped them--silence that seemed in itself a living thing, charged +with the brooding vengeance of the earth upon the creatures that had been +delving at her heart. + +"Burrows!--that water--maddens me." He moved his head miserably. "Could +you get some? The brandy-flask has a cup." + +"There is a little pool by the brattice. I put my cap in as we got there, +and dashed it over you. I'll go again." + +George heard the long limbs drag themselves painfully along. Then he lost +count again of time, and all impressions on the ear, till he was roused +by the water at his lips and a hand dashing some on his brow. + +He drank greedily. + +"Thanks! Put it by me--there; that's safe. Now, Burrows, I'm dying. Leave +me. You can't do anything--and you--you might still try for it. There are +one or two ways that might be worth trying. Take these keys. I could +explain--" + +But the little thread of life wavered terribly as he spoke. Burrows had +to put his ear close to the scorched lips. + +"No," he said gloomily, "I don't leave a man while there's any life in +him. Besides, there's no chance--I don't know the mine." + +Suddenly, as though answering to the other's despair, a throb of such +agony rose in George it seemed to rive body and soul asunder. His poor +Letty!--his child that was to be!--his own energy of life, he had been so +conscious of at the very moment of descending to this hideous death--all +gone, all done!--his little moment of being torn from him by the +inexorable force that restores nothing and explains nothing. + +A picture flashed into his mind, an etching that he had seen in Paris in +a shop window--had seen and pondered over. "Entombed" was written +underneath it, and it showed a solitary miner, on whom the awful trap +has fallen, lifting his arms to his face in a last cry against the +universe that has brought him into being, that has given him nerve and +brain--for this! + +Wherever he turned his eyes in the blackness he saw it--the lifted arms, +the bare torso of the man, writhing under the agony of realisation--the +tools, symbols of a life's toil, lying as they had dropped for ever from +the hands that should work no more. It had sent a shudder through him, +even amid the gaiety of a Paris street. + +Then this first image was swept away by a second. It seemed to him that +he was on the pit bank again. It was night, but the crowd was still +there, and big fires lighted for warmth threw a glow upon the faces. +There were stars, and a pale light of snow upon the hills. He looked +into the engine-house. There she was--his poor Letty! O God! He tried to +get through to her, to speak to her. Impossible! + +A sound disturbed his dream. + +His ear and brain struggled with it--trying to give it a name. A man's +long, painful breaths--half sobs. Burrows, no doubt--thinking of the +woman he loved--of the poor emaciated soul George had seen him tending +in the cottage garden on that April day. + +He put out his hand and touched his companion. + +"Don't despair," he whispered; "you will see her again. How strange--we +two--we enemies--but this is the end. Tell me about her." + +"I took her from a ruffian who had nearly murdered her and the child," +said the hoarse voice after a pause. "She was happy--in spite of the +drink, in spite of everything--she would have been happy, till she died. +To think of her alone is too cruel. If people turned their backs on her, +I made up." + +"You will see her again," George repeated, but hardly knowing what the +words were he said. + +When he next spoke it was with an added strength that astonished his +companion. + +"Burrows, promise me something. Take a message from me to my wife. +Come nearer." + +Then, as he felt his companion's breath on his cheek, he roused himself +to speak plainly: + +"Tell her--I sent her my dear love--that I thanked her with all my heart +and soul for her love--that it was very hard to leave her--and our child. +Write the words for her, Burrows. Tell her it was impossible for me to +write, but I dictated this." He paused for a long time, then resumed: +"And tell her, too--my last wish was--that she should ask Lord and Lady +Maxwell--can you hear plainly?"--he repeated the names--"to be her +friends and guardians. And bid her ask them--from me--not to forsake her. +Have you understood? Will you repeat it?" + +Burrows, in the mood of one humouring the whim of the dying, repeated +what had been said to him word by word, his own sensuous nature swept the +while by the terrors of a death which seemed but one little step further +from himself than from Tressady. Yet he did his best to understand, and +recollect; and to the message so printed on his shrinking brain a woman's +misery owed its only comfort in the days that followed. + +"Thank you," said Tressady, painfully listening for the last word. "Give +me your hand. Good-bye. You and I--The world's a queer place--I wish I'd +turned you back at the pit's mouth. I wanted to show I bore no malice. +Well--at least I know--" + +The words broke off incoherently. Burrows caught the word "suffering," +and some phrase about "the men," then Tressady's head slipped back +against the wall, and he spoke no more. + +But the mind was active long afterwards. Again and again he seemed to +himself standing in a bright light, alive and free. Innumerable illusions +played about him. In one of the most persistent he was climbing the slope +of a Swiss meadow in May. Oh! the scent of the narcissus, heavy still +with the morning dew--the brush of the wet grass against his +ankles--those yellow anemones shining there beneath the pines--the roar +of the river in the gorge below--and beyond, far above, the grey peak, +sharp and tall against that unmatched brilliance of the blue. In another +he was riding alone in a gorge aflame with rhododendrons, and far down in +the plain--the burnt-up Indian plain--some great fortified town, grave on +its hill-top, broke the level lines--"A rose-red city, half as old as +time." Or, again, it was the sea in some glow of sunset, the white +reflections of the sails slipping down and down through the translucent +pinks and blues, till the eye lost itself in the infinity of shades and +tints, which the breeze--oh, the freshness of it!--was painting each +moment anew at its caprice--painting and blotting, over and over again, +as the water swung under the ship. + +But all through these freaks of memory some strange thing seemed to have +happened to him. He carried something in his arms--on his breast. The +anguish of his inner pity for Letty, piercing through all else, expressed +itself so. + +But sometimes, as the brain grew momentarily clearer, he would wonder, +almost in his old cynical way, at his own pity. She seemed to have come +to love him. But was it not altogether for her good that his flawed, +contradictory life should be cut violently from hers? Could their +marriage, ill-planted, ill-grown, have come in the end to any tolerable +fruit? His mind passed back, with bitterness, over the nine months of it; +not bitterness towards her--he seemed to be talking to her all the time, +as she lay hidden on his shoulder--bitterness towards himself, towards +the futility of his own life and efforts and desires. + +But why his more than any other? The futility, the insignificance of all +that man desires, all that waits on him--that old self-scorn, which began +with the race, tormented him none the less, in dying, for the myriads it +had haunted so before. An image of human fate, which had struck him in +some book, recurred to him now--an image of daisied grass, alive one +moment in the evening light--a quivering world of blades and dew, insects +and petals, a forest of innumerable lines, crossed by the innumerable +movements of living things--the next withdrawn into the night, all +silenced, all effaced. + +So life. Except, perhaps, for pain! His own pain never ceased. The only +eternity that seemed conceivable, therefore, was an eternity of pain. It +had become to him the last reality. What a horrible quickening had come +to him of that sense for misery, that intolerable compassion, which in +life he had always held to be the death of a man's natural energy! Again +and again, as consciousness still fought against the last surrender, it +seemed to him that he heard voices and hammerings in the mine. And while +he painfully listened, from the eternal darkness about him, dim tragic +forms would break in a faltering procession--men or young boys, burnt and +marred and slain like himself--turning to him faces he remembered. It was +as though the scorn for pity he had once flung at Marcella Maxwell had +been but the fruit of some obscure and shrinking foresight that he +himself should die drowned and lost in pity; for as he waited for death +his soul seemed to sink into the suffering of the world, as a spent +swimmer sinks into the wave. + +One perception, indeed, that was not a perception of pain, this piteous +submission to the human lot brought with it. The accusing looks of hungry +men, the puzzles of his own wavering heart, all social qualms and +compunctions--these things troubled him no more. In the wanderings of +death he was not without the solemn sense that, after all, he, George +Tressady, a man of no professions, and no enthusiasms, had yet paid his +share and done his part. + +Was there something in this thought that softened the dolorous way? +Once--nearly at the last--he opened his eyes with a start. + +"What is it? Something watches me. There is a sense of something that +supports--that reconciles. If--_if_--how little would it all matter! _Oh! +what is this that knows the road I came_--_the flame turned cloud, the +cloud returned to flame_--_the lifted, shifted steeps, and all the way!_" +His dying thought clung to words long familiar, as that of other men +might have clung to a prayer. There was a momentary sense of ecstasy, of +something ineffable. + +And with that sense came a rending of all barriers, a breaking of long +tension, a flooding of the soul with joy. Was it a passing under new +laws, into a new spiritual polity? He knew not; but as he lifted his +sightless eyes he saw the dark roadway of the mine expand, and a woman, +stepping with an exquisite lightness and freedom, came towards him. +Neither shrank nor hesitated. She came to him, knelt by him, and took +his hands. He saw the pity in her dark eyes. "_Is it so bad, my friend? +Have courage--the end is near." "Care for her--and keep me, too, in your +heart_," he cried to her, piteously. She smiled. Then light--blinding, +featureless light--poured over the vision, and George Tressady had +ceased to live. + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Sir George Tressady, Vol. II, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR GEORGE TRESSADY, VOL. II *** + +***** This file should be named 9634.txt or 9634.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/9/6/3/9634/ + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Mary +Meehan, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..74f5a41 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #9634 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9634) diff --git a/old/7sgt210.txt b/old/7sgt210.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cdc7c60 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/7sgt210.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10477 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir George Tressady, Vol. II, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Sir George Tressady, Vol. II + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9634] +[This file was first posted on October 11, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, SIR GEORGE TRESSADY, VOL. II *** + + + + +E-text prepared by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and +Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + +Note: This book was originally published as two separate + volumes. This Project Gutenberg edition preserves the + two-volume format primarily because of the length of + the novel. This is Volume II. Volume I can be found at + http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext05/7sgt110.txt + http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext05/7sgt110.zip + http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext05/8sgt110.txt + http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext05/8sgt110.zip + + + + + + + +SIR GEORGE TRESSADY, VOLUME II + +IN TWO VOLUMES + +BY + +MRS. HUMPHRY WARD + +AUTHOR OF "MARCELLA," "THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE," +"ROBERT ELSMERE," ETC. + + + + + + + +VOLUME II. + + + + +PART II + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +On a hot morning at the end of June, some four weeks after the Castle +Luton visit, George Tressady walked from Brook Street to Warwick Square, +that he might obtain his mother's signature to a document connected with +the Shapetsky negotiations, and go on from there to the House of Commons. + +She was not in the drawing-room, and George amused himself during his +minutes of waiting by inspecting the various new photographs of the +Fullerton family that were generally to be found on her table. What a +characteristic table it was, littered with notes and bills, with patterns +from every London draper, with fashion-books and ladies' journals +innumerable! And what a characteristic room, with its tortured +decorations and crowded furniture, and the flattered portraits of Lady +Tressady, in every caprice of costume, which covered the walls! George +looked round it all with an habitual distaste; yet not without the secret +admission that his own drawing-room was very like it. + +His mother might, he feared, have a scene in preparation for him. + +For Letty, under cover of some lame excuse or other, had persisted in +putting off the visit which Lady Tressady had intended to pay them at +Ferth during the Whitsuntide recess, and since their return to town +there had been no meeting whatever between the two ladies. George, +indeed, had seen his mother two or three times. But even he had just let +ten days pass without visiting her. He supposed he should find her in a +mood of angry complaint; nor could he deny that there would be some +grounds for it. + +"Good morning, George," said a sharp voice, which startled him as he was +replacing a photograph of the latest Fullerton baby. "I thought you had +forgotten your way here by now." + +"Why, mother, I am very sorry," he said, as he kissed her. "But I +have really been terribly busy, what with two Committees and this +important debate." + +"Oh! don't make excuses, pray. And of course--for Letty--you won't even +attempt it. I wouldn't if I were you." + +Lady Tressady settled herself on a chair with her back to the light, and +straightened the ribbons on her dress with hasty fingers. Something in +her voice struck George. He looked at her closely. + +"Is there anything wrong, mother? You don't look very well." + +Lady Tressady got up hurriedly, and began to move about the room, picking +up a letter here, straightening a picture there. George felt a sudden +prick of alarm. Were there some new revelations in store for him? But +before he could speak she interrupted him. + +"I should be very well if it weren't for this heat," she said pettishly. +"Do put that photograph down, George!--you do fidget so! Haven't you got +any news for me--anything to amuse me? Oh! those horrid papers!--I see. +Well! they'll wait a little. By the way, the 'Morning Post' says that +young scamp, Lord Ancoats, has gone abroad. I suppose that girl was +bought off." + +She sat down again in a shady corner, fanning herself vigorously. + +"I am afraid I can't tell you any secrets," said George, smiling, "for I +don't know any. But it looks as though Mrs. Allison and Maxwell between +them had somehow found a way out." + +"How's the mother?" + +"You see, she has gone abroad, too--to Bad Wildheim. In fact, Lord +Ancoats has taken her." + +"That's the place for heart, isn't it?" said his mother, abruptly. +"There's a man there that cures everybody." + +"I believe so," said George. "May we come to business, mother? I have +brought these papers for you to sign, and I must get to the House in +good time." + +Lady Tressady seemed to take no notice. She got up again, restlessly, and +walked to the window. + +"How do you like my dress, George? Now, don't imagine anything absurd! +Justine made it, and it was quite cheap." + +George could not help smiling--all the more that he was conscious of +relief. She would not be asking him to admire her dress if there were +fresh debts to confess to him. + +"It makes you look wonderfully young," he said, turning a critical eye, +first upon the elegant gown of some soft pinky stuff in which his mother +had arrayed herself, then upon the subtly rouged and powdered face above +it. "You are a marvellous person, mother! All the same, I think the heat +must have been getting hold of you, for your eyes are tired. Don't racket +too much!" + +He spoke with his usual careless kindness, laying a hand upon her arm. + +Lady Tressady drew herself away, and, turning her back upon him, looked +out of the window. + +"Have you seen any more of the Maxwells?" she said, over her shoulders. + +George gave a slight involuntary start. Then it occurred to him that his +mother was making conversation in an odd way. + +"Once or twice," he said, reluctantly, in reply. "They were at the +Ardaghs' the other night, of course." + +"Oh! you were there?"--Lady Tressady's voice was sharp again. "Well, of +course. Letty went as your wife, and you're a member of Parliament. Lady +Ardagh knows _me_ quite well--but I don't count now; she used to be glad +enough to ask me." + +"It was a great crush, and very hot," said George, not knowing +what to say. + +Lady Tressady frowned as she looked out of the window. + +"Well!--and Lady Maxwell--is she as absurd as ever?" + +"That depends upon one's point of view," said George, smiling. "She +seemed as convinced as ever." + +"Who sent Mrs. Allison to that place? Barham, I suppose. He always sends +his patients there. They say he's in league with the hotel-keepers." + +George stared. What was the matter with her? What made her throw out +these jerky sentences with this short, hurried breath. + +Suddenly Lady Tressady turned. + +"George!" + +"Yes, mother." He stepped nearer to her. She caught his sleeve. + +"George "--there was something like a sob in her voice--"you were quite +right. I am ill. There, don't talk about it. The doctors are all fools. +And if you tell Letty anything about it, I'll never forgive you." + +George put his arm round her, but was not, in truth, much disturbed. Lady +Tressady's repertory, alas! had many _roles_. He had known her play that +of the invalid at least as effectively as any other. + +"You are just overdone with London and the heat," he said. "I saw it at +once. You ought to go away." + +She looked up in his face. + +"You don't believe it?" she said. + +Then she seemed to stagger. He saw a terrible drawn look in her face, +and, putting out all his strength, he held her, and helped her to a sofa. + +"Mother!" he exclaimed, kneeling beside her, "what is the matter?" + +Voice and tone were those of another man, and Lady Tressady quailed +under the change. She pointed to a small bag on a table near her. He +opened it, and she took out a box, from which she swallowed something. +Gradually breath and colour returned, and she began to move restlessly. + +"That was nothing," she said, as though to herself--"nothing--and it +yielded at once. Well, George, I knew you thought me a humbug!" + +Her eyes glanced at him with a kind of miserable triumph. He looked down +upon her, still kneeling, horror-struck against his will. After a life of +acting, was this the truth--this terror, which spoke in every movement, +and in some strange way had seized upon and infected himself? + +He urgently asked her to be frank with him. And with a sob she poured +herself out. It was the tragic, familiar story that every household +knows. Grave symptoms, suddenly observed--the hurried visit to a +specialist--his verdict and his warnings. + +"Of course, he said at first I ought to give up everything and go +abroad--to this very same place--Bad-what-do-you-call-it? But I told him +straight out I couldn't and wouldn't do anything of the sort. I am just +eaten up with engagements. And as to staying at home and lying-up, that's +nonsense--I should die of that in a fortnight. So I told him to give me +something to take, and that was all I could do. And in the end he quite +came round--they always do if you take your own line--and said I had +much better do what suited me, and take care. Besides, what do any of +them know? They all confess they're just fumbling about. Now, surgery, +of course--that's different. Battye"--Battye was Lady Tressady's ordinary +medical adviser--"doesn't believe all the other man said. I knew he +wouldn't. And as for making an invalid of me, he sees, of course, that it +would kill me at once. There, my dear George, don't make too much of it. +I think I was a fool to tell you." + +And Lady Tressady struggled to a sitting position, looking at her son +with a certain hostility. The frown on her white face showed that she was +already angry with him for his emotion--this rare emotion, that she had +never yet been able to rouse in him. + +He could only implore her to be guided by her doctor--to rest, to give up +at least some of the mill-round of her London life, if she would not go +abroad. Lady Tressady listened to him with increasing obstinacy and +excitability. + +"I tell you I know best!" she said, passionately, at last. "Don't go on +like this--it worries me. Now, look here--" + +She turned upon him with emphasis. + +"Promise me not to tell Letty a word of this. Nobody shall know--she +least of all. I shall do just as usual. In fact, I expect a very gay +season. Three 'drums' this afternoon and a dinner-party--it doesn't +look as though I were quite forgotten yet, though Letty does think me +an old fogey!" + +She smiled at him with a ghastly mixture of defiance and conceit. The old +age in her pinched face, fighting with the rouged cheeks and the gaiety +of her fanciful dress, was pitiful. + +"Promise," she said. "Not a word--to her!" + +George promised, in much distress. While he was speaking she had a slight +return of pain, and was obliged to submit to lie down again. + +"At least," he urged, "don't go out to-day. Give yourself a rest. Shall I +go back, and ask Letty to come round to tea?" + +Lady Tressady made a face like a spoilt child. + +"I don't think she'll come," she said. "Of course, I know from the first +she took an ungodly dislike to me. Though, if it hadn't been for +me--Well, never mind! Yes, you can ask her, George--do! I'll wait and see +if she comes. If she comes, perhaps I'll stay in. It would amuse me to +hear what she has been doing. I'll behave quite nicely--there!" + +And, taking up her fan, Lady Tressady lightly tapped her son's hand with +it in her most characteristic manner. + +He rose, seeing from the clock that he should only just have time to +drive quickly back to Letty if he was to be at the House in time for an +appointment with a constituent, which had been arranged for one o'clock. + +"I will send Justine to you as I go out," he said, taking up his hat, +"and I shall hear of you from Letty this evening." + +Lady Tressady said nothing. Her eyes, bright with some inner +excitement, watched him as he looked for his stick. Suddenly she said, +"George! kiss me!" + +Her tone was unsteady. Infinitely touched and bewildered, the young man +approached her, and, kneeling down again beside her, took her in his +arms. He felt a quick sobbing breath pass through her; then she pushed +him lightly away, and, putting up the slim, pink-nailed hand of which she +was so proud, she patted him on the cheek. + +"There--go along! I don't like that coat of yours, you know. I told you +so the other day. If your figure weren't so good, you'd positively look +badly dressed in it. You should try another man." + +Tressady hailed a hansom outside, and drove back to Brook Street. On the +way his eyes saw little of the crowded streets. So far, he had had no +personal experience of death. His father had died suddenly while he was +at Oxford, and he had lost no other near relation or friend. Strange! +this grave, sudden sense that all was changed, that his careless, +half-contemptuous affection for his mother could never again be what it +had been. Supposing, indeed, her story was all true! But in the case of a +character like Lady Tressady's, there are for long, recurrent, +involuntary scepticisms on the part of the bystander. It seems +impossible, unfitting, to grant to such persons _le beau role_ they +claim. It outrages a certain ideal instinct, even, to be asked to believe +that they too can yield, in their measure, precisely the same tragic +stuff as the hero or the saint. + +Letty was at home, just about to share her lunch with Harding Watton, who +had dropped in. Hearing her husband's voice, she came out to the +stairhead to speak to him. + +But after a minute or two George dashed down again to his study, that he +might write a hurried note to a middle-aged cousin of his mother's, +asking her to go round to Warwick Square early in the afternoon, and +making excuses for Letty, who was "very much engaged." + +For Letty had met his request with a smiling disdain. Why, she was simply +"crowded up" with engagements of all sorts and kinds! + +"Mother is really unwell," said George, standing with his hands on his +sides, looking down upon her. He was fuming with irritation and hurry, +and had to put a force on himself to speak persuasively. + +"My dear old boy!"--she rose on tiptoe and twisted his moustache for +him--"don't we know all about your mother's ailments by this time? I +suppose she wants to give me a scolding, or to hear about the Ardaghs, or +to tell me all about the smart parties _she_ has been to--or something of +the sort. No, really, it's quite impossible--this afternoon. I know I +must go and see her some time--of course I will." + +She said this with the air of someone making a great concession. It was, +indeed, her first formal condonement of the offence offered her just +before the Castle Luton visit. + +George attempted a little more argument and entreaty, but in vain. Letty +was rather puzzled by his urgency, but quite obdurate. And as he ran down +the stairs, he heard her laugh in the drawing-room mingled with Harding +Watton's. No doubt they were making merry over the "discipline" which +Letty found it necessary to apply to her mother-in-law. + +In the House of Commons the afternoon was once more given up to the +adjourned debate on the second reading of the Maxwell Bill. The House was +full, and showing itself to advantage. On the whole, the animation and +competence of the speeches reflected the general rise in combative energy +and the wide kindling of social passions which the Bill had so far +brought about, both in and out of Parliament. Those who figured as the +defenders of industries harassed beyond bearing by the Socialist meddlers +spoke with more fire, with more semblance, at any rate, of putting their +hearts into it than any men of their kind had been able to attain since +the "giant" days of the first Factory debates. Those, on the other hand, +who were urging the House to a yet sterner vigilance in protecting the +worker--even the grown man--from his own helplessness and need, who +believed that law spells freedom, and that the experience of half a +century was wholly on their side--these friends of a strong cause were +also at their best, on their mettle. Owing to the widespread flow of a +great reaction, the fight had become a representative contest between two +liberties--a true battle of ideas. + +Yet George, sitting below the Gangway beside his leader, his eyes staring +at the ceiling, and his hands in his pockets, listened to it all in much +languor and revolt. He himself had made his speech on the third day of +the debate. It had cost him endless labour, only to seem to him in the +end--by contrast with the vast majority of speeches made in the course of +the debate, even those by men clearly inferior to himself in mind and +training--to be a hollow and hypocritical performance. What did he +really think and believe? What did he really desire? He vowed to himself +once more, as he had vowed at Ferth, that his mind was a chaos, without +convictions, either intellectual or moral; that he had begun what he was +not able to finish; and that he was doomed to make a failure of his +parliamentary career, as he was already making a failure of coal-owning +and a failure-- + +He curbed something bitter and springing that haunted his most inmost +mind. But his effort could not prevent his dwelling angrily for a minute +on the thought of Letty laughing with Harding Watton--laughing because he +had asked her a small kindness, and she had most unkindly refused it. + +Yet she _must_ help him with his poor mother. How softened were all his +thoughts about that difficult and troublesome lady! As it happened, he +had a good deal of desultory medical knowledge, for the problems and +perils of the body had always attracted his pessimist sense. Yet it did +not help him much at this juncture. At one moment he said to himself, +"eighteen months--she will live eighteen months," and at another, "Battye +was probably right; Barham took an unnecessarily gloomy view--she may +quite well last as long as the rest of us." + + * * * * * + +Suddenly he was startled by a movement beside him. + +"The honourable member has totally misunderstood me," cried Fontenoy, +springing to his feet and looking eagerly towards the Speaker. + +The member who was speaking on the Government side smiled, put on his +hat, and sat down. Fontenoy flung out a few stinging sentences, was hotly +cheered both by his own supporters and from a certain area of the Liberal +benches, and sat down again triumphant, having scored an excellent point. + +George turned round to his companion. + +"Good!" he said, with emphasis. "That rubbed it in!" + +But when the man opposite was once more on his legs, labouring to undo +the impression which had been made, George found himself wondering +whether, after all, the point had been so good, and why he had been so +quick to praise. _She_ would have said, of course, that it was a point +scored against common-sense, against humanity. He began to fancy the +play of her scornful eyes, the eloquence of her white hand moving and +quivering as she spoke. + +How long was it--one hurried month only--since he had walked with her +along the river at Castle Luton? While the crowded House about him was +again listening with attention to the speech which had just brought the +protesting Fontenoy to his legs; while his leader was fidgeting and +muttering beside him; while to his left the crowd of members round the +door was constantly melting, constantly reassembling, Tressady's mind +withdrew itself from its surroundings, saw nothing, heard nothing, but +the scenes of a far-off London and a figure that moved among them. + +How often had he been with her since Castle Luton? Once or twice a week, +certainly, either at St. James's Square or in the East End, in spite of +Parliament, and Fontenoy, and his many engagements as Letty's husband. +Strange phenomenon--that little _salon_ of hers in the far East! For it +was practically a _salon_, though it existed for purposes the Hotel +Rambouillet knew nothing of. He found himself one of many there. And, +like all _salons_, it had an inner circle. Charles Naseby, Edward Watton, +Lady Madeleine Penley, the Levens--some or all of these were generally to +be found in Lady Maxwell's neighbourhood, rendering homage or help in one +way or another. It was touching to see that girl, Lady Madeleine, looking +at the docker or the shirtmaker, with her restless greenish eyes, as +though she realised for the first time what hideous bond it is--the one +true commonalty--that crushes the human family together! + +Well!--and what had he seen? Nothing, certainly, of which he had not had +ample information before. Under the fresh spur of the talk that occupied +the Maxwell circle he had made one or two rounds through some dismal +regions in Whitechapel, Mile End, and Hackney, where some of the worst of +the home industries to which, at last, after long hesitation on the part +of successive Governments, Maxwell's Bill was intended to put an end, +crowded every house and yard. He saw some of it in the company of a lady +rent-collector, an old friend of the Maxwells, who had charge of several +tenement blocks where the trouser and vest trade was largely carried on; +and he welcomed the chance of one or two walks in quest of law-breaking +workshops with a young inspector, who could not say enough in praise of +the Bill. But if it had been only a question of fact, George would have +felt when the rounds were done merely an added respect for Fontenoy, +perhaps even for his own party as a whole. Not a point raised by his +guides but had been abundantly discussed and realised--on paper, at any +rate--by Fontenoy and his friends. The young inspector, himself a hot +partisan, and knowing with whom he had to deal, would have liked to +convict his companion of sheer and simple ignorance; but, on the +contrary, Tressady was not to be caught napping. As far as the trade +details and statistics of this gruesome slopwork of East London went, he +knew all that could be shown him. + +Nevertheless, cool and impassive as his manner was throughout, the +experience in the main did mean the exchange of a personal for a paper +and hearsay knowledge. When, indeed, had he, or Fontenoy, or anyone else +ever denied that the life of the poor was an odious and miserable +struggle, a scandal to gods and men? What then? Did they make the world +and its iron conditions? And yet this long succession of hot and smelling +dens, this series of pale, stooping figures, toiling hour after hour, at +fever pace, in these stifling backyards, while the June sun shone +outside, reminding one of English meadows and the ripple of English +grass; these panting, dishevelled women, slaving beside their husbands +and brothers, amid the rattle of the machines and the steam of the +pressers' irons, with the sick or the dying, perhaps, in the bed beside +them, and their blanched children at their feet--sights of this sort, +thus translated from the commonplace of reports and newspapers into a +poignant, unsavoury truth, had at least this effect--they vastly +quickened the personal melancholy of the spectator, they raised and drove +home a number of piercing questions which, probably, George Tressady +would never have raised, and would have lived happily without raising, if +it had not been for a woman, and a woman's charm. + +For that woman's _solutions_ remained as doubtful to him as ever. He +would go back to that strange little house where she kept her strange +court, meet her eager eyes, and be roused at once to battle. How they had +argued! He knew that she had less hope than ever of persuading him even +to modify his view of the points at issue between the Government and his +own group. She could not hope for a moment that any act of his would be +likely to stand between Maxwell and defeat. He had not talked of his +adventures to Fontenoy--would rather, indeed, that Fontenoy knew nothing +of them. But he and she knew that Fontenoy, so far, had little to fear +from them. + +And yet she had not turned from him. To her personal mood, to her wifely +affection even, he must appear more plainly than ever as the callous and +selfish citizen, ready and glad to take his own ease while his brethren +perished. He had been sceptical and sarcastic; he had declined to accept +her evidence; he had shown a persistent preference for the drier and more +brutal estimate of things. Yet she had never parted from him without +gentleness, without a look in her beautiful eyes that had often +tormented his curiosity. What did it mean? Pity? Or some unspoken comment +of a personal kind she could not persuade her womanly reticence to put +into words? + +Or, rather: had she some distant inkling of the real truth--that he was +beginning to hate his own convictions--to feel that to be right with +Fontenoy was nothing, but to be wrong with her would be delight? + +What absurdity! With a strong effort, he pulled himself +together--steadied his rushing pulse. It was like someone waking at night +in a nervous terror, and feeling the pressure of some iron dilemma, from +which he cannot free himself--cold vacancy and want on the one side, +calamity on the other. + +For that cool power of judgment in his own case which he had always +possessed did not fail him now. He saw everything nakedly and coldly. His +marriage was not three months old, but no spectator could have discussed +its results more frankly than he was now prepared to discuss them with +himself. It was monstrous, no doubt. He felt his whole position to be as +ugly as it was abnormal. Who could feel any sympathy with it or him? He +himself had been throughout the architect of his own misfortune. Had he +not rushed upon his marriage with less care--relatively to the weight of +the human interest in such a matter--than an animal shows when it mates? + +Letty's personal idiosyncrasies even--her way of entering a room, her +mean little devices for attracting social notice, the stubborn +extravagance of her dress and personal habits, her manner to her +servants, her sharp voice as she retailed some scrap of slanderous +gossip--her husband had by now ceased to be blind or deaf to any of +them. Indeed, his senses in relation to many things she said and did were +far more irritable at this moment--possibly far less just--than a +stranger's would have been. Often and often he would try to recall to +himself the old sense of charm, of piquancy. In vain. It was all gone--he +could only miserably wonder at the past. Was it that he knew now what +charm might mean, and what divinity may breathe around a woman! + + * * * * * + +"I say, where are you off to?" + +Tressady looked up with a start as Fontenoy rose beside him. + +"Good opportunity for dinner, I think," said Fontenoy, with a motion of +the head towards the man who had just caught the Speaker's eye. "Are you +coming? I should like a word with you." + +George followed him into the Lobby. As the swing-door closed behind him, +they plunged into a whirlpool of talk and movement. All the approaches to +the House were full of folk; everybody was either giving news or getting +it. For the excitement of a coming crisis was in the air. This was +Friday, and the division on the second reading was expected on the +following Monday. + +"What a crowd, and what a temperature!" said Fontenoy. "Come on to the +Terrace a moment." + +They made their way into the air, and as they walked up and down Fontenoy +talked in his hoarse, hurried voice of the latest aspect of affairs. The +Government would get their second reading, of course that had never been +really doubtful; though Fontenoy was certain that the normal majority +would be a good deal reduced. But all the hopes of the heterogeneous +coalition which had been slowly forming throughout the spring hung upon +the Committee stage, and Fontenoy's mind was now full of the closest +calculations as to the voting on particular amendments. + +For him the Bill fell into three parts. The first part, which was mainly +confined to small amendments and extensions of former Acts, would be +sharply criticised, but would probably pass without much change. The +second part contained the famous clause by which it became penal to +practise certain trades, such as tailoring, boot-finishing, and +shirt-making, in a man's or woman's own home--in the same place, that is +to say, as the worker uses for eating and sleeping. This clause, which +represented the climax of a long series of restrictions upon the right of +a man to stitch even his own life away, still more upon his right to +force his children or bribe his neighbour to a like waste of the nation's +force, was by now stirring the industrial mind of England far and wide. + +And not the mind of England only. Ireland and Scotland, town and country, +talked of it, seethed with it. The new law, if it passed, was to be +tried, indeed, at first, in London only. But every provincial town and +every country district knew that, if it succeeded, there was not a corner +of the land that would not ultimately feel the yoke, or the deliverance, +of it Every workman's club, every trade-union meeting, every mechanics' +institute was ringing with it. Organised labour, dragged down at every +point--in London, at any rate--by the competition of the starving and +struggling crew of home-workers, clamoured for the Bill. The starving and +struggling crew themselves were partly voiceless, partly bewildered; now +drawn by the eloquence of their trade-union fellows to shout for the +revolution that threatened them, now surging tumultuously against it. + +On this vital clause, in Fontenoy's belief, the Government would go down. +But if, by amazing good-fortune and good generalship, they should get +through with it, then the fight would but rage the more fiercely round +the last two sections of the Bill. + +The third section dealt with the hours of labour in the new workshops +that were to be. For the first time it became directly penal for a man, +as well as a woman, to work more than the accepted factory-day of ten and +a half hours, with a few exceptions and exemptions in the matter of +overtime. On this clause, if it were ever reached, the Socialist vote, +were it given solidly for the Government, might, no doubt, pull them +through. "But if we have any luck--damn it! they won't get the chance!" +Fontenoy would say, with that grim, sudden reddening which revealed from +moment to moment the feverish tension of the man. + +In the last section of the Bill the Government, having made its +revolution, looked round for a class on which to lay the burden of +carrying it into action, and found it in the landlords. The landlords +were to be the policemen of the new Act. To every owner of every tenement +or other house in London the Bill said: _You_ are responsible. If, after +a certain date, you allow certain trades to be carried on within your +walls at all, even by the single man or the single woman working in their +own room, penalty and punishment shall follow. + +Of this clause in the Bill Fontenoy could never speak with calmness. One +might see his heart thumping in his breast as he denounced it. At bottom +it was to him the last and vilest step in a long and slanderous campaign +against the class to which he belonged, against property,--against the +existing social order. He fell upon the subject to-night _a propos_ of a +Socialist letter in the morning papers; and George, who was mostly +conscious at the moment of a sick fatigue with Fontenoy and Fontenoy's +arguments, had to bear it as best he might. Presently he interrupted: + +"One assumption you make I should like to contest. You imagine, I think, +that if they carry the prohibition and the hours clauses we shall be able +to whip up a still fiercer attack on the 'landlords' clause. Now, that +isn't my view." + +Fontenoy turned upon him, startled. + +"Why isn't it your view?" he said abruptly. + +"Because there are always waverers who will accept a _fait accompli_; and +you know how opposition has a trick of cooling towards the end of a Bill. +Maxwell has carried his main point, they will say; this is a question of +machinery. Besides, many of those Liberals who will be with us on the +main point don't love the landlords. No! don't flatter yourself that, if +we lose the main engagement, there will be any Prussians to bring up. The +thing will be done." + +"Well, thank God!" grumbled Fontenoy, "we don't mean to lose the main +engagement. But if one of _our_ men were to argue in that way, I should +know what to say to him." + +George made no reply. + +They walked on in silence, the summer twilight falling softly over the +river and the Hospital, over the Terrace with its groups, and the +towering pile of buildings beside them. + +Presently Fontenoy said, in another voice: + +"I have really never had the courage to talk to you of the matter, +Tressady, but didn't you see something of that lad Ancoats before he went +off abroad?" + +"Yes, I saw him several times, first at the club; then he came and dined +with me here one night." + +"And did he confide in you?" + +"More or less," said George, smiling rather queerly at the recollection. + +Fontenoy made a sound between a growl and a sigh. + +"Really, it's rather too much to have to think out that young +man's affairs as well as one's own. And the situation is so +extraordinary!--Maxwell and I have to be in constant consultation. I went +to see him in his room in the House of Lords the other night, and met a +man coming out, who stopped, and stared as though he were shot. Luckily I +knew him, and could say a word to him, or there would have been all sorts +of cock-and-bull stories abroad." + +"Well, and what are you and Maxwell doing?" + +"Trying to get at the young woman. One can't buy her off, of course. +Ancoats is his own master, and could outbid us. But Maxwell has found a +brother--a decent sort of fellow--a country solicitor. And there is a +Ritualist curate, a Father somebody,"--Fontenoy raised his +shoulders,--"who seems to have an intermittent hold on the girl. When +she has fits of virtue she goes to confess to him. Maxwell has got hold +of _him_." + +"And meanwhile Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim?" + +"Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim, and behaving himself, as I hear from his +poor mother." Fontenoy sighed. "But the boy was frightened, of course, +when they went abroad. Now she is getting better, and one can't tell--" + +"No, one can't tell," said George. + +"I wish I knew what the thing really _meant_," said Fontenoy, presently, +in a tone of perplexed reverie. "What do you think? Is it a passion--?" + +"Or a pose?" + +George pondered. + +"H'm," he said at last--"more of a pose, I think, than a passion. Ancoats +always seems to me the _jeune premier_ in his own play. He sees his life +in scenes, and plays them according to all the rules." + +"Intolerable!" said Fontenoy, in exasperation. "And at least he might +refrain from dragging a girl into it! We weren't saints in my day, but we +weren't in the habit of choosing well-brought-up maidens of twenty in our +own set for our confidantes. You know, I suppose, what broke up the party +at Castle Luton?" + +"Ancoats told me nothing. I have heard some gossip from Harding Watton," +said George, unwillingly. It was one of his strongest characteristics, +this fastidious and even haughty dislike of chatter about other people's +private affairs, a dislike which, in the present case, had been +strengthened by his growing antipathy to Harding. + +"How should he know?" said Fontenoy, angrily. He was glad enough to use +Watton as a political tool, but had never yet admitted him to the +smallest social intimacy. + +Yet with Tressady he felt no difficulty in talking over these private +affairs; and he did, in fact, report the whole story--that same story +with which Marcella had startled Betty Leven on the night in question: +how Ancoats on this Sunday evening had decoyed this handsome, +impressionable girl, to whom throughout the winter he had been paying +decided and even ostentatious court, into a _tete-a-tete_--had poured out +to her frantic confessions of his attachment to the theatrical lady--a +woman he could never marry, whom his mother could never meet, but with +whom, nevertheless, come what might, he was determined to live and die. +She--Madeleine--was his friend, his good angel. Would she go to his +mother and break it to her? Would she understand, and forgive him? There +must be no opposition, or he would shoot himself. And so on, till the +poor girl, worn out with excitement and grief, tottered into Mrs. +Allison's room more dead than alive. + +But at that point Fontenoy stopped abruptly. + +George agreed that the story was almost incredible, and added the inward +and natural comment of the public-school man--that if people will keep +their boys at home, and defraud them of the kickings that are their due, +they may look out for something unwholesome in the finished product. +Then, aloud, he said: + +"I should imagine that Ancoats was acting through the greater part of +that. He had said to himself that such a scene would be effective--and +would be new." + +"Good heavens!--why, that makes it ten thousand times more abominable +than before!" + +"I daresay," said George, coolly. "But it also makes the future, perhaps, +a little more hopeful--throws some light on the passion or pose +alternative. My impression is, that if we can only find an effective exit +for Ancoats,--a last act that he would consider worthy of him,--he will +bow himself out of the business willingly enough." + +Fontenoy smiled rather gloomily, and the two walked on in silence. + +Once or twice, as they paced the Terrace, George glanced sidelong at his +leader. A corner of Fontenoy's nightly letter to Mrs. Allison was, he +saw, sticking out of the great man's coat-pocket. Every night he wrote a +crowded sheet upon his knee, under the shelter of a Blue Book, and on one +or two nights George's quick eyes had not been able to escape from the +pencilled address on the envelope to which it was ultimately consigned. +The sheet was written with the regularity and devotion of a Prime +Minister reporting to the Sovereign. + +Well! it was all very touching and very remarkable. But George had some +sympathy with Ancoats. To be virtually saddled with a stepfather, with +whom your minutest affairs are confidentially discussed, and yet to have +it said by all the world that your poor mother is too unselfish and too +devoted to her son to marry again--the situation is not without its +pricks. And that Ancoats was acutely conscious of them George had good +reason to know. + +"I say, Tressady, will you pair till eleven?" cried a man, swinging +bareheaded along the Terrace with his hat in his hand. "I want an hour or +two off badly, and there will be no big guns on till eleven or so." + +George exchanged a word or two with Fontenoy, then stood still, and +thought a moment. A sudden animation flushed into his face. Why not? + +"All right!" he said; "till eleven." + +Then he and Fontenoy went back to dine. As they mounted the dark +staircase leading from the Terrace another man caught Tressady by the +arm. + +"The strike notices are out," he said. "I have just had a wire. Everyone +leaves work to-night." + +George shrugged his shoulders. He had been expecting the news at any +moment, and was glad that the long shilly-shallying on both sides was at +last over. + +"Good luck to them!" he said. "I'm glad. The fight had to come." + +"Oh! we shall be in the middle of arbitration before a fortnight's up. +The men won't stand." + +George shook his head. He himself believed that the struggle would last +on through the autumn. + +"Well, to be sure, there's Burrows," said his informant, himself a large +coal-owner in the Ferth district; "if Burrows keeps sober, and if +somebody doesn't buy him, Burrows will do his worst." + +"That we always knew," said George, laughing, and passed on. He had but +just time to catch his train. + +He walked across to the Underground station, and by the time he reached +it he had clean forgotten his pits and the strike, though as he passed +the post-office in the House a sheaf of letters and telegrams had been +put into his hands. Rather, he was full of a boy's eagerness and +exultation. He had never supposed he could be let off to-night, till the +offer of Dudley's pair tempted him. And now, in half an hour he would be +in that queer Mile End room, watching her--quarrelling with her. + +A little later, however, as he was sitting quietly in the train, quick +composite thoughts of Letty, of his miners, and his money difficulties +began to clutch at him again. Perhaps, now that the strike was a reality, +it might even be a help to him and a bridle to his wife. Preposterous, +what she was doing and planning at Perth! His face flushed and hardened +as he thought of their many wrangles during the past fortnight, her +constant drag upon his purse, his own weakness, the annoyance and +contempt that made him yield rather than argue. + +What was that fellow, Harding Watton, doing in the house at all hours, +and beguiling Letty, by his collector's airs, into a hundred foolish +wants and whims? And that brute Cathedine! Was it decent, was it +bearable, that a bride of three months should take no more notice of her +husband's wishes and dislikes in such a matter than Letty had shown with +regard to her growing friendship with that disreputable person? It seemed +to George that he called most afternoons. Letty laughed, excused herself, +or abused her visitor as soon as he had departed; but the rebuff which +George's pride would not let him ask of her directly, while yet his +whole manner demanded it, was never given. + +He sat solitary in his brilliantly lit carriage, staring at the +advertisements opposite, his long chin thrust forward, his head, with its +fair curls, thrown moodily back. And all the time his mind was working +with an appalling clearness. This cold light, in which he was beginning +to see his wife and all she did--it was already a tragedy. + +What was he flying to, what was he in search of--there in the East End? +His whole being flung the answer. A little sympathy, a little heart, a +little tenderness and delicacy of soul!--nothing else. He had once taken +it for granted that every woman possessed them in some degree. Or, was it +only since he had found them in this unexampled fulness and wealth that +he had begun to thirst for them in this way? He made himself face the +question. "One needn't lie to oneself!" + +At Aldgate, as he was making his way out of the station, he stumbled upon +Edward Watton. + +"Hullo! You bound for No. 20, too?" + +"No; there is no function to-night. Lady Maxwell is at a meeting. It has +grown rather suddenly from small beginnings, and two days ago they made +her promise to speak. I came down because I am afraid of a row. Things +are beginning to look ugly down here, and I don't think she has much idea +of it. Will you come?" + +"Of course." + +Watton looked at him with an amused and friendly eye. + +It was another instance of her power--that she had been able to bind +even this young enemy to her chariot-wheels. He hoped Letty had the sense +to approve! As a matter of fact, Watton had never, by his own choice, +become well acquainted with his cousin Letty, and had always secretly +marvelled at Tressady's sudden marriage. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +The two men were soon on the top of the Mile End Road tramcar, on their +way eastward. It was a hot, dull evening. The setting sun behind them was +already swallowed up in mist, and the heavy air held down and made +palpable all the unsavoury odours of street and shop. Before them +stretched the wide, interminable road which was once the highway from the +great city to Colchester and East Anglia. A broad and comely thoroughfare +on the whole, save that from end to end it has now the dyed and patched +look that an old village street inevitably puts on when it has been +swallowed up by the bricks and mortar of an overtaking town. + +Tressady looked round him in a reverie, interested in the place and the +streets because _she_ cared for them, and had struck one of her roots +here. Strange medley everywhere--in this main street, at all events--of +old and new! Here were the Trinity almshouses, with their Jacobean gables +and their low, spreading quadrangle behind the fine ironwork that +shelters them from the street--a poetic fragment from the days of Wren +and Dryden, sore threatened now by an ever-advancing London, hungry for +ground and space. Here was a vast mission-hall, there a still vaster +brewery; on the right, the quiet entrance to the oldworld quiet of +Stepney-Green; and to the left a huge flame-ringed gin-palace, with shops +on either side, hung to the roof with carpets, or brooms, or umbrellas, +plastered with advertisements, and blazing with gas. While in the street +between streamed the ever-moving crowd of East London folk, jostling, +chattering, loafing, doing their business or their pleasure, and made +perpetually interesting, partly by their frank preoccupation with the +simplest realities of life: with eating, drinking, earning, marrying, +child-rearing; still more, perhaps, by the constant presence among them +of that "leisured class" which, alike at the bottom and the top of +things, has time to be gay, curious, and witty. + +As he rolled along, watching the scene, Tressady thought to himself, as +he had often thought before, that the East End, in many of its aspects, +is a very decentish sort of place, about which many people talk much +nonsense. He made the remark, carelessly, to Watton. + +Watton shrugged his shoulders, and pointed silently to the entrances, +right and left, of two side-streets, the typical streets of the East End: +long lines of low houses,--two storeys always, or two storeys and a +basement,--all of the same yellowish brick, all begrimed by the same +smoke, every door-knocker of the same pattern, every window-blind hung in +the same way, and the same corner "public" on either side, flaming in the +hazy distance. + +Watton hardly put his comment into words; but Tressady, who knew him +well, understood, and nodded over his cigarette. Watton meant, of course, +to suggest the old commonplace of the mean and dull monotony that weighs +like a nightmare upon this vast East London and its human hive, which +hums and toils, drones and feeds, by night and day, in these numberless +featureless boxes of wood and stone, on this flat, interminable earth +that stretches eastward to Essex marshes and southward to the river, and +bears yellow brick and cemeteries for corn. Well! Tressady knew that the +thought of this monotony, and of the thousands under its yoke, was to +Watton a constant sting and oppression; he knew, too, or guessed, the +religious effects it produced in him. For Watton was a religious man, and +the action of the dream within showed itself in him and all he did. But +why should everyone make a grief of East London? He was in the mood again +to-night to feel it a kind of impertinence, this endless, peering anxiety +about a world you never planned and cannot mend. Whose duty is it to cry +for the moon? + +"Better get down here, I think," said Watton, signalling to the +tram-conductor, "and find out whether they have really gone, or not." + +They stopped, half-way down the Mile End Road, before a piece of wall +with a door in it. A trim maiden of fifteen in a spotless cotton frock +and white apron opened to them. + +Inside was a small flagged courtyard and the old-fashioned house that +Marcella Maxwell, a year before,--some time after their first lodging had +been given up,--had rescued from demolition and the builder, to make an +East End home out of it. Somewhere about 1750 some City tradesman had +built it among fields, and taken his rest there; while somewhat later, in +a time of Evangelical revival, a pious widow had thrown out a low room to +one side for class-meetings. In this room Marietta now held her +gatherings, and both Tressady and Watton knew it well. + +The little handmaid bubbled over with willing talk. Oh, yes, there was a +meeting up Manx Road, and her Ladyship had gone with Lord Naseby, and +Lady Madeleine, and Mr. Everard, the inspector, and, she thought, one or +two besides. She expected the ladies back about ten, and they were to +stay the night. + +"An they do say, sir," she said eagerly, looking up at Watton, whom she +knew, "as there'll be a lot o' rough people at the meetin." + +"Oh! I daresay," said Watton. "Well, we're going up, too, to look +after her." + +As they walked on they talked over the general situation in the district, +and Watton explained what he knew of this particular meeting. In the +first place, he repeated, he could not see that Lady Maxwell understood +as yet the sort of opposition that the Bill was rousing, especially in +these East End districts. The middle-class and parliamentary resistance +she had always appreciated; but the sort of rage that might be awakened +among a degraded class of workers by proposals that seemed to threaten +their immediate means of living, he believed she had not yet realised, in +anything like its full measure and degree. And he feared that this +meeting might be a disagreeable experience. + +For it was the direct fruit of an agitation that, as Tressady knew, was +in particular Fontenoy's agitation. The Free Workers' League, which had +called upon the trade-unionist of Mile End to summon the meeting, and to +hear therein what both sides had to say, was, in fact, Fontenoy's +creation. It had succeeded especially in organising the women +home-workers of Mile End and Poplar. Two or three lady-speakers employed +by the League had been active to the point of frenzy in denouncing the +Bill and shrieking "Liberty!" in the frightened ear of Mile End. Watton +could not find a good word for any of them--was sure that what mostly +attracted them was the notoriety of the position, involving, as it did, +a sort of personal antagonism to Lady Maxwell, who had, so to speak, +made Mile End her own. And to be Lady Maxwell's enemy was, Watton +opined, the next best thing, from the point of view of advertisement, to +being her friend. + +"Excellent women, I daresay," said Tressady, laughing--"talking excellent +sense. But, tell me, what is this about Naseby--why Naseby?--on all these +occasions?" + +"Why not, indeed?" said Watton. "Ah! you don't know? It seems to be +Naseby that's going to get the egg out of the hat for us." + +And he plunged eagerly into the description of certain schemes wherewith +Naseby had lately astonished the Maxwell circle. Tressady listened, +languidly at first, then with a kind of jealous annoyance that +scandalised himself. How well he could understand the attraction of such +things for her quick mind! Life was made too easy for these "golden +lads." People attributed too much importance to their fancies. + +Naseby, in fact,--but so much George already knew,--had been for some +months now the comrade and helper of both the Maxwells. His friends still +supposed him to be merely the agreeable and fashionable idler. In +reality, Naseby for some years past had been spending all the varied +leisure that his commission in the Life Guards allowed him upon the work +of a social and economic student. He had joined the staff of a well-known +sociologist, who was at the time engaged in an inquiry into certain +typical East London trades. The inquiry had made a noise, and the +evidence collected under it had already been largely used in the debates +on the Maxwell Bill. Tressady, for instance, had much of it by heart, +although he never knew, until he became a haunter of Lady Maxwell's +circle, that Naseby had played any part in the gathering of it. + +At the same time, as George had soon observed, Naseby was no blind +follower of the Maxwells. In truth, under his young gaiety and coolness +he had the temper of the student, who was more in love with his problem +itself than with any suggested solution of it. As he had told Lady +Betty, he had "no opinions"--would himself rather leave the sweated +trades alone, and trust to much slower and less violent things than +law-making. All this the Maxwells knew perfectly, and liked and trusted +him none the less. + +Now, however, it seemed there was a new development. If the Bill passed, +Naseby had a plan. He was already a rich man, independently of the +marquisate to come. His grandmother had left him a large preliminary +fortune, and through his friends and connections besides he seemed to +command as much money as he desired. And of this money, supposing the +Bill passed, he proposed to make original and startling use. He had +worked out the idea of a syndicate furnished with, say, a quarter of a +million of money, which should come down upon a given district of the +East End, map it out, buy up all the existing businesses in its typical +trade, and start a system of new workshops proportioned to the +population, supplying it with work just as the Board schools supply it +with education. The new scheme was to have a profit-sharing element: the +workers were to be represented on the syndicate, and every nerve was to +be strained to secure the best business management. The existing +middlemen would be either liberally bought out, or absorbed into the new +machine. It was by no means certain that they would show it any strong +resistance. + +Tressady made a number of unfriendly comments on the scheme as Watton +detailed it. A bit of amateur economics, which would only help the Bill +to ruin a few more people than would otherwise have gone down! + +"Ah! well," said Watton, "if this thing passes there are bound to be +experiments, and Naseby means to be in 'em. So do I, only I haven't got a +quarter of a million. Here's our road! We're late, of course--the +meeting's begun. I say, just look at this!" + +For Manx Road, as they turned into it, was already held by another big +meeting of its own. The room in the Board school which crossed the end of +the street must be full, and this crowd represented, apparently, those +who had been turned away. + +As the two friends pushed their way through, Tressady's quick eye +recognised in the throng a number of familiar types. Well-to-do +"pressers" and machinists, factory-girls of different sorts, hundreds of +sallow women, representing the home-workers of Mile End, Bow, and +Stepney--poor souls bowed by toil and maternity, whose marred fingers +labour day and night to clothe the Colonies and the army; their husbands +and brothers, too, English slop-tailors for the most part, of the humbler +sort--the short side-street was packed with them. It was an anxious, +sensitive crowd, Tressady thought, as he elbowed his passage through it. +A small thing might inflame it; and he saw a number of rough lads on the +skirts of it. + +Jews, too, there were in plenty. For the stress of this Bill had brought +Jew and Gentile together in a new comradeship that amazed the East End. +Here were groups representing the thrifty, hard-working London Jew of +the second generation,--small masters for the most part, pale with the +confinement and "drive" of the workshop,--men who are expelling and +conquering the Gentile East Ender, because their inherited passion for +business is not neutralised by any of the common English passions for +spending--above all by the passion for drink. Here, too, were men of a +far lower type and grade--the waste and refuse of the vast industrial +mill. Tressady knew a good many of them by sight--sullen, quick-eyed +folk, who buy their "greeners" at the docks, and work them day and night +at any time of pressure; whose workshops are still flaring at two +o'clock in the morning, and alive again by the winter dawn; who fight +and flout the law by a hundred arts, and yet, brutal and shifty as many +of them are, have a curious way of winning the Gentile inspector's +sympathy, even while he fines and harasses them, so clearly are they and +their "hands" alike the victims of a huge world-struggle that does but +toss them on its surge. + +These gentry, however, were hard hit by more than one clause of the +Maxwell Bill, and they were here to-night to protest, as they had been +already protesting at many meetings, large and small, all over the East +End. And they had their slaves with them,--ragged, hollow-eyed creatures, +newly arrived from Russian Poland, Austria, or Romania, and ready to +shout or howl in Yiddish as they were told,--men whose strange faces and +eyes under their matted shocks of black or reddish hair suggested every +here and there the typical history and tragic destiny of the race which, +in other parts of the crowd, was seen under its softer and more +cosmopolitan aspects. + +As the two men neared the door of the school, where the press was +densest, they were recognised as probably belonging to the Maxwell party, +and found themselves a good deal jeered and hustled, and could hardly +make any way at all. However, a friendly policeman came to their aid. +They were passed into a lobby, and at last, with much elbowing and +pushing, found themselves inside the schoolroom. + +So crowded was the place and so steaming the atmosphere, that it was +some minutes before Tressady could make out what was going on. Then he +saw that Naseby was speaking--Naseby, looking remarkably handsome and +well curled, and much at his ease, besides, in the production of a string +of Laodicean comments on the Bill, his own workshop scheme, and the +general prospects of East End labour. He described the scheme, but in +such a way as rather to damn it than praise it; and as for the Bill +itself, which he had undertaken to compare with former Factory Bills, +when he sat down he left it, indeed, in a parlous case--a poor, limping, +doubtful thing, quite as likely to ruin the East End as to do it a hand's +turn of good. + +Just as the speaker was coming to his peroration Tressady suddenly caught +sight of a delicate upraised profile on the platform, behind Naseby. The +repressed smile on it set him smiling, too. + +"What on earth do they make Naseby speak for!" said Watton, indignantly. +"Idiocy! He spoils everything he touches. Let him give the money, and +other people do the talking. You can see the people here don't know what +to make of him in the least. Look at their faces.--Who's he talking to?" + +"Lady Madeleine, I think," said Tressady. "What amazing red hair that +girl has! and what queer, scared eyes! It is like an animal--one wants to +stroke her." + +"Well, Naseby strokes her," said Watton, laughing. "Look at her; she +brightens up directly he comes near." + +Tressady thought of the tale Fontenoy had just told him, and wondered. +Consolation seemed to come easy to maidens of quality. + +Meanwhile various trade-unionists--sturdy, capable men, in black +coats--were moving and seconding resolutions; flinging resentful +comments, too, at Naseby whenever occasion offered. Tressady heard very +little of what they had to say. His eyes and thoughts were busy with the +beautiful figure to the left of the chair. Its dignity and charm worked +upon him like a spell--infused a kind of restless happiness. + +When he woke from his trance of watching, it was to turn upon Watton +with impatience. How long was this thing going on? The British workman +spoke with deplorable fluency. Couldn't they push their way through to +the platform? + +Watton looked at the crowd, and shrugged his shoulders. + +"Not yet--I say! who's this they've put up. Come, my dear fellow, that +looks like the real thing!" + +Tressady turned, and saw an old man, a Jew, with a long greyish beard, +coming slowly to the front of the platform. His eyes were black and deep, +sunk under white brows; he was decently but poorly dressed; and he began +to speak with a slight German accent, in an even, melancholy voice, +rather under-pitched, which soon provoked the meeting. He was +vociferously invited to speak up or sit down; and at the first +interruption he stopped timorously, and looked towards the Chair. + +An elderly, grey-haired woman was presiding--no doubt to mark the +immense importance of the Bill for the women of the East End. She came +forward at the man's appeal. + +"My friends," she said quietly, "you let this man speak, and don't you be +hard on him. He's got a sad story to tell you, and he won't be long about +it. You give him his chance. Some of you shall have yours soon." + +Up. The speaker was the paid secretary of one of the women's unions; but +she had been a tailoress for years, and had known a tragic life. Once, at +a meeting where some flippant speaker had compared the reality and +frequency of "starvation" in London to the reality and frequency of the +sea serpent, Tressady had seen her get up and, with a sudden passion, +describe the death of her own daughter from hardship and want, with the +tears running down her cheeks. Her appeal to the justice of the meeting +succeeded, and the old man was allowed to go on. It soon appeared that he +had been put up by one of the tailoring unions to denounce the long hours +worked in some of the Whitechapel and Spitalfields workshops. His H facts +were appalling. But he put them badly, with a dull, stumbling voice, and +he got no hold on the meeting at all till suddenly he stepped forward, +paused,--his miserable face working, his head turning from if side to +side,--and finally said, with a sharp change of note: + +"And now, if you please, I will tell you how it was about Isaac--my +brother Isaac. It was Mr. Jacobs "--he looked round, and pointed to the +tradeunion secretary who had been speaking before him--"Mr. Jacobs it +was that put it in my mind to come here and tell you about Isaac. For the +way Isaac died was like this. He and I were born in Spitalfields; he +wasn't one of your greeners--he was a reg'lar good worker, first-rate +general coat-hand, same as me. But he got with a hard master. And last +winter season but one there came a rush. And Isaac must be working six +days a week--and he must be working fourteen hours a day--and, more'n +that, he must be doing his bastes overtime, two hours one time, and an +hour or so, perhaps, another; anyway, they made it up to half a +day--eight hours and more in the week. _You_ know how they reckon it." + +He stopped, grinning feebly. The trade-unionists about the platform +shouted or groaned in response. The masters round the door, with their +"greeners," stood silent. + +"And about Wednesday in the third week," he went on, "he come to the +master, and he says--Isaac was older than me, and his chest it would be +beginning to trouble him pretty bad, so he says: 'I'm done,' he says; 'I +must go home. You can get another chap to do my bastes to-night--will +you?' And the master says to Isaac: 'If you don't do your bastes +overtime, if you're too high and mighty,' he says, 'why, there's plenty +as will, and you don't need to come to-morrow neither.' And Isaac had his +wife Judith at home, and four little uns; and he stopped and done his +bastes, of _course_. And next night he couldn't well see, and he'd been +dreadful sick all day, and he says to the master again, he says as he +must go home. And the master, he says the same to him--and Isaac stops. +And on Friday afternoon he come home. And the shop had been steamin hot, +but outside it was a wind to cut yer through. And his wife Judith says to +him, 'Isaac, you look starved!' and she set him by the fire. And he sat +by the fire, and he didn't say nothing. Then his hands fell down sudden +like that--" + +The old man let his hands drop heavily by his side with a simple dramatic +gesture. By this time there was not a sound in the crowded room. Even the +wildest and most wolfish of the greeners were staring silently, craning +brown necks forward. + +"And his wife ran to him, and he falls against her; and he says, 'Lay me +down, Judith, and don't you let em wake me--not the young uns,' he says +'not for nothing and nobody. For if it was the trump of the Most High,' +he says--and Isaac was a religious man, and careful in his speech--'I +must have my sleep.' And she laid him down, and the children and she +watched--and by midnight Isaac turned himself over. He just opened his +eyes once, and groaned. And he never spoke no more--he was gone before +mornin.--And his master gave Judith five shillings towards the coffin, +and the men in the shop, they raised the rest." + +The old man paused. He stood considering a moment, his face and ragged +beard thrown out--a spot of greyish white--against the figures behind, +his eyes blinking painfully under the gas. + +"Well, we've tried many things," he said at last. "We've tried strikes +and unions, and it isn't no good. There's always one treading on +another, and if you don't do it, someone else will. It's the _law_ as'll +have to do it. You may take that and smoke it!--you won't get nothing +else. Why!"--his hoarse voice trembled--"why, they use us up cruel in the +sort of shop I work for. Ten or twelve years, and a man's all to pieces. +It's the irons, and the heat, and the sitting--_you_ know what it is. +I've lasted fifteen year, but I'm breaking up now. If my master give me +the sack for speaking here I'll have nothing but the Jewish Board of +Guardians to look to. All the same, I made up my mind as I'd come and say +how they served Isaac." + +He stopped abruptly, and stood quite still a moment, fronting the +meeting, as though appealing to them, through the mere squalid physical +weakness he could find no more words to express. Then, with a sort of +shambling bow, he turned away, and the main body of the meeting clapped +excitedly, while at the back some of the "sweaters" grinned, and chatted +sarcastic things in Yiddish with their neighbours. Tressady saw Lady +Maxwell rise eagerly as the old man passed her, take his hand, and find +him a seat. + +"That, I suppose, was an emotion," said Tressady, looking down upon his +companion. + +"Or an argument," said Watton--"as you like!" + +One other "emotion" of the same kind--the human reality at its simplest +and cruellest--Tressady afterwards remembered. + +A "working-woman" was put up to second an amendment condemning the +workshops clause, which had been moved in an angry speech by one of +"Fontenoy's ladies," a shrill-voiced, fashionable person, the secretary +to the local branch of the Free Workers' League. Tressady had yawned +impatiently through the speech, which had seemed to him a violent and +impertinent performance. But as the speaker sat down he was roused by an +exclamation from a man beside him. + +"_That_ woman!" cried a tall curate, straining on tiptoe to see. "No! +They ought to be ashamed of themselves!" + +Tressady wondered who and why; but all that he saw was that a thin, tall +woman was being handed along the bench in front of him, while her +neighbours and friends clapped her on the back as she passed, laughing +and urging her on. Then, presently, there she stood on the platform, a +thin, wand-like creature, with her battered bonnet sideways on her head, +a woollen crossover on her shoulders, in spite of July, her hands clasped +across her chest, her queer light eyes wandering and smiling hither and +thither. In her emaciation, her weird cheerfulness, she was like a figure +from a Dance of Death. But what was amazing was her self-possession. + +"Now yer laffin' at me," she began in a conversational tone, nodding +towards the group of women she had just left. "You go 'long! I told the +lidy I'd speak, an I will. Well, they comes to me, an they ses, Mrs. +Dickson, yer not to work at 'ome no longer--they'll put yer in prison if +yer do't, they ses; yer to go out ter work, same as the shop 'ands, they +ses; and what's more, if they cotch Mr. Butterford--that's my landlord; +p'raps yer dunno 'im--" + +She looked down at the meeting with a whimsical grin, her eyes screwed up +and her crooked brows lifted, so that the room roared merely to look at +her. The trim lady-secretary, however, bent forward with an air of +annoyance. She had not, perhaps, realised that Mrs. Dickson was so much +of a character. + +"If they cotch Mr. Butterford, they'll make 'im pay up smart for lettin +yer do such a thing as make knickers in 'is 'ouse. So I asks the lidy, +Wot's ter become o' me an the little uns? An she says she done know, but +yer mus come and speak Tuesday night, she says--Manx Road Schools, she +says--if yer want to perwent em making a law ov it. Which I'm a doin +of--aint I?" + +Fresh laughter and response from the room. She went on satisfied. + +"An, yer know, if I can't make the knickers at 'ome, I can't make 'em +awy from 'ome. For ther aint no shops as want kids squallin round, as +fer as I can make out. An Jimmy's a limb, as boys mos'ly are in my +egsperience. Larst week 'e give the biby a 'alfpenny and two o' my +biggest buttons to swaller, an I ony jest smacked 'em out of 'er in +time. Ther'd be murder done if I was to leave 'em. An 'ow 'ud I be able +to pay anyone fer lookin' after em? I can't git much, yer know, shop or +no shop. I aint wot I was." + +She stopped, and pointed significantly to her chest. Tressady shuddered +as the curate whispered to him. + +"I've been in orspital--cut about fearful. I can't go at the pace them +shops works at. They'd give me the sack, double-quick, if I was to go try +in 'em. No, it's _settin_ as does it--settin an settin. I'm at it by +seven, an my 'usband--yer can see im there--e'll tell yer." + +She stopped, and pointed to a burly ruffian standing amid a group of +"pals" round the door. This gentleman had his arms folded, and was +alternately frowning and grinning at this novel spectacle of his wife as +a public performer. Bribes had probably been necessary to bring him to +consent to the spectacle at all. But he was not happy, and when his wife +pointed at him, and the meeting turned to look, he suddenly took a dive +head-foremost into the crowd about him; so that when the laughter and +horse-play that followed had subsided, it was seen that Mr. Tom Dickson's +place knew him no more. + +Meanwhile Mrs. Dickson stood grinning--grinning wide and visibly. It was +the strangest mirth, as though hollow pain and laughter strove with each +other for the one poor indomitable face. + +"Well, ee _could_ 'a told yer, if e'd ad the mind," she said, nodding, +"for ee knows. Ee's been out o' work this twelve an a arf year--well, +come, I'll bet yer, anyway, as ee 'asn't done a 'and's turn this three +year--an I don't blime im. Fust, there isn't the work to be got, and +then yer git out of the way o' wantin it. An beside, I'm used to im. +When Janey--no, it were Sue!--were seven month old, he come in one +night from the public, an after ee'd broke up most o' the things, he +says to me, 'Clear out, will yer!' An I cleared out, and Sue and me +set on the doorstep till mornin. And when mornin come, Tom opened the +door, an ee says, 'What are you doin there, mother? Why aint yer got my +breakfast?' An I went in an got it. But, bless yer, nowadays--the +_women won't do it_!--" + +Another roar went up from the meeting. Mrs. Dickson still grinned. + +"An so there's nothink but _settin_', as I said before--settin' till yer +can't set no more. If I begin o' seven, I gets Mr. Dickson to put the +teathings an the loaf andy, so as I don't 'ave to get up more'n jes to +fetch the kettle; and the chillen gets the same as me--tea an bread, and +a red 'erring Sundays; an Mr. Dickson, 'e gets 'is meals out. I gives +'im the needful, and 'e don't make no trouble; an the children is +dreadful frackshus sometimes, and gets in my way fearful. But there, if +I can _set_--set till I 'ear Stepney Church goin twelve--I can earn my +ten shillin a week, an keep the lot of 'em. Wot does any lidy or +genelman want, a comin' meddlin down 'ere? Now, that's the middle an +both ends on it. Done? Well, I dessay I is done. Lor, I ses to em in the +orspital it do seem rummy to me to be layin abed like that. If Tom was +'ere, why, 'e'd--" + +She made a queer, significant grimace. But the audience laughed no +longer. They stared silently at the gaunt creature, and with their +silence her own mood changed. + +Suddenly she whipped up her apron. She drew it across her eyes, and flung +it away again passionately. + +"I dessay we shall be lyin abed in Kingdom Come," she said defiantly, yet +piteously. "But we've got to git there fust. An I don't want no shops, +thank yer!" + +She rambled on a little longer, then, at a sign from the lady-secretary, +made a grinning curtsy to the audience and departed. + +"What do they get out of that?" said Watton, in Tressady's ear--"Poor +galley-slave in praise of servitude!" + +"Her slavery keeps her alive, please." + +"Yes--and drags down the standard of a whole class!" + +"You'll admit she seemed content?" + +"It's that content we want to kill.--Ah! _at last!_" and Watton clapped +loudly, followed by about half the meeting, while the rest sat silent. +Then Tressady perceived that the chair-woman had called upon Lady Maxwell +to move the next resolution, and that the tall figure had risen. + +She came forward slowly, glancing from side to side, as though doubtful +where to look for her friends. She was in black, and her head was covered +with a little black lace bonnet, in the strings of which, at her throat, +shone a small diamond brooch. The delicate whiteness of her face and +hands, and this sparkle of light on her breast, that moved as she moved, +struck a thrill of pleasure through Tressady's senses. The squalid +monotony and physical defect of the crowd about him passed from his mind. +Her beauty redressed the balance. "'Loveliness, magic, and grace--they +are here; they are set in the world!'--and ugliness and pain have not +conquered while this face still looks and breathes." This, and nothing +less, was the cry of the young man's heart and imagination as he +strained forward, waiting for her voice. + +Then he settled himself to listen--only to pass gradually from +expectation to nervousness, from nervousness to dismay. + +What was happening? She had once told him that she was not a speaker, and +he had not believed her. She had begun well, he thought, though with a +hesitation he had not expected. But now--had she lost her thread--or +what? Incredible! when one remembered her in private life, in +conversation. Yet these stumbling sentences, this evident distress! + +Tressady found himself fidgeting in sympathetic misery. He and Watton +looked at each other. + +A little more, and she would have lost her audience. She _had_ lost it. +At first there had been eager listening, for she had plunged +straightway into a set explanation and defence of the Bill point by +point, and half the room knew that she was Lord Maxwell's wife. But by +the end of ten minutes their attention was gone. They were only staring +at her because she was handsome and a great lady. Otherwise, they +seemed not to know what to make of her. She grew white; she wavered. +Tressady saw that she was making great efforts, and all in vain. The +division between her and her audience widened with every sentence, and +Fontenoy's lady-organiser, in the background, sat smilingly erect. +Tressady, who had been at first inclined to hate the thought of her +success in this Inferno, grew hot with wrath and irritation. His own +vanity suffered in her lack of triumph. + +Amazing! How _could_ her personal magic--so famous on so many +fields--have deserted her like this in an East End schoolroom, before +people whose lives she knew, whose griefs she carried in her heart? + +Then an idea struck him. The thought was an illumination--he understood. +He shut his eyes and listened. Maxwell's sentences, Maxwell's +manner--even, at times, Maxwell's voice! He had been rehearsing to her +his coming speech in the House of Lords, and she was painfully repeating +it! To his disgust, Tressady saw the reporters scribbling away--no doubt +they knew their business! Aye, there was the secret. The wife's adoration +showed through her very failure--through this strange conversion of all +that was manly, solid, and effective in Maxwell, into a confused mass of +facts and figures, pedantic, colourless, and cold! + +Edward Watton began to look desperately unhappy. "Too long," he said, +whispering in Tressady's ear, "and too technical. They can't follow." + +And he looked at a group of rough factory-girls beginning to scuffle with +the young men near them, at the restless crowd of "greeners," at the +women in the centre of the hall lifting puzzled faces to the speaker, as +though in a pain of listening. + +Tressady nodded. In the struggle of devotion with a half-laughing +annoyance he could only crave that the thing should be over. + +But the next instant his face altered. He pushed forward instinctively, +turning his back on Watton, hating the noisy room, that would hardly +let him hear. + +Ah!--those few last sentences, that voice, that quiver of passion--they +were her own--herself, not Maxwell. The words were very simple, and a +little tremulous--words of personal reminiscence and experience. But for +one listener there they changed everything. The room, the crowd, the +speaker--he saw them for a moment under another aspect: that poetic, +eternal aspect, which is always there, behind the veil of common things, +ready to flash out on mortal eyes. He _felt_ the woman's heart, oppressed +with a pity too great for it; the delicate, trembling consciousness, like +a point in space, weighed on by the burden of the world; he stood, as it +were, beside her, hearing with her ears, seeing the earth-spectacle as +she saw it, with that terrible second sight of hers: the all-environing +woe and tragedy of human things--the creeping hunger and pain--the +struggle that leads no whither--the life that hates to live and yet +dreads to die--the death that cuts all short, and does but add one more +hideous question to the great pile that hems the path of man. + +A hard, reluctant tear rose in his eyes. Is it starved tailoresses and +shirtmakers alone who suffer? Is there no hunger of the heart, that +matches and overweighs the physical? Is it not as easy for the rich as +the poor to miss the one thing needful, the one thing that matters and +saves? Angrily, and in a kind of protest, he put out his hand, as it +were, to claim his own share of the common pain. + +"Make way there! make way!" cried a police-sergeant, holding back the +crowd, "and let the lady pass." + +Tressady did his best to push through with Lady Maxwell on his arm. But +there was an angry hum of voices in front of him, an angry pressure round +the doors. + +"We shall soon get a cab," he said, bending over her. "You are very +tired, I fear. Please lean upon me." + +Yet he could but feel grateful to the crowd. It gave him this joy of +protecting and supporting her. Nevertheless, as he looked ahead, he +wished that they were safely off, and that there were more police! + +For this meeting, which had been only mildly disorderly and inattentive +while Marcella was speaking, had suddenly flamed, after she sat down, +into a fierce confusion and tumult--why, Tressady hardly now understood. +A man had sprung up to speak as she sat down who was apparently in bad +repute with most of the unions of the district. At any rate, there had +been immediate uproar and protest. The trade-unionists would not hear +him--hurled names at him--"thief," "blackleg"--as he attempted to speak. +Then the Free Workers, for whom this dubious person had been lately +acting, rose in a mass and booed at the unionists; and finally some of +the dark-eyed, black-bearded "greeners" near the door, urged on, +probably, by the masters, whose slaves they were, had leaped the benches +near them, shouting strange tongues, and making for the hostile throng +around the platform. + +Then it had been time for Naseby and the police to clear the platform and +open a passage for the Maxwell party. Unfortunately, there was no outlet +to the back, no chance of escaping the shouting crowd in Manx Road. +Tressady, joining his friends at last by dint of his height and a free +play of elbows, found himself suddenly alone with Lady Maxwell, Naseby +and Lady Madeleine borne along far behind, and no chance but to follow +the current, with such occasional help as the police stationed along the +banks of it might be able to give. + +Outside, Tressady strained his eyes for a cab. + +"Here, sir!" cried the sergeant in front, carving a passage by dint of +using his own stalwart frame as a ram. + +They hurried on, for some rough lads on the edges of the crowd had +already begun stone-throwing. The faces about them seemed to be partly +indifferent, partly hostile. "Look at the bloomin bloats!" cried a wild +factory-girl with a touzled head as Lady Maxwell passed. "Let 'em stop at +'ome and mind their own 'usbands--yah!" + +"Garn! who paid for your bonnet?" shouted another, until a third girl +pulled her back, panting, "If you say that any more I'll scrag yer!" For +this third girl had spent a fortnight in the Mile End Road house, getting +fed and strengthened before an operation. + +But here was the cab! Lady Maxwell's foot was already on the step, when +Tressady felt something fly past him. + +There was a slight cry. The form in front of him seemed to waver a +moment. Then Tressady himself mounted, caught her, and in another moment, +after a few plunges from the excited horse, they were off down Manx +Road, followed by a shouting crowd that gradually thinned. + +"You are hurt!" he said. + +"Yes," she said faintly, "but not much. Will you tell him to drive first +to Mile End Road?" + +"I have told him. Can I do anything to stop the bleeding?" + +He looked at her in despair. The handkerchief, and the delicate hand +itself that she was holding to her brow, were dabbled in blood. + +"Have you a silk handkerchief to spare?" she asked him, smiling slightly +and suddenly through her pallor, as though at their common predicament. + +By good fortune he had one. She took off her hat, and gave him a few +business-like directions. His fingers trembled as he tried to obey her; +but he had the practical sense that the small vicissitudes and hardships +of travel often develop in a man, and between them they adjusted a rough +but tolerable bandage. + +Then she leant against the side of the cab, and he thought she would +have swooned. There was a pause, during which he watched the quivering +lines of the lips and nostrils and the pallor of the cheeks with a +feeling of dismay. + +But she did not mean to faint, and little by little her will answered to +her call upon it. Presently she said, with eyes shut and brow contracted: + +"I _trust_ the others are safe. Oh! what a failure--what a failure! I am +afraid I have done Aldous harm!" + +The tone of the last words touched Tressady deeply. Evidently she could +hardly restrain her tears. + +"They were not worthy you should go and speak to them," he said quickly. +"Besides, it was only a noisy minority." + +She did not speak again till they drew up before the house in the Mile +End Road. Then she turned to him. + +"I was to have stayed here for the night, but I think I must go home. +Aldous might hear that there had been a disturbance. I will leave a +message here, and drive home." + +"I trust you will let me go with you. We should none of us be happy to +think of you as alone just yet. And I am due at the House by eleven." + +She smiled, assenting, then descended, leaning heavily upon him in +her weakness. + +When she reappeared, attended by her two little servants, all frightened +and round-eyed at their mistress's mishap, she had thrown a thick lace +scarf round her head, which hid the bandage and gave to her pale beauty a +singularly touching, appealing air. + +"I wish I could see Madeleine," she said anxiously, standing beside the +cab and looking up the road. "Ah!" + +For she had suddenly caught sight of a cab in the distance driving +smartly up. As it approached, Naseby and Lady Madeleine were plainly to +be seen inside it. The latter jumped out almost at Marcella's feet, +looking more scared than ever as she saw the bandage and the black scarf +twisted round the white face. But in a few moments Marcella had soothed +her, and given her over, apparently, to the care of another lady staying +in the house. Then she waved her hand to Naseby, who, with his usual +coolness, asked no questions and made no remarks, and she and Tressady +drove off. + +"Madeleine will stay the night," Marcella explained as they sped towards +Aldgate. "That was our plan. My secretary will look after her. She has +been often here with me lately, and has things of her own to do. But I +ought not to have taken her to-night. Lady Kent would never have forgiven +me if she had been hurt. Oh! it was all a mistake--all a great mistake! I +suppose I imagined--that is one's folly--that I could really do some +good--make an effect." + +She bit her lip, and the furrow reappeared in the white brow. + +Tressady felt by sympathy that her heart was all sore, her moral being +shaken and vibrating. After these long months of labour and sympathy and +emotion, the sudden touch of personal brutality had unnerved her. + +Mere longing to comfort, to "make-up," overcame him. + +"You wouldn't talk of mistake--of failing--if you knew how to be near +you, to listen to you, to see you, touches and illuminates some of us!" + +His cheek burnt, but he turned a manly, eager look upon her. + +Her cheek, too, flushed, and he thought he saw her bosom heave. + +"Oh no!--no!" she cried. "How _impossible!_--when one feels oneself so +helpless, so clumsy, so useless. Why couldn't I do better? But perhaps it +is as well. It all prepares one--braces one--against--" + +She paused and leaned forward, looking out at the maze of figures and +carriages on the Mansion House crossing, her tight-pressed lips trembling +against her will. + +"Against the last inevitable disappointment." That, no doubt, was what +she meant. + +"If you only understood how loth some of us are to differ from you," he +cried,--"how hard it seems to have to press another view,--to be +already pledged." + +"Oh yes!--_please_--I know that you are pledged," she said, in +hasty distress, her delicacy shrinking as before from the direct +personal argument. + +They were silent a little. Tressady looked out at the houses in Queen +Victoria Street, at the lamplit summer night, grudging the progress of +the cab, the approach of the river, of the Embankment, where there would +be less traffic to bar their way--clinging to the minutes as they passed. + +"Oh! how could they put up that woman?" she said presently, her eyes +still shut, her hand shaking, as it rested on the door. "How _could_ +they? It is the thought of women like that--the hundreds and thousands of +them--that goads one on. A clergyman who knows the East End well said to +me the other day, 'The difference between now and twenty years ago is +that the women work much more, the men less.' I can never get away from +the thought of the women! Their lives come to seem to me the mere refuse, +the rags and shreds, that are thrown every day into the mill and ground +to nothing--without a thought--without a word of pity, an hour of +happiness! Cancer--three children left out of nine--and barely forty, +though she looked sixty! They tell me she may live eighteen months. Then, +when the parish has buried her, the man has only to hold up his finger to +find someone else to use up in the same way. And she is just one of +thousands." + +"I can only reply by the old, stale question," said Tressady, sturdily. +"Did we make the mill? Can we stop its grinding? And if not, is it fair +even to the race that has something to gain from courage and gaiety--is +it _reasonable_ to take all our own poor little joy and drench it in +this horrible pain of sympathy, as you do! But we have said all these +things before." + +He bent over to her, smiling. But she did not look up. And he saw a tear +which her weakness, born of shock and fatigue, could not restrain, steal +from the lashes on the cheek. Then he added, still leaning towards her: + +"Only, what I never have said--I think--is what is true to-night. At last +you have made one person feel--if that matters anything!--the things you +feel. I don't know that I am particularly grateful to you! And, +practically, we may be as far apart as ever. But I was without a sense +when I went into this game of politics; and now--" + +His heart beat. What would he not have said, mad youth!--within the +limits imposed by her nature and his own dread--to make her look at him, +to soften this preposterous sadness! + +But it needed no more. She opened her eyes, and looked at him with a wild +sweetness and gratitude which dazzled him, and struck his memory with the +thought of the Southern, romantic strain in her. + +"You are very kind and comforting!" she said; "but then, from the +first--somehow--I knew you were a friend to us. One felt it--through all +difference." + +The little sentences were steeped in emotion--emotion springing from +many sources, fed by a score of collateral thoughts and memories--with +which Tressady had, in truth, nothing to do. Yet the young man gulped +inwardly. She had been a tremulous woman till the words were said. +Now--strange!--through her very gentleness and gratefulness, a barrier +had risen between them. Something stern and quick told him this was +the very utmost of what she could ever say to him--the farthest limit +of it all. + +They passed under Charing Cross railway bridge. Beside them, as they +emerged, the moon shone out above the darks and silvers of the river, and +in front, the towers of Westminster rose purplish grey against a west +still golden. + +"How were things going in the House this afternoon?" she asked, looking +at the towers. "Oh! I forgot. You see, the clock says close on eleven. +Please let me drop you here. I can manage by myself quite well." + +He protested, and she yielded, with a patient kindness that made him +sore. Then he gave his account, and they talked a little of Monday's +division and of the next critical votes in Committee--each of them, so he +felt in his exaltation, a blow dealt to her--that he must help to deal. +Yet there was a fascination in the topic. Neither could get away from it. + +Presently, Pall Mall being very full of traffic, they had to wait a +moment at the corner of the street that turns into St. James's Square. In +the pause Tressady caught sight of a man on the pavement. The man smiled, +looked astonished, and took off his hat. Lady Maxwell bowed coldly, and +immediately looked away. Tressady recognised Harding Watton. But neither +he nor she mentioned his name. + +In another minute he had seen her vanish within the doors of her own +house. Her hand had rested gently, willingly, in his. + +"I am so grateful!" she had said; "so will Maxwell be. We shall meet +soon, and laugh over our troubles!" + +And then she was gone, and he was left standing a moment, bewildered. + +Eleven? What had he to do? + +Then he remembered his pair, and that he had promised to call for Letty +at a certain house, and take her on to a late ball. The evening, in fact, +instead of ending, was just beginning. He could have laughed, as he got +back into his cab. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile Marcella had sped through the outer hall into the inner, where +one solitary light, still burning, made a rather desolate dark-in-light +through the broad, pillared space. A door opened at the farther side. + +"Aldous!" + +"You!" + +He came out, and she flew to him. He felt her trembling as she touched +him. In ten words she told him something of what had happened. Then +he saw the bandage round her temple. His countenance fell. She knew +that he turned white, and loved him for it. How few things had power +to move him so! + +He wanted to lead her back into his library, where he was at work. But +she resisted. + +"Let me go up to Annette," she said. "The little wound--oh! it is not +much, I _know_ it is not much--ought to be properly seen to. We will do +it between us in a moment. Then come--I will send her down for you. I +want to tell you." + +But in her heart of hearts she was just a little afraid of telling him. +What if an exaggerated version should get into the papers--if it should +really do him harm--at this critical moment! She was always tormented by +this dread, a dread born of long-past indiscretions and mistakes. + +He acquiesced, but first he insisted on half leading, half carrying her +upstairs; and she permitted it, delighting in his strong arm. + +Half an hour later she sent for him. The maid found him pacing up and +down the hall, waiting. + +When he entered her room she was lying on her sofa in a white wrapper of +some silky stuff. The black lace had been drawn again round her head, and +he saw nothing but a very pale face and her eager, timid eyes--timid for +no one in the world but him. As he caught sight of her, she produced in +him that exquisite mingled impression of grace, passion, self-yielding, +which in all its infinite variations and repetitions made up for him the +constant poem of her beauty. But though she knew it, she glanced at him +anxiously as he approached her. It had been to her a kind of luxury of +feeling, in the few moments that she had been waiting for him, to cherish +a little fear of him--of his displeasure. + +"Now describe exactly what you have been doing," he said, sitting down by +her with a troubled face and taking her hand, as soon as he had assured +himself that the cut was slight and would leave no scar. + +She told her tale, and was thrilled to see that he frowned. She laid her +hand on his shoulder. + +"It is the first public thing I have done without consulting you. I meant +to have asked you yesterday, but we were both so busy. The meeting was +got up rather hurriedly, and they pressed me to speak, after all the +arrangements were made." + +"We are both of us too busy," he said, rather sadly; "we glance, and nod, +and bustle by--" + +He did not finish the quotation, but she could. Her eyes scanned his +face. "Do you think I ought to have avoided such a thing at such a time? +Will it do harm?" + +His brow cleared. He considered the matter. + +"I think you may expect some of the newspapers to make a good deal of +it," he said, smiling. + +And, in fact, his own inherited tastes and instincts were all chafed by +her story. His wife--the wife of a Cabinet Minister--pleading for her +husband's Bill, or, as the enemy might say, for his political existence, +with an East End meeting, and incidentally with the whole +public--exposing herself, in a time of agitation, to the rowdyism and +the stone-throwing that wait on such things! The notion set the +fastidious old-world temper of the man all on edge. But he would never +have dreamed of arguing the matter so with her. A sort of high chivalry +forbade it. In marrying her he had not made a single condition--would +have suffered tortures rather than lay the smallest fetter upon her. In +consequence, he had been often thought a weak, uxorious person. Maxwell +knew that he was merely consistent. No sane man lays his heart at the +feet of a Marcella without counting the cost. + +She did not answer his last remark. But he saw that she was wistful and +uneasy, and presently she laid her fingers lightly on his. + +"Tell me if I am too much away from you--too much occupied with +other people." + +He sighed,--the slightest sigh,--but she winced. "I had just an hour +before dinner," he said; "you were not here, and the house seemed very +empty. I would have come down to fetch you, but there were some important +papers to read before to-morrow." A Cabinet meeting was fixed, as she +knew, for the following day. "Then, I have been making Saunders draw up a +statement for the newspapers in answer to Watton's last attack, and it +would have been a help to talk to you before we sent it off. Above all, +if I had known of the meeting I should have begged you not to go. I ought +to have warned you yesterday, for I knew that there was some ugly +agitation developing down there. But I never thought of you as likely to +face a mob. Will you please reflect"--he pressed her hand almost roughly +against his lips--"that if that stone had been a little heavier, and +flung a little straighter--" + +He paused. A dew came to her eyes, a happy glow to her cheek. As for her, +she was grateful to the stone that had raised such heart-beats. + +Perhaps some instinct told him not to please her in this way too much, +for he rose and walked away a moment. + +"There! don't let's think of it, or I shall turn tyrant after all, and +plunge into 'shalls' and 'sha'n'ts'! You _know_ you carry two lives, and +all the plans that either of us care about, in your hand. You say that +Tressady brought you home?" + +He turned and looked at her. + +"Yes. Edward Watton brought him to the meeting." + +"But he has been down to see you there several times before, as well as +coming here?" + +"Oh yes! almost every week since we met at Castle Luton." + +"It is curious," said Maxwell, thoughtfully; "for he will certainly vote +steadily with Fontenoy all through. His election speeches pledged him +head over ears." + +"Oh! of course he will vote," said Marcella, moving a little uneasily; +"but one cannot help trying to modify his way of looking at things. And +his tone _is_ changed." + +Maxwell stood at the foot of her sofa, considering, a host of perplexed +and unwelcome notions flitting across his mind. In spite of his idealist +absorption in his work, his political aims, and the one love of his +life, he had the training of a man of the world, and could summon the +shrewdness of one when he pleased. He had liked this young Tressady, for +the first time, at Castle Luton, and had seen him fall under Marcella's +charm with some amusement. But this haunting of their camp in the East +End, at such a marked and critical moment, was strange, to say the least +of it. It must point, one would think, to some sudden and remarkable +strength of personal influence. + +Had she any real consciousness of the power she wielded? Once or twice, +in the years since they had been married, Maxwell had watched this spell +of his wife's at work, and had known a moment of trouble. "If I were the +fellow she had talked and walked with so," he had once said to himself, +"I must have fallen in love with her had she been twenty times another +man's wife!" Yet no harm had happened; he had only reproached himself for +a gross mind without daring to breathe a word to her. + +And he dared not now. Besides, how absurd! The young man was just +married, and, to Maxwell's absent, incurious eyes, the bride had seemed a +lively, pretty little person enough. No doubt it was the nervous strain +of his political life that made such fancies possible to him. Let him not +cumber her ears with them! + +Then gradually, as he stood at her feet, the sight of her, breathing +weakness, submission, loveliness, her eyes raised to his, banished every +other thought from his happy heart, and drew him like a magnet. + +Meanwhile she began to smile. He knelt down beside her, and she put both +hands on his shoulders. + +"Dear!" she said, half laughing and half crying, "I did speak so badly; +you would have been ashamed of me. I couldn't hold the meeting. I didn't +persuade a soul. Lord Fontenoy's ladies had it all their own way. And +first I was dreadfully sorry I couldn't do such a thing decently--sorry +because of one's vanity, and sorry because I couldn't help you. And now I +think I'm rather glad." + +"Are you?" said Maxwell, drily; "as for me, I'm enchanted! There!--so +much penalty you _shall_ have." + +She pressed his lips with her hand. + +"Don't spoil my pretty speech. I am only glad because--because public +life and public success make one stand separate--alone. I have gone +far enough to know how it might be. A new passion would come in, and +creep through one like a poison. I should win you votes--and our +hearts would burn dry! There! take me--scold me--despise me. I am a +poor thing--but yours!" + +With such a humbleness might Diana have wooed her shepherd, stooping her +goddess head to him on the Latmian steep. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +George went back to the House, and stayed for half an hour or so, +listening to a fine speech from a member of a former Liberal Cabinet. The +speech was one more sign of the new cleavage of parties that was being +everywhere brought about by the pressure of the new Collectivism. + +"We always knew," said the speaker, referring to a Ministry in which +he had served seven years before, "that we should be fighting +Socialism in good earnest before many years were over; and we knew, +too, that we should be fighting it as put forward by a Conservative +Government. The hands are the hands of the English Tory, the voice is +the voice of Karl Marx." + +The Socialists sent forth mocking cheers, while the Government benches +sat silent. The rank-and-file of the Conservative party already hated the +Bill. The second reading must go through. But if only some rearrangement +were possible without rushing the country into the arms of +revolutionists--if it were only conceivable that Fontenoy, or even the +old Liberal gang, should form a Government, and win the country, the +Committee stage would probably not trouble the House long. + +Meanwhile in the smoking-rooms and lobbies the uncertainties of the +coming division kept up an endless hum of gossip and conjecture. Tressady +wandered about it all like a ghost, indifferent and preoccupied, careful +above all to avoid any more talk with Fontenoy. While he was in the House +itself he stood at the door or sat in the cross-benches, so as to keep a +space between him and his leader. + +A little before twelve he drove home, dressed hastily, and went off to a +house in Berkeley Square, where he was to meet Letty. He found her +waiting for him, a little inclined to be reproachful, and eager for her +ball. As they drove towards Queen's Gate she chattered to him of her +evening, and of the people and dresses she had seen. + +"And, you foolish boy!" she broke out, laughing, and tapping him on the +hand with her fan--"you looked so glum this morning when I couldn't go +and see Lady Tressady--and--what do you think? Why, she has been at a +party to-night--at a party, my dear!--and _dressed_! Mrs. Willy Smith +told me she had seen her at the Webers'." + +"I daresay," said George, rather shortly; "all the same, this morning she +was very unwell." + +Letty shrugged her shoulders, but she did not want to be disagreeable and +argue the point. She was much pleased with her dress--with the last +glance of herself that she had caught in the cloak-room looking-glass +before leaving Berkeley Square--and, finally, with this well-set-up, +well-dressed husband beside her. She glanced at him every now and then as +she put on a fresh pair of gloves. He had been very much absorbed in this +tiresome Parliament lately, and she thought herself a very good and +forbearing wife not to make more fuss. Nor had she made any fuss about +his going down to see Lady Maxwell at the East End. It did not seem to +have made the smallest difference to his opinions. + +The thought of Lady Maxwell brought a laugh to her lips. + +"Oh! do you know, Harding was so amusing about the Maxwells to-day!" she +said, turning to Tressady in her most good-humoured and confiding mood. +"He says people are getting so tired of her,--of her meddling, and her +preaching, and all the rest of it,--and that everybody thinks him so +absurd not to put a stop to it. And Harding says that it doesn't succeed +even--that Englishmen will never stand petticoat government. It's all +very well--they have to stand it in some forms!" + +And, stretching her slim neck, she turned and gave her husband a tiny +flying kiss on the cheek. Mechanically grateful, George took her hand in +his, but he did not make her the pretty speech she expected. Just before +she spoke he was about to tell her of his evening--of the meeting, and of +his drive home with Lady Maxwell. He had been far too proud hitherto, and +far too confident in himself, to make any secret to Letty of what he did. +And, luckily, she had raised no difficulties. In truth, she had been too +well provided with amusements and flatteries of her own since their +return from the country to leave her time or opportunities for jealousy. +Perhaps, secretly, the young husband would have been more flattered if +she had been more exacting. + +But as she quoted Harding something stiffened in him. Later, after the +ball, when they were alone, he would tell her--he would try and make her +understand what sort of a woman Marcella Maxwell was. In his trouble of +mind a confused plan crossed his thoughts of trying to induce Lady +Maxwell to make friends with Letty. But a touch of that charm, that +poetry!--he asked no more. + +He glanced at his wife. She looked pretty and young as she sat beside +him, lost in a pleasant pondering of social successes. But he wondered, +uncomfortably, why she must use such a thickness of powder on her still +unspoilt complexion; and her dress seemed to him fantastic, and not +over-modest. He had begun to have the strangest feeling about their +relation, as though he possessed a double personality, and were looking +on at himself and her, wondering how it would end. It was characteristic, +perhaps, of his half-developed moral life that his sense of ordinary +husbandly responsibility towards her was not strong. He always thought of +her as he thought of himself--as a perfectly free agent, dealing with him +and their common life on equal terms. + +The house to which they were going belonged to very wealthy people, and +Letty was looking forward feverishly to the cotillon. + +"They say, at the last dance they gave, the cotillon gifts cost eight +hundred pounds," she said gleefully, to George. "They always do things +extraordinarily well." + +No doubt it was the prospect of the cotillon that had brought such a +throng together. The night was stifling; the stairs and the supper-room +were filled with a struggling mob; and George spent an hour of purgatory +wondering at the gaieties of his class. + +He had barely more than two glimpses of Letty after they had fought their +way into the room. On the first occasion, by stretching himself to his +full height so as to look over the intervening crowd, he saw her seated +in a chair of state, a mirror in one hand and a lace handkerchief in the +other. Young men were being brought up behind her to look into the glass +over her shoulder, and she was merrily brushing their images away. +Presently a tall, dark fellow advanced, with jet-black moustache and red +cheeks. Letty kept her handkerchief suspended a moment over the +reflection in the glass. George could see the corners of her lips +twitching with amusement. Then she quietly handed the mirror to the +leader of the cotillon, rose, gathered up her white skirt a little, the +music struck up joyously, and she and Lord Cathedine spun round the room +together, followed by the rest of the dancers. + +George meanwhile found few people to talk to. He danced a few dances, +mostly with young girls in the white frocks of their first season--a +species of partner for which, as a rule, he had no affinity at all. But +on the whole he passed the time leaning against the wall in a corner, +lost in a reverie which was a vague compound of this and that, there and +here; of the Manx Road schoolroom, its odours and heats, its pale, +uncleanly crowd absorbed in the things of daily bread, with these gay, +scented rooms, and this extravagance of decoration, that made even +flowers a vulgarity, with these costly cotillon gifts--pins, bracelets, +rings--that were being handed round and wondered over by people who had +already more of such things than they could wear; of these rustling +women, in their silks and diamonds, with that gaunt stooping image of the +loafer's wife, smiling her queer defiance at pain and fate, and letting +meddling "lidies" know that without sixteen hours' "settin" she could not +keep her husband and children alive. Stale commonplace, that all the +world knows by heart!--the squalor of the _pauperum tabernae_ dimming the +glory of the _regum turres_. Yet there are only a few men and women in +each generation who really pass into the eclipsing shadow of it. Others +talk--_they_ feel and struggle. There were many elements in Tressady's +nature that might seem destined to force him into their company. Yet +hitherto he had resolutely escaped his destiny--and enjoyed his life. + +About supper-time he found himself near Lady Cathedine, a thin-faced, +silent creature, whose eyes suddenly attracted him. He took her down to +supper, and spent an exceedingly dull time. She had the air of one pining +to talk, to confide herself. Yet in practice it was apparently impossible +for her to do it. She fell back into monosyllables or gentle banalities; +and George noticed that she was always restlessly conscious of the +movements in the room--who came in, who went out--and throwing little +frightened glances towards the door. + +He was glad indeed when his task was over. On their way to the +drawing-rooms they passed a broad landing, which on one side led out to a +balcony, and had been made into a decorated bower for sitting-out. At +the farther end he saw Letty sitting beside Harding Watton. Letty was +looking straight before her, with a flushed and rather frowning face. +Harding was talking to her, and, to judge from his laughing manner, was +amusing himself, if not her. + +George duly found Lady Cathedine a seat, and returned himself to ask +Letty whether it was not time to go. He found, however, that she had been +carried off by another partner, and could only resign himself to a fresh +twenty minutes of boredom. He leant, yawning, against the wall, feeling +the evening interminable. + +Then a Harrow and Oxford acquaintance came up to him, and they chatted +for a time behind a stand of flowers that stood between them and one of +the doorways to the ballroom. At the end of the dance George saw Lady +Cathedine hurrying up to this door with the quick, furtive step that was +characteristic of her. She passed on the other side of the flowers, and +George heard her say to someone just inside the room: + +"Robert, the carriage has come!" + +A pause; then a thick voice said, in an emphatic undertone: + +"Damn the carriage!--go away!" + +"But, Robert, you know we _promised_ to look in at Lady Tuam's on the +way home." + +The thick voice dropped a note lower. + +"Damn Lady Tuam! I shall come when it suits me." + +Lady Cathedine fell back, and George saw her cross the landing, and drop +into a chair beside an old general, who was snoozing in a peaceful corner +till his daughters should see fit to take him home. The old general took +no notice of her, and she sat there, playing with her fan, her rather +prominent grey eyes staring out of her white face. + +Both George and his friend, as it happened, had heard the conversation. +The friend raised his eyebrows in disgust. + +"What a brute that fellow is! They have been married four months. +However, she was amply warned." + +"Who was she?" + +"The daughter of old Wickens, the banker. He married her for her money, +and lives upon it religiously. By now, I should think, he has dragged her +through every torture that marriage admits of." + +"So soon?" said George, drily. + +"Well," said the friend, laughing, "no doubt it admits of a great many." + +"I am ready to go home," said a voice at Tressady's elbow. + +Something in the intonation surprised him, and he turned quickly. + +"By all means," he said, throwing an astonished look at his wife, who had +come up to him on Lord Cathedine's arm. "I will go and look for the +carriage." + +What was the matter, he asked himself as he ran downstairs--what was the +meaning of Letty's manner and expression? + +But by the time he had sent for the carriage the answer had suggested +itself. No doubt Harding Watton had given Letty news of that hansom in +Pall Mall, and no doubt, also--He shrugged his shoulders in annoyance. +The notion of having to explain and excuse himself was particularly +unpalatable. What a fool he had been not to tell Letty of his East End +adventure on their way to Queen's Gate. + +He was standing in a little crowd at the foot of the stairs when Letty +swept past him in search of her wraps. He smiled at her, but she held her +head erect as though she did not see him. + +So there was to be a scene. George felt the rise of a certain inner +excitement. Perhaps it was as well. There were a good many things he +wanted to say. + +At the same time, the Cathedine episode had filled him with a new disgust +for the violences and brutalities to which the very intimacy of the +marriage relation may lead. If a scene there was to be, he meant to be +more or less frank, and at the same time to keep both himself and her +within bounds. + + * * * * * + +"You can't deny that you made a secret of it from me," cried Letty, +angrily. "I asked you what had been doing in the House, and you never let +me suspect that you had been anywhere else the whole evening." + +"I daresay," said George, quietly. "But I never meant to make any +mystery. Something you said about Lady Maxwell put me off telling +you--then. I thought I would wait till we got home." + +They were in George's study--the usual back-room on the ground-floor, +which George could not find time to make comfortable, while Letty had +never turned her attention to it. Tressady was leaning against the +mantelpiece. He had turned up a solitary electric light, and in the cold +glare of it Letty was sitting opposite to him, angrily upright. The ugly +light had effaced the half-tones of the face and deepened the lines of +it, while it had taken all the grace from her extravagant dress and +tumbled flowers. She seemed to have lost her prettiness. + +"Something I said about Lady Maxwell?" she repeated scornfully. "Why +shouldn't I say what I like about Lady Maxwell? What does she matter +either to you or to me that I should not laugh at her if I please? +Everybody laughs at her." + +"I don't think so," said Tressady, quietly. "I have seen her to-night in +a curious and touching scene--in a meeting of very poor people. She tried +to make a speech, by the way, and spoke badly. She did not carry the +meeting with her, and towards the end it got noisy. As we came out she +was struck with a stone, and I got a hansom for her, and drove her home +to St. James's Square. We were just turning into the Square when Harding +saw us. I happened to be with her in the crowd when the stone hit her. +What do you suppose I could do but bring her home?" + +"Why did you go? and why didn't you tell me at once?" + +"Why did I go?" Tressady hesitated, then looked down upon his wife. +"Well!--I suppose I went because Lady Maxwell is very interesting to +watch--because she is sympathetic and generous, and it stirs one's mind +to talk to her." + +"Not at all!" cried Letty, passionately. "You went because she is +handsome--because she is just a superior kind of flirt. She is always +making women anxious about their husbands under this pretence of +politics. Heaps of women hate her, and are afraid of her." + +She was very white, and could hardly save herself from the tears of +excitement. Yet what was working in her was not so much Harding Watton's +story as this new and strange manner of her husband's. She had sat +haughtily silent in the carriage on their way home, fully expecting him +to question her--to explain, entreat, excuse himself, as he had generally +been ready to do whenever she chose to make a quarrel. But he, too, said +nothing, and she could not make up her mind how to begin. Then, as soon +as they were shut into his room her anger had broken out, and he had not +yet begun to caress and appease her. Her surprise had brought with it a +kind of shock. What was the matter? Why was she not mistress as usual? + +As she made her remark about Marcella, Tressady smiled a little, and +played with a cigarette he had taken up. + +"Whom do you mean?" he asked her. "One often hears these things said of +her in the vague, and never with any details. I myself don't believe it. +Harding, of course, believes anything to her disadvantage." + +Letty hesitated; then, remembering all she could of Harding's ill-natured +gossip, she flung out some names, exaggerating and inventing freely. The +emphasis with which she spoke reddened all the small face again--made it +hot and common. + +Tressady raised his shoulders as she came to the end of her tirade. + +"Well, you know I don't believe all that--and I don't think Harding +believes it. Lady Maxwell, as you once said yourself, is not, I suppose, +a woman's woman. She gets on better, no doubt, with men than with women. +These men you speak of are all personal and party friends. They support +Maxwell, and they like her. But if anybody is jealous, I should think +they might remember that there is safety in numbers." + +"Oh, that's all very well! But she wants _power_, and she doesn't care a +rap how she gets it. She is a dangerous, intriguing woman--and she just +trades upon her beauty!" + +Tressady, who had been leaning with his face averted from her, turned +round with sparkling eyes. + +"You foolish child!" he said slowly--"you foolish child!" + +Her lips twitched. She put out a shaking hand to her cloak, that had +fallen from her arms. + +"Oh! very well. I sha'n't stay here to be talked to like that, so +good-night." + +He took no notice. He walked up to her and put his hands on her +shoulders. + +"Don't you know what it is"--he spoke with a curious imperiousness--"that +protects any woman--or any man either for the matter of that--from +Marcella Maxwell's beauty? Don't you know that she adores her husband?" + +"That's a pose, of course, like everything else," cried Letty, trying to +move herself away; "you once said it was." + +"Before I knew her. It's not a pose--it's the secret of her whole life." + +He walked back to the mantelpiece, conscious of a sudden rise of inward +bitterness. + +"Well, I shall go to bed," said Letty, again half rising. "You might, I +think, have had the kindness and the good taste to say you were sorry I +should have the humiliation of finding out where my husband spends his +evenings, from Harding Watton!" + +Tressady was stung. + +"When have I ever concealed what I did from you?" he asked her hotly. + +Letty, who was standing stiff and scornful, tossed her head +without speaking. + +"That means," said Tressady after a pause, "that you don't take my word +for it--that you suspect me of deceiving you before to-night?" + +Letty still said nothing. His eyes flashed. Then a pang of conscience +smote him. He took up his cigarette again with a laugh. + +"I think we are both a pair of babies," he said, as he pretended to look +for matches. "You know very well that you don't really think I tell you +mean lies. And let me assure you, my dear child, that fate did not mean +Lady Maxwell to have lovers--and that she never will have them. But when +that's said there's something else to say." + +He went up to her again, and touched her arm. + +"You and I couldn't have this kind of scene, Letty, could we, if +everything was all right?" + +Her breast rose and fell hurriedly. + +"Oh! I supposed you would want to retaliate--to complain on your side!" + +"Yes," he said deliberately, "I think I do want to complain. Why is it +that--I began to like going down to see Lady Maxwell--why did I like +talking to her at Castle Luton? Well! of course it's pleasant to be with +a beautiful person--I don't deny that in the least. But she might have +been as beautiful as an angel, and I mightn't have cared twopence about +her. She has something much less common than beauty. It's very simple, +too--I suppose it's only _sympathy_--just that. Everybody feels the same. +When you talk to her she seems to care about it; she throws her mind into +yours. And there's a charm about it--there's no doubt of that." + +He had begun his little speech meaning to be perfectly frank and +honest--to appeal to her better nature and his own. But something +stopped him abruptly, perhaps the sudden perception that he was after +playing the hypocrite--perhaps the consciousness that he was only making +matters worse. + +"It's a pity you didn't say all these things before," she said, with +a hard laugh, "instead of denouncing the political woman, as you +used to do." + +He sat down on the arm of the chair beside her, balancing lightly, with +his hands in his pockets. + +"Did I denounce the political woman? Well, the Lord knows I'm not in love +with her now! It isn't politics, my dear, that are attaching--it's the +kind of human being. Ah! well, don't let's talk of it. Let's go back to +that point of sympathy. There's more in it than I used to think. Suppose, +for instance, you were to try and take a little more interest in my +political work than you do? Suppose you were to try and see money matters +from my point of view, instead of driving us"--he paused a moment, then +went on coolly, lifting his thin, long-chinned face to her as she stood +quivering beside him--"driving us into expenses that will, sooner or +later, be the ruin of us--that rob us, too, of self-respect. Suppose you +were to take a little more account, also, of my taste in people? I am +afraid I don't like Harding, though he is your cousin, and I don't +certainly see why he should furnish our drawing-rooms and empty our purse +for us as he has been doing. Then, as to Lord Cathedine, I'm really not +over-particular, but when I hear that fellow's in the house, my impulse +is to catch the nearest hansom and drive away from it. I heard him speak +to his wife to-night in a way for which he ought to be kicked down Oxford +Street--and, in general, I should say that it takes the shine off a +person to be much seen with Cathedine." + +The calm attitude--the voice, just a shade interrogative, exasperated +Letty still more. She, too, sat down, her cheeks flaming. + +"I am _extremely_ obliged to you! You really couldn't have been more +frank. I am sorry that _nothing_ I do pleases you. You must be quite +sorry by now you married me--but really I didn't force you! Why should I +give up my friends? You know very well you won't give up Lady Maxwell." + +She looked at him keenly, her little foot beating the ground. +George started. + +"But what is there to give up?" he cried. "Come and see her +yourself--come with me, and make friends with her. You would be +quite welcome." + +But as he spoke he knew that he was talking absurdly, and that Letty had +reason for her laugh. + +"Thank you! Lady Maxwell made it _quite_ plain to me at Castle Luton that +she didn't want _my_ acquaintance. I certainly sha'n't force myself upon +her any more. But if you'll give up going to see her--well, perhaps I'll +see what can be done to meet your wishes; though, of course, I think all +you say about Harding and Lord Cathedine is just unreasonable prejudice!" + +George was silent. His mind was torn between the pricks of a conscience +that told him Letty had in truth, as far as he was concerned, a far more +real grievance than she imagined, and a passionate intellectual contempt +for the person who could even distantly imagine that Marcella Maxwell +belonged to the same category as other women, and was to be won by the +same arts as they. At last he broke out impatiently: + +"I cannot possibly show discourtesy to one who has been nothing but +kindness to me, as she is to scores of others--to old friends like Edward +Watton, or new ones like--" + +"She wants your vote, of course!" threw in Letty, with an excited laugh. +"_Either_ she is a flirt--_or_ she wants your vote. Why should she take +so much notice of you? She isn't your side--she wants to get hold of +you--and it makes you ridiculous. People just laugh at you and her!" She +turned upon him passionately. A little more, and the wish to say the +wounding, venomous thing would have grown like a madness upon her. But +George kept his self-possession. + +"Well, they may laugh," he said, with a strong effort to speak +good-humouredly. "But politics aren't managed like that, as you and they +will find out. Votes are not so simple as they sound." + +He got up and walked away from her as he spoke. As usual, his mood was +beginning to cool. He saw no way out. They must both accept the _status +quo_. No radical change was possible. It is character that makes +circumstance, and character is inexorable. + +"Well, of course I didn't altogether believe that you would really be +such a fool, and wreck all your prospects!" said Letty, violently, her +feverish eyes intent the while on her husband and on the thin fingers +once more busied with the cigarette. "There now! I think we have had +enough of this! It doesn't seem to have led to much, does it?" + +"No," said George, coolly; "but perhaps we shall come to see more alike +in time. I don't want to tyrannise--only to show you what I think. Shall +I carry up your cloak for you?" + +He approached her punctiliously. Letty gathered her wraps upon her arm in +a disdainful silence, warding him off with a gesture. As he opened the +door for her she turned upon him: + +"You talk of my extravagance, but you never seem to consider what you +might do to make up to me for the burden of being your mother's relation! +You expect me to put up with the annoyance and ridicule of belonging to +her--and to let her spend all your money besides. I give you fair warning +that I sha'n't do it! I shall try and spend it on my side, that she +sha'n't get it." + +She was perfectly conscious that she was behaving like a vixenish child, +but she could not restrain herself. This strange new sense that she could +neither bend nor conquer him was becoming more than she could bear. + +George looked at her, half inclined to shake her first, and then insist +on making friends. He was conscious that he could probably assert himself +with success if he tried. But the impulse failed him. He merely said, +without any apparent temper, "Then I shall have to see if I can invent +some way of protecting both myself and you." + +She flung through the door, and almost ran through the long passage to +the stairs, in a sobbing excitement. A sudden thought struck George as he +stood looking after her. He pursued her, caught her at the foot of the +stairs, and held her arm strongly. + +"Letty! I wasn't to tell you, but I choose to break my promise. Don't be +too cruel, my dear, or too angry. My mother is dying!" + +She scanned him deliberately, the flushed face--the signs of strongly +felt yet strongly suppressed emotion. The momentary consciousness flew +through her that he was at bottom a very human, impressionable +creature--that if she could but have broken down and thrown herself on +his neck, this miserable evening might open for both of them a new way. +But her white-heat of passion was too strong. She pushed him away. + +"She made you believe that this morning? Then I'd better hurry up at +Ferth; for of course it only means that there will be a fresh list of +debts directly!" + +He let her go, and she heard him walk quickly back to his study and +shut the door. She stared after him triumphantly for a moment, then +rushed upstairs. + +In her room her maid was waiting for her. Grier's sallow face and gloomy +eyes showed considerable annoyance at being kept up so late. But she said +nothing, and Letty, who in general was only too ready to admit the woman +to a vulgar familiarity, for once held her tongue. Her state of +excitement and exhaustion, however, was evident, and Grier bestowed many +furtive, examining glances upon her mistress in the course of the +undressing. She thought she had heard "them" quarrelling on the stairs. +What a pity she had been too tired and cross to listen! + +Of course they must come to quarrelling! Grier's sympathies were +tolerably impartial. She had no affection for her mistress, and she +cordially disliked Sir George, knowing perfectly well that he thought ill +of her. But she had a good place, and meant to keep it if she could. To +which end she had done her best to strengthen a mean hold on Letty. Now, +as she was brushing out Letty's brown hair, and silently putting two and +two together the while, an idea occurred to her which pleased her. + +After Grier had left her, Letty could not make up her mind to go to bed. +She was still pacing up and down the room in her dressing-gown, when she +heard a knock--Grier's knock. + +"Come in!" + +"Please, my lady," said Grier, appearing with something in her hand, +"doesn't this belong to your photograph box? I found it on the floor in +Sir George's dressing-room this morning." + +Letty hastily took it from her, and, in spite of an instant effort to +control herself, the red flushed again into a cheek that had been very +pale when Grier came in. + +"Where did you find it?" + +"It had tumbled off Sir George's table, I think," said Grier, with +elaborate innocence; "someone must have took it out of your photo-box." + +"Thank you," said Letty, shortly. "You may go, Grier." + +The maid went, and Letty was left standing with the photograph in +her hands. + +Two days before Tressady had been in Edward Watton's room in St. +James's Street, and had seen this amateur photograph of Marcella +Maxwell and her boy on Watton's table. The poetic charm of it had +struck him so forcibly that he had calmly put it in his pocket, telling +the protesting owner that he in his _role_ of great friend could easily +procure another, and must beware of a grudging spirit. Watton had +laughed and submitted, and Tressady had carried off the picture, +honestly meaning to present it to Letty for a collection of +contemporary "beauties" she had just begun to make. + +Later in the day, as he was taking off his coat in the evening to dress +for dinner, Tressady drew out the photograph. A sudden instinct, which he +himself could hardly have explained, made him delay handing it over to +Letty. He thrust it into the top tray of his collar-and-shirt wardrobe. +Two days later the butler, coming in a hurry before breakfast to put out +his master's clothes, shook the photograph out of the folds of the shirt, +where it had hidden itself, without noticing what he had done. The +picture slipped between the wardrobe and the wall of the recess in which +it stood, was discovered later in the day by the housemaid, and given to +Lady Tressady's maid. + +Letty laid the photograph down on the dressing-table, and stood leaning +upon her hands, looking at it. Marcella was sitting under one of the +cedars of Maxwell Court with her boy beside her. A fine corner of the old +house made a background, and the photographer had so dealt with his +picture as to make it a whole, full of significance, and culminating in +the two faces--the sensitive, speaking beauty of the mother, the sturdy +strength of the child. Marcella had never looked more wistful, more +attaching. It was the expression of a woman at rest, in the golden moment +of her life, yet conscious--as all happiness is conscious--of the common +human doom that nothing escapes. Meanwhile the fine, lightly furrowed +brow above the eyes spoke action and power; so did the strong waves of +black hair blown back by the breeze. A noble, strenuous creature, yet +quivering through and through with the simplest, most human instincts. So +one must needs read her, as one looked from the eyes to the eager clasp +of the arm about the boy. + +Letty studied it, as though she would pierce and stab it with looking. +Then, with a sudden wild movement, she took up the picture, and tore it +into twenty pieces. The pieces she left strewn on the floor, so that they +must necessarily strike the eye of anyone coming into the room. And in a +few more minutes she was in bed, lying still and wakeful, with her face +turned away from the door. + +About an hour afterwards there was a gentle knock at her door. She made +no answer, and Tressady came in. He stepped softly, thinking she was +asleep, and presently she heard him stop, with a stifled exclamation. She +made no sound, but from his movement she guessed that he was picking up +the litter on the floor. Then she heard it thrown into the basket under +her writing-table, and she waited, holding her breath. + +Tressady walked to a far window, drew a curtain back softly, and stood +looking out at the starlight over the deserted street. Once, finding him +so still, she ventured a hasty glance at him over the edge of the sheet. +But she could see nothing. And after a time he turned and came to his +accustomed place beside her. In twenty minutes at latest, she knew, much +to her chagrin, that he was asleep. + +She herself had no sleep. She was stung to wakefulness by that recurrent +sense of the irrevocable which makes us say to ourselves in wonder, "How +can it have happened? Two hours ago--such a little while--it had not +happened!" And the mind clutches at the bygone hour, so near, so +eternally distant--clutches at its ghost, in vain. + +Yet it seemed to her now that she had been jealous from the first moment +when she and George had come into contact with Marcella Maxwell. During +the long hours of this night her jealousy burnt through her like a hot +pain--jealousy, mixed with reluctant memory. Half consciously she had +always assumed that it had been a piece of kindness on her part to marry +George Tressady at all. She had almost condescended to him. After all, +she had played with ambitions so much higher! At any rate, she had taken +for granted that he would always admire and be grateful to her--that in +return for her pretty self she might at least dispose of him and his as +she pleased. + +And now, what galled her intolerably was this discernment of the way in +which--at least since their honeymoon--he must have been criticising +and judging her--judging her by comparison with another woman. She +seemed to see at a glance, the whole process of his mind, and her +vanity writhed under it. + +How much else than vanity? As she turned restlessly from side to side, +possessed by plans for punishing George, for humiliating Lady Maxwell, +and avenging herself, she said to herself that she did not care,--that it +was not worth caring about,--that she would either bring George to his +senses, or manage to amuse herself without him. + +But in reality she was held tortured and struggling all the time in the +first grip of that masterful hold wherewith the potter lifts his clay +when he lays it on the eternal whirring of the wheel. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +The newspapers of the morning following these events--that is to say, +of Saturday, July 5--gave very lively accounts of the East End meeting, +at which, as some put it, Lady Maxwell "had got her answer" from the +East End mob. The stone-throwing, the blow, the woman, and the cause +were widely discussed that same day throughout the clubs and +drawing-rooms of Mayfair and Belgravia, no less than among the clubs and +"publics" of the East End; and the guests at country-house parties as +they hurried out of town for the Sunday, carried the gossip of the +matter far and wide. The Maxwells went down alone to Brookshire, and the +curious visitors who called in St. James's Square "to inquire" came away +with nothing to report. + +"A put-up thing, the whole business," said Mrs. Watton, indignantly, to +her son Harding, as she handed him the "Observer," on the Sunday morning, +in the dining-room of the family house in Tilney Street. "Of course, a +little martyrdom just now suits her book excellently. How that man _can_ +let her make him a laughing-stock in this way--" + +"A laughing-stock?" said Harding, smiling. "Not at all. Don't spoil your +first remark, mother. For, of course, it is all practical politics. The +handsomest woman in England doesn't give her temple to be gashed for +nothing. You will see what her friends will make out of it!--and out of +the brutal violence of our mob." + +"Disgusting!" said Mrs. Watton, playing severely with the lid of the +mustard-pot that stood beside her. + +She and Harding were enjoying a late breakfast _tete-a-tete._ The old +Squire had finished long before, and was already doing his duty with a +volume of sermons in the library upstairs, preparatory to going to +church. Mrs. Watton and Harding, however, would accompany him thither +presently; for Harding was a great supporter of the Establishment. + +The son raised his shoulders at his mother's adjective. + +"What I want to know," he said, "is whether Lady Maxwell is going to bag +George Tressady, or not. He brought her home from the meeting on Friday." + +"Brought her home from the meeting?--_George Tressady?_" + +Mrs. Watton raised her masculine head and frowned at her son, as though +he were, in some sense, personally responsible for this unseemly fact. + +"He has been haunting her in the East End for weeks. I got that out of +Edward. But, of course, one knew that was going to happen as soon as +one saw them together at Castle Luton. She throws her flies cleverly, +that woman!" + +"All I can say is," observed Mrs. Watton, ponderously, "that in any +decent state of society such a woman would be banned!" + +Harding rose, and stood by the open window caressing his moustache. It +was a perception of long standing with him, that life would have been +better worth living had his mother possessed a sense of humour. + +"It seems to me," his mother resumed after a pause, "that someone at +least should give Letty a hint." + +"Oh! Letty can take care of herself," said Watton, laughing. He might +have said, if he had thought it worth while, that somebody had already +given Letty a hint. Tressady, it appeared, disliked him. Well, people +that disliked you were fair game. However, in spite of Tressady's +dislike, he had been able to amuse himself a good deal with Letty and +Letty's furnishing during the last few months. Harding, who prided +himself on the finest of tastes, liked to be consulted; he liked +anything, also, that gave him importance, if it were only with the master +of a curiosity shop, and, under cover of Letty's large dealings, he had +carried off various spoils of his own for his rooms in the Temple--spoils +which were not to be despised--at a very moderate price indeed. + +"Who could have thought George Tressady would turn out such a weak +creature," said his mother, rising, "when one remembers how Lord Fontenoy +believed in him?" + +"And does still believe in him, more or less," said Harding; "but +Fontenoy will have to be warned." + +He looked at the clock, to see if there was time for a cigarette before +church, lit it, and, leaning against the window, gazed towards the hazy +park with a meditative air. + +"Do you mean there is any question of his ratting?" said his mother. + +Harding raised his eyebrows. + +"Well, no--hardly anything so gross as that. But you can see all the +spirit has gone out of him. He does no work for us. The party gets +nothing out of him." + +Harding spoke as if he had the party in his pocket. His mother looked at +him with a severely concealed admiration. There were few limits to her +belief in Harding. But it was not her habit to flatter her sons. + +"What makes one so mad," she said, as she sailed towards the door in a +stiff rustle of Sunday brocade, "is the way in which the people who +admire her talk of her. When one thinks that all this 'slumming,' and all +this stuff about the poor, only means keeping her husband in office and +surrounding herself with a court of young men, it turns one sick!" + +"My dear mother, we keep all our little hypocrisies," said Harding, +indulgently. "Don't forget that Lady Maxwell provides me with a deal of +good copy." + +And after his mother had left him he smoked on, thinking with pleasure of +an article of his on "The Woman of the Slums," packed with allusions to +Marcella Maxwell, which was to appear in the next number of the +"Haymarket Reporter," the paper that he and Fontenoy were now running. +Harding was not the editor. He disliked drudgery and office-hours; and +his father was good for enough to live upon. But he was a powerful +adviser in the conduct of the new journal, and wrote, perhaps, the +smartest articles. + +The paper, indeed, was written by the smartest people conceivable, and +had achieved the smartest combinations. "Liberty" was its catchword; but +the employer must be absolute. To care or think about religion was +absurd; but whoso threw a stone at the Established Church, let him die +the death. Christianity must be steadily, even ferociously supported; in +the policing of an unruly world it was indispensable. But the perennial +butt of the paper was the fool who "went about doing good." The young men +who lived in "settlements," for instance, and gave University Extension +Lectures--the paper pursued all such with a hungry malice, only less +biting than that wherewith day by day it attacked Lord Maxwell, the arch +offender of all the philanthropic tribe. To help a man who had toiled his +ten or twelve hours in the workshop or the mine to read Homer or Dante in +the evening,--well! in the language of Hedda Gabler "people don't do +these things,"--not people with any sense of the humorous or the seemly. +Harding and his crew had required a good deal of help in their time +towards the reading of those authors; that, however, was only their due, +and in the order of the universe. The same universe had sent the miner +below to dig coals for his betters, while Harding Watton went to college. + +But the last and worst demerit in the eyes of Harding and his set was +that old primitive offence that Cain already found so hard to bear. Half +the violence which the new paper had been lavishing on Maxwell--apart +from passionate conviction of the Fontenoy type, which also spoke through +it--sprang from this source. Maxwell, in spite of his obvious drawbacks, +threatened to succeed, to be accepted, to take a large place in English +political life. And his wife, too, reigned, and had her way without the +help of clever young men who write. There was the sting. Harding at any +rate found it intolerable. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile, in spite of newspapers to right of it and newspapers to left +of it, the political coach clattered on. + +The following day--Monday--was a day of early arrivals, packed benches, +and much excitement in the House of Commons; for the division on the +second reading was to be taken after the Home Secretary's reply on the +debate. Dowson was expected to get up about ten o'clock, and it was +thought that the division would be over by eleven. + +On this afternoon and evening Fontenoy was ubiquitous. At least so it +seemed to Tressady. Whenever one put one's head into the Smoking-room or +the Library, whenever one passed through the Lobby, or rushed on to the +Terrace for ten minutes' fresh air, Fontenoy's great brow and rugged face +were always to be seen, and always in fresh company. + +The heterogeneous character of the Opposition with which the Government +was confronted, the conflicting groups and interests into which it was +split up, offered large scope for the intriguing, contriving genius of +the man. And he was spending it lavishly. The small eyes were more +invisible, the circles round them more saucer-like than ever. + +Meanwhile George Tressady had never been so keenly conscious as on +this critical afternoon that his party had begun to drop him out of +its reckonings. Consultations that would once have included him as a +matter of course were going on without him. During the whole of this +busy day Fontenoy even had hardly spoken to him; the battle was +leaving him on one side. + +Well, what room for bitterness?--though, with the unreason that no man +escapes, he was not without bitterness. He had disappointed them as a +debater--and, in other ways, what had he done for them since Whitsuntide? +No doubt also the mention of his name in the reports of the Mile End +meeting had not been without its effect. He believed that Fontenoy's +personal regard for him still held. Otherwise, he was beginning to feel +himself placed in a tacit isolation. + +What wonder, good Lord! During the dinner-hour he found himself in a +corner of the library, dreaming over a biography of Lord Melbourne. Poor +Melbourne! in those last tragic years of waiting and pining, every day +expecting the proffer of office that never came and the familiar +recognition that would be his no more. But Melbourne was old, and had +had his day. + +"I wanted to speak to you," said a hoarse voice, over his shoulder. + +"Say on, and sit down," said George, smiling, and pushing forward a chair +beside him. "I should think you'll want a week's sleep after this." + +"Have you got some time to spare this week," said Fontenoy, abruptly, as +he sat down. + +George hesitated. + +"Well, no. I ought to go down to the country immediately, and see after +my own affairs and the strike, before Committee begins. There is a +meeting of coal-owners on Wednesday." + +"What I want wouldn't take long," said Fontenoy, persistently, after a +pause. "I hear you have been going round workshops lately?" + +His keen, peremptory eyes fixed his companion. + +"I had a round or two with Everard," said George. "We saw a fair +representative lot." + +The thought that flashed through Fontenoy's mind was, "Why the deuce +didn't you speak of it to me?" Aloud, he said with impatience: + +"Representing what Everard chose to show, I should think. However, what I +want is this. You know the series of extracts from reports that has been +going on lately in the 'Chronicle.'" + +George nodded. + +"We want something done to correct the impression that has been made. You +and I know perfectly well that the vast majority of workshops work +factory-hours and an average of four and a half days a week. You have +just had personal experience, and you can write. Will you do three or +four signed articles for the 'Reporter' this week or next? Of course the +office will give you every help." + +George considered. + +"I think not," he said presently, looking up. "I shouldn't do it well. +Perhaps I have become too conscious of the exceptions--the worst cases. +Frankly, the whole thing has become more of a problem to me than it was." + +Fontenoy moved, and grunted uneasily. + +"Does that mean," he said at last, in his harshest manner, "that you +will feel any difficulty in--?" + +"In voting? No. I shall vote right enough. I am all for delay. This +particular Bill doesn't convince me any more than it did. But I don't +want to take a strong public part just at present." + +The two men eyed each other in silence. + +"I thought there was something brewing," said Fontenoy at last. + +"Well, I'm not sorry to have had these few words," was George's reply, +after a pause. "I wanted to tell you that, though I shall vote, I don't +think I shall speak much more. I don't believe I'm the stuff people in +Parliament ought to be made of. I shall be remorseful presently for +having led you into a mistake!" He forced a smile. + +"I made no mistake," said Fontenoy, grimly, and departed. Then, as he +walked down the corridor, he completed his sentence--"except in not +seeing that you were the kind of man to be made a fool of by women!" + +First of all, a hasty marriage with a silly girl who could be no help to +him or to the cause; now, according to Watton--who had called upon +Fontenoy that morning, at his private house, to discuss various matters +of business--the Lady-Maxwell fever in a pronounced form. Most likely. It +was the best explanation. + +The leader's own sense of annoyance and disappointment was considerable. +There was no man for whom he had felt so much personal liking as for +Tressady since the fight began. + +Somewhere before midnight the division on the second reading was taken, +amid all those accompaniments of crowd, expectation, and commotion, that +are usually evoked by the critical points of a contested measure. The +majority for Government was forty-four--less by twenty-four votes than +its normal figure. + +As the cheers and counter-cheers subsided, George found himself borne +into the Lobby with the crowd pouring out of the House. As he approached +the door leading to the outer lobby, a lady in front of him turned. +George received a lightning impression of beauty, of a kind of anxious +joy, and recognised Marcella Maxwell. + +She held out her hand. + +"Well, the first stage is over!" she said. + +"Yes, and well over," he said, smiling. "But you have shed a great many +men already." + +"Oh! I know--I know. The next few weeks will be intolerable; one will +feel sure of nobody." Then her voice changed--took a certain shyness. "A +good many people from here are coming down to us at Mile End during the +next few weeks--will you come some time, and bring Lady Tressady?" + +"Thank you," said George, rather formally. "It is very kind of you." +Then, in another voice: "And you are really none the worse?" + +His eyes sought the injured temple, and she instinctively put up her +hand to the black wave of hair that had been drawn forward so as to +conceal the mark. + +"Oh no! That boy was not an expert, luckily. How absurd the papers +have been!" + +George shook his head. + +"I don't know what else one could expect," he said, laughing. + +"Not at all!"--the flush mounted in the delicate hollow of the cheek. +"Why should there be any more fuss about a woman's being struck than a +man? We don't want any of this extra pity and talk." + +"Human nature, I am afraid," said George, raising his shoulders. Did she +really suppose that women could mix in the political fight on the same +terms as men--could excite no more emotion there than men? Folly! + +Then Maxwell, who was standing behind her, came forward, greeted Tressady +kindly, and they talked for a few minutes about the evening's debate. The +keen look of the elder scanned the younger's face and manner the while +with some minuteness. As for George, his dialogue with the Minister, at +which more than one passer-by threw looks of interest and amusement, gave +him no particular pleasure. Maxwell's qualities were not of the kind that +specially appealed to him; nor was he likely to attract Maxwell. +Nevertheless, he could have wished their ten minutes' talk to last +interminably, merely because of the excuse it gave him to be near +her!--played upon by her movements and her tones. He talked to Maxwell of +speeches, and votes, and little incidents of the day. And all the time he +knew how she was surrounded; how the crowd that was always gathering +about her came and went; with whom she talked; above all, how that eager, +sensitive charm which she had shown in its fulness to him--perhaps to +him only, beside her husband, of all this throng--played through her +look, her voice, her congratulations, and her dismays. For had he not +seen her in distress and confusion--seen her in tears, wrestling with +herself? His heart caressed the thought like a sacred thing, all the time +that he was conscious of her as the centre of this political throng--the +adored, detested, famous woman, typical in so many ways of changing +custom and of an expanding world. + +Then, in a flash, as it were, the crowd had thinned, the Maxwells had +gone, and George was running down the steps of the members' entrance, +into the rain outside. He seemed to carry with him the scent of a +rose,--the rose she had worn on her breast,--and his mind was tormented +with the question he had already asked himself: "How is it going to end?" + +He pushed on through the wet streets, lost in a hundred miseries and +exaltations. The sensation was that of a man struggling with a rising +tide, carried helplessly in the rush and swirl of it. Yet conscience had +very little to say, and, when it did speak, got little but contempt for +its pains. What had any clumsy code, social or moral, to do with it? When +would Marcella Maxwell, by word or look or thought, betray the man she +loved? Not till + +A' the seas gang dry, my dear, +An the rocks melt wi' the sun! + +How he found his way home he hardly knew; for it was a moment of blind +crisis with him. All that crowded, dramatic scene of the House--its +lights, its faces, its combinations--had vanished from his mind. What +remained was a group of three people, contemplated in a kind of +terror--terror of what this thing might grow to! Once, in St. James's +Street, the late hour, the soft, gusty night, suddenly reminded him of +that other gusty night in February when he had walked home after his +parting with Letty, so well content with himself and the future, and +had spoken to Marcella Maxwell for the first time amid that little +crowd in the Mall. Nothing had been irreparable then. He had his life +in his hands. + +As for this passion, that was creeping into all his veins, poisoning and +crippling all his vitalities, he was still independent enough of it to be +able to handle it with the irony it deserved. For it was almost as +ludicrous as it was pitiable. He did not want any man of the world, any +Harding Watton, to tell him that. + +What amazed him was the revelation of his own nature that was coming out +of it. He had always been rather proud to think of himself as an +easygoing fellow with no particular depths. Other men were proud of a +"storm period"--of feasting and drinking deep--made a pose of it. +Tressady's pose had been the very opposite. Out of a kind of good taste, +he had wished to take life lightly, with no great emotion. And marriage +with Letty had seemed to satisfy this particular canon. + +Now, for the first time, certain veils were drawn aside, and he knew what +this hunger for love, and love's response, can do with a man--could do +with _him_, were it allowed its scope! + +Had Marcella Maxwell been another woman, less innocent, less secure! + +As it was, Tressady no sooner dared to give a sensuous thought to her +beauty than his own passion smote him back--bade him beware lest he +should be no longer fit to speak and talk with her, actually or +spiritually. For in this hopeless dearth of all the ordinary rewards and +encouragements of love he had begun to cultivate a sort of second, or +spiritual, life, in which she reigned. Whenever he was alone he walked +with her, consulted her, watched her dear eyes, and the soul playing +through them. And so long as he could maintain this dream he was +conscious of a sort of dignity, of reconciliation with himself; for the +passions and tragedies of the soul always carry with them this dignity, +as Dante, of all mortals, knew first and best. + +But with the turn into Upper Brook Street, the dream suddenly and +painfully gave way. He saw his own house, and could forget Letty and the +problem of his married life no more. What was he going to do with her and +it? What relation was he going to establish with his wife, through all +these years that stretched so interminably before them? Remorse mingled +with the question. But perhaps impatience, still more--impatience of his +own misery, of this maze of emotion in which he felt himself entangled, +as it were against his will. + +During the three days which had passed since his quarrel with Letty, +their common life had been such a mere confusion of jars and discomforts +that George's hedonist temper was almost at the end of its patience; yet +so far, he thought, he had not done badly in the way of forbearance. +After the first moment of angry disgust, he had said to himself that the +tearing up of the photograph was a jealous freak, which Letty had a right +to if it pleased her. At any rate, he had made no comment whatever upon +it, and had done his best to resume his normal manner with her the next +day. She had been, apparently, only the more enraged; and, although there +had been no open quarrelling since, her cutting, contemptuous little airs +had been very hard to bear. Nor was it possible for George to ignore her +exasperated determination to have her own way in the matter both of +friends and expenses. + +As he took his latch-key out of the lock, and turned up the electric +light, he saw two handsome marqueterie chairs standing in the hall. He +went to look at them in some perplexity. Ah! no doubt they had been sent +as specimens. Letty had grown dissatisfied with the chairs originally +bought for the dining-room. He remembered to have heard her say something +about a costly set at a certain Asher's, that Harding had found. + +He studied them for a few moments, his mouth tightening. Then, instead of +going upstairs, he went into his study, and sat down to his table to +write a letter. + +Yes--he had better go off to Staffordshire by the early train; and this +letter, which he would put upon her writing-desk in the drawing-room, +should explain him to Letty. + +The letter was long and candid, yet by no means without tenderness. "I +have written to Asher," it said, "to direct him to send in the morning +for the chairs I found in the hall. They are too expensive for us, and I +have told him that I will not buy them, I need not say that in writing to +him I have avoided every word that could be annoying to you. If you would +only trust me, and consult me a little about such things,--trifles as +they be,--life just now would be easier than it is." + +Then he passed to a very frank statement of their financial position, and +of his own steady resolve not to allow himself to drift into hopeless +debt. The words were clear and sharp, but not more so than the course of +the preceding six weeks made absolutely necessary. And their very +sharpness led him to much repentant kindness at the end. No doubt she was +disappointed both in him and in his circumstances; and, certainly, +differences had developed between them that they had never foreseen at +the time of their engagement. But to "make a good thing" of living +together was never easy. He asked her not to despair, not to judge him +hardly. He would do his best--let her only give him back her confidence +and affection. + +He closed the letter, and then paced restlessly about the little room for +a time. It seemed to him that he was caught in a vice--that neither +happiness, nor decent daily comfort, nor even the satisfactions of +ambition, were ever to be his. + +Next day he was off to Euston before Letty was properly awake. She found +his letter waiting for her when she descended, and spent the day in a +pale excitement. Yet by the end of it she had pretty well made up her +mind. She would have to give in on the money question. George's figures +and her natural shrewdness convinced her that the ultimate results of +fighting him in this matter could only be more uncomfortable for herself +than for him. But as to her freedom in choosing her own friends, or as +to her jealousy of Lady Maxwell, she would never give in. If George had +ceased to court his wife, then he could have nothing to say if she +looked for the amusement and admiration that were her due from other +people. There was no harm in that. Everybody else did it; and she was +not going to be pretty and young for nothing. Whereupon she sat down and +wrote a line to Lord Cathedine to tell him that she and "Tully" would be +at the Opera on the following night, and to beg him to make sure that +she got her "cards for Clarence House." Moreover, she meant to make use +of him to procure her a card for a very smart ball, the last of the +season, which was coming off in a fortnight. That could be arranged, no +doubt, at the Opera. + + * * * * * + +George returned from the North in a few days looking, if possible, +thinner and more careworn than when he went. He had found the strike a +very stubborn business. Burrows was riding the storm triumphantly; and +while upon his own side Tressady looked in vain for a "man," there was a +dogged determination to win among the masters. George's pugnacity shared +it fully. But he was beginning to ask himself a number of questions about +these labour disputes which, apparently, his co-employers did not ask +themselves. Was it that here, no less than in matters that concerned the +Bill before Parliament, _her_ influence, helped by the power of an +expanding mind, had developed in him that fatal capacity for sympathy, +for the double-seeing of compromise, which takes from a man all the joy +of battle. + +Letty, at any rate, was not troubled by anything of the sort. When he +came back he found that she was ready to be on fairly amicable terms with +him. Moreover, she had postponed the more expensive improvements and +changes she had begun to make at Perth against his will; nor was there +any sign of the various new purchases for the London house with which she +had threatened him. On the other hand, she ceased to consult him about +her own engagements; and she let him know, though without any words on +the subject, that she had entirely broken with his mother--would neither +see her nor receive her. As her attitude on this point involved--or, +apparently, must involve--a refusal to accept her husband's statement +made solemnly under strong emotion, George's pride took it in absolute +silence. No doubt it was her revenge upon him for their crippled +income--and for Lady Maxwell. + +The effect of her behaviour on this point was to increase his own pity +for his mother. He told her frankly that Letty could not get over the +inroads upon their income and the shortening of their resources produced +by the Shapetsky debt, just at a time when they should have been able to +spend, and were already hampered by the state of the coal trade. It would +be better that she and Letty should not meet for a time. He would do his +best to make it up. + +Lady Tressady took his news with a curious equanimity. + +"Well, she always hated me!" she said--"I don't exactly know why--and was +a little jealous of my gowns, too, I think. Don't mind, George. I must +say it out. You know, she doesn't really dress very well--Letty doesn't. +Though, my goodness, the bills! Wait till you see them before you call +_me_ extravagant. You should make her go to that new woman--what do they +call her? She's a _darling_, and such a style! Never mind about Letty; +you needn't bother. I daresay she isn't very nice to _you_ about it. But +if you don't come and see me, I shall cut my throat, and leave a note on +the dressing-table. It would spoil your career dreadfully, so you'd +better take care." + +But, indeed, George came, without any pressing, almost every day. He saw +her in her bursts of gaiety and affectation, when the habits of a +lifetime asserted themselves as strongly as ever; and he saw her in her +moments of pain and collapse, when she could hide the omens of inexorable +physical ill neither from herself nor him. By the doctor's advice, he +ceased to press her to give in, to resign herself to bed and invalidism. +It was best, even physically, to let her struggle on. And he was both +astonished and touched by her pluck. She had never been so repellent to +him as on those many occasions in the past when she had feigned illness +to get her way. Now that Death was really knocking, the half-gay, +half-frightened defiance with which she walked the palace of life, one +moment listening to the sounds at the gate, the next throwing herself +passionately into the revelry within, revealed to the son a new fact +about her--a fact of poetry unutterably welcome. + +Even her fawning dependents, the Fullertons, ceased to annoy him. They +were poor parasites, but she thought for them, and they professed to love +her in return. She had emptied her life of finer things, but this +relation of patron and flatterer, such as it was, did something to fill +the vacancy; and George made no further effort to disturb it. + +It was surprising, indeed, how easily, as the weeks went on, he came +to bear many of those ways of hers which had once set him most on +edge--even her absurd outbursts of affection towards him, and +preposterous praise of him in public. In time he submitted even to +being flown at and kissed before the Fullertons. Amazing into what new +relations that simple perspective of _the end_ will throw all the +stuff of life! + + * * * * * + +In Parliament the weeks rushed by. The first and comparatively +non-contentious sections of the Bill passed with a good deal of talk and +delay. George spoke once or twice, without expecting to speak, +instinctively pleasing Fontenoy where he could. They had now but little +direct intercourse. But George did not feel that his leader had become +his enemy, and was not slow to recognise a magnanimity he had not +foreseen. Yet, after all, he had not offered the worst affront to party +discipline. Fontenoy could still count on his vote. As to the rest of +his party, he saw that he was to be finally reckoned as a "crank," and +let alone. It was not, he found, altogether to be regretted. The position +gave him a new freedom of speech. + +Meanwhile he and Marcella Maxwell rarely met. Week after week passed, and +still Tressady avoided those gatherings at the Mile End house, of which +he heard full accounts from Edward Watton. He once formally asked Letty +if she would go with him to one of Lady Maxwell's East End "evenings," +and she, with equal formality, refused. But he did not take advantage of +her refusal to go himself. Was it fear of his own weakness, or +compunction towards Letty, or the mere dread of being betrayed into +something at once ridiculous and irreparable? + +At the same time, it was surprising how often during these weeks he had +occasion to pass through St. James's Square. Once or twice he saw her go +out or come in, and sometimes was near enough to catch the sudden smile +and look which surely must be the smile and look she gave her friends, +and not to every passing stranger! Once or twice, also, he met her for a +few minutes in the Lobby, or on the Terrace, but always in a crowd. She +never repeated her invitation. He divined that she was, perhaps, vexed +with herself for having seemed to press the point on the night of the +second reading. + + * * * * * + +July drew to an end. The famous "workshop clause" had been debated for +nearly ten days, the whole country, as it were, joining in. One evening +in the last week of the month Naseby and Lady Madeleine were sitting +together in a corner of a vast drawing-room in Carlton House Terrace. +The drawing-room was Mrs. Allison's. She had returned about a fortnight +before from Bad Wildheim, and was now making an effort, for the boy's +sake, to see some society. As she moved about the room in her black silk +and lace she was more gentle, but in a sense more inaccessible, than +ever. She talked with everyone, but her eyes followed her son's auburn +head, with its strange upstanding tufts of hair above the fair, freckled +face; or they watched the door, even when she was most animated. She +looked ill and thin, and the many friends who loved her would have +gladly clung about her and cherished her. But it was not easy to cherish +Mrs. Allison. + +"Do you see how our hostess keeps a watch for Fontenoy?" said Naseby, in +a low voice, to Lady Madeleine. + +Madeleine turned her startled face to him. Nature had given her this +hunted look--the slightly open mouth, the wide eyes of one who +perpetually hears or expects bad news. Naseby did not like it, and had +tried to laugh her out of her scared ways before this. But he had no +sooner laughed at her than he found himself busy--to use Watton's +word--in "stroking" and making it up to her, so tender and clinging was +the girl's whole nature, so golden was her hair, so white her skin! + +"Isn't it the division news she is expecting?" + +"Yes--but don't look so unhappy! She will bear up--even if they are +beaten. And they will be beaten. Fontenoy's hopes have been going down. +The Government will get through this clause at all events--by a shave." + +"What a fuss everybody is making about this Bill!" + +"Well, you don't root up whole industries without a fuss. But, certainly, +Maxwell has roused the country finely." + +"_She_ will break down if it goes on," said Lady Madeleine, in a +melancholy voice. + +Naseby laughed. + +"Not at all! Lady Maxwell was made for war--she thrives on it. Don't you, +too, enjoy it?" + +"I don't know," said the girl, drearily. "I don't know what I was +made for." + +And over her feather fan her wide eyes travelled to the distant ogress +figure of her mother, sitting majestical in black wig and diamonds beside +the Russian Ambassador. Naseby's also travelled thither--unwillingly. It +was a disagreeable fact that Lady Kent had begun to be very amiable to +him of late. + +Lady Madeleine's remark made him silent a moment. Then he looked at +her oddly. + +"I am going to offend you," he said deliberately. "I am going to tell you +that you were made to wear white satin and pearls, and to look as you +look this evening." + +The girl flushed hotly. + +"I knew you despised women," she said, in a strained voice, staring back +at him reproachfully. During her months of distress and humiliation she +had found her only comfort in "movements" and "causes"--in the moral +aspirations generally--so far as her mother would allow her to have +anything to do with them. She had tried, for instance, to work with +Marcella Maxwell--to understand her. + +But Naseby held his ground. + +"Do I despise women because I think they make the grace and poetry of the +world?" he asked her. "And, mind you, I don't draw any lines. Let them be +county councillors and guardians, and inspectors, and queens as much as +they like. I'm very docile. I vote for them. I do as I'm told." + +"Only, you don't think that _I_ can do anything useful!" + +"I don't think you're cut out for a 'platform woman,' if that's what you +mean," he said, laughing--"even Lady Maxwell isn't. And if she was, she +wouldn't count. The women who matter just now--and you women are getting +a terrible amount of influence--more than you've had any time this half +century--are the women who sit at home in their drawing-rooms, wear +beautiful gowns, and attract the men who are governing the country to +come and see them." + +"Lady Maxwell doesn't sit at home and wear beautiful gowns!" + +"I vow she does!" said Naseby, with spirit. "I can vouch for it. I was +caught that way myself. Not that I belong to the men who are governing +the country. And now she has roped me to her chariot for good and all. +Ah, Ancoats! how do you do?" + +He got up to make room for the master of the house as he spoke. But as +he walked away he said to himself, with a kind of delight: "Good! she +didn't turn a hair." + +Lady Madeleine, indeed, received her former suitor with a cool dignity +that might have seemed impossible to anyone so plaintively pretty. He +lingered beside her, twirling his carefully pointed moustache, that +matched the small Richelieu chin, and looking at her with a furtive +closeness from time to time. + +"Well--so you have just come back from Paris?" she said indifferently. + +"Yes; I stayed a day or two after my mother. One didn't want to come back +to this dull hole." + +"Did you see the new piece at the Francais?" + +He made a face. + +"Not I! One couldn't be caught by such _vieux jeu_ as that! There was a +splendid woman in one of the _cafes chantants_--but I suppose you don't +go to _cafes chantants?"_ + +"No," said Madeleine, eyeing him over her fan with a composure that +astonished herself. "No, I don't go to _cafes chantants_." + +Ancoats looked blank a moment, then resumed, with fervour: + +"This woman's divine--_epatant_! Then, at the Chat Noir--but--ah! well, +perhaps you don't go to the Chat Noir?" + +"No, I don't go to the Chat Noir." + +He fidgeted for a minute. She sat silent. Then he said: + +"There are some new French pictures in the next room. Will you come and +see them?" + +"Thank you, I think I'll stay here," she said coldly. + +He lingered another second or two, then departed. The girl drew a long +breath, then instinctively turned her white neck to see if Naseby had +really left her. Strange! he too, from far away, was looking round. In +another moment he was making his way slowly back to her. + + * * * * * + +"Ah, there's Tressady! Now for news." + +The remark was Naseby's. He and Lady Madeleine were, as it happened, +inspecting the very French pictures that the girl had just refused to +look at in Ancoats's company. + +But now they hurried back to the main drawing-room where the Tressadys +were already surrounded by an eager crowd. + +"Eighteen majority," Tressady was saying. "The Socialists saved it at +the last moment, after growling and threatening till nobody knew what +was going to happen. Forty Ministerialists walked out, twenty more, at +least, were away unpaired, and the Old Liberals voted against the +Government to a man." + +"Oh! they'll go--they'll go on the next clause," said an elderly peer, +whose ruddy face glowed with delight. "Serve them right, too! Maxwell's +whole aim is revolution made easy. The most dangerous man we have had for +years! Looks so precious moderate, too, all the time. Tell me how did +Slade vote after all?" + +And Tressady found himself buttonholed by one person after another; +pressed for the events and incidents of the evening: how this person had +voted, how that; how Ministers had taken it; whether, after this Pyrrhic +victory there was any chance of the Bill's withdrawal, or at least of +some radical modification in the coming clauses. Almost everyone in the +crowded room belonged, directly or indirectly, to the governing political +class. Barely three people among them could have given a coherent account +of the Bill itself. But to their fathers and brothers and cousins would +belong the passing or the destroying of it. And in this country there is +no game that amuses so large a number of intelligent people as the +political game. + +"I don't know why he should look so d--d excited over it," said Lord +Cathedine to Naseby in a contemptuous aside, with a motion of the head +towards Tressady, showing pale and tall above the crowd. "He seems to +have voted straight this time, but he's as shaky as he can be. You +never know what that kind of fellow will be up to. Ah, my lady! and +how are you?" + +He made a low bow, and Naseby, turning, saw young Lady Tressady +advancing. + +"Are you, too, talking politics?" said Letty, with affected disgust, +giving her hand to Cathedine and a smile to Naseby. + +"We will now talk of nothing but your scarlet gown," said Cathedine in +her ear. "Amazing!" + +"You like it?" she said, with nonchalant self-possession. "It makes me +look dreadfully wicked, I know." And she threw a complacent glance at a +mirror near, which showed her a gleam of white shoulders in a setting of +flame-coloured tulle. + +"Well, you wouldn't wish to look good," said Cathedine, pulling his +black moustache. "Any fool can do that!" + +"You cynic!" she said, laughing. "Come and talk to me over there. Have +you got me my invitations?" + +Cathedine followed, a disagreeable smile on his full lips, and they +settled themselves in a corner out of the press. Nor were they disturbed +by the sudden hush and parting of the crowd when, five minutes later, +amid a general joyous excitement, Fontenoy walked in. + +Mrs. Allison forgot her usual dignity, and hurried to meet the leader as +he came up to her, with his usual flushed and haggard air. + +"Magnificent!" she said tremulously. "Now you are going to win!" + +He shook his head, and would hardly let himself be congratulated by any +of the admirers, men or women, who pressed to shake hands with him. To +most of them he said, impatiently, that it was no good hallooing till +one was out of the wood, that for his own part he had expected more, and +that the Government might very well rally on the next clause. Then, when +he had effectively chilled the enthusiasm of the room, he drew his +hostess aside. + +"Well, and are you happier?" he said to her in a low voice, his whole +expression changing. + +"Oh, dear friend! don't think of me," she said, putting out a thin hand +to him with a grateful gesture. "Yes, the boy has been very good--he +gives me a great deal of his time. But how can one _know_--how can one +possibly know?" + +Her pale, small face contracted with a look of pain. Fontenoy, too, +frowned as he looked across at Ancoats, who was leaning against the wall +in an affected pose, and quoting bits from a new play to George Tressady. + +After a pause, he said: + +"I think if I were you I should cultivate Tressady. Ancoats likes him. It +might be possible some time for you to work through him." + +The mother assented eagerly, then said, with a smile: + +"But I gather you don't find him much to be depended on in the House?" + +Fontenoy shrugged his shoulders. + +"Lady Maxwell has bedevilled him somehow. You're responsible!" + +"Poor Castle Luton! You must tell me how it and I can make up. But you +don't mean that there is any thought of his going over?" + +"His vote's all safe--I suppose. He would make too great a fool of +himself if he failed us there. But he has lost all heart for the +business. And Harding Watton tells me it's all her doing. She has been +taking him about in the East End--getting her friends to show him round." + +"And _now_ you are in the mood to put the women down--to show them +their place?" + +She looked at him with gentle humour--a very delicate high-bred figure, +in her characteristic black-and-white. Fontenoy's whole aspect changed as +he caught the reference to their own relation. The look of premature old +age, of harsh fatigue, was for the moment effaced by something young and +ardent as he bent towards her. + +"No--I take the rough with the smooth. Lady Maxwell may do her worst. We +have the counter-charm." + +A flush showed itself in her lined cheek. She was fourteen years older +than he, and had refused a dozen times to marry him. But she would have +found it hard to live without his devotion, and she had brought him by +now into such good order that she dared to let him know it. + + * * * * * + +Half an hour later George and Letty mounted another palatial staircase, +and at the top of it Letty put on fresh smiles for a new hostess. George, +tired out with the drama of the day, could hardly stifle his yawns; but +Letty had treated the notion of going home after one party when, they +might, if they pleased, "do" four, with indignant amazement. + +So here they were at the house of one of the greatest of bankers, and +George stalked through the rooms in his wife's train, taking +comparatively little part in the political buzz all about him, and +thinking mostly of a hurried little talk with Mrs. Allison that had taken +up his last few minutes in her drawing-room. Poor thing! But what could +he do for her? The lad was as stage-struck as ever--could barely talk +sense on any other subject, and not much on that. + +But if he, owing to the clash of an inner struggle, was weary of +politics, the world in general could think and speak of nothing else. The +rooms were full of politicians and their wives, of members just arrived +from the House, of Ministers smiling at each other with lifted eyebrows, +like boys escaped from a birching. A tempest of talk surged through the +rooms--talk concerned with all manner of great issues, with the fate of a +Government, the rousing of a country, the fortunes of individual +statesmen. Through it all the little host himself, a small fair-haired +man, with the tired eyes and hot-house air of the financier, walked about +from group to group, gossiping over the incidents of the division, and +now and then taking up some newcomer to be introduced to his pretty and +fashionable wife. + +Somewhere in the din George stumbled across Lady Leven, who was talking +merrily to young Bayle; and found her, notwithstanding, very ready to +turn and chat with him. + +"Of course we are all waiting for the Maxwells," she said to him. "Will +they come, I wonder?" + +"Why not?" + +"Do people show on their way to disaster? I think I should stay at home +if I were she." + +"Why, they have to hearten their friends!" + +"No good," said Betty, pursing her pretty lips; "and they have +fought so hard." + +"And may win yet," said George, an odd sparkle in his eye, as he stood +looking over his tiny companion to the door. "Nobody is sure of anything, +I can tell you." + +"I don't believe _you_ care," she said audaciously, shaking her golden +head at him. + +"Pray, why?" + +"Oh! you don't seem at all desperate," she said coolly. "Perhaps you're +like Frank--you think the other side make so much better points than you +do. 'If Dowson makes another speech,' Frank said to me yesterday, 'I vow +I shall rat!' There's a way of talking of your own chiefs. Oh! I shall +have to take him out of politics." + +And she unfurled her fan with a jerk half melancholy, half decided. +Then, suddenly, a laugh flashed over her face; she raised herself +eagerly on tiptoe. + +"Ah! bravo!" she said. "Here they are!" + +George turned with the crowd, and saw them enter, Marcella first, +in a blaze of diamonds; then the quiet face and square shoulders of +her husband. + +Nothing, he thought, could have been better than the manner in which both +bore themselves as they passed through the throng, answering the +greetings of friend and foe, and followed by the keen or hostile scrutiny +of hundreds. There was no bravado, no attempt to disguise the despondency +that must naturally follow on a division so threatening and in many ways +so wounding. Maxwell looked grey with fatigue and short nights, while her +black eyes passed wistfully from friend to friend, and had never been +more quick, more responsive. Their cause was in danger; nevertheless, the +impression on Tressady's mind was of two people consciously in the grip +of forces infinitely greater than they--forces that would hold on their +path whatever befell their insignificant mortal agents. + +I steadier step when I recall, +Howe'er I slip, thou canst not fall. + +So cries the thinker to his mistress, Truth. And in the temper of that +cry lies the secret of brave living. One looker-on, at least,--and that +an opponent,--recalled the words as he watched Marcella and her husband +taking their way through the London crowd, amid the doubts of their +friends and the half-concealed triumph of their foes. + +It seemed to him that he could have no chance of speech with her. But +presently, from the other side of the room, he saw that she had +recognised and was greeting him, and, do what he would, he must needs +make his way to her. + +She welcomed him with great friendliness, and without a word of small +reproach on the score of the weeks he had let pass without coming to see +her. They fell into talk about the speeches of the evening. George +thought he could see that she, or Maxwell speaking through her, was +dissatisfied with Dowson's conduct of the Bill in the House, and chafing +under the constitutional practice that made it necessary to give him so +large a share in the matter. But she said nothing ungenerous; nor was +there any bitterness towards the many false friends who had deserted them +that night in the division-lobby. She spoke with eager hope of a series +of speeches Maxwell was about to make in the North, and then she turned +upon her companion. + +"You haven't spoken since the second reading--on any of the fighting +points, at least. I have been wondering what you thought of many things." + +George threw his head back against the wall beside her, and was silent a +moment. At last he said, looking down upon her: + +"Perhaps, very often I haven't known what to think." + +She started--reddened ever so little. "Does that mean"--she hesitated for +a phrase--"that you have moved at all on the main question?" + +"No," he said deliberately--"no! I think as I always did, that you are +calling in law to do what law can't do. But perhaps I appreciate better +than I once did what provokes you to it. It seems to me difficult now to +meet the case your side is putting forward by a mere _non possumus_. One +wants to stop the machine a bit and think it out. So much I admit." + +She met his smile with a curious, tremulous look. Instinctively he +guessed that this partial triumph in him of her cause--of Maxwell's +cause--had let flow some inner font of feeling. + +"If you only knew," she said, "how all this Parliamentary rush and +clatter seem to me beside the mark. People talk to me of divisions and +votes. I think all the time of persons I know--of faces of +children--sick-beds, horrible rooms--" + +She had turned her face from the crowd towards the open window, in whose +recess they were standing. As she spoke they both fell back a little into +comparative solitude, and he drew her on to talk--trying in a young eager +way to make her rest in his kindness, to soothe her weariness and +disappointment. And as she spoke, he clutched at the minutes; he threw +more and more sympathy at her feet to keep her talking, to enchain her +there beside him, in her lovely whiteness and grace. And, mingled with it +all, was the happy guess that she liked to linger with him--that amid +all this hard clamour of public talk and judgment she felt him a friend +in a peculiar sense--a friend whose loyalty grew with misfortune. As for +this wild-beast world, that was thwarting and libelling her, he began to +think of it with a blind, up-swelling rage--a desire to fight and win +for her--to put down-- + +"Tressady, your wife sent me to find you. She wishes to go home." + +The voice was Harding Watton's. That observant young man advanced bowing, +and holding out his hand to Lady Maxwell. + +When Marcella had drifted once more into the fast-melting crowd, George +found himself face to face with Letty. She was very white, and stared at +him with wide, passionate eyes. + +And on the way home George, with all his efforts, could not keep the +peace. Letty flung at him a number of bitter and insulting things that he +found very hard to bear. + +"What do you want me to do?" he said to her at last, impatiently. "I have +hardly spoken six sentences to Lady Maxwell, since the meeting, till +tonight--I suppose because you wished it. But neither you nor anyone else +shall make me rude to her. Don't be such a fool, Letty! Make friends with +her, and you will be ashamed of saying or even thinking such things." + +Whereat Letty burst into hysterical tears, and he soon found himself +involved in all the remorseful, inconsequent speeches to which a man in +such a plight feels himself driven. She allowed herself to be calmed, +and they had a dreary making-up. When it was over, however, George was +left with the uneasy conviction that he knew very little of his wife. She +was not of a nature to let any slight to her go unpunished. What was she +planning? What would she do? + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +"Hullo! Are you come back?" + +The speaker was George Tressady. He was descending the steps of his club +in Fall Mall, and found his arm caught by Naseby, who had just dismissed +his hansom outside. + +"I came back last night. Are you going homewards? I'll walk across the +Square with you." + +The two men turned into St. James's Square, and Naseby resumed: + +"Yes, we had a most lively campaign. Maxwell spoke better than I ever +heard him." + +"The speeches have been excellent reading, too. And you had good +meetings?" + +"Splendid! The country is rallying, I can tell you. The North is now +strong for Maxwell and the Bill--or seems to be." + +"Just as we are going to kick it out in the House! It's very queer--for +no one could tell, a month ago, how the big towns were going. And it +looked as though London even were deserting them." + +"A mere wave, I think. At least, I'll bet you anything they'll win this +Stepney election. Shall we get the division on the hours clause +to-morrow?" + +"They say so." + +"If you know your own interests, you'll hurry up," said Naseby, smiling. +"The country is going against you." + +"I imagine Fontenoy has got his eye on the country! He's been letting the +Socialists talk nonsense till now to frighten the steady-going old +fellows on the other side or putting up our men to mark time. But I saw +yesterday there was a change." + +"Between ourselves, hasn't he been talking a good deal of nonsense on his +own account?" + +Naseby threw a glance of laughing inquiry at his companion. George +shrugged his shoulders in silence. It had become matter of public remark +during the last few days that Fontenoy was beginning at last to show the +strain of the combat--that his speeches were growing hysterical and his +rule a tyranny. His most trusted followers were now to be heard grumbling +in private over certain aspects of his bearing in the House. He had come +into damaging collision with the Speaker on one or two occasions, and had +made here and there a blunder in tactics which seemed to show a weakening +of self-command. Tressady, indeed, knew enough to wonder that the man's +nerve and coolness had maintained themselves in their fulness so long. + +"So Maxwell took a party to the North?" said George, dropping the subject +of Fontenoy. + +"Lady Maxwell, of course--myself, Bennett, and Madeleine Penley. It was a +pleasure to see Lady Maxwell. She has been dreadfully depressed in town +lately. But those trade-union meetings in Lancashire and Yorkshire were +magnificent enough to cheer anyone up." + +George shook his head. + +"I expect they come too late to save the Bill." + +"I daresay. Well, one can't help being tremendously sorry for her. I +thought her looking quite thin and ill over it. It makes one doubt about +women in politics! Maxwell will take it a deal more calmly, unless one +misunderstands his cool ways. But I shouldn't wonder if _she_ had a +breakdown." + +George made no reply. Naseby talked a little more about Maxwell and the +tour, the critical side of him gaining upon the sympathetic with every +sentence. At the corner of King Street he stopped. + +"I must go back to the club. By the way, have you heard anything of +Ancoats lately?" + +George made a face. + +"I saw him in a hansom last night, late, crossing Regent Circus with a +young woman--_the_ young woman, to the best of my belief." + +In the few moments' chat that followed Tressady found that Naseby, like +Fontenoy, regarded him as the new friend who might be able to do +something for a wild fellow, now that mother and old friends were alike +put aside and ignored. But, as he rather impatiently declared--and was +glad to declare--such a view was mere nonsense. He had tried, for the +mother's sake, and could do nothing. As for him, he believed the thing +was very much a piece of _blague_-- + +"Which won't prevent it from taking him to the devil," said Naseby, +coolly; "and his mother, by all accounts, will die of it. I'm sorry for +her. He seems to think tremendous things of you. I thought you might, +perhaps, have knocked it out of him." George shook his head again, and +they parted. + +In truth, Tressady was not particularly flattered by Ancoats's fancy for +him. He did not care enough about the lad in return. Yet, in response to +one or two outbreaks of talk on Ancoats's part--talks full of a stagey +railing at convention--he had tried, for the mother's sake, to lecture +the boy a little--to get in a word or two that might strike home. But +Ancoats had merely stared a moment out of his greenish eyes, had shaken +his queer mane of hair, as an animal shakes off the hand that curbs it, +had changed the subject at once, and departed. Tressady had seen very +little of him since. + +And had not, in truth, taken it to heart. He had neither time nor mind to +think about Ancoats. Now, as he walked home to dinner, he put the subject +from him impatiently. His own moral predicament absorbed him--this weird, +silent way in which the whole political scene was changing in aspect and +composition under his eyes, was grouping itself for him round one +figure--one face. + +Had he any beliefs left about the Bill itself? He hardly knew. In truth +it was not his reason that was leading him. It now was little more than a +passionate boyish longing to wrench himself free from this odious task of +hurting and defeating Marcella Maxwell. The long process of political +argument was perhaps tending every day to the loosening and detaching of +those easy convictions of a young Chauvinism, that had drawn him +originally to Fontenoy's side. Intellectually he was all adrift. At the +same time he confessed to himself, with perfect frankness, that he could +and would have served Fontenoy happily enough, but for another +influence--another voice. + +Yet his old loyalty to Fontenoy tugged sorely at his will. And with this +loyalty of course was bound up the whole question of his own personal +honour and fidelity--his pledges to his constituents and his party. + +Was there no rational and legitimate way out? He pondered the political +situation as he walked along with great coolness and precision. When the +division on the hours clause was over the main struggle on the Bill, as +he had all along maintained, would be also at an end. If the Government +carried the clause--and the probability still was that they would carry +it by a handful of votes--the two great novelties of the Bill would have +been affirmed by the House. The homework in the scheduled trades would +have been driven by law into inspected workshops, and the male workers in +these same trades would have been brought under the time-restrictions of +the Factory Acts. + +Compared to these two great reforms, or revolutions, the remaining +clause--the landlords clause--touched, as he had already said to +Fontenoy, questions of secondary rank, of mere machinery. Might not a man +thereupon--might not he, George Tressady--review and reconsider his +whole position? + +He had told Fontenoy that his vote was safe; but must that pledge extend +to more than the vital stuff, the main proposals of the Bill? The hours +clause?--yes. But after it? + +Fontenoy, no doubt, would carry on the fight to the bitter end, counting +on a final and hard-wrung victory. The sanguine confidence which had +possessed him about the time of the second reading was gone. He did not, +Tressady knew, reckon with any certainty on turning out the Government in +this coming division. The miserable majority with which they had carried +the workshops clause would fall again--it would hardly be altogether +effaced. That final wiping-out would come--if indeed it were attained--in +the last contest of all, to which Fontenoy was already heartening and +urging on his followers. + +Fontenoy's position, of course, in the matter was clear. It was that of +the leader and the irreconcilable. + +But for the private member, who had seen cause to modify some of his +opinions during the course of debate, who had voted loyally with his +party up till now--might not the division on the hours clause be said to +mark a new stage in the Bill--a stage which restored him his freedom? + +The House would have pronounced on the main points of the Bill; the +country was rallying in a remarkable and unexpected way to the +Government--might it not be fairly argued that the war had been carried +far enough? + +He already, indeed, saw signs of that backing down of opposition which he +had prophesied to Fontenoy. The key to the whole matter lay, he believed, +in the hands of the Old Liberals, that remnant of a once great host, who +were now charging the Conservative Government with new and damaging +concessions to the Socialist tyranny. These men kept a watchful eye on +the country; they had maintained all along that the country had not +spoken. George had already perceived a certain weakening among them. And +now, this campaign of Maxwell's, this new enthusiasm in the industrial +North--no doubt they would have their effect. + +He hurried on, closely weighing the whole matter, the prey to a strange +and mingled excitement. + +Meanwhile the streets through which he walked had the empty, listless air +which marks a stage from which the actors have departed. It was nearing +the middle of August, and society had fled. + +All the same, as he reflected with a relief which was not without its +sting, he and Letty would not be alone at dinner. Some political friends +were coming, stranded, like themselves, in this West End, which had by +now covered up its furniture and shut its shutters. + +What a number of smart invitations had been showering upon them during +the last weeks of the season, and were now still pursuing them, for the +country-house autumn! The expansion of their social circle had of late +often filled George with astonishment. No doubt, he said to +himself,--though with a curious doubtfulness,--Letty was very successful; +still, the recent rush of attentions from big people, who had taken no +notice of them on their marriage, was rather puzzling. It had affected +her so far more than himself. For he had been hard pressed by Parliament +and the strike, and she had gone about a good deal alone--appearing, +indeed, to prefer it. + + * * * * * + +"Come out with me on the Terrace," said Marcella to Betty Leven; "I had +rather not wait here. Aldous, will you take us through?" + +She and Betty were standing in the inner lobby of the House of Commons. +The division had just been called and the galleries cleared. Members were +still crowding into the House from the Library, the Terrace, and the +smoking-rooms; and all the approaches to the Chamber itself were filled +with a throng about equally divided between the eagerness of victory and +the anxieties of defeat. + +Maxwell took the ladies to the Terrace, and left them there, while he +himself went back to the House. Marcella took a seat by the parapet, +leant both hands upon it, and looked absently at the river and the +clouds. It was a cloudy August night, with a broken, fleecy sky, and +gusts of hot wind from the river. A few figures and groups were moving +about the Terrace in the flickering light and shade--waiting like +themselves. + +"Will you be very sad if it goes wrongly?" said Betty, in a low voice, as +she took her friend's hand in hers. + +"Yes--" said Marcella, simply. Then, after a pause, she added, "It will +be all the harder after this time in the North. Everything will have come +too late." + +There was a silence; then Betty said, not without sheepishness, "Frank's +all right." + +Marcella smiled. She knew that little Betty had been much troubled by +Frank's tempers of late, and had been haunted by some quite serious +qualms about his loyalty to Maxwell and the Bill. Marcella had never +shared them. Frank Leven had not grit enough to make a scandal and desert +a chief. But Betty's ambition had forced the boy into a life that was +not his; had divided him from the streams and fields, from the country +gentleman's duties and pleasures, that were his natural sphere. In this +hot town game of politics, this contest of brains and ambitions, he was +out of place--was, in fact, wasting both time and capacity. Betty would +have to give way, or the comedy of a lovers' quarrel might grow to +something ill-matched with the young grace and mirth of such a pair of +handsome children. + +Marcella meant to tell her friend all this in due time. Now she +could only wait in silence, listening for every sound, Betty's soft +fingers clasping her own, the wind as it blew from the bridge +cooling her hot brow. + +"Here they are!" said Betty. + +They turned to the open doorway of the House. A rush of feet and voices +approached, and the various groups on the Terrace hurried to meet it. + +"Just saved! By George, what a squeak!" said a man's voice in the +distance; and at the same moment Maxwell touched his wife on the +shoulder. + +"A majority of ten! Nobody knew how it had gone till the last moment." + +She put up her face to him, leaning against him. + +"I suppose it means we can't pull through?" He bent to her. + +"I should think so. Darling, don't take it to heart so much!" + +In the darkness he felt the touch of her lips on his hand. Then she +turned, with a white cheek and smiling mouth, to meet the greetings and +rueful congratulations of the friends that were crowding about them. + +The Terrace was soon a moving mass of people, eagerly discussing the +details of the division. The lamps, blown a little by the wind, threw +uncertain lights on faces and figures, as they passed and re-passed +between the mass of building on the one hand and the wavering darkness of +the river on the other. To Marcella, as she stood talking to person after +person--talking she hardly knew what--the whole scene was a dim +bewilderment, whence emerged from time to time faces or movements of +special significance. + +Now it was Dowson, the Home Secretary, advancing to greet her, with his +grey shaven face, eyelids somewhat drooped, and the cool, ambiguous look +of one not quite certain of his reception. He had been for long a close +ally of Maxwell's. Marcella had thought him a true friend. But certainly, +in his conduct of the Bill of late there had been a good deal to suggest +the attitude of a man determined to secure himself a retreat, and +uncertain how far to risk his personal fortunes on a doubtful issue. So +that she found herself talking to him with a new formality, in the tone +of those who have been friends, yet begin to foresee the time when they +may be antagonists. + +Or, again, it was Fontenoy--Fontenoy's great head and overhanging brows, +thrown suddenly into light against the windy dusk. He was walking with a +young viscount whose curls, clothes, and shoulders were alike +unapproachable by the ordinary man. This youth could not forbear an +exultant twitching of the lip as he passed the Maxwells. Fontenoy +ceremoniously took off his hat. Marcella had a momentary impression of +the passionate, bull-like force of the man, before he disappeared into +the crowd. His eye had wavered as it met hers. Out of courtesy to the +woman he had tried not to _look_ his triumph. + +And now it was quite another face--thin, delicately marked, a noticeable +chin, an outstretched hand. + +She was astonished by her own feeling of pleasure. + +"Tell me," she said quickly, as she moved eagerly forward--"tell me! is +it about what you expected?" + +They turned towards the river. George Tressady hung over the wall +beside her. + +"Yes. I thought it might be anything from eight to twenty." + +"I suppose Lord Fontenoy now thinks the end quite certain." + +"He may. But the end is not certain!" + +"But what can prevent it! The despairing thing for us is, that if the +country had been roused earlier, everything might have been different. +But now the House--" + +"Has got out of hand? It may be; but I find a great many people affected +by Lord Maxwell's speeches in the North, and his reception there. +To-day's result was inevitable, but, if I'm not mistaken, we shall now +see a number of new combinations." + +The sensitive face became in a moment all intelligence. She played the +politician, and cross-examined him. He hesitated. What he was doing was +already a treachery. But he only hesitated to give way. They lingered by +the wall together, discussing possibilities and persons; and when Maxwell +at last turned from his own conversations to suggest to his wife that it +was time to go home, she came forward with a mien of animation that +surprised him. He greeted Tressady with friendliness, and then, as though +a thought had struck him, suddenly drew the young man aside. + +"Ancoats, of course," said George to himself; and Ancoats it was. + +Maxwell, without preliminaries, and taking his companion's knowledge of +the story for granted--no doubt on Fontenoy's information--said a few +words about the renewal of the difficulty. Did he not think it had all +begun again? Yes, George had some reason to think so. "If you can do +anything for us--" + +"Of course! but what can I do? As we all know, Ancoats does not sit still +to be scolded." + +Their colloquy lasted only a minute or two; yet when it was over, and +the Maxwells had gone, George was left with a vivid impression of the +great man's quiet strength and magnanimity. No one could have guessed +from his anxious and well-considered talk on this private matter that he +was in the very heat of a political struggle that must affect all his +own fortunes. Tressady had been accustomed to spend his wit on the +heavier sides of Maxwell's character. To-night, he said to himself, half +in a passion, grudging the confession, that it was not wonderful she +loved him! + +She! The remembrance of how her whole nature had brightened from its +cloud as he drew out for her his own forecast of what might still happen; +the sweet confidence and charm that she had shown him; the intimacy of +the tone she had allowed between them; the mingling all through of a +delicate abstinence from anything touching on his own personal position, +with an unspoken recognition of it--the impulse of a generosity that +could not help rewarding what seemed to it the yielding of an adversary; +these things filled him with a delicious pleasure as he walked home. In a +hundred directions--political, social, spiritual--the old horizons of the +mind seemed to be lightening and expanding. The cynical, indifferent +temper of his youth was breaking down; the whole man was more +intelligent, capable, tender. Yet what sadness and restlessness of soul +as soon as the brief moment of joy had come and gone! + +A few afternoons of Supply encroached upon the eight days that still +remained before the last clause of the Bill came to a division. But the +whole eight days, nevertheless, were filled with the new permutations and +combinations which Tressady had foreseen. The Government carried the +Stepney election, and in other quarters the effects of the speechmaking +in the North began to be visible. Rumours of the syndicate already formed +to take over large numbers of workshops in both the Jewish and Gentile +quarters of the East End, and of the hours and wages that were likely to +obtain in the new factories, were driving a considerable mass of +working-class opinion, which had hitherto held aloof, straight for the +Government, and splitting up much of that which had been purely hostile. + +Nevertheless, the situation in the House itself was hardly changing with +the change in the country. The Socialist members very soon developed the +proposal to make the landlords responsible for the carrying-out of the +new Act into a furious general attack on the landlords of London. Their +diatribes kept up the terrors which had already cost the Government so +many men. It was not possible, not seemly, to yield, as Maxwell was +yielding, all along the line to these fellows! + +But the Old Liberals, or the New Whigs, as George had expected, were +restless. They felt the country, and they had no affection for landlords +as such. Did a man arise who could give them a lead, there was no saying +how soon they might not break away from the Fontenoy combination. +Fontenoy felt it, and prowled among them like a Satan, urging them to +complete their deed, to give the _coup de grace_. + +On the Wednesday afternoon before the Friday on which he thought the +final vote would be taken, George let himself into his own house about +six o'clock, thankful to feel that he had a quiet evening before him. He +had been wandering about the House of Commons and its appurtenances all +day, holding colloquies with this person and that, unable to see his +way--to come to any decision. And, as was now usual, he and Fontenoy had +been engaged in steering out of each other's way as much as possible. + +As he went upstairs he noticed a letter lying on the step. He took it up, +and found an open note, which he read, at first without thinking of it: + +"My dear Lady,--Chatsworth can't be done. I have thrown my flies with +great skill, but--no go! I don't seem to have influence enough in that +quarter. But I have various other plans on hand. You shall have a jolly +autumn, if I can manage it. There are some Scotch invitations I can +certainly get you--and I should like to show you the ways of those +parts. By the way, I hope your husband shoots decently. People are very +particular. And you really must consult me about your gowns--I'm deuced +clever at that sort of thing! I shall come to-morrow, when I have packed +off my family to the country. Don't know why God made families! + +"Yours always, + +"CATHEDINE." + +"George! is that you?" cried Letty from above him, in a voice half angry, +half hesitating; "and--and--that's my note. Please give it me at once." + +He finished it under her eyes, then handed it to her with formal +courtesy. They walked into the drawing-room, and George shut the door. He +was very pale, and Letty quailed a little. + +"So Cathedine has been introducing us into society," he said, "and +advising you as to your gowns. Was that--quite necessary--do you think?" + +"It's very simple what he has been doing," was her angry reply. "You +never take any pains to make life amusing to me, so I must look +elsewhere, if I want society--that's all." + +"And it never occurs to you that you are thereby incurring an unseemly +obligation to a man whom I dislike, whom I have warned you against, who +bears everywhere an evil name? You think I am likely to enjoy--to put up +with, even--the position of being asked on sufferance--as your +appendage--provided I 'shoot decently'?" + +His tone of scorn, his slight figure, imperiously drawn up, sent her a +challenge, which she answered with sullen haste. + +"That's all nonsense, of course! And he wouldn't be rude to you if you +weren't always rude to him." + +"Rude to him!" He smiled. "But now, let us get to the bottom of this +thing. Did Cathedine get us the cards for Clarence House--and that +Goodwood invitation?" + +Letty made no answer. She stared at him defiantly, twisting and +untwisting the ribbons of her blue dress. + +George reddened hotly. His personal pride in matters of social manners +was one of his strongest characteristics. + +"Let me beg you, at any rate, to write and tell Lord Cathedine that we +will not trouble him for any more of these kind offices. And, moreover, I +shall not go to any of these houses in the autumn unless I am quite +certain he has had nothing to do with it." + +"I have accepted," said Letty, breathing hard. + +"I cannot help that. You should have been frank with me. I am not going +to do what would destroy my own self-respect." + +"No--you prefer making love to Lady Maxwell!" + +He looked steadily a moment at her pallor and her furious eyes. Then he +said, in another tone: + +"Letty, does it ever occur to you that we have not been married yet five +months? Are our relations to each other to go on for ever like this? I +think we might make something better of them." + +"That's your lookout. But as to these invitations, I have accepted them, +and I shall go." + +"I don't think you will. You would find it wouldn't do. Anyway, +Cathedine must be written to." + +"I shall do nothing of the kind!" she cried. + +"Then I shall write myself." + +She rose, quivering with passion, supporting herself on the arm of +her chair. + +"If you do, I will find some way of punishing you for it. Oh, if I had +never made myself miserable by marrying you!" + +Their eyes met. Then he said: + +"I think I had better go and dine at the club. We are hardly fit to be +together." + +"Go, for heaven's sake!" she said, with a disdainful gesture. + +Outside the door he paused a moment, head bent, hands clenched. Then a +wild, passionate look overspread his young face. "It is her evening," he +said to himself. "Letty turns me out. I will go." + +Meanwhile Letty stood where he had left her till she had heard the +street-door close. The typical, significant sound knelled to her heart. +She began to walk tempestuously up and down, crying with excitement. + +Time passed on. The August evening closed in; and in this deserted London +nobody came to see her. She dined alone, and afterwards spent what seemed +to her interminable hours pacing the drawing-room and meditating. At last +there was a pause in the rush of selfish or jealous feeling which had +been pulsing through her for weeks past, dictating all her actions, +fevering all her thoughts. And there is nothing so desolate as such a +pause, to such a nature. For it means reflection; it means putting one's +life away from one, and looking at it as a whole. And to the Lettys of +this world there is no process more abhorrent--none they will spend more +energy in escaping. + +It was inexplicable, intolerable that she should be so unhappy. What was +it that tortured her so--hatred of Marcella Maxwell, or pain that she had +lost her husband? But she had never imagined herself in love with him +when she married him. He had never obtained from her before a tenth part +of the thought she had bestowed upon him during the past six weeks. +During all the time that she had been flirting with Cathedine, and +recklessly placing herself in his power by the favours she asked of him, +she saw now, with a kind of amazement, that she had been thinking +constantly of George, determined to impress him with her social success, +to force him to admire her and think much of her. + +Cathedine? Had he any real attraction for her? Why, she was afraid of +him, she knew him to be coarse and brutal, even while she played with him +and sent him on her errands. When she compared him with George--even +George as she had just seen him in this last odious scene--she felt the +tears of anger and despair rising. + +But to be forced to dismiss him at George's word, to submit in this +matter of the invitations, to let herself be trampled on, while George +gave all his homage, all his best mind, to Lady Maxwell--something +scorching flew through her veins as she thought of it. Never! never! +She would find, she had already thought of, a startling way of +avenging herself. + +Late at night George came home. She had locked her door, and he turned +into his dressing-room. When the house was quiet again, she pressed her +face into the pillows, and wept till she was amazed at her own pain, and +must needs turn her rage upon herself. + + * * * * * + +When Tressady arrived at the house in Mile End Road he found the pretty, +bare room where Marcella held her gatherings full of guests. The East End +had not "gone out of town." The two little workhouse girls, in the +whitest of caps and aprons, were carrying round trays of coffee and +cakes; and beyond the open window was a tiny garden, backed by a huge +Board School and some tall warehouses, yet as pleasant within its own +small space as a fountain and flowers, constantly replenished from +Maxwell Court, could make it. + +Amid the medley of workmen, union officials, and members of Parliament +that the room contained, George was set first of all to talk to a young +schoolmaster or two, but he had never felt so little able to adjust his +mind to strangers. The thought of his home miseries burnt within him. +When could he get his turn with her? He was thirsty for the sound of her +voice, the kindness of her eyes. + +She had received him with unusual warmth, and an eagerness of look that +seemed to show she had at least as much to say to him as he to her. And +at last his turn came. She took some of her guests into the garden. +George followed, and they found themselves side by side. He noticed that +she was very pale. Yet how was it that fatigue and anxiety instead of +marring her physical charm, only increased it? This thin black dress in +which the tall figure moved so finely, the black lace folded in a fashion +all her own about her neck and breast, the waving lines of hair above the +delicate stateliness of the brow--those slight tragic hollows in cheek +and temple with their tale of spirit and passionate feeling, and all the +ebb and flow of noble life--he had never felt her so rare, so adorable. + +"Well! what do you think of it all to-day? Are you still inclined to +prophesy?" she asked him, smiling. + +"I might be--if I saw any chance of the man you want. But he doesn't seem +to be forthcoming, and--" + +"And to-morrow is the end!" + +"The Government has quite made up its mind not to take defeat--not to +accept modifications?" + +She shook her head. + +They were standing at the end of the garden, looking into the brightly +lit windows of the Board School, where evening-classes were going on. She +gave a long sigh. + +"As for us personally, we can only be thankful to have it over. Neither +of us could have borne it much longer. I suppose, when the crisis is all +over, we shall go away for a long time." + +By "the crisis" she meant, of course, the resignation of Ministers and +a change of Government. So that a few days hence she would be no longer +within his reach at all. Maxwell, once out of office, would, no doubt, +for a long while to come prefer to spend the greater part of his time +in Brookshire, away from politics. A sudden sharp perception woke in +Tressady of what it would mean to him to find himself in a world +where, on going out of a morning, it would be no longer possible to +come across her. + +At last she broke the silence. + +"How little I really thought, in spite of all one's anxiety, that Lord +Fontenoy was going to win! He has played his cards amazingly well." + +George took no notice. Thoughts were whirling in his brain. + +"What would you say to me, I wonder," he said at last, "if _I_ were to +try the part?" + +He spoke in a bantering tone, poking at the black London earth with +his stick. + +"What part?" + +"Well, it seems to me I might put the case. One wants to argue the thing +in a common-sense way. I don't feel towards this clause as I did towards +the others. I know a good many men don't." + +He turned to her with a light composure. + +She stared in bewilderment. + +"I don't understand." + +"Well; why shouldn't one put the case? We have always counted on the +hostility of the country. But the country seems to be coming round. Some +of us now feel the Bill should have its chance--we are inclined to let +Ministers take the responsibility. But, gracious heavens!--to suppose the +House would pay any attention to me!" + +He took up a stone and jerked it over the wall. She did not speak for a +moment. At last she said: + +"It would be a grave thing for _you_ to do." + +He turned, and their eyes met, hers full of emotion, and his hesitating +and reflective. Then he laughed, his pride stung a little by her +expression. + +"You think I should do myself more harm, than good to anybody else?" + +"No.--Only it would be serious," she repeated after a pause. + +Instantly he dropped the subject as far as his own action was +concerned. He led her back into discussion of other people, and of the +situation in general. + +Then suddenly, as they talked, a host of thoughts fled cloud-like, +rising and melting, through Marcella's memory. She remembered with what +prestige--considering his youth and inexperience--he had entered +Parliament, the impression made by the short and brilliant campaign of +his election. Now, since the real struggle of the session had begun, his +energies seemed to have been unaccountably in abeyance, and eclipse. +People she noticed had ceased to talk of him. But supposing, after all, +there had been a crisis of mind and conviction underlying it?--supposing +that now, at the last moment, in a situation that cried out for a +leader, something should suddenly release his powers and gifts to do +their proper work-- + +It vexed her to realise her own excitement, together with an odd +shrinking and reluctance that seemed to be fighting with it. All in a +moment, to Tressady's astonishment, she recalled the conversation to the +point where it had turned aside. + +"And you think--you _really_ think"--her voice had a nervous appealing +note--"that even at this eleventh hour--No, I don't understand!--I +_can't_ understand!--why, or how you should still think it possible to +change things enough!" + +He felt a sting of pleasure, and the passing sense of hurt pride was +soothed. At least he had conquered her attention, her curiosity! + +"I am sure that anything might still happen," he said stubbornly. + +"Well, only let it be settled!" she said, trying to speak lightly, "else +there will be nothing left of some of us." + +She raised her hand, and pushed back her hair with a childish gesture of +weariness, that was quite unconscious, and therefore touching. + +As she spoke, indeed, the thought of a strong man harassed with overwork, +and patiently preparing to lay down his baffled task, and all his +cherished hopes, captured her mind, brought a quick rush of tears even to +her eyes. Tressady looked at her; he saw the moisture in the eyes, the +reddening of the cheek, the effort for self-control. + +"Why do you let yourself feel it so much?" he said resentfully; "it is +not natural, nor right." + +"That's our old quarrel, isn't it?" she answered, smiling. + +He was staring at the ground again, poking with his stick. + +"There are so many things one _must_ feel," he said in a bitter low +voice; "one may as well try to take politics calmly." + +She looked down upon him, understanding, but not knowing how to meet him, +how to express herself. His words and manner were a confession of +personal grief,--almost an appeal to her,--the first he had ever made. +Yet how to touch the subject of his marriage! She shrank from it +painfully. What ominous, disagreeable things she had heard lately of the +young Lady Tressady from people she trusted! Why, oh! why had he ruined +his own life in such a way! + +And with the yearning towards all suffering which was natural to her, +there mingled so much else--inevitable softness and gratitude for that +homage towards herself, which had begun to touch and challenge all the +loving, responsive impulse which was at the root of her character--an +eager wish to put out a hand and guide him--all tending to shape in her +this new longing to rouse him to some critical and courageous action, +action which should give him at least the joy that men get from the +strenuous use of natural powers, from the realisation of themselves. And +through it all the most divinely selfish blindness to the real truth of +the situation! Yet she tried not to think of Maxwell--she wished to think +only of and for her friend. + +After his last words they stood side by side in silence for a few +moments. But the expression of her eyes, of her attitude, was all +sympathy. He must needs feel that she cared, she understood, that his +life, his pain, his story mattered to her. At last she said, turning her +face away from him, and from the few people who had not yet left the +garden to go and listen to some music that was going on in the +drawing-room: + +"Sometimes, the best way to forget one's own troubles--don't you +think?--is to put something else first for a time--perhaps in your +case, the public life and service. Mightn't it be? Suppose you thought it +all really out, what you have been saying to me--gave yourself up to +it--and then _determined_. Perhaps afterwards--" + +She paused--overcome with doubt, even shyness--and very pale too, as she +turned to him again. But so beautiful! The very perplexity which spoke in +the gently quivering face as it met his, made her lovelier in his eyes. +It seemed to strike down some of the barrier between them, to present her +to him as weaker, more approachable. + +But after waiting a moment, he gave a little harsh laugh. + +"Afterwards, when one has somehow settled other people's affairs, one +might see straighter in one's own? Is that what you mean?" + +"I meant," she said, speaking with difficulty, "what I have often +found--myself--that it helps one sometimes, to throw oneself altogether +into something outside one's own life, in a large disinterested way. +Afterwards, one comes back to one's own puzzles--with a fresh strength +and hope." + +"Hope!" he said despondently, with a quick lifting of the shoulders. +Then, in another tone-- + +"So that's your advice to me--to take this thing seriously--to take +myself seriously--to think it out?" + +"Yes, yes," she said eagerly; "don't trifle with it--with what you might +think and do--till it is too late to think and do anything." + +Suddenly it flashed across them both how far they had travelled since +their first meeting in the spring. Her mind filled with a kind of dread, +an uneasy sense of responsibility--then with a tremulous consciousness of +power. It was as though she felt something fluttering like a bird in her +hands. And all the time there echoed through her memory a voice speaking +in a moonlit garden--"You know--you don't mind my saying it?--nobody is +ever converted--politically--nowadays." + +No, but there may be honest advance and change--why not? And if she had +influenced him--was it not Maxwell's work and thought that had spoken +through her? + +"Well, anyway," said Tressady's voice beside her, "whatever +happens--you'll believe--" + +"That you won't help to give us the _coup de grace_ unless you must?" she +said, half laughing, yet with manifest emotion. "Anyway, I should have +believed that." + +"And you really care so much?" he asked her again, looking at her +wondering. + +She suddenly dropped her head upon her hands. They were alone now in the +moonlit garden, and she was leaning over the low wall that divided them +from the school enclosure. But before he could say anything--before he +could even move closer to her--she had raised her face again, and drawn +her hand rapidly across her eyes. + +"I suppose one is tired and foolish after all these weeks," she said, +with a breaking voice--"I apologise. You see when one comes to see +everything through another's eyes--to live in another's life--" He felt +a sudden stab, then a leap of joy--hungry, desolate joy--that she should +thus admit him to the very sanctuary of her heart--let him touch the +"very pulse of the machine." At the same moment that it revealed the +eternal gulf between them, it gave him a delicious passionate sense of +intimity--of privilege. + +"You have--a marvellous idea of marriage"--he said, under his breath, as +he moved slowly beside her towards the house. + +She made no answer. In another minute she was talking to him of +indifferent things, and immediately afterwards he found himself parted +from her in the crowd of the drawing-room. + +When the party dispersed and he was walking alone towards Aldgate through +the night, he could do nothing but repeat to himself fragments of what +she had said to him--lost all the time in a miserable yearning memory of +her eyes and voice. + +His mind was made up. And as he lay sleepless and solitary through the +night, he scarcely thought any more of the strait to which his married +life had come. Forty-eight hours hence he should have time for that. For +the present he had only to "think out" how it might be possible for him +to turn doubt and turmoil into victory, and lay the crown of it at +Marcella Maxwell's feet. + +Meanwhile Marcella, on her return to St. James's Square, put her hands on +Maxwell's shoulders, and said to him, in a voice unlike herself: "Sir +George Tressady was at the party to-night. I _think_ he may be going to +throw Lord Fontenoy over. Don't be surprised if he speaks in that sense +to-morrow." + +Maxwell looked extraordinarily perturbed. + +"I hope he will do nothing of the kind," he said, with decision. "It will +do him enormous harm. All the conviction he has ever shown has been the +other way. It will be thought to be a mere piece of caprice and +indiscipline." + +Marcella said nothing. She walked away from him, her hands clasped behind +her, her soft skirt trailing--a pale muse of meditation--meditation in +which for once she did not invite him to share. + +"Tressady, by all that's wonderful!" said a member of Fontenoy's party to +his neighbour. "What's _he_ got to say?" + +The man addressed bent forward, with his hands on his knees, to look +eagerly at the speaker. + +"I knew there was something up," he said. "Every time I have come across +Tressady to-day he has been deep with one or other of those fellows"--he +jerked his head towards the Liberal benches. "I saw him buttonholing +Green in the Library, then with Speedwell on the Terrace. And just look +at their benches! They're as thick as bees! Yes, by George! there _is_ +something up." + +His young sportsman's face flushed with excitement, and he tried hard +through the intervening heads to get a glimpse of Fontenoy. But nothing +was to be seen of the leader but a hat jammed down over the eyes, a +square chin, and a pair of folded arms. + +The House, indeed, throughout the day had worn an aspect which, to the +experienced observer--to the smooth-faced Home Secretary, for instance, +watching the progress of this last critical division--meant that +everything was possible, the unexpected above all. Rumours gathered and +died away. Men might be seen talking with unaccustomed comrades; and +those who were generally most frank had become discreet. It was known +that Fontenoy's anxiety had been growing rapidly; and it was noticed that +he and the young viscount who acted as the Whip of the party had kept an +extraordinarily sharp watch on all their own men through the dinner-hour. + +Fontenoy himself had spoken before dinner, throwing scorn upon the +clause, as the ill-conceived finish of an impossible Bill. So the +landlords were to be made the executants, the police, of this precious +Act? Every man who let out a tenement-house in workmen's dwellings was to +be haled before the law and punished if a tailor on his premises did his +work at home, if a widow took in shirtmaking to keep her children. Pass, +for the justice or the expediency of such a law in itself. But who but a +madman ever supposed you could get it carried out! What if the landlords +refused or neglected their part? _Quis custodiet?_ And was Parliament +going to make itself ridiculous by setting up a law, which, were it a +thousand times desirable, you simply could not enforce? + +The speech was delivered with amazing energy. It abounded in savage +epigram and personality; and a month before it would have had great +effect. Every Englishman has an instinctive hatred of paper reforms. + +During the dinner-hour Tressady met Fontenoy in the Lobby, and +suddenly stopped to speak. The young man was deeply flushed and +holding himself stiffly erect. "If you want me," he said--"you will +find me in the Library. I don't want to spring anything upon you. You +shall know all I know." + +"Thank you," said the other with slow bitterness--"but we can look after +ourselves. I think you and I understood each other this morning." + +The two men parted abruptly. Tressady walked on, stung and excited afresh +by the memory of the hateful half hour he had spent that morning in +Fontenoy's library. For after all, when once he had come to his decision, +he had tried to behave with frankness, with consideration. + +Fontenoy hurried on to look for the young viscount with the curls and +shoulders, and the two men stood about the inner lobby together, Fontenoy +sombrely watching everybody who came out or in. + +It was about ten o'clock when Tressady caught the Speaker's eye. He +rose in a crowded House, a House conscious not only that the division +shortly to be taken would decide the fate of a Government, but vaguely +aware, besides, that something else was involved--one of those +personal incidents that may at any moment make the dullest piece of +routine dramatic, or rise into history by the juxtaposition of some +great occasion. + +The House had not yet made up its opinion about him as a speaker. He had +done well; then, not so well. And, moreover, it was so long since he had +taken any part in debate that the House had had time to forget whatever +qualities he might once have shown. + +His bearing and voice won him a first point. For youth, well-bred and +well-equipped, the English House of Commons has always shown a +peculiar indulgence. Then members began to bend eagerly forward, to +crane necks, to put hands to ears. The Treasury Bench was seen to be +listening as one man. + +Before the speech was over many of those present had already recognised +in it a political event of the first order. The speaker had traced with +great frankness his own relation to the Bill--from an opinion which was +but a prejudice, to a submission which was still half repugnance. He drew +attention to the remarkable and growing movement in support of the +Maxwell policy which was now spreading throughout the country, after a +period of coolness and suspended judgment; he pointed to the probable +ease with which, as it was now seen, the "harassed trades" would adapt +themselves to the new law; he showed that the House, in at least three +critical divisions, and under circumstances of enormous difficulty, had +still affirmed the Bill; that the country, during the progress of the +measure, had rallied unmistakably to the Government, and that all that +remained was a question of machinery. That being so, he--and, he +believed, some others--had reconsidered their positions. Their electoral +pledges, in their opinion, no longer held, though they would be ready at +any moment to submit themselves to consequences, if consequences there +were to be. + +Then, taking up the special subject-matter of the clause, he threw +himself upon his leader's speech with a nervous energy, an information, +and a resource which held the House amazed. He tore to pieces +Fontenoy's elaborate attack, showed what practical men thought of the +clause, and with what careful reliance upon their opinion and their +experience it had been framed; and, finally--with a reference not +lacking in a veiled passion that told upon the House, to those "dim +toiling thousands" whose lot, "as it comes to work upon the mind, is +daily perplexing if not transforming the thoughts and ideals of such men +as I"--he, in the plainest terms, announced his intention of voting with +the Government, and sat down, amid the usual mingled storm, in a +shouting and excited House. + +The next hour passed in a tumult. One speaker after another got up from +the Liberal benches--burly manufacturers and men of business, who had so +far held a strong post in the army of resistance--to tender their +submission, to admit that the fight had gone far enough, that the country +was against them, and that the Bill must be borne. What use, too, in +turning out a Government which would either be sent back with redoubled +strength or replaced by combinations that had no attractions whatever +from men of moderate minds? Sadness reigned in the speeches of this +Liberal remnant; nor could the House from time to time forbear to jeer +them. But they made their purpose plain, and the Government Whip, +standing near the door, gleefully struck off name after name from his +Opposition list. + +Then followed the usual struggle between the division that all men +wanted and the speakers that no man could endure. But at last the bell +was rung, the House cleared. As Tressady turned against the stream of +his party, Fontenoy, with a sarcastic smile, stood elaborately aside to +let him pass. + +"We shall soon know what you have cost us," he said hoarsely in +Tressady's ear; then, advancing a little towards the centre of the +floor, he looked up markedly and deliberately at the Ladies' Gallery. +Tressady made no reply. He held his fair head higher than usual as he +passed on his unaccustomed way to the Aye Lobby. Many an eager eye +strained back to see how many recruits would join him as he reached the +Front Opposition Bench; many a Parliamentary Nestor watched the young +man's progress with a keenness born of memory--memory that burnt anew +with the battles of the past. + +"Do you remember Chandos," said one old man to another--"young Chandos, +that went for Peel in '46 against his party? It was my first year in +Parliament. I can see him now. He was something like this young fellow." + +"But _his_ ratting changed nothing," said his companion, with an uneasy +laugh; and they both struggled forward among the Noes. + +Twenty minutes later the tellers were at the table, and the moment that +was to make or mar a great Ministry had come. + +"Ayes, 306; Noes, 280. The Ayes have it!" + +"By Jove, he's done it!--the Judas!" cried a young fellow, crimson with +excitement, who was standing beside Fontenoy! + +"Yes--he's done it!" said Fontenoy, with grim composure, though the hand +that held his hat shook. "The curtain may now fall." + +"Where is he?" shouted the hot bloods around him, hooting and groaning, +as their eyes searched the House for the man who had thus, in an +afternoon, pulled down and defeated all their hopes. + +But Tressady was nowhere to be seen. He had left the House just as the +great news, surging like a wave through Lobby and corridor, reached a +group of people waiting in a Minister's private room--and Marcella +Maxwell knew that all was won. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +"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." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +The door opened silently, and there came in a figure that for a moment +was hardly recognised by either Maxwell or his wife. Shrunken, pale, and +grief-stricken, Ancoats's poor mother entered, her eye seeking eagerly +for Maxwell, perceiving nothing else. She was in black, her veil +hurriedly thrown back, and the features beneath it were all blurred by +distress and fatigue. + +Marcella hurried to her. Mrs. Allison took her hand in both her own with +the soft, appealing motion habitual to her, then said hastily, still +looking at Maxwell: + +"Maxwell, the boy has gone. He left me two days ago. This morning, in my +trouble, I sent for Lord Fontenoy, my kind, kind friend. And he persuaded +me to come to you at once. I begged him to come too--" + +She glanced timidly from one to the other, implying many things. + +But even with this preface, Maxwell's greeting of his defeated +antagonist was ceremony itself. The natural instinct of such a man is to +mask victory in courtesy. But a paragraph that morning in Fontenoy's +paper--a paragraph that he happened to have seen in Lord Ardagh's +room--had appealed to another natural instinct, stronger and more +primitive. It amazed him that even this emergency and Mrs. Allison's +persuasions could have brought the owner of the paper within his doors +on this particular morning. + +Fontenoy, immersed in the correspondence of the morning, had not yet +chanced to see the paragraph, which was Harding Watton's. Yet, if he had, +he could not have shown a more haughty and embarrassed bearing. He was +there under a compulsion he did not know how to resist, a compulsion of +tears and grief; but the instinct for manners, which so often upon +occasion serves the man of illustrious family, as well, almost, as good +feeling or education may serve another, had been for the time weakened in +him by the violences and exhaustion of the political struggle, and he did +not feel certain that he could trust himself. He was smarting still +through every nerve, and the greeting especially that Maxwell's tall wife +extended to him was gall and bitterness. She meanwhile, as she advanced +towards him, was mostly struck with the perfection of his morning dress. +The ultra-correctness and strict fashion that he affected in these +matters were generally a surprise to those who knew him only by +reputation. + +After five minutes' question and answer the Maxwells understood something +of the situation. A servant of Ancoats's had been induced to disclose +what he knew. There could be no question that the young fellow had gone +off to Normandy, where he possessed a chalet close to Trouville, in the +expectation that his fair lady would immediately join him there. She had +not yet started. So much Fontenoy had already ascertained. But she had +thrown up a recent engagement within the last few days, and before +Ancoats's flight all Fontenoy's information had pointed to the likelihood +of a _coup_ of some sort. As for the boy himself, he had left his mother +at Castle Luton, three days before, on the pretext of a Scotch visit, and +had instead taken the evening train to Paris, leaving a letter for his +mother in which the influence of certain modern French novels of the +psychological kind could perhaps be detected. "The call of the heart that +drives me from you," wrote this incredible young man, "is something +independent of myself. I wring my hands, but I follow where it leads. +Love has its crimes,--that I admit,--but they are the only road to +experience. And experience is all I care to live for! At any rate, I +cannot accept the limits that you, mother, would impose upon me. Each of +us must be content to recognise the other's personality. I have tried to +reconcile you to an affection that must be content to be irregular. You +repel it and me, under the influence of a bigotry in which I have ceased +to believe. Suffer me, then, to act for myself in this respect. At any +time that you like to call upon me I will be your dutiful son, so long as +this matter is not mentioned between us. And let me implore you not to +bring in third persons. They have already done mischief enough. Against +them I should know how to protect myself." + +Maxwell returned the letter with a disgust he could hardly repress. +Everything in it seemed to him as pinchbeck as the passion itself. Mrs. +Allison took it with the same miserable look, which had in it, Marcella +noticed, a certain strange sternness, as of some frail creature nerving +itself to desperate things. + +"Now what shall we do?" said Maxwell, abruptly. + +Fontenoy moved forward. "I presume you still command the same persons you +set in motion before? Can you get at them to-day?" + +Maxwell pondered. "Yes, the clergyman. The solicitor-brother is too far +away. Your idea is to stop the girl from crossing?" + +"If it were still possible." Fontenoy dropped his voice, and his gesture +induced Maxwell to follow him to the recess of a distant window. + +"The chief difficulty, perhaps," said Fontenoy, resuming, "concerns the +lad himself. His mother, you will understand, cannot run any risk of +being brought in contact with that woman. Nor is she physically fit for +the voyage; but someone must go, if only to content her. There has been +some wild talk of suicide, apparently--mere bombast, of course, like so +much of it, but she has been alarmed." + +"Do you propose, then, to go yourself?" + +"I am of no use," said Fontenoy, decisively. + +Maxwell had cause to know that the statement was true, and did not press +him. They fell into a rapid consultation. + +Meanwhile, Marcella had drawn Mrs. Allison to the sofa beside her, and +was attempting a futile task of comfort. Mrs. Allison answered in +monosyllables, glancing hither and thither. At last she said in a low, +swift voice, as though addressing herself, rather than her companion, "If +all fails, I have made up my mind. I shall leave his house. I can take +nothing more from him." + +Marcella started. "But that would deprive you of all chance, all hope of +influencing him," she said, her eager, tender look searching the other +woman's face. + +"No; it would be my duty," said Mrs. Allison, simply, crossing her hands +upon her lap. Her delicate blue eyes, swollen with weeping, the white +hair, of which a lock had escaped from its usual quiet braids and hung +over her blanched cheeks, her look at once saintly and indomitable--every +detail of her changed aspect made a chill and penetrating impression. +Marcella began to understand what the Christian might do, though the +mother should die of it. + +Meanwhile she watched the two men at the other side of the room, with a +manifest eagerness for their return. Presently, indeed, she half rose +and called: + +"Aldous!" + +Lord Maxwell turned. + +"Are you thinking of someone who might go to Trouville?" she asked him. + +"Yes, but we can hit on no one," he replied, in perplexity. + +She moved towards him, bearing herself with a peculiar erectness +and dignity. + +"Would it be possible to ask Sir George Tressady to go?" she said +quietly. + +Maxwell looked at her open-mouthed for an instant. Fontenoy, behind him, +threw a sudden, searching glance at the beautiful figure in grey. + +"We all know," she said, turning back to the mother, "that Ancoats likes +Sir George." + +Mrs. Allison shrunk a little from the clear look. Fontenoy's rage of +defeat, however modified in her presence, had nevertheless expressed +itself to her in phrases and allusions that had both perplexed and +troubled her. _Had_ Marcella indeed made use of her beauty to decoy a +weak youth from his allegiance? And now she spoke his name so simply. + +But the momentary wonder died from the poor mother's mind. + +"I remember," she said sadly, "I remember he once spoke to me very kindly +about my son." + +"And he thought kindly," said Marcella, rapidly; "he is kind at heart. +Aldous! if Cousin Charlotte consents, why not at least put the case to +him? He knows everything. He might undertake what we want, for her +sake,--for all our sakes,--and it might succeed." + +The swift yet calm decision of her manner completed Maxwell's +bewilderment. + +His eyes sought hers, while the others waited, conscious, somehow, of a +dramatic moment. Fontenoy's flash of malicious curiosity made him even +forget, while it lasted, the little tragic figure on the sofa. + +"What do you say, Cousin Charlotte?" said Maxwell at last. + +His voice was dry and business-like. Only the wife who watched him +perceived the silent dignity with which he had accepted her appeal. + +He went to sit beside Mrs. Allison, stooping over her, while they talked +in a low key. Very soon she had caught at Marcella's suggestion, with an +energy of despair. + +"But how can we find him?" she said at last, looking helplessly round +the room, at the very chair, among others, where Tressady had just +been sitting. + +Maxwell felt the humour of the situation without relishing it. + +"Either at his own house," he said shortly, "or the House of Commons." + +"He may have left town this morning. Lord Fontenoy thought"--she looked +timidly at her companion--"that he would be sure to go and explain +himself to his constituents at once." + +"Well, we can find out. If you give me instructions,--if you are sure +this is what you want,--we will find out at once. Are you sure?" + +"I can think of nothing better," she said, with a piteous gesture. +"And if he goes, I have only one message to give him. Ancoats knows +that I have exhausted every argument, every entreaty. Now let him tell +my son"--her voice grew firm, in spite of her look of anguish--"that +if he insists on surrendering himself to a life of sin I can bear him +company no more. I shall leave his house, and go somewhere by myself, +to pray for him." + +Maxwell tried to soothe her, and there was some half-whispered talk +between them, she quietly wiping away her tears from time to time. + +Meanwhile, Marcella and Fontenoy sat together a little way off, he at +first watching Mrs. Allison, she silent, and making no attempt to play +the hostess. Gradually, however, the sense of her presence beside him, +the memory of Tressady's speech, of the scene in the House of the night +before, began to work in his veins with a pricking, exciting power. His +family was famous for a certain drastic way with women; his father, the +now old and half-insane Marquis, had parted from his mother while +Fontenoy was still a child, after scenes that would have disgraced an +inn parlour. Fontenoy himself, in his reckless youth, had simply avoided +the whole sex, so far as its reputable members were concerned; till one +woman by sympathy, by flattery perhaps, by the strange mingling in +herself of iron and gentleness, had tamed him. But there were brutal +instincts in his blood, and he became conscious of them as he sat beside +Marcella Maxwell. + +Suddenly he broke out, bending forward, one hand on his knee, the other +nervously adjusting the eyeglass without which he was practically blind. + +"I imagine your side had foreseen last night better than we had?" + +She drew herself together instantly. + +"One can hardly say. It was evident, wasn't it, that the House as a whole +was surprised? Certainly, no one could have foreseen the numbers." + +She met his look straight, her white hand playing with Mrs. +Allison's card. + +"Oh! a slide of that kind once begun goes like the wind," said Fontenoy. +"Well, and are you pleased with your Bill--not afraid of your +promises--of all the Edens you have held out?" + +The smile that he attempted roused such ogerish associations in Marcella, +she must needs say something to give colour to the half-desperate laugh +that caught her. + +"Did you suppose we should be already _en penitence?_" she asked him. + +The man's wrath overcame him. So England--all the serious forces of the +country--were to be more and more henceforward at the mercy of this kind +of thing! He had begun the struggle with a scornful disbelief in current +gossip. He--politically and morally the creation of a woman--had yet not +been able to bring himself to fear a woman. And now he sat there, +fiercely saying to himself that this woman, playing the old game under +new names, had undone him. + +"Ah! I see," he said. "You are of the mind of the Oxford don--never +regret, never retract, never apologise?" + +The small, reddish eyes, like needle-points, fixed the face before him. +She looked up, her beautiful lips parting. She felt the insult--marvelled +at it! On such an errand, in her own house! Scorn was almost lost in +astonishment. + +"A quotation which nobody gets right--isn't it so?" she said calmly. "If +a wise man said it, I suppose he meant, 'Don't explain yourself to the +wrong people,' which is good advice, don't you think?" + +She rose as she spoke, and moved away from him, that she might listen to +what her husband was saying. Fontenoy was left to reflect on the folly of +a man who, being driven to ask a kindness of his enemy, cannot keep his +temper in the enemy's house. Yet his temper had been freshly tried since +he entered it. The whole suggestion of Tressady's embassy was to himself +galling in the extreme. "There is a meaning in it," he thought; "of +course she thinks it will save appearances!" There was no extravagance, +no calumny, that this cold critic of other men's fervours was not for the +moment ready to believe. + +Nevertheless, as he threw himself back in his chair, and his eye caught +Mrs. Allison's bent figure on the other side of the room, he knew that he +must needs submit--he did submit--to anything that could give that torn +heart ease. Of his two passions, one, the passion for politics, seemed +for the moment to have lost itself in disgust and disappointment; to the +other he clung but the more strongly. Once or twice in her talk with +Maxwell, Mrs. Allison raised her gentle eyes and looked across to +Fontenoy. "Are you there, my friend?" the glance seemed to say, and a +thrill spread itself through the man's rugged being. Ah, well! the +follies of this young scapegrace must wear themselves out in time, and +either he would marry and so free his mother, or he would so outrage her +conscience that she would separate herself from him. Then would come +other people's rewards. + +Presently, indeed, Mrs. Allison rose from her seat and advanced to him +with hurried steps. + +"We have settled it, I think; Maxwell will do all he can. It seems hard +to trust so much to a stranger like Sir George Tressady, but if he will +go--if Ancoats likes him? We must do the best, mustn't we?" + +She raised to him her delicate, small face, in a most winning dependence. +Fontenoy did not even attempt resistance. + +"Certainly--it is not a chance to lose. May I suggest also"--he looked +at Maxwell--"that there is no time to lose?" + +"Give me ten minutes, and I am off," said Maxwell, hurriedly carrying a +bundle of unopened letters to a distance. He looked through them, to see +if anything especially urgent required him to give instructions to his +secretary before leaving the house. + +"Shall I take you home?" said Fontenoy to Mrs. Allison. + +She drew her thick veil round her head and face, and said some tremulous +words, which unconsciously deepened the gloom on Fontenoy's face. +Apparently they were to the effect that before going home she wished to +see the Anglican priest in whom she especially confided, a certain Father +White, who was to all intents and purposes her director. For in his +courtship of this woman of fifty, with her curious distinction and her +ethereal charm, which years seemed only to increase, Fontenoy had not one +rival, but two--her son and her religion. + +Fontenoy's fingers barely touched those of Maxwell and his wife. As he +closed the door behind Mrs. Allison, leaving the two together, he said to +himself contemptuously that he pitied the husband. + +When the latch had settled, Maxwell threw down his letters and crossed +the room to his wife. + +"I only half understood you," he said, a flush rising in his face. "You +really mean that we, on this day of all days--that I--am to personally +ask this kindness of George Tressady?" + +"I do!" she cried, but without attempting any caress. "If I could only go +and ask it myself!" "That would be impossible!" he said quickly. + +"Then you, dear husband--dear love!--go and ask it for me! Must we +not--oh! do see it as I do!--must we not somehow make it possible to be +friends again, to wipe out that--that half-hour once for all?"--she threw +out her hand in an impetuous gesture. "If you go, he will feel that is +what we mean--he will understand us at once--there is nothing vile in +him--nothing! Dear, he never said a word to me I could resent till this +morning. And, alack, alack! was it somehow my fault?" She dropped her +face a moment on the back of the chair she held. "How I am to play my own +part--well! I must think. But I cannot have such a thing on my heart, +Aldous--I cannot!" + +He was silent a moment; then he said: + +"Let me understand, at least, what it is precisely that we are doing. Is +the idea that it should be made possible for us all to meet again as +though nothing had happened?" + +She shrank a moment from the man's common sense; then replied, +controlling herself: + +"Only not to leave the open sore--to help him to forget! He must know--he +does know"--she held herself proudly--"that I have no secrets from you. +So that when the time comes for remembering, for thinking it over, he +will shrink from you, or hate you. Whereas, what I want"--her eyes filled +with tears--"is that he should _know_ you--only that! I ought to have +brought it about long ago." + +"Are you forgetting that I owe him this morning my political existence?" + +The voice betrayed the inner passion. + +"He would be the last person to remember it!" she cried. "Why not take it +quite, quite simply?--behave so as to say to him, without words, 'Be our +friend--join with us in putting out of sight what hurts us no less than +you to think of. Shut the door upon the old room--pass with us into a +new!'--oh! if I could explain!" + +She hid her face in her hands again. + +"I understand," he said, after a long pause. "It is very like you. I am +not quite sure it is very wise. These things, to my mind, are best left +to end themselves. But I promised Mrs. Allison; and what you ask, dear, +you shall have. So be it." + +She lifted her head hastily, and was dismayed by the signs of +agitation in him as he turned away. She pursued him timidly, laying +her hand on his arm. + +"And then--" + +Her voice sank to its most pleading note. He caught her hand; but she +withdrew herself in haste. + +"And then," she went on, struggling for a smile, "then you and I have +things to settle. Do you think I don't know that I have made all your +work, and all your triumph, gall and bitterness to you--do you think I +don't know?" + +She gazed at him with a passionate intensity through her tears, yet by +her gesture forbidding him to come near her. What man would not have +endured such discomforts a thousand times for such a look? + +He stooped to her. + +"We are to talk that out, then, when I come back?--Please give these +letters to Saunders--there is nothing of importance. I will go first to +Tressady's house." + + * * * * * + +Maxwell drove away through the sultry streets, his mind running on his +task. It seemed to him that politics had never put him to anything so +hard. But he began to plan it with his usual care and precision. The +butler who opened the door of the Upper Brook Street house could only say +that his master was not at home. + +"Shall I find him, do you imagine, at the House of Commons?" + +The butler could not say. But Lady Tressady was in, though just on the +point of going out. Should he inquire? + +But the visitor made it plain that he had no intention of disturbing Lady +Tressady, and would find out for himself. He left his card in the +butler's hands. + +"Who was that, Kenrick?" said a sharp voice behind the man as the hansom +drove away. Letty Tressady, elaborately dressed, with a huge white hat +and lace parasol, was standing on the stairs, her pale face peering out +of the shadows. The butler handed her the card, and telling him to get +her a cab at once, she ran up again to the drawing-room. + +Meanwhile Maxwell sped on towards Westminster, frowning over his problem. +As he drove down Whitehall the sun brightened to a naked midday heat, +throwing its cloak of mists behind it. The gilding on the Clock Tower +sparkled in the light; even the dusty, airless street, with its withered +planes, was on a sudden flooded with gaiety. Two or three official or +Parliamentary acquaintances saluted the successful minister as he passed; +and each was conscious of a certain impatience with the gravity of the +well-known face. That a great man should not be content to look victory, +as well as win it, seemed a kind of hypocrisy. + +In the House of Commons, a few last votes and other oddments of the now +dying session were being pushed through to an accompaniment of empty +benches. Tressady was not there, nor in the library. Maxwell made his way +to the upper lobby, where writing-tables and materials are provided in +the window-recesses for the use of members. + +He had hardly entered the lobby before he caught sight at its further end +of the long straight chin and fair head of the man he was in quest of. +And almost at the same moment, Tressady, who was sitting writing amid a +pile of letters and papers, lifted his eyes and saw Lord Maxwell +approaching. + +He started, then half rose, scattering his papers. Maxwell bowed as he +neared the table, then stopped beside it, without offering his hand. + +"I fear I may be disturbing you," he said, with simple but cold courtesy. +"The fact is I have come down here on an urgent matter, which may perhaps +be my excuse. Could you give me twenty minutes, in my room?" + +"By all means," said Tressady. He tried to put his papers together, but +to his own infinite annoyance his hand shook. He seemed hardly to know +what to do with them. + +"Do not let me hurry you," said Maxwell, in the same manner. "Will you +follow me at your leisure?" + +"I will follow you immediately," said Tressady; "as soon as I have put +these under lock and key." + +His visitor departed. Tressady remained standing a moment by the table, +his blue eyes, unusually wide open, fixed absently on the river, a dark +red flush overspreading the face. Then he rapidly threw his papers +together into a black bag that stood near, and walked with them to his +locker in the wall. + +For an hour after he left Marcella Maxwell he had wandered blindly up +and down the Green Park; at the end of it a sudden impulse had driven +him to the House, as his best refuge both from Letty and himself. There +he found waiting for him a number of letters, and a sheaf of telegrams +besides from his constituency, with which he had just begun to grapple +when Maxwell interrupted him. Some hours of hard writing and thinking +might, he thought, bring him by reaction to some notion of what to do +with the next days and nights--how to take up the business of his +private life again. + +Now, as he withdrew his key from the lock, in a corridor almost empty of +inhabitants, abstraction seized him once more. He leant against the wall +a moment, with his hands in his pockets, seeing her face--the tears on +her cheek--feeling the texture of her dress against his lips. Barely two +hours ago! No doubt she had confided all to Maxwell in the interval. The +young fellow burnt with mingled rage and shame. This interview with the +husband seemed to transform it all to vaudeville, if not to farce. How +was he to get through it with any dignity and self-command? Moreover, a +passionate resentment towards Maxwell developed itself. His telling of +his secret had been no matter for a common scandal, a vulgar jealousy. +_She_ knew that--she could not have so misrepresented him. A sense of the +situation to which he had brought himself on all sides made his pride +feel itself in the grip of something that asked his submission. Yet why, +and to whom? + +He walked along through the interminable corridors towards Maxwell's room +in the House of Lords, a prey to what afterwards seemed to him the +meanest moment of his life. Little knowing the pledges that a woman had +given for him, he did say to himself that Maxwell owed him much--that he +was not called upon to bear everything from a man he had given back to +power. And all the time his thoughts built a thorn-hedge about her face, +her pity. Let him see them no more, not even in the mirror of the mind. +Great heaven! what harm could such as he do to her? + +By the time he reached Maxwell's door he seemed to himself as hard and +cool as usual. As he entered, the minister was standing by an oriel +window, overlooking the river, turning over the contents of a +despatch-box that had just been brought him. He advanced at once; and +Tressady noticed that he had already dismissed his secretary. + +"Will you sit by the window?" said Maxwell. "The day promises to be +extraordinarily hot." + +Tressady took the seat assigned him. Maxwell's grey eye ran over the +young man's figure and bearing. Then he bent forward from a chair on the +other side of a small writing-table. + +"You will probably have guessed the reason of my intrusion upon you--you +and I have already discussed this troublesome affair--and the kind manner +in which you treated our anxieties then--" + +"Ancoats!" exclaimed Tressady, with a start he could not control. "You +wish to consult me about Ancoats?" + +A flash of wonder crossed the other's mind. "He imagined--" Instinctively +Maxwell's opening mildness stiffened into a colder dignity. + +"I fear we may be making an altogether improper claim upon you," he said +quietly; "but this morning, about an hour ago, Ancoats's mother came to +us with the news that he had left her two days ago, and was now +discovered to be at Trouville, where he has a chalet, waiting for this +girl, of whom we all know, to join him. You will imagine Mrs. Allison's +despair. The entanglement is in itself bad enough. But she--I think you +know it--is no ordinary woman, nor can she bring any of the common +philosophy of life to bear upon this matter. It seems to be sapping her +very springs of existence, and the impression she left upon myself--and +upon Lady Maxwell"--he said the words slowly--"was one of the deepest +pity and sorrow. As you also know, I believe, I have till now been able +to bring some restraining influence to bear upon the girl, who is of +course not a girl, but a very much married woman, with a husband always +threatening to turn up and avenge himself upon her. There is a good man, +one of those High Church clergymen who interest themselves specially in +the stage, who has helped us many times already. I have telegraphed to +him, and expect him here before long. We know that she has not yet left +London, and it may be possible again, at the eleventh hour, to stop her. +But that--" + +"Is not enough," said Tressady, quickly, raising his head. "You want +someone to grapple with Ancoats?" + +Face and voice were those of another man--attentive, normal, sympathetic. +Maxwell observed him keenly. + +"We want someone to go to Ancoats; to represent to him his mother's +determination to leave him for good if this disgraceful affair goes on; +to break the shock of the girl's non-arrival to him, if, indeed, we +succeed in stopping her; and to watch him for a day or two, in case there +should be anything in the miserable talk of suicide with which he seems +to have been threatening his mother." + +"Oh! Suicide! Ancoats!" said Tressady, throwing back his head. + +"We rate him, apparently, much the same," said Maxwell, drily. "But it +is not to be wondered at that the mother should be differently affected. +She sent you"--the speaker paused a moment--"what seemed to me a +touching message." + +Tressady bent forward. + +"'Tell him that I have no claim upon him--that I am ashamed to ask this +of him. But he once said some kind words to me about my son, and I know +that Ancoats desired his friendship. His help _might_ save us. I can say +no more.'" + +Tressady looked up quickly, reddening involuntarily. + +"Was Fontenoy there--did he agree?" + +"Fontenoy agreed," said Maxwell, in the same measured voice. "In fact, +you grasp our petition. To speak frankly, my wife suggested it, and I was +deputed to bear it to you. But I need not say that we are quite prepared +to find that you are not able to do what we have ventured to ask of you, +or that your engagements will not permit it." + +A strange gulp rose in Tressady's throat. He understood--oh! he +understood her--perfectly. + +He leant back in his chair, looking through the open window to the +Thames. A breeze had risen and was breaking up the thunderous sky into +gay spaces of white and blue. The river was surging and boiling under the +tide, and strings of barges were mounting with the mounting water, +slipping fast along the terrace wall. The fronts of the various buildings +opposite rose in shadow against the dazzling blue and silver of the +water. Here over the river, even for this jaded London, summer was still +fresh; every mast and spar, every track of boat or steamer in the burst +of light, struck the eye with sharpness and delight. + +Each line and hue printed itself on Tressady's brain. Then he turned +slowly to his companion. Maxwell sat patiently waiting for his reply; and +for the first time Tressady received, as it were, a full impression of a +personality he had till now either ignored or disliked. In youth Maxwell +had never passed for a handsome man. But middle life and noble habit were +every year giving increased accent and spiritual energy to the youth's +pleasant features; and Nature as she silvered the brown hair, and drove +deep the lines of thought and experience, was bringing more than she took +away. A quiet, modest fellow Maxwell would be to the end; not witty; not +brilliant; more and more content to bear the yoke of the great +commonplaces of life as subtlety and knowledge grew; saying nothing of +spiritual things, only living them--yet a man, it seemed, on whom England +would more and more lay the burden of her fortunes. + +Tressady gazed at him, shaken with new reverences, new compunctions. +Maxwell's eyes were drawn to his--mild, penetrating eyes, in which for an +instant Tressady seemed to read what no words would ever say to him. Then +he sprang up. + +"There is an afternoon train put on this month. I can catch it. Tell me, +if you can, a few more details." + +Maxwell took out a half-sheet of notes from his pocket, and the two men +standing together beside the table went with care into a few matters it +was well for Tressady to know. Tressady threw a quick intelligence into +his questions that inevitably recalled to Maxwell the cut-and-thrust of +his speech on the preceding evening; nor behind his rapid discussion of a +vulgar business did the constrained emotion of his manner escape his +companion. + +At last all was settled. At the last moment an uneasy question rose in +Maxwell's mind. "Ought _we_, at such a crisis, to be sending him away +from his wife?" But he could not bring himself to put it, even lightly, +into words, and as it happened Tressady did not leave him in doubt. + +"I am glad you caught me," he said nervously, in what seemed an awkward +pause, while he looked for his hat, forgetting where he had put it. "I +was intending to leave London to-night. But my business can very well +wait till next week. Now I think I have everything." + +He gathered up a new Guide-Chaix that Maxwell had put into his hand, saw +that the half-sheet of notes was safely stowed into his pocket-book, and +took up his hat and stick. As he spoke, Maxwell had remembered the +situation and Mrs. Allison's remark. No doubt Tressady had proposed to go +north that night on a mission of explanation to his Market Malford +constituents, and it struck one of the most scrupulous of men with an +additional pang, that he should be thus helping to put private motives in +the way of public duty. But what was done was done. And it seemed +impossible that either should speak a word of politics. + +"I ought to say," said Tressady, pausing once more as they moved +together towards the door, "that I have not ultimately much hope for +Mrs. Allison. If this entanglement is put aside, there will be something +else. Trouville itself, in August, I should imagine, is a place of +_bonnes fortunes_ for the man who wants them, and Ancoats's mind runs to +such things." + +He spoke with a curious eagerness, like one who pleads that his good-will +shall not be judged by mere failure or success. + +Maxwell raised his shoulders. + +"Nothing that can happen will in the least affect our gratitude to +_you_," he said gravely. + +"Gratitude!" muttered the young man under his breath. His lip trembled. +He looked uncertainly at his companion. Maxwell did not offer his hand, +yet as he opened the door for his visitor there was a quiet cordiality +and kindness in his manner that made his renewed words of thanks sound +like a strange music in Tressady's ears. + + * * * * * + +When the minister was once more alone he walked back to the window, and +stood looking down thoughtfully on the gay pageant of the river. She was +right--she was always right. There was nothing vile in that young fellow, +and his face had a look of suffering it pained Maxwell to remember. Why +had he personally not come to know him better? "I think too little of +men, too much of machinery," he said to himself, despondently; +"unconsciously I leave the dealing with human beings far too often to +her, and then I wonder that a man sees and feels her as she is!" + +Yet as he stood there in the sunshine a feeling of moral relief stole +upon him, the feeling that rewards a man who has tried to deal greatly +with some common and personal strait. Some day, not yet, he would make +Tressady his friend. He calmly felt it to be within his power. + +Unless the wife!--He threw up his hand, and turned back to his +writing-table. What was to be done with that letter? Had Tressady +any knowledge of it? Maxwell could not conceive it possible that he +had. But, no doubt, it would come to his knowledge, as well as +Maxwell's reply. + +For he meant to reply, and as he glanced at the clock on his table he saw +that he had just half an hour before his clergyman-visitor arrived. +Instantly, in his methodical way, he sat down to his task, labouring it, +however, with toil and difficulty, when it was once begun. + +The few words he ultimately wrote ran as follows: + +"Dear Lady Tressady,--Your letter was a great surprise and a great pain +to me. I believe you will recognise before long that you wrote it under a +delusion, and that you have said in it both unkind and unjust things of +one who is totally incapable of wronging you or anyone else. My wife read +your letter, for she and I have no secrets. She will try and see you at +once, and I trust you will not refuse to see her. She will prove to you, +I think, that you have been giving yourself quite needless torture, for +which she has no responsibility, but for which she is none the less +sorrowful and distressed. + +"I have treated your letter in this way because it is impossible to +ignore the pain and trouble which drove you to write. I need not say that +if it became necessary for me to write or act in another way, I should +think only of my wife. But I will trust to the effect upon you of her own +words and character; and I cannot believe that you will misconstrue the +generosity that prompts her to go to you. + +"Is it not possible, also, that your misunderstanding of your husband +may be in its own way as grave as your misunderstanding of Lady Maxwell? +Forgive an intrusive question, and believe me, + +"Yours faithfully, + +"MAXWELL." + +He read it anxiously over and over, then took a hasty copy of it, and +finally sealed and sent it. He was but half satisfied with it. How was +one to write such a letter without argument or recrimination? The poor +thing had a vulgar, spiteful, little soul; that was clear from her +outpouring. It was also clear that she was miserable; nor could Maxwell +disguise from himself that in a sense she had ample cause. From that hard +fact, with all its repellent and unpalatable consequences, a weaker man +would by now have let his mind escape, would at any rate have begun to +minimise and make light of George Tressady's act of the morning. In +Maxwell, on the contrary, after a first movement of passionate resentment +which had nothing whatever in common with ordinary jealousy, that act was +now generating a compelling and beneficent force, that made for healing +and reparation. Marcella had foreseen it, and in her pain and penitence +had given the impulse. For all things are possible to a perfect +affection, working through a nature at once healthy and strong. + +Yet when Maxwell was once more established in his room at the Privy +Council, overwhelmed with letters, interviews, and all the routine of +official business, those who had to do with him noticed an unusual +restlessness in their even-tempered chief. In truth, whenever his work +left him free for a moment, all sorts of questions would start up in his +mind: "Is she there? Is that woman hurting and insulting her? Can I do +nothing? My love! my poor love!" + + * * * * * + +But Marcella's plans so far had not prospered. + +When George Tressady, after hastily despatching his most urgent business +at the House, drove up to his own door in the afternoon just in time to +put his things together and catch a newly-put-on dining-train to Paris, +he found the house deserted. The butler reminded him that Letty +accompanied by Miss Tulloch had gone to Hampton Court to join a river +party for the day. George remembered; he hated the people she was to be +with, and instinct told him that Cathedine would be there. + +A rush of miserable worry overcame him. Ought he to be leaving her? + +Then, in the darkness of the hall, he caught sight of a card lying on the +table. _Her card_! Amazement made him almost dizzy, while the man at his +arm explained. + +"Her ladyship called just after luncheon. She thought she would have +found my lady in--before she went out. But her ladyship is coming again, +probably this evening, as she wished to see Lady Tressady particularly." + +Tressady gave the man directions to pack for him immediately, then took +the card into his study, and stood looking at it in a tumult of feeling. +Ah! let him begone--out of her way! Oh, heavenly goodness and compassion! +It seemed to him already that an angel had trodden this dark house, and +that another air breathed in it. + +That was his first thought. Then the rush of sore longing, of unbearable +self-contempt, stirred all his worser self to life again. Had she not +better after all have left him and Letty alone! What did such lives as +theirs matter to her? + +He ran upstairs to make his last preparations, wrote a few lines to Letty +describing Mrs. Allison's plight and the errand on which he was bound, +and in half an hour was at Charing Cross. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +"Did you ring, my lady?" + +"Yes. Kenrick, if Lady Maxwell calls to see me to-night, you will say, +please, that I am particularly engaged, and unable to receive anyone." + +Letty Tressady had just come in from her river party. Dressed in a +delicate gown of lace and pale green chiffon, she was standing beside her +writing-table with Lady Maxwell's card in her hand. Kenrick had given it +to her on her arrival, together with the message which had accompanied +it, and she had taken a few minutes to think it over. As she gave the man +his order, the energy of the small figure, as it half turned towards the +door, the brightness of the eyes under the white veil she had just thrown +back, no less than the emphasis of her tone, awakened in the butler the +clear perception that neither the expected visit nor his mistress's +directions were to be taken as ordinary affairs. After he left the +drawing-room, Grier passed him on the stairs. He gave her a slight +signal, and the two retired to some nether region to discuss the secrets +of their employers. + +Meanwhile Letty, having turned on the electric light in the room, walked +to the window and set it half open behind the curtain. In that way she +would hear the carriage approaching, it was between eight and nine +o'clock. No doubt Lady Maxwell would drive round after dinner. + +Then, still holding the card lightly in her hand, she threw herself on +the sofa. She was tired, but so excited that she could not rest--first, +by the memory of the day that had just passed; still more by the thought +of the rebuff she was about to administer to the great lady who had +affronted her. No doubt her letter had done its work. The remembrance of +it tilled her with an uneasy joy. Did George know of it by now? She did +not care. Lady Maxwell, of course, was coming to try and appease her, to +hush it up. There had been a scene, it was to be supposed, between her +and her stiff husband. Letty gloated over the dream of it. Tears, +humiliation, reproaches, she meted them all out in plenty to the woman +she hated. Nor would things end there. Why, London was full of gossip! +Harding's paragraph--for of course it was Harding's--had secured that. +How clever of him! Not a name!--not a thing that could be taken hold +of!--yet so clear. Well!--if she, Letty, was to be trampled on and set +aside, at any rate other people should suffer too. + +So George had gone off to France, leaving her alone, without "Good-bye." +She did not believe a word of his excuse; and, if it were true, it was +only another outrage that he should have thought twice of such a matter +at such a crisis. But it was probably a mere device of his and +_hers_--she would find out for what. + +Her state of tension was too great to allow her to stay in the same place +for more than a few minutes. She got up, and went to the glass before the +mantelpiece. Taking out the pins that held her large Gainsborough hat, +she arranged her hair with her hands, putting the curls of the fringe in +their right place, fastening up some stray ends. She had given orders, as +we have seen, to admit no one, and was presumably going to bed. +Nevertheless, her behaviour was instinctively the behaviour of one who +expects a guest. + +When, more or less to her satisfaction, she had restored the symmetry of +the little curled and crimped head, she took her face between her hands, +and stared at her own reflection. Memories of the party she had just +left, of the hot river, the slowly filling locks, the revelry, the +champagne, danced in her mind, especially of a certain walk through a +wood. She defiantly watched the face in the glass grow red, the eyelids +quiver. Then, like the tremor from some volcanic fire far within, a +shudder ran through her. She dropped her head on her hands. She +hated--_hated_ him! Was it to-morrow evening she had told him he might +come? She would go down to Ferth. + +Wheels in the quiet street! Letty flew to the window like an excited +child, her green and white twinkling through the room. + +A brougham, and a tall figure in black stepping slowly out of it. Letty +sheltered herself behind a curtain, held her breath, and listened. + +Presently her lower lip dropped a little. What was Kenrick about? The +front door had closed, and Lady Maxwell had not re-entered her carriage. + +She opened the drawing-room door with care, and was stooping over the +banisters when she saw Kenrick on the stairs. He seemed to be coming +from the direction of George's study. + +"What have you been doing?" she asked him in a hard under-voice, looking +at him angrily. "I told you not to let Lady Maxwell in." + +"I told her, my lady, that you were engaged and could see no one. Then +her ladyship asked if she might write a few lines to you and send them +up, asking when you would be able to see her. So I showed her into Sir +George's study, my lady, and she is writing at Sir George's desk." + +"You should have done nothing of the sort," said Letty, sharply. "What is +that letter?" + +She took it from his hand before the butler, somewhat bewildered by the +responsibilities of his position, could explain that he had just found it +in the letterbox, where it might have been lying some little time, as he +had heard no knock. + +She let him go downstairs again, to await Lady Maxwell's exit, and +herself ran back to read her letter, her heart beating, for the address +of the sender was on the envelope. + +When she had finished she threw it down, half suffocating. + +"So I am to be lectured and preached to besides. Good heavens! In his +lofty manner, I suppose, that people talk of. Prig--odious, +insufferable prig! So I have mistaken George, have I? My own husband! +And insulted her--_her_! And she is actually downstairs, writing to me, +in my own house!" + +She locked her hands, and began stormily to pace the room again. The +image of her rival, only a few feet from her, bending over George's +table, worked in her with poisonous force. Suddenly she swept to the bell +and rang it. A door opened downstairs. She ran to the landing. + +"Kenrick!" + +"Yes, my lady." She heard a pause, and the soft rustle of a dress. + +"Tell Lady Maxwell, please"--she struggled hard for the right, the +dignified tone--"that if it is not too late for her to stay, I am now +able to see her." + +She hurried back into the drawing-room and waited. _Would_ she come? +Letty's whole being was now throbbing with one mad desire. If Kenrick +let her go! + +But steps approached; the door was thrown open. + +Marcella Maxwell came in timidly, very pale, the dark eyes shrinking from +the sudden light of the drawing-room. She was bareheaded, and wore a long +cloak of black lace over her white evening dress. Letty's flash of +thought as she saw her was twofold: first, hatred of her beauty, then +triumph in the evident nervousness with which her visitor approached her. + +Without making the slightest change of position, the mistress of the +house spoke first. + +"Will you please tell me," she said, in her sharpest, thinnest voice, "to +what I owe the honour of this visit?" + +Marcella paused half-way towards her hostess. + +"I read your letter to my husband," she said quietly, though her voice +shook, "and I thought you would hardly refuse to let me speak to you +about it." + +"Then perhaps you will sit down," said Letty, in the same voice; and she +seated herself. + +If she had wished to heighten the effect of her reception by these small +discourtesies she did not succeed. Rather, Marcella's self-possession +returned under them. She looked round simply for a chair, brought one +forward within speaking distance of her companion, moving once more, in +her thin, tall grace, with all that unconscious dignity Letty had so +often envied and admired from a distance. + +But neither dignity nor grace made any bar to the emotion that filled +her. She bent forward, clasping her hands on her knee. + +"Your letter to my husband made me so unhappy--that I could not help +coming," she said, in a tone that was all entreaty, all humbleness. +"Not--of course--that it seemed to either of us a true or just account of +what had happened"--she drew herself up gently--"but it made me +realise--though indeed I had realised it before I read it--that in my +friendship with your husband I had been forgetting--forgetting those +things--one ought to remember most. You will let me put things, won't +you, in my own way, as they seem to me? At Castle Luton Sir George +attracted me very much. The pleasure of talking to him there first made +me wish to try and alter some of his views--to bring him across my poor +people--to introduce him to our friends. Then, somehow, a special bond +grew up between him and me with regard to this particular struggle in +which my husband and I"--she dropped her eyes that she might not see +Letty's heated face--"have been so keenly interested. But what I ought to +have felt--from the very first--was, that there could be, there ought to +have been, something else added. Married people "--she spoke hurriedly, +her breath rising and falling--"are not two, but one--and my first step +should have been to come--and--and ask you to let me know you too--to +find out what your feelings were, whether you wished for a +friendship--that--that I had perhaps no right to offer to Sir George +alone. I have been looking into my own heart"--her voice trembled +again--"and I see that fault, that great fault. To be excluded myself +from any strong friendship my husband might make, would be agony to me!" +The frank, sudden passion of her lifted eyes sent a thrill even through +Letty's fierce and hardly, kept silence. "And that I wanted to say to +you, first of all. I wronged my own conception of what marriage should +be, and you were quite, quite right to be angry!" + +"Well, I think it's quite clear, isn't it, that you forgot from the +beginning George had a wife?" cried Letty, in her most insulting voice. +"That certainly can't be denied. Anybody could see that at Castle Luton!" + +Marcella looked at her in perplexity. What could suggest to her how to +say the right word, touch the right chord? Would she be able to do more +than satisfy her own conscience and then go, leaving this strange little +fury to make what use she pleased of her visit and her avowals? + +She shaded her eyes with her hand a moment, thinking. Then she said: + +"Perhaps it is of no use for me to ask you to remember how full our +minds--my husband's and mine--have been of one subject--one set of +ideas. But, if I am not keeping you too long, I should like to give you +an account, from my point of view, of the friendship between Sir George +and myself. I think I can remember every talk of ours, from our first +meeting in the hospital down to--down to this morning." + +"This morning!" cried Letty, springing up. "This _morning_! He went to +you to-day?" + +The little face convulsed with passion raised an intolerable distress +in Marcella. + +"Yes, he came to see me," she said, her dark eyes, full of pain, full, +too, once more, of entreaty, fixed upon her interrogator. "But do let me +tell you! I never saw anyone in deeper trouble--trouble about +you--trouble about himself." + +Letty burst into a wild laugh. + +"Of course! No doubt he went to complain of me--that I flirted--that I +ill-treated his mother--that I spent too much money--and a lot of other +pleasant little things. Oh! I can imagine it perfectly. Besides that, I +suppose he went to be thanked. Well, he deserved _that_. He has thrown +away his career to please you; so if you didn't thank him, you ought! +Everybody says his position in Parliament now isn't worth a straw--that +he must resign--which is delightful, of course, for his wife. And I saw +it all from the beginning--I understood exactly what you _wanted_ to do +at Castle Luton--only I couldn't believe then--I was only six weeks +married--" + +A wave of excitement and self-pity swept over her. She broke off +with a sob. + +Marcella's heart was wrung. She knew nothing of the real Letty Tressady. +It was the wife as such, slighted and set aside, that appealed to the +imagination, the remorse of this happy, this beloved woman. She rose +quickly, she held out her hands, looking down upon the little venomous +creature who had been pouring these insults upon her. + +"Don't--_don't_ believe such things," she said, with sobbing breath. "I +never wronged you consciously for a moment. Can't you believe that Sir +George and I became friends because we cared for the same kind of +questions; because I--I was full of my husband's work and everything that +concerned it; because I liked to talk about it, to win him friends. If it +had ever entered my mind that such a thing could pain and hurt you--" + +"Where have you sent him to-day?" cried Letty, peremptorily, interrupting +her, while she drew her handkerchief fiercely across her eyes. + +Instantly Marcella was conscious of the difficulty of explaining her own +impulse and Maxwell's action. + +"Sir George told me," she said, faltering, "that he must go away from +London immediately, to think out some trouble that was oppressing him. +Only a few minutes after he left our house we heard from Mrs. Allison +that she was in great distress about her son. She came, in fact, to beg +us to help her find him. I won't go into the story, of course; I am sure +you know it. My husband and I talked it over. It occurred to us that if +Maxwell went to him--to Sir George--and asked him to do us and her this +great kindness of going to Ancoats and trying to bring him back to his +mother, it would put everything on a different footing. Maxwell would +get to know him,--as I had got to know him. One would find a way--to +silence the foolish, unjust things--that have been said--I suppose--I +don't know--" + +She paused, confused by the difficulties in her path, her cheeks hot and +flushed. But the heart knew its own innocence. She recovered herself; she +came nearer. + +"--If only--at the same time--I could make you realise how truly--how +bitterly--I had felt for any pain you might have suffered--if I could +persuade you to look at it all--your husband's conduct and mine--in its +true light, and to believe that he cares--he _must_ care--for nothing in +the world so much as his home--as you and your happiness!" + +The nobleness of the speaker, the futility of the speech, were about +equally balanced! Candour was impossible, if only for kindness' sake. And +the story, so told, was not only unconvincing, it was hardly intelligible +even, to Letty. For the two personalities moved in different worlds, and +what had seemed to the woman who was all delicate impulse and romance the +natural and right course, merely excited in Letty, and not without +reason, fresh suspicion and offence. If words had been all, Marcella had +gained nothing. + +But a strange tumult was rising in Letty's breast. There was something in +this mingling of self-abasement with an extraordinary moral richness and +dignity, in these eyes, these hands that would have so gladly caught and +clasped her own, which began almost to intimidate her. She broke out +again, so as to hold her own bewilderment at bay: + +"What right had you to send him away--to plan anything for _my_ husband +without my consent? Oh, of course you put it very finely; I daresay you +know about all sorts of things _I_ don't know about; I'm not clever, I +don't talk politics. But I don't quite see the good of it, if it's only +to take husbands away from their wives. All the same, I'm not a +hypocrite, and I don't mean to pretend I'm a meek saint. Far from it. +I've no doubt that George thinks he's been perfectly justified from the +beginning, and that I have brought everything upon myself. Well! I don't +care to argue about it. Don't imagine, please, that I have been playing +the deserted wife all the time. If people injure me, it's not my way to +hold my tongue, and I imagine that, after all, I do understand my own +husband, in spite of Lord Maxwell's kind remarks!" She pointed scornfully +to Maxwell's letter on the table. "But as soon as I saw that nothing I +said mattered to George, and that his whole mind was taken up with your +society, why, of course, I took my own measures! There are other men in +the world--and one of them happens to amuse me particularly at this +moment. It's your doing and George's, you see, if he doesn't like it!" + +Marcella recoiled in sudden horror, staring at her companion with wide, +startled eyes. Letty braved her defiantly, her dry lips drawn into a +miserable smile. She stood, looking very small and elegant, beside her +writing-table, her hand, blazing with rings, resting lightly upon it, the +little, hot withered face alone betraying the nerve tension behind. + +The situation lasted a few seconds, then with a quick step Marcella +hurried to a chair on the further side of the room, sank into it, and +covered her face with her hands. + +Letty's heart seemed to dip, as it were, into an abyss. But there was a +frenzied triumph in the spectacle of Marcella's grief and tears. + +_Marcella Maxwell_--thus silenced, thus subdued! The famous name, with +all that it had stood for in Letty's mind, of things to be envied and +desired, echoed in her ear, delighted her revenge. She struggled to +maintain her attitude. + +"I don't know why what I said should make you so unhappy," she said +coldly, after a pause. + +Marcella did not reply. Presently Letty saw that she was resting her +cheek on her hand and gazing before her into vacancy. At last she turned +round, and Letty could satisfy herself that in truth her eyes were wet. + +"Is there no one," asked the full, tremulous voice, "whom you care for, +whom you would send for now to advise and help you?" + +"Thank you!" said Letty, calmly, leaning against the little +writing-table, and beating the ground slightly with her foot. "I don't +want them. And I don't know why you should trouble yourself about it." + +But for the first time, and against its owner's will, the hard +tone wavered. + +Marcella rose impetuously again, and came towards her. + +"When one thinks of all the long years of married life," she said, still +trembling, "of the children that may come--" + +Letty lifted her eyebrows. + +"If one happened to wish for them. But I don't happen to wish for them, +never did. I daresay it sounds horrid. Anyway, one needn't take that into +consideration." + +"And your husband? Your husband, who must be miserable, whose great gifts +will be all spoiled unless you will somehow give up your anger and make +peace. And instead of that, you are only thinking of revenging yourself, +of making more ruin and pain. It breaks one's heart! And it would need +such a _little_ effort on your part, only a few words written or spoken, +to bring him back, to end all this unhappiness!" + +"Oh! George can take care of himself," said Letty, provokingly; "so can +I. Besides, you have sent him away." + +Marcella looked at her in despair. Then silently she turned away, and +Letty saw that she was searching for some gloves and a handkerchief she +had been carrying in her hand when she came in. + +Letty watched her take them up, then said suddenly, "Are you going away?" + +"It is best, I think. I can do nothing." + +"I wish I knew why you came to see me at all! They say, of course, +you are very much in love with Lord Maxwell. Perhaps--that made you +sorry for me?" + +Marcella's pride leapt at the mention by those lips of her own married +life. Then she drove her pride down. + +"You have put it better than I have been able to do, all the time." Her +mouth parted in a slight, sad smile--"Good-night." + +Letty took no notice. She sat down on the arm of a chair near her. Her +eyes suddenly blazed, her face grew dead-white. + +"Well, if you want to know--" she said--"no, don't go--I don't mean to +let you go just yet--I _am_ about the most miserable wretch going! There, +you may take it or leave it; it's true. I don't suppose I cared much +about George when I married him; plenty of girls don't. But as soon as he +began to care about _you_,--just contrariness, I suppose,--I began to +feel that I could kill anybody that took him from me, and kill myself +afterwards! Oh, good gracious! there was plenty of reason for his getting +tired of me. I'm not the sort of person to let anyone get the whip-hand +of me, and I _would_ spend his money as I liked, and I _would_ ask the +persons I chose to the house; and, above all, I wasn't going to be +pestered with looking after and giving up to his _dreadful_ mother, who +made my life a burden to me. Oh! why do you look so white? Well, I +daresay it does sound atrocious. I don't care. Perhaps you'll be still +more horrified when you know that they came round this afternoon, when I +was out and George was gone, to tell me that Lady Tressady was +frightfully ill--dying, I think my maid said. And I haven't given it +another thought since--not one--till now"--she struck one hand against +the other--"because directly afterwards the butler told me of your visit +this afternoon, and that you were coming again--and I wasn't going to +think of anything else in the world but you, and George. No, don't look +like that, don't come near me--I'm not mad. I assure you I'm not mad! But +that's all by the way. What was I saying? Oh! that George had cause +enough to stop caring about me. Of course he had; but if he's lost to +me--I shall give him a good deal more cause before we've done. That +other man--you know him--Cathedine--gave me a kiss this afternoon, when +we were in a wood together"--the same involuntary shudder overtook her, +while she still held her companion at arm's length. "Oh, he is a +brute--a _brute_! But what do I care what happens to me? It's so strange +I don't--rather creditable, I think--for after all I like parties, and +being asked about. But now George hates me--and let you send him away +from me--why, of course, it's all simple enough! I--Don't--don't come. I +shall never, never forgive--it's just being tired--" + +But Marcella sprang forward. Mercifully, there is a limit to nerve +endurance, and Letty in her raving had overpassed it. She sank gasping on +a sofa, still putting out her hand as though to protect herself. But +Marcella knelt beside her, the tears running down her cheeks. She put her +arms--arms formed for tenderness, for motherliness--round the girl's +slight frame. "Don't--don't repulse me," she said, with trembling lips, +and suddenly Letty yielded. She found herself sobbing in Lady Maxwell's +embrace, while all the healing, all the remorse, all the comfort that +self-abandonment and pity can pour out on such a plight as hers, +descended upon her from Marcella's clinging touch, her hurried, +fragmentary words. Assurances that all could be made right entreaties for +gentleness and patience--revelations of her own inmost heart as a wife, +far too sacred for the ears of Letty Tressady--little phrases and +snatches of autobiography steeped in an exquisite experience: the nature +Letty had rained her blows upon, kept nothing back, gave her all its +best. How irrelevant much of it was!--chequered throughout by those +oblivions, and optimisms, and foolish hopes by which such a nature as +Marcella's protects itself from the hard facts of the world. By the time +she had ranged through every note of entreaty and consolation, Marcella +had almost persuaded herself and Letty that George Tressady had never +said a word to her beyond the commonplaces of an ordinary friendship; she +had passionately determined that this blurred and spoiled marriage could +and should be mended, and that it lay with her to do it; and in the +spirit of her audacious youth she had taken upon herself the burden of +Letty's character and fate, vowing herself to a moral mission, to a long +patience. The quality of her own nature, perhaps, made her bear Letty's +violences and frenzies more patiently than would have been possible to a +woman of another type; generous remorse and regret, combined with her +ignorance of Letty's history and the details of Letty's life, led her +even to look upon these violences as the effects of love perverted, the +anguish of a jealous heart. Imagination, keen and loving, drew the +situation for her in rapid strokes, draped Letty in the subtleties and +powers of her own heart, and made forbearance easy. + +As for Letty, her whole being surrendered itself to a mere ebb and flow +of sensations. That she had been able thus to break down the barriers of +Marcella's stateliness filled her all through, in her passion as in her +yielding, with a kind of exultation. A vision of a tall figure in a white +and silver dress, sitting stiff and unapproachable beside her in the +Castle Luton drawing-room, fled through her mind now and then, only +to make the wonder of this pleading voice, these confidences, this +pity, the more wonderful. But there was more than this, and better +than this. Strange up-wellings of feelings long trampled on and +suppressed--momentary awakenings of conscience, of repentance, of +regret--sharp realisations of an envy that was no longer ignoble but +moral, softer thoughts of George, the suffocating, unwilling recognition +of what love meant in another woman's life--these messengers and +forerunners of diviner things passed and repassed through the spaces of +Letty's soul as she lay white and passive under Marcella's yearning look. +There was a marvellous relief besides, much of it a physical relief, in +this mere silence, this mere ceasing from angry railing and offence. + +Marcella was still sitting beside her, holding her hands, and talking in +the same low voice, when suddenly the loud sound of a bell clanged +through the house. Letty sprang up, white and startled. + +"What can it be? It's past ten o'clock. It can't be a telegram." + +Then a guilty remembrance struck her. She hurried to the door as +Kenrick entered. + +"Lady Tressady's maid would like to see you, my lady. They want Sir +George's address. The doctors think she will hardly live over to-morrow." + +And behind Kenrick, Justine, the French maid, pushed her way in, weeping +and exclaiming. Lady Tressady, it seemed, had been in frightful pain all +the afternoon. She was now easier for the moment, though dangerously +exhausted. But if the heart attacks returned during the next twenty-four +hours, nothing could save her. The probability was that they would +return, and she was asking piteously for her son, who had seen her, +Justine believed, the day before these seizures began, just before his +departure for Paris, and had written. "Et la pauvre ame!" cried the +Frenchwoman at last, not caring what she said to this amazing +daughter-in-law, "elle est la toujours, quand les douleurs s'apaisent un +peu, ecoutant, esperant--et personne ne vient--_personne_! Voulez-vous +bien, madame, me dire ou on peut trouver Sir George?" + +"Poste Restante, Trouville," said Letty, sullenly. "It is the only +address that I know of." + +But she stood there irresolute and frowning, while the French girl, +hardly able to contain herself, stared at the disfigured face, demanding +by her quick-breathing silence, by her whole attitude, something else, +something more than Sir George's address. + +Meanwhile Marcella waited in the background, obliged to hear what passed, +and struck with amazement. It is perhaps truer of the moral world than +the social that one half of it never conceives how the other half lives. +George Tressady's mother--alone--dying--in her son's absence--and Letty +Tressady knew nothing of her illness till it had become a question of +life and death, and had then actually refused to go--forgotten the +summons even! + +When Letty, feverish and bewildered, turned back to the companion +whose heart had been poured out before her during this past hour of +high emotion, she saw a new expression in Lady Maxwell's eyes from +which she shrank. + +"Ought I to go?" she said fretfully, almost like a peevish child, putting +her hand to her brow. + +"My carriage is downstairs," said Marcella, quickly. "I can take you +there at once. Is there a nurse?" she asked, turning to the maid. + +Oh, yes; there was an excellent nurse, just installed, or Justine could +not have left her mistress; and the doctor close by could be got at a +moment's notice. But the poor lady wanted her son, or at least some one +of the family,--Justine bit her lip, and threw a nervous side glance at +Letty,--and it went to the heart to see her. The girl found relief in +describing her mistress's state to this grave and friendly lady, and +showed more feeling and sincerity in speaking of it than might have been +expected from her affected dress and manner. + +Meanwhile Letty seemed to be wandering aimlessly about the room. Marcella +went up to her. + +"Your hat is here, on this chair. I have a shawl in the carriage. Won't +you come at once, and leave word to your maid to bring after you what +you want? Then I can go on, if you wish it, and send your telegram to +Sir George." + +"But you wanted him to do something?" said Letty, looking at her +uncertainly. + +"Mothers come first, I think!" said Marcella, with a smile of wonder. +"It is best to write it before we go. Will you tell me what to say?" + +She went to the writing-table, and had to write the telegram with small +help from Letty, who in her dazed, miserable soul was still fighting some +demonic resistance or other to the step asked of her. Instinctively and +gradually, however, Marcella took command of her. A few quiet words to +Justine sent her to make arrangements with Grier. Then Letty found a +cloak that had been sent for being drawn round her shoulders, and was +coaxed to put on her hat. In another minute she was in the Maxwells' +brougham, with her hand clasped in Marcella's. + +"They will want me to sit up," she said, dashing an irrelevant tear from +her eyes, as they drove away. "I am so tired--and I hate illness!" + +"Very likely they won't let you see her to-night. But you will be there +if the illness comes on again. You would feel it terribly if--if she died +all alone, with Sir George away." + +"Died!" Letty repeated, half angrily. "But that would be so +horrible--what could I do?" + +Marcella looked at her with a strange smile. + +"Only be kind, only forget everything but her!" + +The softness of her voice had yet a severity beneath it that Letty felt, +but had no spirit to resent, Rather it awakened an uneasy and painful +sense that, after all, it was not she who had come off conqueror in this +great encounter. The incidents of the last half-hour seemed in some +curious way to have reversed their positions. Letty, smarting, felt that +her relation to George's dying mother had revealed her to Lady Maxwell +far more than any wild and half-sincere confessions could have done. Her +vanity felt a deep inner wound, yet of a new sort. At any rate, +Marcella's self-abasement was over, and Letty instinctively realised that +she would never see it again, while at the same time a new and clinging +need had arisen in herself. The very neighbourhood of the personality +beside her had begun to thrill and subjugate her. She had been conscious +enough before--enviously, hatefully conscious--of all the attributes and +possessions that made Maxwell's wife a great person in the world of +London. What was stealing upon her now was glamour and rank and influence +of another kind. + +Not unmixed, no doubt, with more mundane thoughts! No ordinary preacher, +no middle-class eloquence perhaps would have sufficed--nothing less +dramatic and distinguished than the scene which had actually passed, than +a Marcella at her feet. Well! there are many modes and grades of +conversion. Whether by what was worst in her, or what was best; whether +the same weaknesses of character that had originally inflamed her had now +helped to subdue her or no, what matter? So much stood--that one short +hour had been enough to draw this vain, selfish nature within a moral +grasp she was never again to shake off. + +Meanwhile, as they drove towards Warwick Square Marcella's only thought +was how to hand her over safe to her husband. A sense of agonised +responsibility awoke in the elder woman at the thought of Cathedine. But +no more emotion--only common sense and gentleness. + +As they neared Warwick Square, Letty withdrew her hand. + +"I don't suppose you will ever want to see me again," she said huskily, +turning her head away. + +"Do you think that very possible between two people who have gone +through such a time as you and I have?" said Marcella, pale, but +smiling. "When may I come to see you to-morrow? I shall send to inquire, +of course, very early." + +Some thought made Letty's breath come quickly. "Will you come in the +afternoon--about four?" she said hastily. "I suppose I shall be here." +They were just stopping at the door in Warwick Square. "You said you +would tell me--" + +"I have a great deal to tell you.... I will come, then, and see if you +can be spared.... Good-night. I trust she will be better! I will go on +and send the telegram." + +Letty felt her hand gravely pressed, the footman helped her out, and +in another minute she was mounting the stairs leading to Lady +Tressady's room, having sent a servant on before her to warn the nurse +of her arrival. + +The nurse came out, finger on lip. She was very glad to see Lady +Tressady, but the doctor had left word that nothing whatever was to be +allowed to disturb or excite his patient. Of course, if the attack +returned--But just now there was hope. Only it was so difficult to keep +her quiet. Instead of trying to sleep, she was now asking for Justine, +declaring that Justine must read French novels aloud to her, and bring +out two of her evening dresses, that she might decide on some +alteration in the trimmings. "I daren't fight with her," said the +nurse, evidently in much perplexity. "But if she only raises herself in +bed she may kill herself." + +She hurried back to her patient, promising to inform the daughter-in-law +at once if there was a change for the worse, and Letty, infinitely +relieved, made her way to the spare room of the house, where Grier was +already unpacking for her. + +After a hasty undressing she threw herself into bed, longing for sleep. +But from a short nightmare dream she woke up with a start. Where was she? +In her mother-in-law's house,--she could actually hear the shrill +affected voice laughing and talking in the room next door,--and brought +there by Marcella Maxwell! The strangeness of these two facts kept her +tossing restlessly from side to side. And where was George? Just arrived +at Paris, perhaps. She thought of the glare and noise of the Gare du +Nord--she heard his cab rattling over the long stone-paved street +outside. In the darkness she felt a miserable sinking of heart at the +thought of his going with every minute farther, farther away from her. +Would he ever forgive her that letter to Lord Maxwell, when he knew of +it? Did she want him to forgive her? + +A mood that was at once soft and desolate stole upon her, and made her +cry a little. It sprang, perhaps, from a sense of the many barriers she +had heaped up between herself and happiness. The waves of feeling, half +self-assertive, half repentant, ebbed and flowed. One moment she yearned +for the hour when Marcella was to come to her; the next, she hated the +notion of it. So between dream and misery, amid a maze of thought without +a clue, Letty's night passed away. By the time the morning dawned, the +sharp conviction had shaped itself within her that she had grown older, +that life had passed into another stage, and could never again be as it +had been the day before. Two emotions, at least, or excitements, had +emerged from all the rest and filled her mind--the memory of the scene +with Marcella, and the thought of George's return. + + + + +PART III + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +"My dear, you don't mean to say you have had her here for ten days?" + +The speaker was Betty Leven, who had just arrived at Maxwell Court, and +was sitting with her hostess under the cedars in front of the magnificent +Caroline mansion, which it was the never-ending task of Marcella's life +to bring somehow into a democratic scheme of things. + +A still September afternoon, lightly charged with autumn mists, lay +gently on the hollows of the park. Betty was in her liveliest mood and +her gayest dress. Her hat, a marvel in poppies, was perched high upon no +less ingenious waves and frettings of hair. Her straw-coloured gown, +which was only simple for the untrained eye, gave added youth even to +her childish figure; and her very feet, clothed in the smallest and most +preposterous of shoes, had something merry and provocative about them, +as they lay crossed upon the wooden footstool Marcella had pushed +towards her. + +The remark just quoted followed upon one made by her hostess, to the +effect that Lady Tressady would be down to tea shortly. + +"Now, Betty," said Marcella, seriously, though she laughed, "I meant to +have a few words with you on this subject first thing--let's have them. +Do you want to be very kind to me, or do you ever want me to be very +nice to you?" + +Betty considered. + +"You can't do half as much for me now as you once could, now that Frank's +going to leave Parliament," she remarked, with as much worldly wisdom as +her face allowed. "Nevertheless, the quality of my nature is such that, +sometimes, I might even be nice to you for nothing. But information +before benevolence--why have you got her here?" + +"Because she was fagged and unhappy in London, and her husband had gone +to take his mother abroad, after first doing Maxwell a great kindness," +said Marcella,--not, however, without embarrassment, as Betty saw,--"and +I want you to be kind to her." + +"Reasons one and two no reasons at all," said Betty, meditating; "and the +third wants examining. You mean that George Tressady went after Ancoats?" + +Marcella raised her shoulders, and was silent. + +"If you are going to be stuffy and mysterious," said Betty, with +vivacity, "you know what sort of a hedgehog I can be. How can you expect +me to be nice to Letty Tressady unless you make it worth my while?" + +"Betty, you infant! Well, then, he did go after Ancoats--got him safely +away from Trouville, brought him to Paris to join Mrs. Allison, and, in +general, has laid us all under very great obligations. Meanwhile, she was +very much tired out with nursing her mother-in-law--" + +"Oh, and such a mother-in-law--such a jewel!" ejaculated Betty. + +"And I brought her down here to rest, till he should come back from +Wildheim and take her home. He will probably be here to-night." + +The speaker reddened unconsciously during her story, a fact not +lost on Betty. + +"Well, I knew most of that before," said Betty, quietly. "And what sort +of a time have you been having this ten days?" + +"I have been very glad to have her here," came the quick reply. "I ought +to have known her long ago." + +Betty looked at the speaker with a half-incredulous smile. + +"You have been 'collecting' her, I suppose, as Hallin collects grasses. +Of course, what I pine to know is what sort of a time _she's_ had. You're +not the easiest person in the world to get on with, my lady." + +"I know that," said Marcella, sighing; "but I don't think she has +been unhappy." + +Betty's green eyes opened suddenly to the light. + +"Are you ever going to tell me the truth? Have you got her under your +thumb? Does she adore you?" + +"Betty, don't be an idiot!" + +"I expect she does," said Betty, thoughtfully, a myriad thoughts and +conjectures passing through her quick brain as she studied her friend's +face and attitude. "I see exactly what fate is going to happen to you in +middle life. Women couldn't get on with you when you were a girl--you +didn't like them, nor they you; and now everywhere I hear the young women +beginning to talk about you, especially the young married women; and in a +few years you will have them all about you like a cluster of doves, +cooing and confessing, and making your life a burden to you." + +"Well, suppose you begin?" said Marcella, with meaning. "I'm quite ready. +How are Frank's spirits since the great decision?" + +"Frank's spirits?" said Betty. She leisurely took off her glove. "Frank's +spirits, my dear, if you wish to know, are simply an affront to his wife. +My ruined ambitions appear to affect him as Parrish's food does the baby. +I prophesy he will have gained a stone by Christmas." + +For the great step had been taken. Betty had given way, and Frank was to +escape from politics. For three years Betty had held him to his task--had +written his speeches, formed his opinions, and done her very best to +train him for a statesman. But the young man had in truth no opinions, +save indeed whatever might be involved in the constant opinion that +Heaven had intended him for a country gentleman and a sportsman, and for +nothing else. And at last a mixture of revolt and melancholy had served +his purpose. Betty was subdued; the Chiltern Hundreds were in sight. The +young wife, with many sighs, had laid down all dreams of a husband on the +front bench. But--in compensation--she had regained her lover, and the +honeymoon shone once more. + +"Frank came to see me yesterday," said Marcella, smiling. + +Betty sprang forward. + +"What did he say? Didn't he tell you I was an angel? Now there's a +bargain! Repeat to me every single word he said, and I will devote +myself, body and bones, to Letty Tressady." + +"Hush!" said Marcella, laying two fingers on the pretty mouth. "Here +she comes." + +Letty Tressady, in fact, had just emerged from a side-door of the house, +and was slowly approaching the two friends on the terrace. Lady Leven's +discerning eye ran over the advancing figure. Marcella heard her make +some exclamation under her breath. Then she rose with little, hurrying +steps, and went to greet the newcomer with a charming ease and kindness. + +Letty responded rather nervously. Marcella looked up with a smile, and +pointed to a low chair, which Letty took with a certain stiffness. It was +evident to Marcella that she was afraid of Lady Leven, who had, indeed, +shown a marked indifference to her society at Castle Luton. + +But Betty was disarmed. The "minx" had lost her colour, and, for the +moment, her prettiness. She looked depressed, and talked little. As to +her relation to Marcella Betty's inquisitive brain indulged itself in a +score of conjectures. "How like her!" she thought to herself, "to forget +the wife's existence to begin with, and then to make love to her by way +of warding off the husband!" + +Meanwhile, aloud, Lady Leven professed herself exceedingly dissatisfied +with the entertainment provided for her. Where were the gentlemen? What +was the good of one putting on one's best frock to come down to a Maxwell +Court Saturday to find only a "hen tea-party" at the end? Marcella +protested that there were only too many men somewhere on the premises +already, and more--with their wives--were arriving by the next train. +But Maxwell had taken off such as had already appeared for a long +cross-country walk. + +Betty demanded the names, and Marcella gave them obediently. Betty +perceived at once that the party was the party of a political chief +obliged to do his duty. She allowed herself a good many shrugs of her +small shoulders. "Oh, Mrs. Lexham,--very charming, of course,--but what's +the good of being friends with a person who has five hundred people in +London that call her Kelly? Lady _Wendover_? I ought to have had notice. +A good mother? I should think she is! That's the whole point against her. +She always gives you the idea of having reared fifteen out of a possible +twelve. To see her beaming on her offspring makes me positively ashamed +of being in the same business myself. Don't you agree, Lady Tressady?" + +But Letty, whose chief joy a month before would have been to dart in on +such a list with little pecking proofs of acquaintance, was leaning back +listlessly in her chair, and could only summon a forced smile for answer. + +"And Sir George, too, is coming to-night, isn't he?" said Lady Leven. + +"Yes, I expect my husband to-night," said Letty, coldly, without looking +at her questioner. Betty glanced quickly at the expression of the eyes +which were bent upon the further reaches of the park; then, to Letty's +astonishment, she bent forward impulsively and laid her little hand on +Lady Tressady's arm. + +"Do you mind telling me," she said in a loud whisper, with a glance over +her shoulder, "your candid opinion of _her_ as a country lady?" + +Letty, taken aback, turned and laughed uneasily; but Betty went rattling +on. "Have you found out that she treats her servants like hospital +nurses; that they go off and on duty at stated hours; that she has +workshops and art schools for them in the back premises; and that the +first footman has just produced a cantata which has been sent in to the +committee of the Worcester Festival (Be quiet, Marcella; if it isn't +that, it's something near it); that she teaches the stable boys and the +laundry maids old English dances, and the _pas de quatre_ once a +fortnight, and acts showman to her own pictures for the benefit of the +neighbourhood once a week? I came once to see how she did it, but I found +her and the Gairsley ironmonger measuring the ears of the Holbeins--it +seems you can't know anything about pictures now unless you have measured +all the ears and the little fingers, which I hope you know; I didn't!--so +I fled, as she hadn't a word to throw to me, even as one of the public. +Then perhaps you don't know that she has invented a whole, new, and +original system of game-preserving--she and Frank fight over it by the +hour--that she has upset all the wage arrangements of the county--that, +perhaps, you do know, for it got into the papers--and a hundred other +trifles. Has she revealed these things?" + +Letty looked in perplexity from Betty's face, full of sweetness and +mirth, to Marcella's. + +"She hasn't talked about them," she said, hesitating. "Of course, I +haven't understood a good many things that are done here--" + +"Don't try," said Marcella, first laughing and then sighing. + +Nothing appeased, Lady Leven chattered away, while Letty watched her +hostess in silence. She had come down to the Court gloating somewhat, in +spite of her very real unhappiness, over the prospect of the riches and +magnificence she was to find there. And to discover that wealth might be +merely the source of one long moral wrestle to the people who possessed +it, burdening them with all sorts of problems and remorses that others +escaped, had been a strange and, on the whole, jarring experience to her. +Of course there must be rich and poor; of course there must be servants +and masters. Marcella's rebellion against the barriers of life had been a +sort of fatigue and offence to Letty ever since she had been made to feel +it. And daily contact with the simple, and even Spartan, ways of living +that prevailed--for the owners of it, at least--in the vast house, with +the overflowing energy and humanity that often made its mistress a +restless companion, and led her into a fair percentage of mistakes--had +roused a score of half-scornful protests in the small, shrewd mind of her +guest. Nevertheless, when Marcella was kind, when she put Letty on the +sofa, insisting that she was tired, and anxiously accusing herself of +some lack of consideration or other; when she took her to her room at +night, seeing to every comfort, and taking thought for luxuries that in +her heart she despised; or when, very rarely, and turning rather pale, +she said a few words--sweet, hopeful, encouraging--about George's return, +then Letty was conscious of a strange leap of something till then +unknown, something that made her want to sob, that seemed to open to her +a new room in the House of Life. Marcella had not kissed her since the +day of their great scene; they had been "Lady Maxwell" and "Lady +Tressady" to each other all the time, and Letty had but realised her own +insolences and audacities the more, as gradually the spiritual dignity of +the woman she had raved at came home to her. But sometimes when Marcella +stood beside her, unconscious, talking pleasantly of London folk or +Ancoats, or trying to inform herself as to Letty's life at Ferth, a +half-desolate intuition would flash across the younger woman of what it +might be to be admitted to the intimate friendship of such a nature, to +feel those long, slender arms pressed about her once more, not in pity or +remonstrance, as of one trying to exorcise an evil spirit, but in mere +love, as of one asking as well as giving. The tender and adoring +friendship of women for women, which has become so marked a feature of +our self-realising generation, had passed Letty by. She had never known +it. Now, in these unforeseen circumstances, she seemed to be trembling +within reach of its emotion; divining it, desiring it, yet forced onward +to the question, "What is there in me that may claim it?" + +Marcella, indeed, after their first stormy interview, had once more +returned to the subject of it. She had told the story of her friendship +with George Tressady, very gently and plainly, in a further conversation, +held between them at the elder Lady Tressady's house during that odd +lady's very odd convalescence; till, indeed, she reached the last scene. +She could not bring herself to deliver the truth of that. Nor was it +necessary. Letty's jealousy had guessed it near enough long ago. But when +all else was told, Letty had been conscious at first of a half-sore +resentment that there was so little to tell. In her secret soul she knew +very well what had been the effect on George. Her husband's mind had been +gradually absorbed by another ideal in which she had no part; nor could +she deny that he had suffered miserably. The memory of his face as he +asked her to "forgive him" when she fled past him on that last wretched +night was enough. But suffered for what? A few talks about politics, a +few visits to poor people, an office of kindness after a street accident +that any stranger must have rendered, a few meetings in the House and +elsewhere! + +Letty's vanity was stabbed anew by the fact that Lady Maxwell's +offence was so small. It gave her a kind of measure of her own hold +upon her husband. + +Once, indeed, Marcella's voice and colour had wavered when she made +herself describe how, on the Mile End evening, she had been conscious of +pressing the personal influence to gain the political end. But good +heavens!--Letty hardly understood what the speaker's evident compunction +was about. Why, it was all for Maxwell! What had she thought of all +through but Maxwell? Letty's humiliation grew as she understood, and as +in the quiet of Maxwell Court she saw the husband and wife together. + +Her anger and resentment might very well only have transferred themselves +the more hotly to George. But this new moral influence upon her had a +kind of paralysing effect. The incidents of the weeks before the crisis +excited in her now a sick, shamed feeling whenever she thought of them. +For contact with people on a wholly different plane of conduct, if such +persons as Letty can once be brought to submit to it, will often produce +effects, especially on women, like those one sees produced every day by +the clash of two standards of manners. It means simply the recognition +that one is unfit to be of certain company, and perhaps there are few +moral ferments more penetrating. Probably Letty would have gone to her +grave knowing nothing of it, but for the accident which had opened to her +the inmost heart of a woman with whom, once known, not even her vanity +dared measure itself. + +George and she had already met since the day when he had gone off to +Paris in search of Ancoats. The telegram sent to him by Marcella on the +night of his mother's violent illness had, indeed, been recalled next +day. Lady Tressady, following the idiosyncrasies of her disease, sprang +from death to life--and life of the sprightliest kind--in the course of a +few hours. The battered, grey-haired woman--so old, do what she would, +under the betraying hand of physical decay!--no sooner heard that George +had been sent for than she at once and peremptorily telegraphed to him +herself to stay away. "I'm not dead yet," she wrote to him afterwards, +"in spite of all the fuss they've made with me. I was simply ashamed to +own such a cadaverous-looking wretch as you were when you came here last, +and if you take my advice you'll stay at Trouville with Lord Ancoats and +amuse yourself. As to that young man, of course it's no good, and his +mother's a great fool to suppose that you or anybody else can prevent +his enjoying himself. But these High Church women are so extraordinary." + +Letty, indeed, remembering her mother-in-law's old ways, and finding +them little changed as far as she herself was concerned, was puzzled and +astonished by the new relations between mother and son. On the smallest +excuse or none, Lady Tressady, a year before, would have been ready to +fetch him back from furthest land without the least scruple. Now, +however, she thought of him, or for him, incessantly. And one day Letty +actually found her crying over an official intimation from the lawyer +concerned that another instalment of the Shapetsky debt would be due +within a month. But she angrily dried her tears at sight of Letty, and +Letty said nothing. + +George, however, came back within about ten days of his departure, having +apparently done what he was commissioned to do, though Letty took so +little interest in the Ancoats affair that she barely read those portions +of his letters in which he described the course of it. His letters, +indeed, with the exception of a few ambiguous words here and there, dealt +entirely with Trouville, Ancoats, or the ups and downs of public opinion +on the subject of his action and speech in the House. Letty could only +gather from a stray phrase or two that he enjoyed nothing; but evidently +he could not yet bring himself to speak of what had happened. + +When he did come back, the husband and wife saw very little of each +other. It was more convenient that he should stay in Upper Brook Street +while she remained at her mother-in-law's; and altogether he was hardly +three days in London. He rushed up to Market Malford to deliver his +promised speech to his constituents, and immediately afterwards, on the +urgent advice of the doctors, he went off to Wildheim with his mother and +the elderly cousin whose aid he had already invoked. Before he went, he +formally thanked his wife--who hardly spoke to him unless she was +obliged--for her attention to his mother, and then lingered a little, +looking no less "cadaverous," certainly, than when he had gone away, and +apparently desiring to say more. + +"I suppose I shall be away about a fortnight," he said at last, "if one +is to settle her comfortably. You haven't told me yet what you would like +to do. Couldn't you get Miss Tulloch to go down with you to Ferth, or +would you go to your people for a fortnight?" + +He was longing to ask her what had come of that promised visit of Lady +Maxwell's. But neither by letter nor by word of mouth had Letty as yet +said a word of it. And he did not know how to open the subject. During +the time that he was with his wife and mother, nothing was seen of +Marcella in Warwick Square, and an interview that he was to have had with +Maxwell, by way of supplement to his numerous letters, had to be +postponed because of overcrowded days on both sides. So that he was still +in the dark. + +Letty at first made no answer to his rather lame proposals for her +benefit. But just as he was turning away with a look of added +worry, she said: + +"I don't want to go home, thank you, and I still less want to go +to Ferth." + +"But you can't stay in London. There isn't a soul in town; and it would +be too dull for you." + +He gazed at her in perplexity, praying, however, that he might not +provoke a scene, for the carriage that was to take him and his mother to +the station was almost at the door. + +Letty rose slowly, and folded up some embroidery she had been +playing with. Then she took a note from her work-basket, and laid it +on the table. + +"You may read that if you like. That's where I'm going." + +And she quickly went out of the room. + +George read the note. His face flushed, and he hurriedly busied himself +with some of his preparations for departure. When his wife came into the +room again he went up to her. + +"You could have done nothing so likely to save us both," he said huskily, +and then could think of nothing more to say. He drew her to him as though +to kiss her, but a blind movement of the old rage with him or +circumstance leapt in her, and she pulled herself away. The thought of +that particular moment had done more perhaps than anything else to thin +and whiten her since she had been at Maxwell Court. + +And now he would be here to-night. She knew both from her host himself +and from George's letters that Lord Maxwell had specially written to him +begging him to come to the Court on his return, in order to join his wife +and also to give that oral report of his mission for which there had been +no time on his first reappearance. Maxwell had spoken to her of his wish +to see her husband, without a tone or a word that could suggest anything +but the natural friendliness and good-will of the man who has accepted a +signal service from his junior. But Letty avoided Maxwell when she could; +nor would he willingly have been left alone with this thin, sharp-faced +girl whose letter to him had been like the drawing of an ugly veil from +nameless and incredible things. He was sorry for her; but in his strong, +deep nature he felt a repulsion for her he could not explain; and to +watch Marcella with her amazed him. + + * * * * * + +Immediately after tea, Lady Leven's complaints of her entertainment +became absurd. Guests poured in from the afternoon train, and a variety +of men, her husband foremost among them, were soon at her disposal, +asking nothing better than to amuse her. + +Letty Tressady meanwhile looked on for a time at the brilliant crowd +about her on the terrace, with a dull sense of being forgotten and of no +account. She said to herself sullenly that of course no one would want to +talk to her; it was not her circle, and she had even few acquaintances +among them. + +Then, to her astonishment, she began to find herself the object of an +evident curiosity and interest to many people among the throng. She +divined that her name was being handed from one to the other, and she +soon perceived that Marcella had been asked to introduce to her this +person and that, several of them men and women whose kindness, a few +weeks before, would have flattered her social ambitions to the highest +point. Colour and nerve returned, and she found herself sitting up, +forgetting her headache, and talking fast. + +"I am delighted to have this opportunity of telling you, Lady Tressady, +how much I admired your husband's great speech," said the deep and +unctuous voice of the grey-haired Solicitor-General as he sank into a +chair beside her. "It was not only that it gave us our Bill, it gave the +House of Commons a new speaker. Manner, voice, matter--all of it +excellent! I hope there'll be no nonsense about his giving up his seat. +Don't you let him! He will find his feet and his right place before long, +and you'll be uncommonly proud of him before you've done." + +"Lady Tressady, I'm afraid you've forgotten me," said a plaintive voice; +and, on turning, Letty saw the red-haired Lady Madeleine asking with +smiles to be remembered. "Do you know, I was lucky enough to get into the +House on the great day? What a scene it was! You were there, of course?" + +When Letty unwillingly said "No," there was a little chorus of +astonishment. + +"Well, take my advice, my dear lady," said the Solicitor-General, +speaking with lazy patronage somewhere from the depths of comfort,--he +was accustomed to use these paternal modes of speech to young +women,--"don't you miss your husband's speeches. We can't do without our +domestic critics. But for the bad quarters of an hour that lady over +there has given me, I should be nowhere." + +And he nodded complacently towards the wife as stout as himself, who was +sitting a few yards away. She, hearing her name, nodded back, with smiles +aside to the bystanders. Most of the spectators, however, were already +acquainted with a conjugal pose which was generally believed to be not +according to facts, and no one took the cue. + +Then presently Mr. Bennett--the workmen's member from the North--was at +Letty's elbow saying the most cordial things of the absent George. Bayle, +too, the most immaculate and exclusive of private secretaries, who was at +the Court on a wedding visit with a new wife, chose to remember Lady +Tressady's existence for the first time for many months, and to bestow +some of his carefully adapted conversation upon her. While, last of all, +Edward Watton came up to her with a cousinly kindness she had scarcely +yet received from him, and, drawing a chair beside her, overflowed with +talk about George, and the Bill, and the state of things at Market +Malford. In fact, it was soon clear even to Letty's bewildered sense that +till her husband should arrive she was perhaps, for the moment, the +person of most interest to this brilliant and representative gathering of +a victorious party. + +Meanwhile she was made constantly aware that her hostess remembered her. +Once, as Marcella passed her, after introducing someone to her, Letty +felt a hand gently laid on her shoulder and then withdrawn. Strange waves +of emotion ran through the girl's senses. When would George be here? +About seven, she thought, when they would all have gone up to dress. He +would have arrived from Wildheim in the morning, and was to spend the day +doing business in town. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Letty was lying on a sofa in her bedroom. Her maid was to come to her +shortly, and she was impatiently listening to every sound that approached +or passed her door. The great clock in the distant hall struck seven, and +it seemed to her intolerably long before she heard movements in the +passage, and then Maxwell's voice outside. + +"Here is your room, Sir George. I hope you don't mind a few ghosts! It is +one of the oldest bits of the house." + +Letty sprang up. She heard the shutting of the passage door, then +immediately afterwards the door from the dressing-room opened, and George +came through. + +"Well!" she said, staring at him, her face flushing; "surely you are +very late?" + +He came up to her, and put his arms round her, while she stood passive. +"Not so very," he said, and she could hear that his voice was unsteady. +"How are you? Give me a kiss, little woman--be a little glad to see me!" + +He looked down upon her wistfully. On the journey he had been conscious +of great weariness of mind and body, a longing to escape from struggle, +to give and receive the balm of kind looks and soft words. He had come +back full of repentance towards her, if she had only known, full too of a +natural young longing for peace and good times. + +She let him kiss her, but as he stooped to her it suddenly struck her +that she had never seen him look so white and worn. Still; after all this +holiday-making! Why? For love of a woman who never gave him a thought, +except of pity. Bitterness possessed her. She turned away indifferently. + +"Well, you'll only just have time to dress. Is someone unpacking for +you?" + +He looked at her. + +"Is that all you have to say?" + +She threw back her head and was silent. + +"I was very glad to come back to you," he said, with a sigh, "though I--I +wish it were anywhere else than here. But, all things considered, I did +not see how to refuse. And you have been here the whole fortnight?" + +"Yes." + +"Have you"--he hesitated--"have you seen a great deal of Lady Maxwell?" + +"Well, I suppose I have--in her own house." Then she broke out, her +heart leaping visibly under her light dressing-gown. "I don't blame +_her_ any more, if you want to know that; she doesn't think of anyone in +the world but him." + +The gesture of her hand seemed to pursue the voice that had been just +speaking in the corridor. + +He smiled. + +"Well, at least I'm glad you've come to see that!" he said quietly. "And +is that all?" + +He had walked away from her, but at his renewed question he turned +back quickly, his hands in his pockets. Something in the look of him +gave her a moment of pleasure, a throb of possession. But she showed +nothing of it. + +"No, it's not all"--her pale blue eyes pierced him. "Why did you go and +see her that morning, and why have you never told me since?" + +He started, and shrugged his shoulders. + +"If you have been seeing much of her," he replied, after a pause, "you +probably know as much as I could tell you." + +"No," she said steadily; "she has told me much about +everything--but that." + +He walked restlessly about for a few seconds, then returned, holding out +his hands. + +"Well, my dear, I said some mad and miserable things. They are as dead +now as if they had never been spoken. And they were not love-making--they +were crying for the moon. Take me, and forget them. I am an +unsatisfactory sort of fellow, but I will do the best I can." + +"Wait a bit," she said, retreating, and speaking with a hard +incisiveness. "There are plenty of things you don't know. Perhaps you +don't know, for instance, that I wrote to Lord Maxwell? I sat up writing +it that night--he got it the same morning you saw her." + +"You wrote to Maxwell!" he said in amazement--then, under his breath--"to +complain of her. My God!" + +He walked away again, trying to control himself. + +"You didn't suppose," she said huskily, "I was going to sit down calmly +under your neglect of me? I might have been silly in not--not seeing what +kind of a woman she was; that's different--besides, of course, she ought +to have thought more about me. But _that's_ not all!" + +Her hand shook as she stood leaning on the sofa. George turned, and +looked at her attentively. + +"The day you left I went to Hampton Court with the Lucys. Cathedine was +there. Of course I flirted with him all the time, and as we were going +through a wood near the river he said abominable things to me, and +kissed me." + +Her brows were drawn defiantly. Her eyes seemed to be riveted to his. He +was silent a moment, the colour dyeing his pale face deep. Then she heard +his long breath. + +"Well, we seem to be about quits," he said, in a bitter voice. "Have you +seen him since?" + +"No. That's Grier knocking--you'd better go and dress." + +He paused irresolutely. But Letty said, "Come in," and he retreated into +his dressing-room. + +Husband and wife hurried down together, without another word to each +other. When George at last found himself at table between Lady Leven and +Mr. Bayle's new and lively wife, he had never been so grateful before to +the ease of women's tongues. In his mental and physical fatigue, he could +scarcely bear even to let himself feel the strangeness of his presence in +this room--at her table, in Maxwell's splendid house. _Not_ to +feel!--somehow to recover his old balance and coolness--that was the cry +of the inner man. + +But the situation conquered him. _Why_ was he here? It was barely a month +since in her London drawing-room he had found words for an emotion, a +confession it now burnt him to remember. And here he was, breaking bread +with her and Maxwell, a few weeks afterwards, as though nothing lay +between them but a political incident. Oh! the smallness, the triviality +of our modern life! + +Was it only four weeks, or nearly? What he had suffered in that time! An +instant's shudder ran through him, during an interval, while Betty's +unwilling occupation with her left-hand neighbour left memory its chance. +All the flitting scenes of the past month, Ancoats's half-vicious +absurdities, the humours of the Trouville beach, the waves of its grey +sea, his mother's whims and plaints, the crowd and heat of the little +German watering-place where he had left her--was it he, George Tressady, +that had been really wrestling with these things and persons, walking +among them, or beside them? It seemed hardly credible. What was real, +what remained, was merely the thought of some hours of solitude, beside +the Norman sea, or among the great beech-woods that swept down the hills +about Bad Wildheim. Those hours--they only--had stung, had penetrated, +had found the shrinking core of the soul. + +What in truth was it that had happened to him? After weeks of a growing +madness he had finally lost his self-command, had spoken passionately, +as only love speaks, to a married woman, who had no thought for any man +in the world but her husband, a woman who had immediately--so he had +always read the riddle of Maxwell's behaviour--reported every incident +of his conversation with her to the husband, and had then tried her +best, with an exquisite kindness and compunction, to undo the mischief +her own charm had caused. For that effort, in the first instance, +George, under the shock of his act and her pain, had been, at intervals, +speechlessly grateful to her; all his energies had gone into pitiful, +eager response. Now, her attempt, and Maxwell's share in it, seemed to +have laid him under a weight he could no longer bear. His acceptance of +Maxwell's invitation had finally exhausted his power of playing the +superhuman part to which she had invited him. He wished with all his +heart he had not accepted it! From the moment of her greeting--with its +mixture of shrinking and sweetness--he had realised the folly, the +humiliation even, of his presence in her house. He could not rise--it +was monstrous, ludicrous almost, that she should wish it--to what she +seemed to ask of him. + +What had he been in love with? He looked at her once or twice in +bewilderment. Had not she herself, her dazzling, unconscious purity, +debarred him always from the ordinary hopes and desires of the sensual +man? His very thought had moved in awe of her, had knelt before her. +Throughout there had been this half-bitter glorying in the strangeness of +his own case. The common judgment in its common vileness mattered nothing +to him. He had been in love with love, with grace, with tenderness, with +delight. He had seen, too late, a vision of the _best_; had realised +what things of enchantment life contains for the few, for the +chosen--what woman at her richest can be to man. And there had been a cry +of personal longing--personal anguish. + +Well!--it was all done with. As for friendship, it was impossible, +grotesque. Let him go home, appease Letty, and mend his life. He +constantly realised now, with the same surprise, as on the night before +his confession, the emergence within himself, independent as it were of +his ordinary will, and parallel with the voice of passion or grief, of +some new moral imperative. Half scornfully he discerned in his own nature +the sort of paste that a man inherits from generations of decent dull +forefathers who have kept the law as they understood it. He was conscious +of the same "ought" vibrating through the moral sense as had governed +their narrower lives and minds. It is the presence or the absence indeed +of this dumb compelling power that in moments of crisis differentiates +one man from another. He felt it; wondered perhaps that he should feel +it; but knew, nevertheless, that he should obey it. Yes, let him go home, +make his wife forgive him, rear his children--he trusted to God there +would be children!--and tame his soul. How strange to feel this tempest +sweeping through him, this iron stiffening of the whole being, amid this +scene, in this room, within a few feet of that magic, that voice-- + + * * * * * + +"Thank goodness I have got rid of my man at last!" said Betty's laughing +whisper in his ear. "Three successive packs of hounds have I followed +from their cradles to their graves. Make it up to me, Sir George, at +once! Tell me everything I want to know!" + +George turned to her smiling. + +"About Ancoats?" + +"Of course. Now don't be discreet!--I know too much already. How did he +receive you?" + +George laughed--not noticing that instead of laughing with him, little +Betty was staring at him open-eyed over her fan. + +"To begin with, he invited me to fight--coffee and pistols before +eight, on the following morning, in the garden of his chalet, which +would not have been at all a bad place, for he is magnificently +installed. I came from his enemies, he said. They had prevented the +woman he loved from joining him, and covered him with ridicule. As +their representative I ought to be prepared to face the consequences +like a man. All this time he was storming up and down, in a marvellous +blue embroidered smoking suit--" + +"Of course, to go with the hair," put in Betty. + +"I said I thought he'd better give me some dinner before we talked it +out. Then he looked embarrassed and said there were friends coming. I +replied, '_Tant mieux.'_ He inquired fiercely whether it was the part of +a gentleman to thrust himself where he wasn't wanted. I kept my temper, +and said I was too famished to consider. Then he haughtily left the room, +and presently a servant came and asked for my luggage, which I had left +at the station, and showed me a bedroom. Ancoats, however, appeared again +to invite me to withdraw, and to suggest the names of two seconds who +would, he assured me, be delighted to act for me. I pointed out to him +that I was unpacked, and that to turn me out dinnerless would be simply +barbarous. Then, after fidgeting about a little, he burst out laughing in +an odd way, and said, 'Very well--only, mind, I didn't ask you.' Sure +enough, of course I found a party." + +George paused. + +"You needn't tell me much about the party," said Betty, nervously, +"unless it's necessary." + +"Well, it wasn't a very reputable affair, and two young women were +present." + +"No need to talk about the young women," said Betty, hastily. + +George bowed submission. + +"I only mentioned them because they are rather necessary to the story. +Anyway, by the time the company was settled Ancoats suddenly threw off +his embarrassment, and, with some defiant looks at me, behaved himself, I +imagine, much as he would have done without me. When all the guests were +gone, I asked him whether he was going to keep up the farce of a _grande +passion_ any more. He got in a rage and vowed that if 'she' had come, of +course all those creatures, male and female, would be packed off. I +didn't suppose that he would allow the woman he loved to come within a +mile of them? I shrugged my shoulders and declined to suppose anything +about his love affairs, which seemed to me too complicated. Then, of +course, I had to come to plain speaking, and bring in his mother." + +"That she should have produced such a being!" cried Betty; "that he +should have any right in her at all!" + +"That she should keep such a heart for him!" said George, raising his +eyebrows. "He turned rather white, I was relieved to see, when I told him +from her that she would leave his house if the London affair went on. +Well, we walked up and down in his garden, smoking, the greater part of +the night, till I could have dropped with fatigue. Every now and then +Ancoats would make a dash for the brandy and soda on the verandah; and in +between I had to listen to tirades against marriage, English prudery, and +English women,--quotations from Gautier and Renan,--and Heaven knows +what. At last, when we were both worn out, he suddenly stood still and +delivered his ultimatum. 'Look here--if you think I've no grievances, +you're much mistaken. Go back and tell my mother that if she'll marry +Fontenoy straight away I'll give up Marguerite!' I said I would deliver +no such impertinence. 'Very well,' he said; 'then I will. Tell her I +shall be in Paris next week, and ask her to meet me there. When are you +going?' 'Well,' I said, rather taken aback, 'there is such an institution +as the post. Now I've come so far, suppose you show me Trouville for a +few days?' He muttered something or other, and we went to bed. +Afterwards, he behaved to me quite charmingly, would not let me go, and I +ended by leaving him at the door of an hotel in Paris where he was to +meet his mother. But on the subject of Fontenoy it is an _idee fixe_. He +chafes under the whole position, and will yield nothing to a man who, as +he conceives, has no _locus standi_. But if his pride were no longer +annoyed by its being said that his mother had sacrificed her own +happiness to him, and if the situation were defined, I _think_ he might +be more amenable. I think they might marry him." + +"That's how the man puts it!" said Betty, tightening her lip. "Of course +_any_ marriage is desirable for _any_ woman!" + +"I was thinking of Mrs. Allison," said George, defensively. "One can't +think of a Lady Ancoats till she exists." + +"_Merci!_ Never mind. Don't apologise for the masculine view. It has to +be taken with the rest of you. Do you understand that matrimony is in the +air here to-night? Have you been talking to Lady Madeleine?" + +"No, not yet. But how handsome she's grown! I see Naseby's not far off." + +George turned smiling to his companion. But, as he did so, again +something cold and lifeless in his own face and in the expression +underlying the smile pricked little Betty painfully. Marcella had made +her no confidences, but there had been much gossip, and Letty Tressady's +mere presence at the Court set the intimate friend guessing very near +the truth. + +She did her best to chatter on, so as to keep him at least +superficially amused. But both became more and more conscious of two +figures, and two figures only, at the crowded table--Letty Tressady, +who was listening absently to Edward Watton with oppressed and indrawn +eyes, and Lady Maxwell. + +George, indeed, watched his wife constantly. He hungered to know more of +that first scene between her and Lady Maxwell, or he thought with bitter +repulsion of the letter she had confessed to him. Had he known of it,--in +spite of that strange, that compelling letter of Maxwell's, so reticent, +and yet in truth so plain,--he could hardly have come as a guest to +Maxwell's house. As for her revelations about Cathedine, he felt little +resentment or excitement. For the future a noxious brute had to be kept +in order--that was all. It was his own fault, he supposed, much more than +hers. The inward voice, as before, was clear enough. "I must just take +her home and be good to her. _She_ shirked nothing--now, no doubt, she +expects me to do my part." + +"Do you notice those jewels that Lady Maxwell is wearing to-night?" said +Betty at last, unable to keep away from the name. + +"I imagine they are a famous set?" + +"They belonged to Marie Antoinette. At last Maxwell has made her have +them cleaned and reset. What a pity to have such desperate scruples as +she has about all your pretty things!" + +"Must diamonds and rubies, then, perish out of the world?" he asked her, +absently, letting his eyes rest again upon the beautiful head and neck. + +Betty made some flippant rejoinder, but as she watched him, she +was not gay. + + * * * * * + +George had had but a few words with his hostess before dinner, and +afterwards a short conversation was all that either claimed. She had +hoped and planned so much! On the stage of imagination before he +came--she had seen his coming so often. All was to be forgotten and +forgiven, and this difficult visit was to lead naturally and without +recall to another and happier relation. And now that he was here she felt +herself tongue-tied, moving near him in a dumb distress. Both realised +the pressure of the same necessities, the same ineluctable facts; and +tacitly, they met and answered each other, in the common avoidance of a +companionship which could after all avail nothing. Once or twice, as they +stood together after dinner, he noticed amid her gracious kindness, her +inquiries after Mrs. Allison or his mother, the search her eyes made for +Letty, and presently she began to talk with nervous, almost appealing, +emphasis--with a marked significance and intensity indeed--of Letty's +fatigue after her nursing, and the need she had for complete change and +rest. George found himself half resenting the implications of her manner, +as the sentences flowed on. He felt her love of influence, and was not +without a hidden sarcasm. In spite of his passionate gratitude to her, he +must needs ask himself, did she suppose that a man or a marriage was to +be remade in a month, even by her plastic fingers? Women envisaged these +things so easily, so childishly, almost. + +When he moved away, a number of men who had already been talking to him +after dinner, and some of the most agreeable women of the party besides, +closed about him, making him, as it were, the centre of a conversation +which was concerned almost entirely with the personalities and chances +of the political moment. He was scarcely less astonished than Letty had +been by his own position amongst the guests gathered under Maxwell's +roof. Never had he been treated with so much sympathy, so much deference +even. Clearly, if he willed it so, what had seemed the dislocation might +only be the better beginning of a career. Nonsense! He meant to throw it +all up as soon as Parliament met again in February. The state of his +money affairs alone determined that. The strike was going from bad to +worse. He must go home and look after his own business. It was a folly +ever to have attempted political life. Meanwhile he felt the stimulus of +his reception in a company which included some of the keenest brains in +England. It appealed to his intelligence and virility, and they +responded. Letty once, glancing at him, saw that he was talking briskly, +and said to herself, with contradictory bitterness, that he was looking +as well as ever, and was going, she supposed, to behave as if nothing +had happened. + +"What is the matter with you to-night, my lady?" said Naseby, taking a +seat beside his hostess. "May I be impertinent and guess?--you don't like +your gems? Lady Leven has been telling me tales about them. They are the +most magnificent things I ever saw. I condole with you." + +She turned rather listlessly to meet his bantering look. + +"'Come you in friendship, or come you in war?'" she said, pointing to a +seat beside her. "I have no fight in me. But I have a great many things +to say to you." + +He reddened for an instant, then recovered himself. + +"So have I to you," he said briskly. "In the first place, I have some +fresh news from Mile End." + +She half laughed, as who should say, "You put me off," then surrendered +herself with eagerness to the pleasure of his report. At the moment of +his approach, under pretence of talking to an elderly cousin of +Maxwell's, she had been lost in such an abstraction of powerless pity for +George Tressady--whose fair head, somehow, never escaped her, wherever it +moved--that she had hardly been able to bear with her guests or the +burden of the evening. + +But Naseby roused her. And, indeed, his story so far was one to set the +blood throbbing in the veins of a creature who, on one side pure woman, +was on the other half poet, half reformer. Since the passage of the +Maxwell Bill, indeed, Naseby and a few friends of his, some "gilded +youths" like himself, together with some trade-union officials of a long +experience, had done wonders. They had been planning out the industrial +reorganisation of a whole district, through its two staple trades, with +the enthusiastic co-operation of the workpeople themselves; and the +result so far struck the imagination. Everywhere the old workshops were +to be bought up, improved, or closed; everywhere factories in which life +might be decent, and work more than tolerable, were to be set up; +everywhere the prospective shortening of hours, and the doing away with +the most melancholy of the home trades was working already like the +incoming of a great slowly surging tide, raising a whole population on +its breast to another level of well-being and of hope. + +Most of what had been done or designed was of course already well known +to Maxwell's wife; she had indeed given substantial help to Naseby +throughout. But Naseby had some fresh advances to report since she was +last in East London, and she drank them in with an eagerness, which +somehow assuaged a hidden smart; while he wondered a little perhaps in +his philosopher's soul at the woman of our English day, with her +compunctions and altruisms, her entanglement with the old scheme of +things, her pining for a new. It had often seemed to him that to be a +Nihilist nurse among a Russian peasantry would be an infinitely easier +task than to reconcile the social remorses and compassions that tore his +companion's mind with the social pageant in which her life, do what she +would, must needs be lived. He knew that, intellectually, she no more +than Maxwell saw any way out of unequal place, unequal spending, unequal +recompense, if civilisation were to be held together; but he perceived +that morally she suffered. Why? Because she and not someone else had been +chosen to rule the palace and wear the gems that yet must be? In the end, +Naseby could but shrug his shoulders over it. Yet even his sceptical +temper made no question of sincerity. + +When all his budget was out, and her comments made, she leant back a +little in her chair, studying him. A smile came to play about her lips. + +"What do you want to say to me?" he asked her quickly. + +She looked round her to see that they were not overheard. + +"When did you see Madeleine last?" + +"At her brother's house, a fortnight ago." + +"Was she nice to you?" + +He bit his lip, and drew his brows a little together, under her scrutiny. + +"Do you imagine I am going to be cross-examined like this?" + +"Yes--reply!" + +"Well, I don't know what her conception of 'niceness' may be; it didn't +fit mine. She had got it into her head that I 'pitied' her, which seemed +to be a crime. I didn't see how to disprove it, so I came away." + +He spoke with a dry lightness, but she perceived anxiety and unrest under +his tone. She bent forward. + +"Do you know where Madeleine is now?" + +"Not in the least." + +"In the Long Gallery. I sent her there." + +"Upon my word!" he said, after a pause. "Do you want to rule us all?" +His cheek had flushed again; his look was half rebellious. + +A flash of pain struck through her brightness. + +"No, no!" she said, protesting. "But I know--you don't!" + +He rose deliberately, and bowed with the air of obeying her commands. +Then suddenly he bent down to her. + +"I knew perfectly well that she was in the Long Gallery! But I also knew +that Mrs. Bayle had chosen to join her there. The coast, you may +perceive, is now clear." + +He walked away. Marcella looked round, and saw an elegant little bride, +Mr. Bayle's new wife, rustling into the room again. She leant back in +her chair, half laughing, yet her eyes were wet. The new joy brought a +certain ease to old regrets. Only that word "rule" rankled a little. + +Yet the old regrets were all sharp and active again. It seemed to be +impossible now to talk with George Tressady, to make any real breach in +the barrier between them; but how impossible also not to think of +him!--of the young fellow, who had given Maxwell his reward, and said to +herself such sad, such agitating things! She did think of him. Her heart +ached to serve him. The situation made a new and a very troubling appeal +to her womanhood. + + * * * * * + +The night was warm, and still, and the windows were open to it as they +had been on that May night at Castle Luton. Maxwell came to look for +Tressady, and took him out upon a flagged terrace that ran the length of +the house. + +They talked first of the Ancoats incident, George supplementing his +letters by some little verbal pictures of Ancoats's life and surroundings +that made Maxwell laugh grimly from time to time. As to Mrs. Allison, +Maxwell reported that Ancoats seemed to have gained his point. There was +talk of the marriage coming off some time in the winter. + +"Well, Fontenoy has earned his prize," said George. + +"There are more than twelve years between them. But she seems to be one +of the women who don't age. I have seen her go through griefs that +would kill most women; and it has been like the passage of a storm over +a flower." + +"Religion, I suppose, carried to that point, protects one a good deal," +said George, not, in truth, feeling much interest in the matter or in +Mrs. Allison now that his task was done. + +"And especially religion of the type that allows you to give your soul +into someone else's keeping. There is no such anodyne," said Maxwell, +musing. "I have often noticed how Catholic women keep their youth and +softness. But now, do allow me a few words about yourself. Is what I hear +about your withdrawal from Parliament irrevocable?" + +George's reply led to a discussion in which Maxwell, without any attempt +at party proselytism, endeavoured to combat all that he could understand +of the young man's twofold disgust, disgust with his own random +convictions no less than with the working of the party machine. + +"Where do I belong?" he said. "I don't know myself. I ought never to have +gone in. Anyway, I had better stand aside for a time." + +"But evidently the Malford people want to keep you." + +"Well, and of course I shall consult their convenience as much as I can," +said George, unwillingly, but would say no more. + +Nothing, indeed, could be more flattering, more healing, than all that +was implied in Maxwell's earnestness, in the peculiar sympathy and +kindness with which the elder man strove to win the younger's confidence; +but George could not respond. His whole inner being was too sore; and his +mind ran incomparably more upon the damnable letter that must be lying +somewhere in the archives of the memory of the man talking to him, than +upon his own political prospects. The conversation ended for Maxwell in +mere awkwardness and disappointment,--deep disappointment if the truth +were known. Once roused his idealism was little less stubborn, less +wilful than Marcella's. + +When the ladies withdrew, a brilliant group of them stood for a moment on +the first landing of the great oak staircase, lighting candles and +chattering. Madeleine Penley took her candle absently from Marcella's +hand, saying nothing. The girl's curious face under its crown of gold-red +hair was transformed somehow to an extraordinary beauty. The frightened +parting of the lips and lifting of the brows had become rather a look of +exquisite surprise, as of one who knows at last "the very heart of love." + +"I am coming to you, presently," murmured Marcella, laying her cheek +against the girl's. + +"Oh, _do_ come!" said Madeleine, with a great breath, and she walked +away, unsteadily, by herself, into the darkness of the tapestried +passage, her white dress floating behind her. + +Marcella looked after her, then turned with shining eyes to Letty +Tressady. Her expression changed. + +"I am afraid your headache has been very bad all the evening," she said +penitently. "Do let me come and look after you." + +She went with Letty to her room, and put her into a chair beside the wood +fire, that even on this warm night was not unwelcome in the huge place. +Letty, indeed, shivered a little as she bent towards it. + +"Must you go so early?" said Marcella, hanging over her. "I heard Sir +George speak of the ten o'clock train." + +"Oh, yes," said Letty, "that will be best." + +She stared into the fire without speaking. Marcella knelt down +beside her. + +"You won't hate me any more?" she said, in a low, pleading voice, taking +two cold hands in her own. + +Letty looked up. + +"I should like," she said, speaking with difficulty, "if you cared--to +see you sometimes." + +"Only tell me when," said Marcella, laying her lips lightly on the hands, +"and I will come." Then she hesitated. "Oh, do believe," she broke out at +last, but still in the same low voice, "that all can be healed! Only show +him love,--forget everything else,--and happiness must come. Marriage is +so difficult--such an art--even for the happiest people, one has to learn +it afresh day by day." + +Letty's tired eyes wavered under the other's look. + +"I can't understand it like that," she said. Then she moved restlessly in +her chair. "Ferth is a terrible place! I wonder how I shall bear it!" + + * * * * * + +An hour later Marcella left Madeleine Penley and went back to her own +room. The smile and flush with which she had received the girl's last +happy kisses disappeared as she walked along the corridor. Her head +drooped, her arms hung listlessly beside her. + +Maxwell found her in her own little sitting-room almost in the dark. He +sat down by her and took her hand. + +"You couldn't make any impression on him as to Parliament?" she asked +him, almost whispering. + +"No. He persists that he must go. I think his private circumstances at +Ferth have a great deal to do with it." + +She shook her head. She turned away from him, took up a paper-knife, and +let it fall on the table beside her. He thought that she must have been +in tears, before he found her, and he saw that she could find no words in +which to express herself. Lifting her hand to his lips, he held it there, +silently, with a touch all tenderness. + +"Oh, why am I so happy!" she broke out at last, with a sob, almost +drawing her hand away. "Such a life as mine seems to absorb and batten +upon other people's dues--to grow rich by robbing their joy, joy that +should feed hundreds and comes all to me! And that besides I should +actually bruise and hurt--" + +Her voice failed her. + +"Fate has a way of being tolerably even, at last," said Maxwell, slowly, +after a pause. "As to Tressady, no one can say what will come of it. He +has strange stuff in him--fine stuff I think. He will pull himself +together. And for the wife--probably, already he owes you much! I saw her +look at you to-night--once as you touched her shoulder. Dear!--what +spells have you been using?" + +"Oh! I will do all I can--all I can!" Marcella repeated in a low, +passionate voice, as one who makes a vow to her own heart. + +"But after to-morrow he will not willingly come across us again," said +Maxwell, quietly. "That I saw." + +She gave a sad and wordless assent. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +Letty Tressady sat beside the doorway of one of the small red-brick +houses that make up the village of Ferth. It was a rainy October +afternoon, and through the door she could see the black main street +--houses and road alike bedabbled in wet and mire. At one point in the +street her eye caught a small standing crowd of women and children, most +of them with tattered shawls thrown over their heads to protect them from +the weather. She knew what it meant. They were waiting for the daily +opening of the soup kitchen, started in the third week of the great +strike by the Baptist minister, who, in the language of the Tory paper, +was "among the worst firebrands of the district." There was another soup +kitchen further down, to which George had begun to subscribe immediately +on his return to the place. She had thought it a foolish act on his part +thus to help his own men to fight him the better. But--now, as she +watched the miserable crowd outside the Baptist chapel, she felt the +teasing pressure of those new puzzles of her married life which had so +far done little else, it seemed, than take away her gaiety and her power +of amusing herself. + +Near her sat an oldish woman with an almost toothless mouth, who was +chattering to her in a tone that Letty knew to be three parts +hypocritical. + +"Well, the treuth is the men is that fool 'ardy when they gets a thing +into their yeds, there's no taakin wi un. There's plenty as done like the +strike, my lady, but they dursent say so--they'd be afeard o' losin the +skin off their backs, for soom o' them lads o' Burrows's is a routin +rough lot as done keer what they doos to a mon, an yo canna exspeck a +quiet body to stan up agen 'em. Now, my son, ee comes in at neet all +slamp and downcast, an I says to 'im, 'Is there noa news yet o' the Jint +Committee, John?' I ses to un. 'Noa, mither,' ee says, 'they're just +keepin ov it on.' An ee do seem so down'earted when ee sees the poor +soart ov a supper as is aw I can gie un to 'is stomach. Now, _I'm_ wun o' +thoase as _wants_ nuthin. The doctor ses, 'Yo've got no blude in yer, +Missus 'Ammersley, what 'ull yer 'ave?' An I says, '_Nuthin!_ it's sun +cut, an it's sun cooked, _nuthin!_' Noa, I've niver bin on t' parish--an +I _might_--times. An I don't 'old wi strikes. Lor, it is a poor pleace, +is ours--ain't it?--an nobbut a bit o' bread an drippin for supper." + +The old woman threw her eyes round her kitchen, bringing them back slyly +to Letty's face. Letty ended by leaving some money with her, and walking +away as dissatisfied with her own charity as she was with its recipient. +Perhaps this old body was the only person in the village who would have +begged of "Tressady's wife" at this particular moment. Letty, moreover, +had some reason to believe that her son was one of the roughest of +Burrows's bodyguard; while the old woman was certainly no worse off than +any of her neighbours. + +Outside, she was disturbed to find as she walked home, that the street +was full of people, in spite of the rain--of gaunt men and pinched +women, who threw her hostile and sidelong glances as she passed. She +hurried through them. How was it that she knew nothing of them--except, +perhaps, of the few toadies and parasites among them? How was one to +penetrate into this ugly, incomprehensible world of "the people"? The +mere idea of trying to do so filled her with distaste and ennui. She was +afraid of them. She wished she had not stayed so long with that old +gossip, Mrs. Hammersley, and that there were not so many yards of dark +road between her and her own gate. Where was George? She knew that he +had gone up to the pits that afternoon to consult his manager about some +defect in the pumping arrangements. She wished she had secured his +escort for the walk home. + +But before she left the village she paused irresolutely, then turned down +a side street, and went to see Mary Batchelor, George's old nurse, the +mother who had lost her only son in his prime. + +When, a few minutes later, she came up the lane, she was flatly conscious +of having done a virtuous thing--several virtuous things--that afternoon, +but certainly without any pleasure in them. She did not get on with Mary, +nor Mary with her. The tragic absorption of the mother--little abated +since the spring--in her dead boy seemed somehow to strike Letty dumb. +She felt pity, but yet the whole emotion was beyond her, and she shrank +from it. As for Mary, she had so far received Lady Tressady's visits with +a kind of dull surprise, always repeated and not flattering. Letty +believed that, in her inmost heart, the broken woman was offended each +time that it was not George who came. Moreover, though she never said a +word of it to Tressady's wife, she was known to be passionately on the +side of the strikers, and her manner gave the impression that she did not +want to be talking with their oppressors. Perhaps it was this feeling +that had reconciled her to the loutish lad who lived with her, and had +been twice "run in" by the police for stone-throwing at non-union men +since the beginning of the strike. At any rate, she took a great deal +more notice of him than she had done. + +No--they were not very satisfactory, these attempts of Letty's in the +village. She thought of them with a kind of inner exasperation as she +walked home. She had been going to a few old and sick people, and trying +to ignore the strike. But at bottom she felt an angry resentment towards +these loafing, troublesome fellows, who filled the village street when +they ought to have been down in the pits--who were starving their own +children no less than disturbing and curtailing the incomes of their +betters. Did they suppose that people were going to run pits for them for +nothing? Their drink and their religion seemed to her equally hideous. +She hated the two Dissenting ministers of the place only less than +Valentine Burrows himself, and delighted to pass their wives with her +head high in air. + +With these general feelings towards the population in her mind, why +these efforts at consolation and almsgiving? Well, the poor old people +were not responsible; but she did not see that any good had come of it. +She had said nothing about her visits to George, nor did-she suppose +that he had noticed them. He had been so incessantly busy since their +arrival with conferences and committees that she had seen very little of +him. It was generally believed that the strike was nearing its end, and +that the men were exhausted; but she did not think that George was very +hopeful yet. + +Presently, as she neared a dark slope of road, bordered with trees on +one side and the high "bank" of the main pit on the other, her thoughts +turned back to their natural and abiding subject--herself. Oh, the +dulness of life at Ferth during the last three weeks! She thought of +her amusements in town, of the country houses where they might now be +staying but for George's pride, of Cathedine, even; and a rush of +revolt and self-pity filled her mind. George always away, nothing to do +in the ugly house, and Lady Tressady coming directly--she said to +herself, suffocating, her small hands stiffening, that she felt fit to +kill herself. + +Half-way down the slope she heard steps behind her in the gathering +darkness, and at the same moment something struck her violently on the +shoulder. She cried out, and clutched at some wooden railings along the +road for support, as the lump of "dirt" from the bank which had been +flung at her dropped beside her. + +"Letty, is that you?" shouted a voice from the direction of the +village--her husband's voice. She heard running. In a few seconds George +had reached her and was holding her. + +"What is it struck you? I see! Cowards! _damned_ cowards! Has it broken +your arm? Try and move it." + +Sick with pain she tried to obey him. "No," she said faintly; "it is not +broken--I think not." + +"Good!" he cried, rejoicing; "probably only a bad bruise. The brute +mercifully picked up nothing very hard"--and he pushed the lump with +his foot. "Take my scarf, dear; let me sling it. Ah!--what was that? +Letty! can you be brave--can you let me go one minute? I sha'n't be out +of your sight." + +And he pointed excitedly to a dark spot moving among the bushes along the +lower edge of the "bank." + +Letty nodded. "I can stay here." + +George leapt the palings and ran. The dark spot ran too, but in queer +leaps and bounds. There was the sound of a scuffle, then George returned, +dragging something or someone behind him. + +"I knew it," he said, panting, as he came within earshot of his wife; "it +was that young ruffian, Mary Batchelor's grandson! Now you stand still, +will you? I could hold two of the likes of you with one hand. Madan!" + +He had but just parted from his manager on the path which led sideways up +the "bank," and waited anxiously to see if his voice would reach the +Scotchman's ears. But no one replied. He shouted again; then he put two +fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly towards the pit, holding the +struggling lad all the time. + +At the same moment a couple of heavily built men, evidently colliers, +came down the road from the village. George at once called to them from +across the palings. + +"Here, you there! this young rascal has been throwing a lump of dirt at +Lady Tressady, and has hit her badly on the arm. Will you two just walk +him up to the police-station for me, while I take my wife home?" + +The two men stopped and stared at the lady by the railings and at Sir +George holding the boy, whose white but grinning face was just visible in +the growing dusk. + +"Noa," said one of them at last, "it's noa business ov ourn--is +it, Bill?" + +"Noa," said the other, stolidly; and on they tramped. + +"Oh, you heroes!" George flung after them. "Attacking a woman in the dark +is about what you understand!--Madan!" + +He whistled again, and this time there was a hurrying from overhead. + +"Sir George!" + +"Come down here, will you, at once!" + +In a few more minutes the boy was being marched up the road to the +police-station in charge of the strong-wristed Scotch manager, and George +was free to attend to Letty. + +He adjusted a sling very fairly, then made her cling to him with her +sound arm; and they were soon inside their own gates. + +"You can't climb this hill," he said to her anxiously. "Rest at the +lodge, and let me go for the brougham." + +"I can walk perfectly well--and it will be much quicker." + +Involuntarily, he was surprised to find her rather belittling than +exaggerating the ill. As they climbed on in the dark, he helping her as +much as he could, both could not but think of another accident and +another victim. Letty found herself imagining again and again what the +scene with Lady Maxwell, after the East End meeting, might have been +like; while, as for him, a face drew itself upon the rainy dusk, which +the will seemed powerless to blot out. It was a curious and unwelcome +coincidence. His secret sense of it made him the more restlessly kind. + +"What were you in the village for?" he asked, bending to her; "I did not +know you had anything to do there!" + +"I had been to see old Bessie Hammersley and Mrs. Batchelor," she +said, in a tone that tried to be stiff or indifferent. "Bessie begged, +as usual." + +"That was very good of you. Have you been doing visiting, then, during +all these days I have been away?" + +"Yes--a few people." + +George groaned. + +"What's the use of it--or of anything? They hate us and we them. This +strike begins to eat into my very being. And the men will be beaten soon, +and the feeling towards the employers will be worse than ever." + +"You are sure they will be beaten?" + +"Before Christmas, anyway. I daresay there will be some bad times first. +To think a woman even can't walk these roads without danger of +ill-treatment! How is one to have any dealings with the brutes, or any +peace with them?" + +His rage and bitterness made her somehow feel her bruises less. She even +looked up in protest. + +"Well, it was only a boy, and you used to think he wasn't all there." + +"Oh! all there!" said George, scornfully. "There'd be half of them in +Bedlam if one had to make that excuse for them. There isn't a day passes +without some devilry against the non-union men somewhere. It was only +this morning I heard of two men being driven into a reservoir near +Rilston, and stoned in the water." + +"Perhaps we should do the same," she said unwillingly. + +"Lean on me more heavily--we shall soon be there. You think we should be +brutes too? Probably. We seem to be all brutes for each other--that's the +charming way this competitive world is managed. So you have been looking +after some of the old people, have you? You must have had a dull time of +it this last three weeks--don't think I don't know that!" + +He spoke with emotion. He thought he felt her grasp waver a little on his +arm, but she did not speak. + +"Suppose--when this business was over--I were to cut the whole +concern--let the pits and the house, and go right away? I daresay I +could." + +"Could you?" she said eagerly. + +"We shouldn't get so much money, you know, as in the best years. But +then it would be certain. What would you say to a thousand a year less?" +he asked her, trying to speak lightly. + +"Well, it doesn't seem easy to get on with what we have--even if we had +it," she said sharply. + +He understood the reference to his mother's debts, and was silent. + +But evidently the recollection, once introduced, generated the usual heat +and irritation in her, for, as they neared the front door, she suddenly +said, with an acerbity he had not heard for some weeks: + +"Of course, to have a country house, and not to be able to spend a +farthing upon it--to ask your friends, or have anything decent--is enough +to make anyone sick of it. And, above all, when we needn't have been here +at all this October--" + +She stopped, shrinking from the rest of the sentence, but not before he +had time to think, "She say _that_!--monstrous!" + +Aloud he coldly replied: + +"It is difficult to see where I could have been but here, this October." + +Then the door opened, and the light showed her to him pale, with lips +tight pressed from the pain of her injury. Instantly he forgot everything +but his natural pity and chivalry towards women. He led her in, and half +carried her upstairs. A little later she was resting on her bed, and he +had done everything he could for her till the doctor should come. She +seemed to have passed into an eclipse of temper or moodiness, and he got +little gratitude. + +The evening post brought her a letter which he took up to her himself. +He knew the clear, rapid hand, and he knew, too, that Letty had received +many such during the preceding month. He stood beside her a moment, +almost on the point of asking her to let him see it. But the words died +on his lips. And, perceiving that she would not read it while he was +there, he went away again. + +When he returned, carrying a new book and asking if he should read to +her, he found her lying with her cheek on her hand, staring into the +fire, and so white and miserable that his heart sank. Had he married her, +a girl of twenty-four, only to destroy her chance of happiness +altogether? A kind of terror seized him. He had been "good to her," so +far as she and his business had allowed him, since their return; there +had been very little outward jarring; but no one knew better than he that +there had not been one truly frank or reconciling moment. + +His own inner life during these weeks had passed in one obscure +continuous struggle--a sort of dull fever of the soul. And she had simply +held herself aloof from him. + +He knelt down beside her, and laid his face against hers. + +"Don't look so unhappy!" he said in a whisper, caressing her free hand. +She did not answer or make any response till, as he got up again in a +kind of despair as to what to do or say next, she hastily asked: + +"Has the constable been up here to see you?" + +He looked at her in surprise. + +"Yes. It is all arranged. The lad will be brought up before the +magistrates on Thursday." + +She fidgeted, then said abruptly: + +"I should like him to be let off." + +He hesitated. + +"That's very nice of you, but it wouldn't be very good for the district." + +She did not press the matter, but as he moved away she said fretfully: + +"I wish you'd read to me. The pain's horrid." + +Thankful, in his remorse, to do anything for her, he tried to amuse and +distract her as he best could. But in the middle of a magazine story she +interrupted him: + +"Isn't it the day after to-morrow your mother's coming?" + +"According to her letter this morning." He put down the book. "But I +don't think you'll be at all fit to look after her. Shall I write +to-night and suggest that she stays in London a little?" + +"No. I shall be all right, the doctor says. I want to tell +Esther"--Esther was the housemaid--"_not_ to get the Blue Room ready for +her. I looked in to-day, and it seemed damp. The back room over the +dining-room is smaller, but it's much warmer." + +She turned to look at him with a rather flushed face. + +"You know best," he said, smiling. "I am sure it will be all right. But I +sha'n't let her come unless you are better." + +He went on reading till it grew late, and it seemed to him she was +dropping off to sleep. He was stealing off by way of the large +dressing-room near by, where he had been installed since their return, +when, she said faintly, "Good-night!" + +He returned, and felt the drawing of her hot hand. He stooped and kissed +her. Then she turned away from him, and seemed to go instantly to sleep. + +He went downstairs to his library, and gathered about him some documents +he had brought back from the last meeting of the masters' committee, +which had to be read. But in reality he spent an hour of random thought. +When would she herself tell him anything of her relations to Lady +Maxwell, of the nature and causes of that strange subjection which, as +he saw quite plainly, had been brought about? She must know that he +pined to know; yet she held her secret only the more jealously, no doubt +to punish him. + +He thought of her visits to the village, half humorously, half sadly; +then of her speech about the Blue Room and his mother. They seemed to him +signs of some influence at work. + +But at last he turned back to his papers with a long impatient sigh. The +clear pessimism with which he was wont to see facts that concerned +himself maintained that all the surrounding circumstance of the case was +as untoward as it could be--this dull house, a troubled district, his +money affairs, the perpetual burden of his mother, Letty's own thirst for +pleasure, and the dying down in himself of the feelings that might +once--possibly--have made up to her for a good deal. The feelings might +be simulated. Was the woman likely to be deceived? That she was capable +of the fiercest jealousy had been made abundantly plain; and such a +temper once roused would find a hundred new provocations, day by day, in +the acts and doings of a husband who had ceased to be a lover. + +Two days later Lady Tressady arrived, with Justine, and her dogs, and +all her paraphernalia. She declared herself better, but she was a mere +shadow of the woman who had tormented George with her debts and +affectations at Malford House a twelvemonth before. She took Ferth +discontentedly, as usual, and was particularly cross with Letty's +assignment to her of the back room, instead of the larger spare room to +the front of the house. + +"Damp?--nonsense!" she said to Justine, who was trying to soothe her on +the night she arrived. "I suppose Lady Tressady has some friend of her +own coming to stay--that's, of _course_, what it is. _C'est parfaitement +clair, je te dis--parfaitement!_" + +The French maid reminded her that her daughter-in-law had said, on +showing her the room, she had only to express a wish to change, and the +arrangements should be altered at once. + +"I daresay," cried Lady Tressady. "But I shall ask _no_ favours of +her--and that, of course, she knew." + +"But, miladi, I need only speak to the housemaid." + +"Thank you! Then afterwards, whenever I had a pain or a finger-ache, it +would be, 'I told you so!' No! she has managed it very cleverly--very +cleverly indeed!--and I shall let it alone." + +Thenceforward, however, there were constant complaints of everything +provided for her--room, food, the dulness of the place, the manners of +her daughter-in-law. Whether it was that her illness had now reached a +stage when the will could no longer fight against it, and its only effect +was demoralising; or whether the strange flash of courage and natural +affection struck from the volatile nature by the first threat of death +could not in any case have maintained itself, it is hard to say. At any +rate, George also found it hard to keep up his new and better ways with +her. The fact was, he suffered through Letty. In a few days his +sympathies were all with her, and to his amazement he perceived before +long that, in spite of occasional sharp speeches and sulky moments that +only an angel could have forborne, she was really more patient under his +mother's idiosyncrasies than he was. Yet Lady Tressady, even now, was +rarely unmanageable in his presence, and could still restrain herself if +it was a question of his comfort and repose; whereas, it was clear that +she felt a cat-like impulse to torment Letty whenever she saw her. + +One recent habit, however, bore with special heaviness on himself. Oddly +enough, it was a habit of religious discussion. Lady Tressady in health +had never troubled herself in the least as to what the doctors of the +soul might have to say, and had generally gaily professed herself a +sceptic in religious matters, mostly, as George had often thought, for +the sake of escaping all inconvenient restrictions--such as family +prayers, or keeping Sunday, or observing Lent--which might have got in +the way of her amusements. + +But, now, poor lady, she was all curiosity and anxiety about this strange +other side of things, and inclined, too, to be rather proud of the +originality of her inquiries on the subject. So that night after night +she would keep George up, after an exhausting day, till the small hours, +while she declared her own views "on God, on Nature, and on Human Life," +and endeavoured to extract his. This latter part of the exercise was +indeed particularly attractive to her; no doubt because of its +difficulty. George had been a singularly reserved person in these +respect's all his life, and had no mind now to play the part of a +coal-seam for his mother to "pike" at. But "pike" she would incessantly. + +"Now, George, look here! what do you _really_ think about a future life? +Now don't try and get out of it! And don't just talk nonsense to me +because you think I'm ill. I'm not a baby--I really am not. Tell +me--seriously--what you think. Do you honestly expect there _is_ a +future life?" + +"I've told you before, mother, that I have no particular thoughts on that +subject. It isn't in my line," George would say, smiling profanely, but +uneasily, and wondering how long this bout of it might be going to last. + +"Don't be shocking, George! You _must_ have some ideas about it. Now, +don't hum and haw--just tell me what you think." And she would lean +forward, all urgency and expectation. + +A pause, during which George could think only of the ghastly figure on +the sofa. She sat upright, generally, against a prop of cushions, +dressed in a white French tea-gown, slim enough to begin, with, but far +too large now for the shrunk form--a bright spot of rouge on either +pinched cheek, and the dyed "fringe" and "coils" covering all the once +shapely head. Meanwhile her hand would play impatiently on her knee. +The hand was skin and bone; and the rings with which it was laden would +often slip off from it to the floor--a diversion of which George was +always prompt to avail himself. + +"Why don't you talk to Mr. Fearon, mother?" he would say gently at last. +"It's his business to discuss these things." + +"Talk to a clergyman! thank you! I hope I have more respect for my own +intelligence. What can a priest do for you? What does he know more than +anybody else? But I do want to know what my own son thinks. Now, George, +just answer me. If there _is_ a future life"--she spread out her hand +slowly on her lap--"what do you suppose your father's doing at this +moment? That's a thing I often think of, George. I don't think I want a +future life if it's to be just like the past. You know--you remember how +he used to be--poking about the house, and going down to the pits, +and--and--swearing at the servants, and having rows with me about the +accounts--and all his dear dreadful little ways? Yet, what else in the +world can you imagine him doing? As to singing hymns!" + +She raised her hands expressively. + +George laughed, and puffed away at his cigarette. But as he still said +nothing Lady Tressady began to frown. + +"That's the way you always get out of my questions," she said fretfully; +"it's so provoking of you." + +"I've recommended you to the professional," he said, patting her hand. +"What else could I do?" + +Her thin cheek flamed. + +"As if we couldn't be certain, anyway," she cried, "that the Christians +don't know anything about it. As M. d'Estrelles used to say to me at +Monte Carlo, if there's one thing clear, it is that we needn't bother +ourselves with _their_ doctrines!" + +"Needn't we?" said George. Then he looked at her, smiling. "And you think +M. d'Estrelles was an authority?" + +Odd recollections began to run through his mind of this elderly +French admirer of his mother's, whom he had seen occasionally +flitting about their London lodgings when, as a boy, he came up from +Eton for his _exeat_. + +"Oh! don't you scoff, George," said his mother, angrily. "M. d'Estrelles +was a very clever man, though he did gamble like a fool. Everybody said +his memory was marvellous. He used to quote me pages out of Voltaire and +the rest of them on the nights when we walked up and down the gardens at +Monte Carlo, after he'd cleared himself out. He always said he didn't see +why these things should be kept from women--why men shouldn't tell women +exactly what they think. And I know he'd been a Catholic in his youth, so +he'd had experience of both. However, I don't care about M. d'Estrelles. +I want your opinions. Now, George!"--her voice would begin to break--"how +can you be so unkind. You might really compose my mind a little, as the +doctors say!" + +And through her incorrigible levity he would see for a moment the terror +which always possessed her raise its head. Then it would be time for him +to go and put his arm round her, and try and coax her to bed. + +One night, after he had taken her upstairs, he came down so wearied and +irritable that he put all his letters aside, and tried to forget himself +in some miscellaneous reading. + +His knowledge of literature was no more complete than his character. +Certain modern English poets--Rossetti, Morris, Keats, and Shelley--he +knew almost by heart. And in travels and biography--mostly of men of +action--he had, at one time or another, read voraciously. But "the +classics he had not read," as with most of us, would have made a list of +lamentable length. + +Since his return to Ferth, however, he had browsed a good deal among the +books collected by his grandfather, mostly by way of distracting himself +at night from the troubles and worries of the day. + +On this particular night there were two books lying on his table. One was +a volume of Madame de Sevigne, the other St. Augustine's "Confessions." +He turned over first one, then the other. + +"Au reste, ma fille, une de mes grandes envies, ce serait d'etre devote; +je ne suis ni an Dieu, ni an Diable; cet etat m'ennuie, quoiqu' entre +nous je le trouve le plus naturel du monde. On n'est point an Diable +parce qu'on craint Dieu, et qu' an fond on a un principe de religion; on +n'est point a Dieu aussi, parce que sa loi paroit dure, et qu' on n'aime +point a se detruire soi-meme." + +"Admirable!" he thought to himself, "_admirable!_ We are all there--my +mother and I--three parts of mankind." + +But on a page of the other book he had marked these lines--for the +beauty of them: + +"Beatus qui amat te, et amicum in te, et inimicum propter te. Solus enim +nullum eorum amittit, cui omnes in illo cari sunt qui non amittitur." + +He hung over the fire, pondering the two utterances. + +"A marvellous music," he thought of the last. "But I know no more what it +means than I know what a symphony of Brahms' means. Yet some say they +know. Perhaps of _her_ it might be true." + +The weeks ran on. Outside, the strike was at its worst, though George +still believed the men would give in before Christmas. There was hideous +distress, and some bad rioting in different parts of the country. Various +attempts had been made by the employers to use and protect non-union +labour, but the crop of outrage they had produced had been too +threatening: in spite of the exasperation of the masters they had been +perforce let drop. The Press and the public were now intervening in good +earnest--"every fool thinks he can do our business for us," as George +would put it bitterly to Letty. Burrows was speaking up and down the +district with a superhuman energy, varied only by the drinking-bouts to +which he occasionally succumbed; and George carried a revolver with him +when he went abroad. + +The struggle wore him to death; the melancholy of his temperament had +never been so marked. At the same time Letty saw a doggedness in him, a +toughness like Fontenoy's own, which astonished her. Two men seemed to be +fighting in him. He would talk with perfect philosophy of the miners' +point of view, and the physical-force sanction by which the lawless among +them were determined to support it; but at the same time he belonged to +the stiffest set among the masters. + +Meanwhile, at home, friction and discomfort were constantly recurring. +In the course of three or four weeks Lady Tressady had several attacks +of illness, and it was evident that her weakness increased rapidly. And +with the weakness, alas! the ugly incessant irritability, that dried up +the tenderness of nurses, and made a battleground of the sick-room. +Though, indeed, she could never be kept in her room; she resented being +left a moment alone. She claimed, in spite of the anxieties of the +moment, to be constantly amused; and though George could sometimes +distract and quiet her, nothing that Letty did, or said, or wore was +ever tolerable to a woman who merely saw in this youth beside her a +bitter reminder of her own. + +At last, one day early in November, came a worse turn than usual. The +doctor was in the house most of the day, but George had gone off before +the alarm to a place on the further side of the county, and could not be +got at till the evening. + +He came in to find Letty waiting for him in the hall. There had been a +rally; the doctor had gone his way marvelling, and it was thought there +was no immediate danger. + +"But oh, the pain!" said Letty, under her breath, pressing her hands +together, and shivering. Her eyes were red, her cheeks pale; he saw that +she was on the point of exhaustion; and he guessed that she had never +seen such a sight before. + +He ran up to visit his mother, whom he found almost speechless from +weakness, yet waiting, with evident signs of impatience and temper, for +her evening food. And while he and Letty were at their melancholy dinner +together, Justine came flying downstairs in tears. Miladi would not eat +what had been taken to her. She was exciting herself; there would be +another attack. + +Husband and wife hurried from the room. In the hall they found the butler +just receiving a parcel left by the railway delivery-cart. + +George passed the box with an exclamation and a shudder. It bore a large +label, "From Worth et Cie," and was addressed to Lady Tressady. But Letty +stopped short, with a sudden look of pleasure. + +"You go to her. I will have this unpacked." + +He went up and coaxed his mother like a child to take her soup and +champagne. And presently, just as she was revived enough to talk to +him, Letty appeared. Her mother-in-law frowned, but Letty came gaily up +to the bed. + +"There is a parcel from Paris for you," she said, smiling. "I have had it +opened. Would you like it brought in?" + +Lady Tressady first whimpered, and said it should go back--what did a +dying woman want with such things?--then demanded greedily to see it. + +Letty brought it in herself. It was a new evening gown of the softest +greens and shell-pinks, fit for a bride in her first season. To see the +invalid, ashen-grey, stretching out her hand to finger it was almost more +than George could stand. But Letty shook out the rustling thing, put on +the skirt herself that Lady Tressady might see, and paraded up and down +in it, praising every cut and turning with the most ingenious ardour. + +"I sha'n't wear it, of course, till after Christmas," said Lady Tressady +at last, still looking at it with half-shut covetous eyes. "Isn't it +_darling_ the way the lace is put on! Put it away. George!--it's the +_first_ I've had from him this year." + +She looked up at him appealingly. He stooped and kissed her. + +"I am so glad you like it, mother dear. Can't you sleep now?" + +"Yes, I think so. Good-night. And good-night, Letty." + +Letty came, and Lady Tressady held her hand, while the blue eyes, still +bearing the awful impress of suffering, stared at her oddly. + +"It was nice of you to put it on, Letty. I didn't think you'd have done +it. And I'm glad you think it's pretty. I wish you would have one made +like it. Kiss me." + +Letty kissed her. Then George slipped his wife's arm in his, and they +left the room together. Outside Letty turned suddenly white, and nearly +fell. George put his arms round her, and carried her down to his study. +He put her on the sofa, and watched her tenderly, rubbing the cold hands. + +"How you _could_," he said at last, in a low voice, when he saw that +she was able to talk; "how you _could!_ I shall never forget that +little scene." + +"You'd have done anything, if you'd seen her this morning," she said, +with her eyes still closed. + +He sat beside her, silent, thinking over the miseries of the last few +weeks. The net result of them--he recognised it with a leap of +surprise--seemed to have been the formation of a new and secret bond +between himself and Letty. During all the time he had been preparing +himself for the worst this strange thing had been going on. How had it +been possible for her to be, comparatively, so forbearing? He could see +nothing in his past knowledge of her to explain it. + +He recalled the effort and gloom with which she had made her first +preparations for Lady Tressady. Yet she had made them. Is there really +some mystic power, as the Christians say, in every act of self-sacrifice, +however imperfect,--a power that represents at once the impelling and the +rewarding God,--that generates, moreover, from its own exercise, the +force to repeat itself? Personally such a point of view meant little to +him, nor did his mind dwell upon it long. All that he knew was that some +angel had stirred the pool--that old wounds smarted less--that hope +seemed more possible. + +Letty knew quite well that he was watching her in a new way, that there +was a new clinging in his touch. She, little more than he, understood +what was happening to her. From time to time during these weeks of +painful tension there had been hours of wild rebellion, when she had +hated her surroundings, her mother-in-law, and her general ill-luck as +fiercely as ever. Then there had followed strange appeasements, and +inflowing calms--moments when she had been able somehow to express +herself to one who cared to listen who poured upon her in return a +sympathy which braced while it healed. + +Suddenly she opened her eyes. + +"Do you want to hear about that first time when she came to see me?" she +whispered, her look wavering under his. + +He flushed and hesitated. Then he kissed her hand. + +"No, not now. You are worn out. Another time. But I love you for thinking +of telling me." + +A feeling of rest and well-being stole over her. Mercifully he made no +protestations, and she asked for none, but there was a gentle moving of +heart towards heart. And the memory of that hour, that night, made one of +the chief barriers between her and despair in the time that followed. + +Two days later a painless death, death in her sleep, overtook Lady +Tressady. Her delicate face, restored to its true years, and framed in +its natural grey hair, seemed for the first time beautiful to George when +he saw her in her coffin. He could not remember admiring her, even when +he was a boy, and she was reckoned among the handsomest women of her day. +Parting with her was like the snapping of a strain that had pulled life +out of its true bearings and proportions. An immense, inevitable relief +followed. But after her death Letty never said a harsh word of her, and +George had a queer, humble feeling that after all he might be found to +owe her much. + +For as November and December passed away the relation between the husband +and wife steadily settled and improved. "We shall rub along," George +said to himself in his frank, secret thoughts--"in the end it will be +much better perhaps than either of us could have hoped." That no doubt +was the utmost that could ever be said; but it was much. + +The night after his mother's death, Letty abruptly, violently even, as +though worked up to it by an inner excitement, told him the story of her +wrestle with Marcella. Then, throwing some letters into his hand she +broke into sobbing and ran away from him. When he went to look for her +his own eyes were wet. "Who else could have done such a thing?" he said; +and Letty made no protest. + +The letters gave him food for thought for many a day afterwards. They +were little less of a revelation to him than the motives and personality +lying behind them had been to Letty. In spite of all that he had felt for +the woman who had written them, they still roused in him a secret and +abiding astonishment. We use the words "spiritual," "poetic" in relation +to human conduct; we talk as though all that the words meant were +familiarly understood by us; and yet when the spiritual or the poetic +comes actually to walk among us, slips into the forms and functions of +our common life, we find it amazing, almost inhuman. It gives us some +trouble to take it simply, to believe in it simply. + +Yet nothing in truth could be a more inevitable outcome of character and +circumstance than these letters of Marcella Maxwell to George Tressady's +wife. Marcella had suffered under a strong natural remorse, and to free +her heart from the load of it she had thrown herself into an effort of +reconciliation and atonement with all the passion, the subtlety, and the +resource of her temperament. She had now been wooing Letty Tressady for +weeks, nor had the eager contriving ability she had been giving to the +process missed its reward. Letty fresh from the new impressions made upon +her by Marcella at home, and Marcella as a wife, by a beauty she could no +longer hate, and a charm to which she had been forced to yield, had found +herself amid the loneliness and dulness of Perth gradually enveloped and +possessed anew by the same influence, acting in ways that grew week by +week more personal, and more subduing. + +What to begin with could be more flattering either to heart or vanity +than the persistence with which one of the most famous women of her +time--watched, praised, copied, attacked, surrounded, as Letty knew her +to be, from morning till night--had devoted herself first to the +understanding, then to the capturing, of the smaller, narrower life. The +reaction towards a natural reserve, a certain proud, instinctive +self-defence, which had governed Marcella's manner during a great part of +Letty's visit to the Court, had been in these letters deliberately broken +down--at first with effort, then more and more frankly, more and more +sweetly. Day after day, as Letty knew, Marcella had taken time from +politics, from society, from her most cherished occupations, to write to +this far-off girl, from whom she had nothing either to gain or to fear, +who had no claims whatever on her friendship, had things gone normally, +while thick about the opening of their relation to each other hung the +memory of Letty's insults and Letty's violence. + +And the letters were written with such abandonment! As a rule Marcella +was a hasty or impatient correspondent. She thought letters a waste of +time; life was full enough without them. But here, with Letty, she +lingered, she took pains. The mistress of Les Rochers writing to her +absent, her exacting Pauline, could hardly have been more eager to +please. She talked--at leisure--of all that concerned her--husband, +child, high politics, the persons she saw, the gaieties she bore with, +the books she read, the schemes in which she was busied; then, with +greater tenderness, greater minuteness, of the difficulties and tediums +of Letty's life at Ferth, as they had been dismally drawn out for her in +Letty's own letters. The animation, the eager kindness of it all went for +much; the amazing self-surrender, self-offering, implied in every page +for much more. + +Strange!--as he read the letters George felt his own heart beating. Were +they in some hidden way meant for him too?--he seemed to hear in them a +secret message--a woman's yearning, a woman's response. + +At any rate, the loving, reconciling effort had done its work. Letty +could not be insensible to such a flattery, a compliment so unexpected, +so bewildering--the heart of a Marcella Maxwell poured out to her for the +taking. She neither felt it so profoundly, nor so delicately as hundreds +of other women could have felt it. Nevertheless the excitement of it had +thrilled and broken up the hardnesses of her own nature. And with each +yielding on her part had come new capacity for yielding, new emotions +that amazed herself; till she found herself, as it were, groping in a +strange world, clinging to Marcella's hand, trying to express feelings +that had never visited her before, one moment proud of her new friend +with a pride half moral, half selfish, the next, ill at ease with her, +and through it all catching dimly the light of new ideals. + +One day, as George walked into Letty's sitting-room, to discuss some +small business of the afternoon, he saw on her writing-table that same +photograph of Lady Maxwell and her boy, whereof an earlier copy had come +to such a tragic end in Letty's hands. He walked up to it with an +exclamation; Letty was not in the room. Suddenly, however, she came in. +He made no attempt whatever to disguise that he had been looking at the +photograph; he bent over it indeed a moment longer, deliberately. Then, +walking away to the window, he began speaking of the matter which had +brought him to look for his wife. Letty answered absently. The colour had +rushed to her face. Her hands fidgeted with the books and papers on her +table, and her mind was full of fevered remembrance. + +Presently George, having settled the little point he came to speak of, +fell silent. But he still stood by the window, looking out through the +rain-splashed glass to the wintry valley below with its chimneys and +straggling village. Letty, who was pretending to write a note, raised her +head, looked at him--the quick breath beating through the parted lips, +the blue eyes half wild, half miserable. She was not nearly so pretty as +she had been a year before. George had often noticed it; it made part of +his remorse. But the face was more troubling, infinitely more human; +and, in truth, he knew it much better, was more sensitively alive to it, +so to speak, than he ever had been in the days of their courtship. + +Before he left the room he came back to her, put his arm round her +shoulders and kissed her hair. She did not raise her head or say +anything. But when he had gone she looked up with a sudden fierce sob, +took the photograph from its place, and thrust it angrily into the drawer +in front of her. Afterwards she sat for some minutes, motionless, with +her handkerchief at her lips, trying to choke down the tears that had +seized her. And last of all, with trembling fingers, she took out the +picture again, wrapped it in some soft tissue paper that lay near, as +though propitiating it, and once more put it out of sight. + +What had made her first ask Marcella for it, and then place it on her +table where George might, nay, must see it? Some vague wish, no doubt, to +"make up"; to punish herself, while touching him. But the recollection of +him, bending over the picture, tortured her, gripped her at the heart for +many a day afterwards. She let it be seen no more. Yet that week she +wrote more fully, more incoherently, more piteously to Marcella than ever +before. She talked, not without bitterness and injustice, of her bringing +up, asked what she should read, spread out her puzzles with the poor, or +with her household--half angrily, as though she were accusing someone. +For the first time, as it were, she was seeking a teacher in the art of +living. And though the tone was still querulous, she knew, and Marcella +presently dared to guess, that the ugly house on the hill had in truth +ceased to be in the least dull or burdensome to her. George went in and +out of it. And for the woman that has come to hunger for her husband's +step, there is no more ennui. + + * * * * * + +Letty indeed hardly knew the strength of her own position. The reading +of Lady Maxwell's letters to his wife had cleared a number of relics +and fragments from George's mind. The day of passion was done. +Yes!--but to see her frequently, to be brought back into any of the old +social or political relations to her and Maxwell, from this his pride +shrank no less than his conscience. Yet there was a large party in his +constituency, and belonging to it some of the men whose probity and +intelligence he had come to rate most highly, who were pressing him +hard not to resign in February, and, indeed, not to resign at all. The +few public meetings he had so far addressed had been stormy indeed, but +on the whole decidedly friendly to him, and it was urged that he must +at least present himself for re-election, in which case his expenses +should be borne, and he should be left as unpledged as possible. Since +the passage of the Bill Fontenoy's reactionary movement had lost ground +largely in the constituency; and the position of independent member +with a general leaning to the Government was no doubt easily open to +George Tressady. + +But his whole soul shrank from such a renewal of the effort of +politics--probably because of that something in him, that enfeebling, +paralysing something, which in all directions made him really prefer the +half to the whole, and see barriers in the way of all enthusiasms. +Nevertheless, the arguments he had to meet, and the kind persuasions he +had to rebut, made these weeks all the more trying to him. + +The second week of December came, the beginning of the end so far as the +strike was concerned. The men's resources were exhausted; the masters +stood unbroken. They had met the men in a joint committee; but they had +steadily refused arbitration from outside. At the beginning of this week, +rioting broke out in a district where the Union had least strength, +caused, no doubt, by the rage of impending failure. By the middle of the +following week, men were going in here and there, and the stampede of +defeat had begun. + +George, passing through the pinched and lowering faces that lined the +village, hated the triumph of his class. On the 21st, he rode over to a +neighbouring town, where local committees, both of masters and men, +were sitting, to see if there was any final news as to the pits of his +own valley. + +About eight o'clock in the evening Letty heard his horse's hoofs +returning. She knew that he was accustomed to ride in the dark, but the +rumours of violence and excitement that filled the air had unnerved her, +and she had been listening to every sound for some time past. + +When the door was open she ran out. + +"Yes, I'm late," said George, in answer to her remonstrances; "but it is +all right--it was worth waiting for. The thing's over. Some of the men go +down to-morrow week, and the rest as we can find room for them." + +"On the masters' terms?" + +"Of course--or all but." + +She clapped her hands. + +"Oh, for goodness' sake, don't!" he said, as he hung up his hat, and she, +supposing that he was irritable from over-fatigue, managed to overlook +the sharpness of his tone. + +Their Christmas passed in solitude. George, more and more painfully alive +to the disadvantages of Ferth as the home of a young woman with a natural +love of gaiety, had tried, in spite of their mourning, to persuade Letty +to ask some friends to spend Christmas week with them. She had refused, +however, and they were still alone when the end of the strike arrived. + +The day before the men were to go back to work, George returned late from +a last meeting of the employers. Letty had begun dinner, and when he +walked into the dining-room she saw at once that some unusual excitement +or strain had befallen him. + +"Let me have some food!" was all he would say in answer to her first +questions, and she let him alone. When the servants were gone he +looked up. + +"I have had a shindy with Burrows, dear--rather a bad one. But that's +all. I walked down to the station with Ashton"--Ashton was a +neighbouring magistrate and coal-owner--"and there we found Valentine +Burrows. Two or three friends were in charge of him, and it has been +given out lately that he has been suffering from nervous breakdown, +owing to his exertions. All that I could see was that he was drunker +than usual--no doubt to drown defeat. Anyway, directly he saw me he +made a scene--foamed and shouted. According to him, I am at the bottom +of the men's defeat. It is all my wild-beast delight in the sight of +suffering,--my love of 'fattening on the misery of the collier,'--my +charming villanies of all sorts--that are responsible for everything. +Altogether he reached a fine flight! Then he got violent--tried to get +at me with his knobbed stick. Ashton and I, and the men with him, +succeeded in quelling him without bothering the police.--I don't think +anything more will come of it." + +And he stretched out his hand to some salted almonds, helping himself +with particular deliberation. + +After dinner, however, he lay down on a sofa in Letty's sitting-room, +obliged to confess himself worn out. She made him comfortable, and after +she had given him a cushion, she suddenly bent over him from behind and +kissed him. + +"Come here!" he said, with a smile, throwing up his hand to catch her. +But with an odd blush and conscious look, she eluded him. + +When, a little later, she came to sit by him with some needle-work she +found him restless and inclined to talk. + +"I wonder if we are always to live in this state of war for one's +bread and butter!" he said, impatiently throwing down a newspaper he +had been reading. "It doesn't tend to make life agreeable--does it? +Yet what on earth--" + +He threw back his head, with a stiff protesting air, staring +across the room. + +Letty had the sudden impression that he was not talking to her at all, +but to some third person, unseen. + +"_Either_ capital gets its fair remuneration"--he went on in an +argumentative voice--"and ability its fair wages--_or_ the Marxian state, +labour-notes, and the rest of it. There is no half-way house--absolutely +none. As for me, I am not going to lend my capital for nothing--nor to +give my superintendence for nothing. And I don't ask exorbitant pay for +either. It is quite simple. My conscience is quite clear." + +"I should think so!" said Letty, resentfully. "I wonder whether +Marcella--is all for the men? She has never mentioned the strike in +her letters." + +As the Christian name slipped out, she flushed, and he was conscious of a +curious start. But the breaking through of a long reticence was +deliberate on Letty's part. + +"Very likely she is all for the men," he said drily, after a pause. "She +never could take a strike calmly. Her instinct always was to catch hold +of any stick that could beat the employers--Watton and I used often to +tease her about it." + +He threw himself back against the sofa, with a little laugh that was +musical in Letty's ear. It was the first time that Lady Maxwell's name +had been mentioned between them in this trivial, ordinary way. The +young wife sat alert and straight at her work, her cheek still pink, +her eyes bright. + +But after a silence, George suddenly sprang up to pace the little room, +and she heard him say, under his breath, "_But who am I, that I should +be coercing them and trampling on them!--men old enough to be my +father--driving them down to-morrow--while I sleep--for a dog's wage!_" + +"George, what is the matter with you?" she cried, looking at him in +real anxiety. + +"Nothing! _nothing!_--Darling, who's ill? I saw the old doctor on the +road home, and he threw me a word as he passed about having been +here--looked quite jolly over it. What's wrong--one of the servants?" + +Letty put down her work upon her knee and her hands upon it. She grew red +and pale; then she turned away from him, pressing her face into the back +of her chair. + +He flew to her, and she murmured in his ear. + + * * * * * + +What she said was by no means all sweetness. There was mingled with it +much terror and some anger. Letty was not one of the women who take +maternity as a matter of course. + +But emotion and natural feeling had their way. George was dissolved in +joy. He threw himself at her feet, resting his head against her knee. + +"If he doesn't have your eyes and hair I'll disinherit him," he said, +with a gaiety which seemed to have effaced all his fatigue. + +"I don't want him," was her pettish reply; "but if _she_ has your chin, +I'll put her out to nurse. Oh! how I hate the thought of it!" and she +shuddered. + +He caught her hand, comforting her. Then, putting up both his own, he +drew her down to him. + +"After all, little woman, it hasn't turned out so badly?" he said in her +ear, with sad appeal. Their lips met, trembling. Suddenly Letty broke +into passionate weeping. George sprang up, gathered her upon his knee, +and they sat for long, in silence, clinging to each other. + +At last Letty drew back from him, pushing a hand against his shoulder. + +"You know--you didn't care a bit for me--when you married me," she said, +half bitter, half crying. + +"Didn't I? And you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. + +"Oh! I don't remember!" she said hurriedly, and dropped her face on his +coat again. + +"Well, we are going to care for each other," he said in a low voice, +after a pause. "That's what matters now, isn't it?" + +She made no reply, but she put up a hand, and touched his face. He turned +his lips to the hand and kissed it tenderly. There was a sore, sad spot +in each heart; and neither dared to look forward. But tonight there was a +sense of belonging to each other in a new and sacred way, of being drawn +apart, separated from the world, husband and wife, together. Through +George's mind there wandered half-astonished thoughts about this strange +compelling power of marriage,--the deep grip it makes on life--the almost +mechanical way in which it bears down resistance, provided only that +certain compunctions, certain scruples still remain for it to work on. + +George slept lightly, being over-tired. All through the night the vision +of the beaten men going down sullenly to their first shift seemed to +hold him as though in a nightmare. + +Between seven and eight o'clock a sound startled him. He found himself +standing by his bed, struggling to wake and collect himself. + +A sound that had shaken the house, passing like a dull thud through the +valley? A horror seized him. He looked at Letty, who was fast asleep; +then he walked noiselessly into his dressing-room, and began to hurry on +his clothes. + +Five minutes later he was running down the hill at his full speed. It was +bitterly cold and still; the first snow lay on the grass, and a raw grey +veil hung over the hills. As he came in sight of the distant pit-bank he +saw a crowd of women swarming up it; a confused and hideous sound of +crying and shrieking came to his ears; and at the same moment a boy, +panting and dead-white, ran through the lodge-gates to meet him. + +"Where is it, Sprowston?" + +"Oh, sir, it's No. 2 pit. The damp's comin up the upcast, and the cage is +blown to pieces. But the down shaft's all right, and Mr. Madan and Mr. +Macgregor were starting down as I come away. There was eighty-six men and +boys went down first shift." + +George groaned, and rushed on. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +England knows these scenes too well! + +When Tressady, out of breath with running, reached the top of the bank, +and threw a hurried look in front of him, his feeling was that he had +seen everything before--the wintry dawn, the crowds of pale men and +weeping women ranged on either hand, the police keeping the ground round +the shafts clear for the mine officials--even the set white face of his +manager, who, with Macgregor the fireman and two hewers, had just emerged +from the cage that was waiting at the mouth of the downcast shaft. + +As soon as Madan saw Tressady rounding the corner of the engine-house he +hurried towards his employer. + +"Have you been down yet?" Tressady cried to him. + +"Just come up, sir. We got about fifty yards--air fairly good--then we +found falls along the main intake. We got over three or four, till the +damp rose on us too bad--we had a rough bit getting back. I thought you'd +be here by now. Macgregor thinks from the direction in which things were +lying that the blast had come from Holford's Heading or thereabouts." + +And the manager hastily opened a map of the colliery he was carrying in +his hand against the wall of the engine-house, and pointed to the spot. + +"How many men there?" + +"About thirty-two in the workings round about--as near as I can +reckon it." + +"Any sign of the rest? How many went down?" + +"Eighty-six. A cageful of men and lads--just them from the +shaft-bottom--got up immediately after the explosion. Since then, not a +sound from anyone! The uptake shaft is chock-full of damp. Mitchell, in +the fan-room, had to run for it at first, it was coming up so fast." + +"Good God!" said George, under his breath; and the two men eyed each +other painfully. + +"Have you sent for the inspector?" said Tressady, after a moment. + +"He ought to be here in five minutes now, sir." + +"Got some baulks together?" + +"The men are piling them by the shaft at this moment." + +"Fan uninjured?" + +"Yes, sir--and speed increased." + +Followed by Madan, Tressady walked up to the shaft, and himself +questioned Macgregor and the two hewers. + +Then he beckoned to Madan, and the two walked in close converse towards +the lamphouse, discussing a plan of action. As they passed slowly along +the bank the eyes of the miserable terror-stricken throng to either side +followed every movement. But there was not a sound from anyone. Once +Tressady looked up and caught the faces of some men near him--dark +faces, charged with a meaning that seemed instantly to stiffen his own +nerve for what he had to do. + +"I give Dixon three more minutes," he said, impatiently looking at his +watch; "then we go down without him." + +Dixon was the inspector. He was well known throughout the district, a +plucky, wiry fellow, who was generally at the pit's mouth immediately +after an accident, ready and keen to go with any rescue party on any +errand, however dangerous--purely, as he himself declared, for +professional and scientific reasons. In this case, he lived only a mile +away, on the further side of the village, so that Madan's messenger had +not far to go. + +As he spoke, George felt his arm clutched from behind. He turned, and saw +Mary Batchelor, who had come forward from a group of women. + +"Sir George! Listen 'ere, Sir George." Her lined face and tear-blurred +eyes worked with a passion of entreaty. "The boy went down at five with +the rest. Don't yer bear 'im no malice. Ee's a poor sickly creetur, an +the Lord an't give 'im the full use of his wits." + +George smiled at the poor thing's madness, and touched her kindly on +the shoulder. + +"Don't you trouble yourself, Mary; all that can be done will be done--for +everybody. We are only giving Mr. Dixon another minute; then we go down. +Look here"--he drew her inside the door of the lamproom, which happened +to be close by, for an open-mouthed group, eager to hear whatever he +might be saying, had begun to press about them. "Can you take this +message from me up to the house? There'll be no news here, you know, for +a long time, and I left Lady Tressady asleep." + +He tore a half-sheet from the letter in his pocket, scribbled a few words +upon it, and put it into Mary's hand. + +The woman, with her shawl over her head, ran past the lamphouse towards +the entrance-gate as fast as her age would let her, while George +rejoined Madan. + +"Ah, there he is!" + +For the small, lean figure of the inspector was already passing the gate. + +Tressady hurried to meet him. + +By the time the first questions and answers were over, Tressady, looking +round for Madan, saw that the manager was speaking angrily to a tall man +in a rough coat and corduroy trousers who had entered the pit premises in +the wake of Mr. Dixon. + +"You take yourself off, Mr. Burrows! You're not wanted here." + +"Madan!" called Tressady, "attend to Mr. Dixon, please. I'll see to +that man." + +And he walked up to Burrows, while the men standing near crowded over the +line they had been told to keep. + +"What do you want?" he said, as he reached the newcomer. + +"I have come to offer myself for the rescue party. I've been a working +miner for years. I've had special experience in accidents before. I can +beat anybody here in physical strength." + +As he spoke the great heavily built fellow looked round him, and a +murmur of assenting applause came from the bystanders. + +Tressady studied him. + +"Are you fit?" he said shortly. + +Burrows flushed. Tressady's penetrating look forced his own to meet it. + +"As fit as you are," was his haughty reply. + +"Well"--said Tressady, slowly, "we don't want to be refusing strong men. +If Madan'll have you, you shall come. Mind, we're all under his orders." + +He went to the manager, and said a word in his ear. Madan, in response, +vouchsafed neither look nor remark to the man, whom he hated apparently +more bitterly than his employer did. But he made no further objection to +his joining the search party. + +Presently all preparations were made. Picked bands of firemen and +timbermen descended first, with Madan at their head. Then George, Mr. +Dixon, a couple of local doctors who had hurried up to offer their +services, and Burrows. + +As they shot down into the darkness George was conscious of a strange +exhilaration. Working on the indications given him by the first exploring +party, his mind was alive with conjectures as to the cause of the +accident, and with plans for dealing with the various obstacles that +might occur. Never during these weeks of struggle and noise and +objurgation had he felt so fit, so strenuous. At the bottom of the shaft +he had even to remind himself, with a shudder, of the dead men who must +be waiting for them in these blank depths. + +For some little distance from the shaft nothing was to be seen that +spoke of an explosion. Some lamps in the porch of the shaft and along the +main roadway were burning as usual, and the "journey" of trucks, from +which the "hookers-on" and engine-men had escaped at the first sign of +danger, was standing laden in the entrance of the mine. The door of the +under-manager's cabin, near the base of the shaft, was open. Madan looked +into the little den, where the lamp was still burning on the wall, and +groaned. The young fellow who was generally to be found there was a great +friend of his, and they attended the same chapel together. A little +farther an open cupboard was noticed with a wisp of spun yarn hanging out +from it--inflammable stuff, quite untouched. But about thirty yards +farther they came upon the first signs of mischief. A heavy fall of roof +had to be scrambled over, and beyond it afterdamp was clearly +perceptible. + +Here there was an exclamation from Burrows, who was to the front, and the +first victim showed out of the dark in the pale glow-worm light of the +lamps turned upon him. A man lay on his side, close against the wall, +with an unlocked lamp in his hands, which were badly burnt. But no other +part of him was burnt, and it was clear that he had died of afterdamp in +trying to escape. He had evidently come from one of the nearer +work-places, and fallen within a few yards of safety. The inspector +pounced upon the lamp at once, while the doctors knelt by the body. But +in itself the lamp told little. If it were the illegal unlocking of a +lamp that caused the disaster, neither this lamp nor this man could be at +fault; for he had died clearly on the verge of the explosion area, and +from the after-effects of the calamity. But the inspector, who had +barely looked at the dead man, turned the lamp round in his hands, +dissatisfied. + +"Bad pattern! bad pattern! If I had my way I'd fine every manager whose +lamps _could_ be unlocked," he said to himself, but quite audibly. + +"The fireman may have unlocked it, sir, to re-light his own or someone +else's," said Madan, stiffly, put at once on his defence. + +"Oh! I know you're within your legal right, Mr. Madan," said the +inspector, briskly. "_I_ haven't the making of the laws." + +And he sat down on the floor, taking the lamp to pieces, and bending his +shrewd, black-eyed face over it, all the time that the doctors were +examining its owner. He was, perhaps, one of the most humane men in his +profession, but a long experience had led him to the conclusion that in +these emergencies the fragments of a lamp, or a "tamping," or a "shot," +matter more to the community than dead men. + +Meanwhile George crouched beside the doctors, watching them. The owner of +the lamp was a strong, fair-haired young man, without a mark on him +except for the burning of the hands, the eyes quietly shut, the face at +peace. One of the colliers in the search party had burst out crying when +he saw him. The lad was his nephew, and had been a favourite in the pit, +partly because of his prowess as a football player. But the young life +had gone out irrevocably. The doctor shook his head as he lifted himself, +and they left him there, in order not to waste any chance of getting out +the living first. + +Twenty yards farther on three more bodies were found, two oldish men and +a boy, very little burnt. They also had been killed in escaping, dragged +down by the inexorable afterdamp. + +A little beyond this group a fall of mingled stone and coal from the roof +blocked the way so heavily that the hewers and timbermen had to be set to +work to open out and shore up before a passage could be made. Meanwhile +the air in the haulage road was clearing fast, and George could sit on a +lump of stone and watch the dim light playing on the figures of the men +at work. The blows struck echoed from floor to roof; the work of the bare +arms and backs, as they swayed and jerked, woke a clamour in the mine. +Were there any ears still to listen for them beyond that mass? He could +scarcely keep a limb quiet, as he sat looking on, for impatience and +excitement. Burrows meanwhile was wielding a pick with the rest, and +George envied him the bodily skill and strength that, in spite of his +irregular ways of life, were still left to him. + +To restore the ventilation-current was their first object, and the +foremost pick had no sooner gained the roadway on the other side than a +strong movement of the air was perceptible. Madan's face cleared. The +ventilation circuit between the downcast and upcast shafts must be +already in some sort re-established. Let them only get a few more +"stoppings" and brattices put temporarily to rights, and the fan, working +at its increased speed, would soon drive the renewed air-currents forward +again, and make it possible to get all over the mine. The hole made was +quickly enlarged, and the rescuers scrambled through. + +But still fall after fall on the further side delayed their progress, +and the work of repairing the blown-out stoppings by such wood brattice +as could be got at, was long and tedious. The rescuers toiled and +sweated, pausing every now and then to draw upon the food and drink sent +up from behind; and the hours flew unheeded. At last, upon the further +side of one of the worst of these falls--a loose mingled mass of rock and +coal--they came on indications that showed them they had reached the +centre and heart of the disaster. A door leading on the right to one of +the side-roads of the pit known as Holford's Heading was blown outwards, +and some trucks from the heading had been dashed across the main intake, +and piled up in a huddled and broken mass against the farther wall. Just +inside that door lay victim after victim, mostly on their faces, poor +fellows! as they had come running out from their stalls at the noise of +the explosion, only to meet the fiery blast that killed them. Two or +three had been flung violently against the sides of the heading, and were +left torn, with still bleeding wounds, as well as charred and blackened +by the flame. Of sixteen men and boys that lay in this place of death, +not one had survived to hear the stifled words--half groans, half sobs, +of the comrades who had found them. + +"But, thank God! no torture, no _thought_," said George to himself as he +went from face to face; "an instant--a flash--then nothingness." + +Many of the men were well known to him. He had seen them last hanging +about the village street, pale with famine--the hatred in their eyes +pursuing him. + +He knelt down an instant beside an elderly man whom he could remember +since he was quite a boy--a weak-eyed, sallow fellow, much given to +preaching--much given, too, it was said, to beating his wife and +children, as the waves of excitement took him. Anyway, a fellow who could +feel, whose nerves stung and tormented him, even in the courses of +ordinary life. He lay with his eyes half open, the face terribly +scorched, the hands clenched, as though he still fought with the death +that had overcome him. + +George covered the man's face with a handkerchief as the doctor left the +body. "_He_ suffered," he said, under his breath. The doctor heard him, +and nodded sadly. + +Hark! What was that? A cry--a faint cry! + +"They're some of them alive in the end workings," cried Madan, with a sob +of joy. "Come on, my lads! come on!" + +And the party--all but Mr. Dixon--leaving the dead, pushed on through +the foul atmosphere, over heaps of fallen stone and coal, in quest of +the living. + +"Leave me a man," said Mr. Dixon, detaining the manager a moment. "I stay +here. You have enough with you. If I judge right, it all began here." + +A collier stayed with him, unwillingly, panting all the time under the +emotion of the rescue the man imagined but was not to see. + +For while the inspector measured and sketched, far up the heading, in +some disused workings off a side-dip or roadway, Burrows was the first to +come upon twenty-five men, eighteen of whom were conscious and uninjured. +Two of them had strength enough, as they heard the footsteps and shouts +approaching, to stagger out into the heading to meet their rescuers. One, +a long, thin lad, came forward with leaps and gambols, in spite of his +weakness, and fell almost at Tressady's feet. As he recognised the tall +man standing above him, his bloodless mouth twitched into a broad grin. + +"I say, give us a chance. Take me out--won't you?" + +It was Mary Batchelor's grandson. In retribution for the assault on Letty +the lad had been sentenced to three weeks' imprisonment, and George had +not seen him since. He stooped now, and poured some brandy down the boy's +throat. "We'll get you out directly," he said, "as soon as we've looked +to the others." + +"There's some on 'em not worth takin out," said the boy, clinging to +George's leg. "They're dead. Take me out first." Then, with another grin, +as George disengaged himself, "Some on em's prayin." + +Indeed, the first sight of that little group was a strange and touching +one. About a dozen men sat huddled round one of their number, a Wesleyan +class-leader, who had been praying with them and reciting passages from +St. John. All of them, young or old, were dazed and bent from the effects +of afterdamp, and scarcely one of them had strength to rise till they +were helped to their feet. Nevertheless, the cry which had been heard by +their rescuers had not been a cry for help, but the voices of the little +prayer-meeting raised feebly through the darkness in the Old Hundredth. + +A little distance from the prayer-meeting, the sceptics of the party +leant against the wall or lay along the floor, unheeding; while seven +men were unconscious, and possibly dying. Two or three young fellows +meanwhile, who had been least touched by the afterdamp, had "amused +themselves," as they said, by riding up and down the neighbouring level +on the "jummer" or coal-truck of one of them. + +"Weren't you afraid?" Tressady asked one of these, turning a curious look +at him, while the doctors were examining the worst cases, and rough men +were sobbing and shaking each other's hands off. + +"Noa," said the young hewer, his face, like something cut out in +yellowish wax, returning the light from Tressady's lamp. "Noa, theer was +cumpany. Old Moses, there--ee saved us." + +Old Moses was the leader of the prayer-meeting. He was a fireman besides, +who had been for twenty-six years in the mine. At the time of the +explosion, it appeared, he had been in a working close to that door on +the heading where death had done so ghastly and complete a work. But the +flame in its caprice had passed him by, and he and another man had been +able to struggle through the afterdamp back along the heading, just in +time to stem the rush of men and boys from the workings at the farther +end. These men were at the moment in a madness of terror, and ready even +to plunge into the white death-mist advancing to meet them, obeying only +the instinct of the trapped animal to "get out." But Moses was able to +control them, to draw them back by degrees along the heading till, in the +distant workings where they were found, the air was more tolerable, and +they could wait for rescue. + +George was the first to help the old fireman to his feet. But instead of +listening to any praises of his own conduct, he was no sooner clinging to +Tressady's arm than he called to Madan: + +"Mr. Madan, sir!" + +"Aye, Moses." + +"Have ye heard aught of them in the West Heading yet?" + +"No, Moses; we must get these fellows out first. We'll go there next." + +"I left thirty men and boys there this morning at half-past six. It was +fair thronged up with them." The old man's voice shook. + +Meanwhile Madan and the doctors were busy with the transport of the seven +unconscious men, some of whom were already dying. Each of them had to be +carried on his back by two men, and as soon as the sick procession was +organised it was seen that only three of the search party were left +free--Tressady, Burrows, and the Scotch fireman, Macgregor. + +Up the level and along the heading, past the point where Dixon was still +at work, over the minor falls that everywhere attested the range of the +explosion, and through the pools of water that here and there gathered +the drippings of the mine, the seven men were tenderly dragged or +carried, till at last the party regained the main intake or roadway. + +George turned to Madan. + +"You will have your hands full with these poor fellows. Macgregor and +I--Mr. Burrows, if he likes--will push on to the West Heading." + +Madan looked uneasy. + +"You'd better go up, Sir George," he said, in a low voice, "and let me +go on. You don't know the signs of the roof as I do. Eight or nine hours +after an explosion is the worst time for falls. Send down another shift, +sir, as quick as you can." + +"Why should you risk more than I?" said George, quietly. "Stop! What time +is it?" He looked at his watch. Five o'clock--nearly nine hours since +they descended! He might have guessed it at three, if he had been asked. +Time in the midst of such an experience contracts to a pin's point. But +the sight of the watch stirred a pang in him. + +"Send word at once to Lady Tressady," he said, in Madan's ear, drawing +the manager to one side. "Tell her I have gone on a little farther, and +may be another hour or two in getting back. If she is down at the bank, +beg her from me to go home. Tell her the chances are that we may find the +other men as safe as these." + +Madan acquiesced reluctantly. George then plundered him of some dry +biscuits--of some keys, moreover, that might be useful in opening one or +two locked doors farther up the workings. + +"Macgregor, you'll come?" + +"Aye, Sir George." + +"You, Mr. Burrows?" + +"Of course," said Burrows, carelessly, throwing back his handsome head. + +Some of the rescued men turned and looked hard at their agent and leader +with their sunken eyes. Others took no notice. His prestige had been lost +in defeat; and George had noticed that they avoided speech with him. No +doubt this rescue party had presented itself to the agent as an opening +he dare not neglect. + +"Come on, then," said George; and the three men turned back towards the +interior of the pit. + +Old Moses, from whose clutch George had just freed himself, stopped short +and looked after them. Then he raised a hoarse voice: + +"Be you going to the West Heading, Sir George?" + +"Yes," George flung back over his shoulder, already far away. + +"The Lord go with yer, Sir George!" + +No answer. The old man, breathing hard, caught hold of one of his +stronger comrades and tottered on towards the shaft. Two or three of his +fellows gathered round him. "Aye," said one of them, out of Madan's +hearing, "ee's been a-squeezing of us through the ground, ee ave, but +ee's a plucky lot, is the boss." + +"They do say as Burrers slanged 'im fine at the station yesterday," said +another, hoarsely. "Called 'im the devil untied, one man told me." + +The first speaker, still haggard and bowed from the poison in his blood, +made no reply, and the movement of old Moses' lips, as he staggered +forward, helped on by the two others, his head hanging on his breast, +showed that he was praying. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile George and his two companions pushed cautiously on, Macgregor +trying the roof with his lamp from time to time for signs of fire-damp. +Two seams of coal were worked in the mine, one of which was "fiery." No +naked lights, therefore, were allowed, and all "shots" or charges for +loosening the coal were electrically fired. + +As they walked, they spoke now and then of the possible cause of the +disaster: whereof Dixon, as they passed him, had bluntly declined to say +a word till his task was done. George, with the characteristic contempt +of intelligence for the blunderer, threw out a few caustic remarks as to +the obstinate disobedience or carelessness of a certain type of +miner--disobedience which, in his own experience even, had already led to +a score of fatal accidents. Burrows, irritated apparently by his tone, +took up a provoking line of reply. Suppose a miner, set to choose between +the risk of bringing the coal-roof down on his head for lack of a proper +light to work by, and the risk of "being blown to hell" by the opening of +his lamp, did a mad thing sometimes, who were other people that they +should blame him? His large, ox-like eyes, clear in the light of his +lamp, turned a scornful defiance on his companion. "Try it yourself, my +fine gentleman"--that was what the expression of them meant. + +"He doesn't only risk his own life," said George, shortly. "That's the +answer.--I say, Macgregor, isn't this the door to the Meadows Pit? If +anything cut us off from the shaft, and supposing we couldn't get round +yet by the return, we might have to try it, mightn't we?" + +Macgregor assented, and George as he passed stepped up to the heavy +wooden door, and tried one of the keys he held, that he might be sure of +opening it in case of need. + +The door had been unopened for long, and he shook it backwards and +forwards to make the key bite. + +Meanwhile Macgregor had lingered a little behind, while Burrows had +walked on. Suddenly, above the rattle of the door a cracking noise was +heard. A voice of agony rang through the roadway. + +"Run, Sir George! run!" + +A rattle like thunder roared through the mine. It was heard at the +pithead, and the people crowded there ran hither and thither in dismay, +thinking it was another explosion. + + * * * * * + +Hours passed. At last in George's numbed brain there was a faint stir of +consciousness. He opened his eyes slowly. + +Oh, horror! oh, cruelty! to come back from merciful nothingness and peace +to this burning anguish, not to be borne, of body and mind. "I had died," +he thought--"it was done with," and a wild, impotent rage, as against +some brutality done him, surged through him. + +A little later he made a first slight movement, which was answered at +once by another movement on the part of a man sitting near him. The man +bent over him in the darkness and felt for his pulse. + +"Burrows!" The whisper was just perceptible. + +"Yes, Sir George." + +"What has happened? Where is Macgregor? Give me some brandy--there, in my +inner pocket." + +"No; I have it. Can you swallow it? I have tried several times before, +but your mouth was set--it ran down my fingers." + +"Give it me." + +Their fingers met, George feeling for the flask. As he moved his arm a +groan of anguish broke from him. + +"Drink it--if you possibly can." + +George put all the power of his being into the effort to swallow a few +drops. Still the anguish! "O God, my back! and the legs--paralysed!" + +The words were only spoken in the brain, but it seemed to him that he +cried them aloud. For a moment or two the mind swam again; then the +brandy began to sting. + +He slid down a hand slowly, defying the pain it caused him, to feel his +right leg. The trouser round the thigh hung in ribbons, but the fragments +lying on the flesh were caked and hard; and beneath him was a pool. His +reason worked with difficulty, but clearly. "Some bad injury to the +thigh," he thought. "Much bleeding--probably the bleeding has dulled the +worst pain. The back and shoulders burnt--" + +Then, in the same hesitating, difficult way he managed to lift his hand +to his head, which ached intolerably. The right temple and the hair upon +it were also caked and wet. + +He let his hand drop. "How long have I--?" he thought. For already his +revived consciousness could hardly maintain itself; something from the +black tunnels of the mine seemed to be perpetually pressing out upon it, +threatening to drown it like a flood. + +"Burrows!"--he felt again with his hand--"where's Macgregor?" + +A sob broke from the darkness beside him. + +"Crushed in an instant. I heard one cry. Why not we, too?" + +"It was such a bad fall?" + +"The whole mine seemed to come down." George felt the shudder of the huge +frame. "I escaped; you must have been caught by some of it. Macgregor was +right underneath it. But there was an explosion besides." + +"Macgregor's lamp? Broken?" whispered George, after a pause. + +"Possibly. It couldn't have been much, or we should have been killed +instantly. I was only stunned--a bit scorched, too--not badly. You're the +lucky one. I shall die by inches." + +"Cheer up!" said George, faintly. "I can't last--but they'll find you." + +"What chance for either of us," said Burrows, groaning. "The return must +be blocked, too, or they'd have got round to us by now." + +"How long--" + +"God knows! To judge by the time I've been sitting--since I got you +here--it's night long ago." + +"Since you got me here?" repeated George, with feeble interrogation. + +"When I came to I was lying with my face in a dampish sort of hollow, and +I suppose the afterdamp had lifted a bit, for I could raise my head. I +felt you close by. Then I dragged myself on a bit, till I felt some +brattice. I got past that, found a dip where the air was better, came +back for you, and dragged you here. I thought you were dead at first; +then I felt your heart. And since we got here I've found an air-pipe up +here along the wall, and broken it." + +George was silent. But the better atmosphere was affecting him somewhat, +and consciousness was becoming clearer. Only, what seemed to him a loud +noise disturbed him--tortured the wound in his head. Then, gradually, as +he bent his mind upon it, he made out what it was--a slow drip or trickle +of water from the face of the wall. The contrast between his imagination +and the reality supplied him with a kind of measure of the silence that +enwrapped them--silence that seemed in itself a living thing, charged +with the brooding vengeance of the earth upon the creatures that had been +delving at her heart. + +"Burrows!--that water--maddens me." He moved his head miserably. "Could +you get some? The brandy-flask has a cup." + +"There is a little pool by the brattice. I put my cap in as we got there, +and dashed it over you. I'll go again." + +George heard the long limbs drag themselves painfully along. Then he lost +count again of time, and all impressions on the ear, till he was roused +by the water at his lips and a hand dashing some on his brow. + +He drank greedily. + +"Thanks! Put it by me--there; that's safe. Now, Burrows, I'm dying. Leave +me. You can't do anything--and you--you might still try for it. There are +one or two ways that might be worth trying. Take these keys. I could +explain--" + +But the little thread of life wavered terribly as he spoke. Burrows had +to put his ear close to the scorched lips. + +"No," he said gloomily, "I don't leave a man while there's any life in +him. Besides, there's no chance--I don't know the mine." + +Suddenly, as though answering to the other's despair, a throb of such +agony rose in George it seemed to rive body and soul asunder. His poor +Letty!--his child that was to be!--his own energy of life, he had been so +conscious of at the very moment of descending to this hideous death--all +gone, all done!--his little moment of being torn from him by the +inexorable force that restores nothing and explains nothing. + +A picture flashed into his mind, an etching that he had seen in Paris in +a shop window--had seen and pondered over. "Entombed" was written +underneath it, and it showed a solitary miner, on whom the awful trap +has fallen, lifting his arms to his face in a last cry against the +universe that has brought him into being, that has given him nerve and +brain--for this! + +Wherever he turned his eyes in the blackness he saw it--the lifted arms, +the bare torso of the man, writhing under the agony of realisation--the +tools, symbols of a life's toil, lying as they had dropped for ever from +the hands that should work no more. It had sent a shudder through him, +even amid the gaiety of a Paris street. + +Then this first image was swept away by a second. It seemed to him that +he was on the pit bank again. It was night, but the crowd was still +there, and big fires lighted for warmth threw a glow upon the faces. +There were stars, and a pale light of snow upon the hills. He looked +into the engine-house. There she was--his poor Letty! O God! He tried to +get through to her, to speak to her. Impossible! + +A sound disturbed his dream. + +His ear and brain struggled with it--trying to give it a name. A man's +long, painful breaths--half sobs. Burrows, no doubt--thinking of the +woman he loved--of the poor emaciated soul George had seen him tending +in the cottage garden on that April day. + +He put out his hand and touched his companion. + +"Don't despair," he whispered; "you will see her again. How strange--we +two--we enemies--but this is the end. Tell me about her." + +"I took her from a ruffian who had nearly murdered her and the child," +said the hoarse voice after a pause. "She was happy--in spite of the +drink, in spite of everything--she would have been happy, till she died. +To think of her alone is too cruel. If people turned their backs on her, +I made up." + +"You will see her again," George repeated, but hardly knowing what the +words were he said. + +When he next spoke it was with an added strength that astonished his +companion. + +"Burrows, promise me something. Take a message from me to my wife. +Come nearer." + +Then, as he felt his companion's breath on his cheek, he roused himself +to speak plainly: + +"Tell her--I sent her my dear love--that I thanked her with all my heart +and soul for her love--that it was very hard to leave her--and our child. +Write the words for her, Burrows. Tell her it was impossible for me to +write, but I dictated this." He paused for a long time, then resumed: +"And tell her, too--my last wish was--that she should ask Lord and Lady +Maxwell--can you hear plainly?"--he repeated the names--"to be her +friends and guardians. And bid her ask them--from me--not to forsake her. +Have you understood? Will you repeat it?" + +Burrows, in the mood of one humouring the whim of the dying, repeated +what had been said to him word by word, his own sensuous nature swept the +while by the terrors of a death which seemed but one little step further +from himself than from Tressady. Yet he did his best to understand, and +recollect; and to the message so printed on his shrinking brain a woman's +misery owed its only comfort in the days that followed. + +"Thank you," said Tressady, painfully listening for the last word. "Give +me your hand. Good-bye. You and I--The world's a queer place--I wish I'd +turned you back at the pit's mouth. I wanted to show I bore no malice. +Well--at least I know--" + +The words broke off incoherently. Burrows caught the word "suffering," +and some phrase about "the men," then Tressady's head slipped back +against the wall, and he spoke no more. + +But the mind was active long afterwards. Again and again he seemed to +himself standing in a bright light, alive and free. Innumerable illusions +played about him. In one of the most persistent he was climbing the slope +of a Swiss meadow in May. Oh! the scent of the narcissus, heavy still +with the morning dew--the brush of the wet grass against his +ankles--those yellow anemones shining there beneath the pines--the roar +of the river in the gorge below--and beyond, far above, the grey peak, +sharp and tall against that unmatched brilliance of the blue. In another +he was riding alone in a gorge aflame with rhododendrons, and far down in +the plain--the burnt-up Indian plain--some great fortified town, grave on +its hill-top, broke the level lines--"A rose-red city, half as old as +time." Or, again, it was the sea in some glow of sunset, the white +reflections of the sails slipping down and down through the translucent +pinks and blues, till the eye lost itself in the infinity of shades and +tints, which the breeze--oh, the freshness of it!--was painting each +moment anew at its caprice--painting and blotting, over and over again, +as the water swung under the ship. + +But all through these freaks of memory some strange thing seemed to have +happened to him. He carried something in his arms--on his breast. The +anguish of his inner pity for Letty, piercing through all else, expressed +itself so. + +But sometimes, as the brain grew momentarily clearer, he would wonder, +almost in his old cynical way, at his own pity. She seemed to have come +to love him. But was it not altogether for her good that his flawed, +contradictory life should be cut violently from hers? Could their +marriage, ill-planted, ill-grown, have come in the end to any tolerable +fruit? His mind passed back, with bitterness, over the nine months of it; +not bitterness towards her--he seemed to be talking to her all the time, +as she lay hidden on his shoulder--bitterness towards himself, towards +the futility of his own life and efforts and desires. + +But why his more than any other? The futility, the insignificance of all +that man desires, all that waits on him--that old self-scorn, which began +with the race, tormented him none the less, in dying, for the myriads it +had haunted so before. An image of human fate, which had struck him in +some book, recurred to him now--an image of daisied grass, alive one +moment in the evening light--a quivering world of blades and dew, insects +and petals, a forest of innumerable lines, crossed by the innumerable +movements of living things--the next withdrawn into the night, all +silenced, all effaced. + +So life. Except, perhaps, for pain! His own pain never ceased. The only +eternity that seemed conceivable, therefore, was an eternity of pain. It +had become to him the last reality. What a horrible quickening had come +to him of that sense for misery, that intolerable compassion, which in +life he had always held to be the death of a man's natural energy! Again +and again, as consciousness still fought against the last surrender, it +seemed to him that he heard voices and hammerings in the mine. And while +he painfully listened, from the eternal darkness about him, dim tragic +forms would break in a faltering procession--men or young boys, burnt and +marred and slain like himself--turning to him faces he remembered. It was +as though the scorn for pity he had once flung at Marcella Maxwell had +been but the fruit of some obscure and shrinking foresight that he +himself should die drowned and lost in pity; for as he waited for death +his soul seemed to sink into the suffering of the world, as a spent +swimmer sinks into the wave. + +One perception, indeed, that was not a perception of pain, this piteous +submission to the human lot brought with it. The accusing looks of hungry +men, the puzzles of his own wavering heart, all social qualms and +compunctions--these things troubled him no more. In the wanderings of +death he was not without the solemn sense that, after all, he, George +Tressady, a man of no professions, and no enthusiasms, had yet paid his +share and done his part. + +Was there something in this thought that softened the dolorous way? +Once--nearly at the last--he opened his eyes with a start. + +"What is it? Something watches me. There is a sense of something that +supports--that reconciles. If--_if_--how little would it all matter! _Oh! +what is this that knows the road I came_--_the flame turned cloud, the +cloud returned to flame_--_the lifted, shifted steeps, and all the way!_" +His dying thought clung to words long familiar, as that of other men +might have clung to a prayer. There was a momentary sense of ecstasy, of +something ineffable. + +And with that sense came a rending of all barriers, a breaking of long +tension, a flooding of the soul with joy. Was it a passing under new +laws, into a new spiritual polity? He knew not; but as he lifted his +sightless eyes he saw the dark roadway of the mine expand, and a woman, +stepping with an exquisite lightness and freedom, came towards him. +Neither shrank nor hesitated. She came to him, knelt by him, and took +his hands. He saw the pity in her dark eyes. "_Is it so bad, my friend? +Have courage--the end is near." "Care for her--and keep me, too, in your +heart_," he cried to her, piteously. She smiled. Then light--blinding, +featureless light--poured over the vision, and George Tressady had +ceased to live. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, SIR GEORGE TRESSADY, VOL. II *** + +This file should be named 7sgt210.txt or 7sgt210.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7sgt211.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7sgt210a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Sir George Tressady, Vol. II + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9634] +[This file was first posted on October 11, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, SIR GEORGE TRESSADY, VOL. II *** + + + + +E-text prepared by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and +Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + +Note: This book was originally published as two separate + volumes. This Project Gutenberg edition preserves the + two-volume format primarily because of the length of + the novel. This is Volume II. Volume I can be found at + http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext05/7sgt110.txt + http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext05/7sgt110.zip + http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext05/8sgt110.txt + http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext05/8sgt110.zip + + + + + + + +SIR GEORGE TRESSADY, VOLUME II + +IN TWO VOLUMES + +BY + +MRS. HUMPHRY WARD + +AUTHOR OF "MARCELLA," "THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE," +"ROBERT ELSMERE," ETC. + + + + + + + +VOLUME II. + + + + +PART II + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +On a hot morning at the end of June, some four weeks after the Castle +Luton visit, George Tressady walked from Brook Street to Warwick Square, +that he might obtain his mother's signature to a document connected with +the Shapetsky negotiations, and go on from there to the House of Commons. + +She was not in the drawing-room, and George amused himself during his +minutes of waiting by inspecting the various new photographs of the +Fullerton family that were generally to be found on her table. What a +characteristic table it was, littered with notes and bills, with patterns +from every London draper, with fashion-books and ladies' journals +innumerable! And what a characteristic room, with its tortured +decorations and crowded furniture, and the flattered portraits of Lady +Tressady, in every caprice of costume, which covered the walls! George +looked round it all with an habitual distaste; yet not without the secret +admission that his own drawing-room was very like it. + +His mother might, he feared, have a scene in preparation for him. + +For Letty, under cover of some lame excuse or other, had persisted in +putting off the visit which Lady Tressady had intended to pay them at +Ferth during the Whitsuntide recess, and since their return to town +there had been no meeting whatever between the two ladies. George, +indeed, had seen his mother two or three times. But even he had just let +ten days pass without visiting her. He supposed he should find her in a +mood of angry complaint; nor could he deny that there would be some +grounds for it. + +"Good morning, George," said a sharp voice, which startled him as he was +replacing a photograph of the latest Fullerton baby. "I thought you had +forgotten your way here by now." + +"Why, mother, I am very sorry," he said, as he kissed her. "But I +have really been terribly busy, what with two Committees and this +important debate." + +"Oh! don't make excuses, pray. And of course--for Letty--you won't even +attempt it. I wouldn't if I were you." + +Lady Tressady settled herself on a chair with her back to the light, and +straightened the ribbons on her dress with hasty fingers. Something in +her voice struck George. He looked at her closely. + +"Is there anything wrong, mother? You don't look very well." + +Lady Tressady got up hurriedly, and began to move about the room, picking +up a letter here, straightening a picture there. George felt a sudden +prick of alarm. Were there some new revelations in store for him? But +before he could speak she interrupted him. + +"I should be very well if it weren't for this heat," she said pettishly. +"Do put that photograph down, George!--you do fidget so! Haven't you got +any news for me--anything to amuse me? Oh! those horrid papers!--I see. +Well! they'll wait a little. By the way, the 'Morning Post' says that +young scamp, Lord Ancoats, has gone abroad. I suppose that girl was +bought off." + +She sat down again in a shady corner, fanning herself vigorously. + +"I am afraid I can't tell you any secrets," said George, smiling, "for I +don't know any. But it looks as though Mrs. Allison and Maxwell between +them had somehow found a way out." + +"How's the mother?" + +"You see, she has gone abroad, too--to Bad Wildheim. In fact, Lord +Ancoats has taken her." + +"That's the place for heart, isn't it?" said his mother, abruptly. +"There's a man there that cures everybody." + +"I believe so," said George. "May we come to business, mother? I have +brought these papers for you to sign, and I must get to the House in +good time." + +Lady Tressady seemed to take no notice. She got up again, restlessly, and +walked to the window. + +"How do you like my dress, George? Now, don't imagine anything absurd! +Justine made it, and it was quite cheap." + +George could not help smiling--all the more that he was conscious of +relief. She would not be asking him to admire her dress if there were +fresh debts to confess to him. + +"It makes you look wonderfully young," he said, turning a critical eye, +first upon the elegant gown of some soft pinky stuff in which his mother +had arrayed herself, then upon the subtly rouged and powdered face above +it. "You are a marvellous person, mother! All the same, I think the heat +must have been getting hold of you, for your eyes are tired. Don't racket +too much!" + +He spoke with his usual careless kindness, laying a hand upon her arm. + +Lady Tressady drew herself away, and, turning her back upon him, looked +out of the window. + +"Have you seen any more of the Maxwells?" she said, over her shoulders. + +George gave a slight involuntary start. Then it occurred to him that his +mother was making conversation in an odd way. + +"Once or twice," he said, reluctantly, in reply. "They were at the +Ardaghs' the other night, of course." + +"Oh! you were there?"--Lady Tressady's voice was sharp again. "Well, of +course. Letty went as your wife, and you're a member of Parliament. Lady +Ardagh knows _me_ quite well--but I don't count now; she used to be glad +enough to ask me." + +"It was a great crush, and very hot," said George, not knowing +what to say. + +Lady Tressady frowned as she looked out of the window. + +"Well!--and Lady Maxwell--is she as absurd as ever?" + +"That depends upon one's point of view," said George, smiling. "She +seemed as convinced as ever." + +"Who sent Mrs. Allison to that place? Barham, I suppose. He always sends +his patients there. They say he's in league with the hotel-keepers." + +George stared. What was the matter with her? What made her throw out +these jerky sentences with this short, hurried breath. + +Suddenly Lady Tressady turned. + +"George!" + +"Yes, mother." He stepped nearer to her. She caught his sleeve. + +"George "--there was something like a sob in her voice--"you were quite +right. I am ill. There, don't talk about it. The doctors are all fools. +And if you tell Letty anything about it, I'll never forgive you." + +George put his arm round her, but was not, in truth, much disturbed. Lady +Tressady's repertory, alas! had many _rôles_. He had known her play that +of the invalid at least as effectively as any other. + +"You are just overdone with London and the heat," he said. "I saw it at +once. You ought to go away." + +She looked up in his face. + +"You don't believe it?" she said. + +Then she seemed to stagger. He saw a terrible drawn look in her face, +and, putting out all his strength, he held her, and helped her to a sofa. + +"Mother!" he exclaimed, kneeling beside her, "what is the matter?" + +Voice and tone were those of another man, and Lady Tressady quailed +under the change. She pointed to a small bag on a table near her. He +opened it, and she took out a box, from which she swallowed something. +Gradually breath and colour returned, and she began to move restlessly. + +"That was nothing," she said, as though to herself--"nothing--and it +yielded at once. Well, George, I knew you thought me a humbug!" + +Her eyes glanced at him with a kind of miserable triumph. He looked down +upon her, still kneeling, horror-struck against his will. After a life of +acting, was this the truth--this terror, which spoke in every movement, +and in some strange way had seized upon and infected himself? + +He urgently asked her to be frank with him. And with a sob she poured +herself out. It was the tragic, familiar story that every household +knows. Grave symptoms, suddenly observed--the hurried visit to a +specialist--his verdict and his warnings. + +"Of course, he said at first I ought to give up everything and go +abroad--to this very same place--Bad-what-do-you-call-it? But I told him +straight out I couldn't and wouldn't do anything of the sort. I am just +eaten up with engagements. And as to staying at home and lying-up, that's +nonsense--I should die of that in a fortnight. So I told him to give me +something to take, and that was all I could do. And in the end he quite +came round--they always do if you take your own line--and said I had +much better do what suited me, and take care. Besides, what do any of +them know? They all confess they're just fumbling about. Now, surgery, +of course--that's different. Battye"--Battye was Lady Tressady's ordinary +medical adviser--"doesn't believe all the other man said. I knew he +wouldn't. And as for making an invalid of me, he sees, of course, that it +would kill me at once. There, my dear George, don't make too much of it. +I think I was a fool to tell you." + +And Lady Tressady struggled to a sitting position, looking at her son +with a certain hostility. The frown on her white face showed that she was +already angry with him for his emotion--this rare emotion, that she had +never yet been able to rouse in him. + +He could only implore her to be guided by her doctor--to rest, to give up +at least some of the mill-round of her London life, if she would not go +abroad. Lady Tressady listened to him with increasing obstinacy and +excitability. + +"I tell you I know best!" she said, passionately, at last. "Don't go on +like this--it worries me. Now, look here--" + +She turned upon him with emphasis. + +"Promise me not to tell Letty a word of this. Nobody shall know--she +least of all. I shall do just as usual. In fact, I expect a very gay +season. Three 'drums' this afternoon and a dinner-party--it doesn't +look as though I were quite forgotten yet, though Letty does think me +an old fogey!" + +She smiled at him with a ghastly mixture of defiance and conceit. The old +age in her pinched face, fighting with the rouged cheeks and the gaiety +of her fanciful dress, was pitiful. + +"Promise," she said. "Not a word--to her!" + +George promised, in much distress. While he was speaking she had a slight +return of pain, and was obliged to submit to lie down again. + +"At least," he urged, "don't go out to-day. Give yourself a rest. Shall I +go back, and ask Letty to come round to tea?" + +Lady Tressady made a face like a spoilt child. + +"I don't think she'll come," she said. "Of course, I know from the first +she took an ungodly dislike to me. Though, if it hadn't been for +me--Well, never mind! Yes, you can ask her, George--do! I'll wait and see +if she comes. If she comes, perhaps I'll stay in. It would amuse me to +hear what she has been doing. I'll behave quite nicely--there!" + +And, taking up her fan, Lady Tressady lightly tapped her son's hand with +it in her most characteristic manner. + +He rose, seeing from the clock that he should only just have time to +drive quickly back to Letty if he was to be at the House in time for an +appointment with a constituent, which had been arranged for one o'clock. + +"I will send Justine to you as I go out," he said, taking up his hat, +"and I shall hear of you from Letty this evening." + +Lady Tressady said nothing. Her eyes, bright with some inner +excitement, watched him as he looked for his stick. Suddenly she said, +"George! kiss me!" + +Her tone was unsteady. Infinitely touched and bewildered, the young man +approached her, and, kneeling down again beside her, took her in his +arms. He felt a quick sobbing breath pass through her; then she pushed +him lightly away, and, putting up the slim, pink-nailed hand of which she +was so proud, she patted him on the cheek. + +"There--go along! I don't like that coat of yours, you know. I told you +so the other day. If your figure weren't so good, you'd positively look +badly dressed in it. You should try another man." + +Tressady hailed a hansom outside, and drove back to Brook Street. On the +way his eyes saw little of the crowded streets. So far, he had had no +personal experience of death. His father had died suddenly while he was +at Oxford, and he had lost no other near relation or friend. Strange! +this grave, sudden sense that all was changed, that his careless, +half-contemptuous affection for his mother could never again be what it +had been. Supposing, indeed, her story was all true! But in the case of a +character like Lady Tressady's, there are for long, recurrent, +involuntary scepticisms on the part of the bystander. It seems +impossible, unfitting, to grant to such persons _le beau rôle_ they +claim. It outrages a certain ideal instinct, even, to be asked to believe +that they too can yield, in their measure, precisely the same tragic +stuff as the hero or the saint. + +Letty was at home, just about to share her lunch with Harding Watton, who +had dropped in. Hearing her husband's voice, she came out to the +stairhead to speak to him. + +But after a minute or two George dashed down again to his study, that he +might write a hurried note to a middle-aged cousin of his mother's, +asking her to go round to Warwick Square early in the afternoon, and +making excuses for Letty, who was "very much engaged." + +For Letty had met his request with a smiling disdain. Why, she was simply +"crowded up" with engagements of all sorts and kinds! + +"Mother is really unwell," said George, standing with his hands on his +sides, looking down upon her. He was fuming with irritation and hurry, +and had to put a force on himself to speak persuasively. + +"My dear old boy!"--she rose on tiptoe and twisted his moustache for +him--"don't we know all about your mother's ailments by this time? I +suppose she wants to give me a scolding, or to hear about the Ardaghs, or +to tell me all about the smart parties _she_ has been to--or something of +the sort. No, really, it's quite impossible--this afternoon. I know I +must go and see her some time--of course I will." + +She said this with the air of someone making a great concession. It was, +indeed, her first formal condonement of the offence offered her just +before the Castle Luton visit. + +George attempted a little more argument and entreaty, but in vain. Letty +was rather puzzled by his urgency, but quite obdurate. And as he ran down +the stairs, he heard her laugh in the drawing-room mingled with Harding +Watton's. No doubt they were making merry over the "discipline" which +Letty found it necessary to apply to her mother-in-law. + +In the House of Commons the afternoon was once more given up to the +adjourned debate on the second reading of the Maxwell Bill. The House was +full, and showing itself to advantage. On the whole, the animation and +competence of the speeches reflected the general rise in combative energy +and the wide kindling of social passions which the Bill had so far +brought about, both in and out of Parliament. Those who figured as the +defenders of industries harassed beyond bearing by the Socialist meddlers +spoke with more fire, with more semblance, at any rate, of putting their +hearts into it than any men of their kind had been able to attain since +the "giant" days of the first Factory debates. Those, on the other hand, +who were urging the House to a yet sterner vigilance in protecting the +worker--even the grown man--from his own helplessness and need, who +believed that law spells freedom, and that the experience of half a +century was wholly on their side--these friends of a strong cause were +also at their best, on their mettle. Owing to the widespread flow of a +great reaction, the fight had become a representative contest between two +liberties--a true battle of ideas. + +Yet George, sitting below the Gangway beside his leader, his eyes staring +at the ceiling, and his hands in his pockets, listened to it all in much +languor and revolt. He himself had made his speech on the third day of +the debate. It had cost him endless labour, only to seem to him in the +end--by contrast with the vast majority of speeches made in the course of +the debate, even those by men clearly inferior to himself in mind and +training--to be a hollow and hypocritical performance. What did he +really think and believe? What did he really desire? He vowed to himself +once more, as he had vowed at Ferth, that his mind was a chaos, without +convictions, either intellectual or moral; that he had begun what he was +not able to finish; and that he was doomed to make a failure of his +parliamentary career, as he was already making a failure of coal-owning +and a failure-- + +He curbed something bitter and springing that haunted his most inmost +mind. But his effort could not prevent his dwelling angrily for a minute +on the thought of Letty laughing with Harding Watton--laughing because he +had asked her a small kindness, and she had most unkindly refused it. + +Yet she _must_ help him with his poor mother. How softened were all his +thoughts about that difficult and troublesome lady! As it happened, he +had a good deal of desultory medical knowledge, for the problems and +perils of the body had always attracted his pessimist sense. Yet it did +not help him much at this juncture. At one moment he said to himself, +"eighteen months--she will live eighteen months," and at another, "Battye +was probably right; Barham took an unnecessarily gloomy view--she may +quite well last as long as the rest of us." + + * * * * * + +Suddenly he was startled by a movement beside him. + +"The honourable member has totally misunderstood me," cried Fontenoy, +springing to his feet and looking eagerly towards the Speaker. + +The member who was speaking on the Government side smiled, put on his +hat, and sat down. Fontenoy flung out a few stinging sentences, was hotly +cheered both by his own supporters and from a certain area of the Liberal +benches, and sat down again triumphant, having scored an excellent point. + +George turned round to his companion. + +"Good!" he said, with emphasis. "That rubbed it in!" + +But when the man opposite was once more on his legs, labouring to undo +the impression which had been made, George found himself wondering +whether, after all, the point had been so good, and why he had been so +quick to praise. _She_ would have said, of course, that it was a point +scored against common-sense, against humanity. He began to fancy the +play of her scornful eyes, the eloquence of her white hand moving and +quivering as she spoke. + +How long was it--one hurried month only--since he had walked with her +along the river at Castle Luton? While the crowded House about him was +again listening with attention to the speech which had just brought the +protesting Fontenoy to his legs; while his leader was fidgeting and +muttering beside him; while to his left the crowd of members round the +door was constantly melting, constantly reassembling, Tressady's mind +withdrew itself from its surroundings, saw nothing, heard nothing, but +the scenes of a far-off London and a figure that moved among them. + +How often had he been with her since Castle Luton? Once or twice a week, +certainly, either at St. James's Square or in the East End, in spite of +Parliament, and Fontenoy, and his many engagements as Letty's husband. +Strange phenomenon--that little _salon_ of hers in the far East! For it +was practically a _salon_, though it existed for purposes the Hôtel +Rambouillet knew nothing of. He found himself one of many there. And, +like all _salons_, it had an inner circle. Charles Naseby, Edward Watton, +Lady Madeleine Penley, the Levens--some or all of these were generally to +be found in Lady Maxwell's neighbourhood, rendering homage or help in one +way or another. It was touching to see that girl, Lady Madeleine, looking +at the docker or the shirtmaker, with her restless greenish eyes, as +though she realised for the first time what hideous bond it is--the one +true commonalty--that crushes the human family together! + +Well!--and what had he seen? Nothing, certainly, of which he had not had +ample information before. Under the fresh spur of the talk that occupied +the Maxwell circle he had made one or two rounds through some dismal +regions in Whitechapel, Mile End, and Hackney, where some of the worst of +the home industries to which, at last, after long hesitation on the part +of successive Governments, Maxwell's Bill was intended to put an end, +crowded every house and yard. He saw some of it in the company of a lady +rent-collector, an old friend of the Maxwells, who had charge of several +tenement blocks where the trouser and vest trade was largely carried on; +and he welcomed the chance of one or two walks in quest of law-breaking +workshops with a young inspector, who could not say enough in praise of +the Bill. But if it had been only a question of fact, George would have +felt when the rounds were done merely an added respect for Fontenoy, +perhaps even for his own party as a whole. Not a point raised by his +guides but had been abundantly discussed and realised--on paper, at any +rate--by Fontenoy and his friends. The young inspector, himself a hot +partisan, and knowing with whom he had to deal, would have liked to +convict his companion of sheer and simple ignorance; but, on the +contrary, Tressady was not to be caught napping. As far as the trade +details and statistics of this gruesome slopwork of East London went, he +knew all that could be shown him. + +Nevertheless, cool and impassive as his manner was throughout, the +experience in the main did mean the exchange of a personal for a paper +and hearsay knowledge. When, indeed, had he, or Fontenoy, or anyone else +ever denied that the life of the poor was an odious and miserable +struggle, a scandal to gods and men? What then? Did they make the world +and its iron conditions? And yet this long succession of hot and smelling +dens, this series of pale, stooping figures, toiling hour after hour, at +fever pace, in these stifling backyards, while the June sun shone +outside, reminding one of English meadows and the ripple of English +grass; these panting, dishevelled women, slaving beside their husbands +and brothers, amid the rattle of the machines and the steam of the +pressers' irons, with the sick or the dying, perhaps, in the bed beside +them, and their blanched children at their feet--sights of this sort, +thus translated from the commonplace of reports and newspapers into a +poignant, unsavoury truth, had at least this effect--they vastly +quickened the personal melancholy of the spectator, they raised and drove +home a number of piercing questions which, probably, George Tressady +would never have raised, and would have lived happily without raising, if +it had not been for a woman, and a woman's charm. + +For that woman's _solutions_ remained as doubtful to him as ever. He +would go back to that strange little house where she kept her strange +court, meet her eager eyes, and be roused at once to battle. How they had +argued! He knew that she had less hope than ever of persuading him even +to modify his view of the points at issue between the Government and his +own group. She could not hope for a moment that any act of his would be +likely to stand between Maxwell and defeat. He had not talked of his +adventures to Fontenoy--would rather, indeed, that Fontenoy knew nothing +of them. But he and she knew that Fontenoy, so far, had little to fear +from them. + +And yet she had not turned from him. To her personal mood, to her wifely +affection even, he must appear more plainly than ever as the callous and +selfish citizen, ready and glad to take his own ease while his brethren +perished. He had been sceptical and sarcastic; he had declined to accept +her evidence; he had shown a persistent preference for the drier and more +brutal estimate of things. Yet she had never parted from him without +gentleness, without a look in her beautiful eyes that had often +tormented his curiosity. What did it mean? Pity? Or some unspoken comment +of a personal kind she could not persuade her womanly reticence to put +into words? + +Or, rather: had she some distant inkling of the real truth--that he was +beginning to hate his own convictions--to feel that to be right with +Fontenoy was nothing, but to be wrong with her would be delight? + +What absurdity! With a strong effort, he pulled himself +together--steadied his rushing pulse. It was like someone waking at night +in a nervous terror, and feeling the pressure of some iron dilemma, from +which he cannot free himself--cold vacancy and want on the one side, +calamity on the other. + +For that cool power of judgment in his own case which he had always +possessed did not fail him now. He saw everything nakedly and coldly. His +marriage was not three months old, but no spectator could have discussed +its results more frankly than he was now prepared to discuss them with +himself. It was monstrous, no doubt. He felt his whole position to be as +ugly as it was abnormal. Who could feel any sympathy with it or him? He +himself had been throughout the architect of his own misfortune. Had he +not rushed upon his marriage with less care--relatively to the weight of +the human interest in such a matter--than an animal shows when it mates? + +Letty's personal idiosyncrasies even--her way of entering a room, her +mean little devices for attracting social notice, the stubborn +extravagance of her dress and personal habits, her manner to her +servants, her sharp voice as she retailed some scrap of slanderous +gossip--her husband had by now ceased to be blind or deaf to any of +them. Indeed, his senses in relation to many things she said and did were +far more irritable at this moment--possibly far less just--than a +stranger's would have been. Often and often he would try to recall to +himself the old sense of charm, of piquancy. In vain. It was all gone--he +could only miserably wonder at the past. Was it that he knew now what +charm might mean, and what divinity may breathe around a woman! + + * * * * * + +"I say, where are you off to?" + +Tressady looked up with a start as Fontenoy rose beside him. + +"Good opportunity for dinner, I think," said Fontenoy, with a motion of +the head towards the man who had just caught the Speaker's eye. "Are you +coming? I should like a word with you." + +George followed him into the Lobby. As the swing-door closed behind him, +they plunged into a whirlpool of talk and movement. All the approaches to +the House were full of folk; everybody was either giving news or getting +it. For the excitement of a coming crisis was in the air. This was +Friday, and the division on the second reading was expected on the +following Monday. + +"What a crowd, and what a temperature!" said Fontenoy. "Come on to the +Terrace a moment." + +They made their way into the air, and as they walked up and down Fontenoy +talked in his hoarse, hurried voice of the latest aspect of affairs. The +Government would get their second reading, of course that had never been +really doubtful; though Fontenoy was certain that the normal majority +would be a good deal reduced. But all the hopes of the heterogeneous +coalition which had been slowly forming throughout the spring hung upon +the Committee stage, and Fontenoy's mind was now full of the closest +calculations as to the voting on particular amendments. + +For him the Bill fell into three parts. The first part, which was mainly +confined to small amendments and extensions of former Acts, would be +sharply criticised, but would probably pass without much change. The +second part contained the famous clause by which it became penal to +practise certain trades, such as tailoring, boot-finishing, and +shirt-making, in a man's or woman's own home--in the same place, that is +to say, as the worker uses for eating and sleeping. This clause, which +represented the climax of a long series of restrictions upon the right of +a man to stitch even his own life away, still more upon his right to +force his children or bribe his neighbour to a like waste of the nation's +force, was by now stirring the industrial mind of England far and wide. + +And not the mind of England only. Ireland and Scotland, town and country, +talked of it, seethed with it. The new law, if it passed, was to be +tried, indeed, at first, in London only. But every provincial town and +every country district knew that, if it succeeded, there was not a corner +of the land that would not ultimately feel the yoke, or the deliverance, +of it Every workman's club, every trade-union meeting, every mechanics' +institute was ringing with it. Organised labour, dragged down at every +point--in London, at any rate--by the competition of the starving and +struggling crew of home-workers, clamoured for the Bill. The starving and +struggling crew themselves were partly voiceless, partly bewildered; now +drawn by the eloquence of their trade-union fellows to shout for the +revolution that threatened them, now surging tumultuously against it. + +On this vital clause, in Fontenoy's belief, the Government would go down. +But if, by amazing good-fortune and good generalship, they should get +through with it, then the fight would but rage the more fiercely round +the last two sections of the Bill. + +The third section dealt with the hours of labour in the new workshops +that were to be. For the first time it became directly penal for a man, +as well as a woman, to work more than the accepted factory-day of ten and +a half hours, with a few exceptions and exemptions in the matter of +overtime. On this clause, if it were ever reached, the Socialist vote, +were it given solidly for the Government, might, no doubt, pull them +through. "But if we have any luck--damn it! they won't get the chance!" +Fontenoy would say, with that grim, sudden reddening which revealed from +moment to moment the feverish tension of the man. + +In the last section of the Bill the Government, having made its +revolution, looked round for a class on which to lay the burden of +carrying it into action, and found it in the landlords. The landlords +were to be the policemen of the new Act. To every owner of every tenement +or other house in London the Bill said: _You_ are responsible. If, after +a certain date, you allow certain trades to be carried on within your +walls at all, even by the single man or the single woman working in their +own room, penalty and punishment shall follow. + +Of this clause in the Bill Fontenoy could never speak with calmness. One +might see his heart thumping in his breast as he denounced it. At bottom +it was to him the last and vilest step in a long and slanderous campaign +against the class to which he belonged, against property,--against the +existing social order. He fell upon the subject to-night _à propos_ of a +Socialist letter in the morning papers; and George, who was mostly +conscious at the moment of a sick fatigue with Fontenoy and Fontenoy's +arguments, had to bear it as best he might. Presently he interrupted: + +"One assumption you make I should like to contest. You imagine, I think, +that if they carry the prohibition and the hours clauses we shall be able +to whip up a still fiercer attack on the 'landlords' clause. Now, that +isn't my view." + +Fontenoy turned upon him, startled. + +"Why isn't it your view?" he said abruptly. + +"Because there are always waverers who will accept a _fait accompli_; and +you know how opposition has a trick of cooling towards the end of a Bill. +Maxwell has carried his main point, they will say; this is a question of +machinery. Besides, many of those Liberals who will be with us on the +main point don't love the landlords. No! don't flatter yourself that, if +we lose the main engagement, there will be any Prussians to bring up. The +thing will be done." + +"Well, thank God!" grumbled Fontenoy, "we don't mean to lose the main +engagement. But if one of _our_ men were to argue in that way, I should +know what to say to him." + +George made no reply. + +They walked on in silence, the summer twilight falling softly over the +river and the Hospital, over the Terrace with its groups, and the +towering pile of buildings beside them. + +Presently Fontenoy said, in another voice: + +"I have really never had the courage to talk to you of the matter, +Tressady, but didn't you see something of that lad Ancoats before he went +off abroad?" + +"Yes, I saw him several times, first at the club; then he came and dined +with me here one night." + +"And did he confide in you?" + +"More or less," said George, smiling rather queerly at the recollection. + +Fontenoy made a sound between a growl and a sigh. + +"Really, it's rather too much to have to think out that young +man's affairs as well as one's own. And the situation is so +extraordinary!--Maxwell and I have to be in constant consultation. I went +to see him in his room in the House of Lords the other night, and met a +man coming out, who stopped, and stared as though he were shot. Luckily I +knew him, and could say a word to him, or there would have been all sorts +of cock-and-bull stories abroad." + +"Well, and what are you and Maxwell doing?" + +"Trying to get at the young woman. One can't buy her off, of course. +Ancoats is his own master, and could outbid us. But Maxwell has found a +brother--a decent sort of fellow--a country solicitor. And there is a +Ritualist curate, a Father somebody,"--Fontenoy raised his +shoulders,--"who seems to have an intermittent hold on the girl. When +she has fits of virtue she goes to confess to him. Maxwell has got hold +of _him_." + +"And meanwhile Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim?" + +"Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim, and behaving himself, as I hear from his +poor mother." Fontenoy sighed. "But the boy was frightened, of course, +when they went abroad. Now she is getting better, and one can't tell--" + +"No, one can't tell," said George. + +"I wish I knew what the thing really _meant_," said Fontenoy, presently, +in a tone of perplexed reverie. "What do you think? Is it a passion--?" + +"Or a pose?" + +George pondered. + +"H'm," he said at last--"more of a pose, I think, than a passion. Ancoats +always seems to me the _jeune premier_ in his own play. He sees his life +in scenes, and plays them according to all the rules." + +"Intolerable!" said Fontenoy, in exasperation. "And at least he might +refrain from dragging a girl into it! We weren't saints in my day, but we +weren't in the habit of choosing well-brought-up maidens of twenty in our +own set for our confidantes. You know, I suppose, what broke up the party +at Castle Luton?" + +"Ancoats told me nothing. I have heard some gossip from Harding Watton," +said George, unwillingly. It was one of his strongest characteristics, +this fastidious and even haughty dislike of chatter about other people's +private affairs, a dislike which, in the present case, had been +strengthened by his growing antipathy to Harding. + +"How should he know?" said Fontenoy, angrily. He was glad enough to use +Watton as a political tool, but had never yet admitted him to the +smallest social intimacy. + +Yet with Tressady he felt no difficulty in talking over these private +affairs; and he did, in fact, report the whole story--that same story +with which Marcella had startled Betty Leven on the night in question: +how Ancoats on this Sunday evening had decoyed this handsome, +impressionable girl, to whom throughout the winter he had been paying +decided and even ostentatious court, into a _tête-à-tête_--had poured out +to her frantic confessions of his attachment to the theatrical lady--a +woman he could never marry, whom his mother could never meet, but with +whom, nevertheless, come what might, he was determined to live and die. +She--Madeleine--was his friend, his good angel. Would she go to his +mother and break it to her? Would she understand, and forgive him? There +must be no opposition, or he would shoot himself. And so on, till the +poor girl, worn out with excitement and grief, tottered into Mrs. +Allison's room more dead than alive. + +But at that point Fontenoy stopped abruptly. + +George agreed that the story was almost incredible, and added the inward +and natural comment of the public-school man--that if people will keep +their boys at home, and defraud them of the kickings that are their due, +they may look out for something unwholesome in the finished product. +Then, aloud, he said: + +"I should imagine that Ancoats was acting through the greater part of +that. He had said to himself that such a scene would be effective--and +would be new." + +"Good heavens!--why, that makes it ten thousand times more abominable +than before!" + +"I daresay," said George, coolly. "But it also makes the future, perhaps, +a little more hopeful--throws some light on the passion or pose +alternative. My impression is, that if we can only find an effective exit +for Ancoats,--a last act that he would consider worthy of him,--he will +bow himself out of the business willingly enough." + +Fontenoy smiled rather gloomily, and the two walked on in silence. + +Once or twice, as they paced the Terrace, George glanced sidelong at his +leader. A corner of Fontenoy's nightly letter to Mrs. Allison was, he +saw, sticking out of the great man's coat-pocket. Every night he wrote a +crowded sheet upon his knee, under the shelter of a Blue Book, and on one +or two nights George's quick eyes had not been able to escape from the +pencilled address on the envelope to which it was ultimately consigned. +The sheet was written with the regularity and devotion of a Prime +Minister reporting to the Sovereign. + +Well! it was all very touching and very remarkable. But George had some +sympathy with Ancoats. To be virtually saddled with a stepfather, with +whom your minutest affairs are confidentially discussed, and yet to have +it said by all the world that your poor mother is too unselfish and too +devoted to her son to marry again--the situation is not without its +pricks. And that Ancoats was acutely conscious of them George had good +reason to know. + +"I say, Tressady, will you pair till eleven?" cried a man, swinging +bareheaded along the Terrace with his hat in his hand. "I want an hour or +two off badly, and there will be no big guns on till eleven or so." + +George exchanged a word or two with Fontenoy, then stood still, and +thought a moment. A sudden animation flushed into his face. Why not? + +"All right!" he said; "till eleven." + +Then he and Fontenoy went back to dine. As they mounted the dark +staircase leading from the Terrace another man caught Tressady by the +arm. + +"The strike notices are out," he said. "I have just had a wire. Everyone +leaves work to-night." + +George shrugged his shoulders. He had been expecting the news at any +moment, and was glad that the long shilly-shallying on both sides was at +last over. + +"Good luck to them!" he said. "I'm glad. The fight had to come." + +"Oh! we shall be in the middle of arbitration before a fortnight's up. +The men won't stand." + +George shook his head. He himself believed that the struggle would last +on through the autumn. + +"Well, to be sure, there's Burrows," said his informant, himself a large +coal-owner in the Ferth district; "if Burrows keeps sober, and if +somebody doesn't buy him, Burrows will do his worst." + +"That we always knew," said George, laughing, and passed on. He had but +just time to catch his train. + +He walked across to the Underground station, and by the time he reached +it he had clean forgotten his pits and the strike, though as he passed +the post-office in the House a sheaf of letters and telegrams had been +put into his hands. Rather, he was full of a boy's eagerness and +exultation. He had never supposed he could be let off to-night, till the +offer of Dudley's pair tempted him. And now, in half an hour he would be +in that queer Mile End room, watching her--quarrelling with her. + +A little later, however, as he was sitting quietly in the train, quick +composite thoughts of Letty, of his miners, and his money difficulties +began to clutch at him again. Perhaps, now that the strike was a reality, +it might even be a help to him and a bridle to his wife. Preposterous, +what she was doing and planning at Perth! His face flushed and hardened +as he thought of their many wrangles during the past fortnight, her +constant drag upon his purse, his own weakness, the annoyance and +contempt that made him yield rather than argue. + +What was that fellow, Harding Watton, doing in the house at all hours, +and beguiling Letty, by his collector's airs, into a hundred foolish +wants and whims? And that brute Cathedine! Was it decent, was it +bearable, that a bride of three months should take no more notice of her +husband's wishes and dislikes in such a matter than Letty had shown with +regard to her growing friendship with that disreputable person? It seemed +to George that he called most afternoons. Letty laughed, excused herself, +or abused her visitor as soon as he had departed; but the rebuff which +George's pride would not let him ask of her directly, while yet his +whole manner demanded it, was never given. + +He sat solitary in his brilliantly lit carriage, staring at the +advertisements opposite, his long chin thrust forward, his head, with its +fair curls, thrown moodily back. And all the time his mind was working +with an appalling clearness. This cold light, in which he was beginning +to see his wife and all she did--it was already a tragedy. + +What was he flying to, what was he in search of--there in the East End? +His whole being flung the answer. A little sympathy, a little heart, a +little tenderness and delicacy of soul!--nothing else. He had once taken +it for granted that every woman possessed them in some degree. Or, was it +only since he had found them in this unexampled fulness and wealth that +he had begun to thirst for them in this way? He made himself face the +question. "One needn't lie to oneself!" + +At Aldgate, as he was making his way out of the station, he stumbled upon +Edward Watton. + +"Hullo! You bound for No. 20, too?" + +"No; there is no function to-night. Lady Maxwell is at a meeting. It has +grown rather suddenly from small beginnings, and two days ago they made +her promise to speak. I came down because I am afraid of a row. Things +are beginning to look ugly down here, and I don't think she has much idea +of it. Will you come?" + +"Of course." + +Watton looked at him with an amused and friendly eye. + +It was another instance of her power--that she had been able to bind +even this young enemy to her chariot-wheels. He hoped Letty had the sense +to approve! As a matter of fact, Watton had never, by his own choice, +become well acquainted with his cousin Letty, and had always secretly +marvelled at Tressady's sudden marriage. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +The two men were soon on the top of the Mile End Road tramcar, on their +way eastward. It was a hot, dull evening. The setting sun behind them was +already swallowed up in mist, and the heavy air held down and made +palpable all the unsavoury odours of street and shop. Before them +stretched the wide, interminable road which was once the highway from the +great city to Colchester and East Anglia. A broad and comely thoroughfare +on the whole, save that from end to end it has now the dyed and patched +look that an old village street inevitably puts on when it has been +swallowed up by the bricks and mortar of an overtaking town. + +Tressady looked round him in a reverie, interested in the place and the +streets because _she_ cared for them, and had struck one of her roots +here. Strange medley everywhere--in this main street, at all events--of +old and new! Here were the Trinity almshouses, with their Jacobean gables +and their low, spreading quadrangle behind the fine ironwork that +shelters them from the street--a poetic fragment from the days of Wren +and Dryden, sore threatened now by an ever-advancing London, hungry for +ground and space. Here was a vast mission-hall, there a still vaster +brewery; on the right, the quiet entrance to the oldworld quiet of +Stepney-Green; and to the left a huge flame-ringed gin-palace, with shops +on either side, hung to the roof with carpets, or brooms, or umbrellas, +plastered with advertisements, and blazing with gas. While in the street +between streamed the ever-moving crowd of East London folk, jostling, +chattering, loafing, doing their business or their pleasure, and made +perpetually interesting, partly by their frank preoccupation with the +simplest realities of life: with eating, drinking, earning, marrying, +child-rearing; still more, perhaps, by the constant presence among them +of that "leisured class" which, alike at the bottom and the top of +things, has time to be gay, curious, and witty. + +As he rolled along, watching the scene, Tressady thought to himself, as +he had often thought before, that the East End, in many of its aspects, +is a very decentish sort of place, about which many people talk much +nonsense. He made the remark, carelessly, to Watton. + +Watton shrugged his shoulders, and pointed silently to the entrances, +right and left, of two side-streets, the typical streets of the East End: +long lines of low houses,--two storeys always, or two storeys and a +basement,--all of the same yellowish brick, all begrimed by the same +smoke, every door-knocker of the same pattern, every window-blind hung in +the same way, and the same corner "public" on either side, flaming in the +hazy distance. + +Watton hardly put his comment into words; but Tressady, who knew him +well, understood, and nodded over his cigarette. Watton meant, of course, +to suggest the old commonplace of the mean and dull monotony that weighs +like a nightmare upon this vast East London and its human hive, which +hums and toils, drones and feeds, by night and day, in these numberless +featureless boxes of wood and stone, on this flat, interminable earth +that stretches eastward to Essex marshes and southward to the river, and +bears yellow brick and cemeteries for corn. Well! Tressady knew that the +thought of this monotony, and of the thousands under its yoke, was to +Watton a constant sting and oppression; he knew, too, or guessed, the +religious effects it produced in him. For Watton was a religious man, and +the action of the dream within showed itself in him and all he did. But +why should everyone make a grief of East London? He was in the mood again +to-night to feel it a kind of impertinence, this endless, peering anxiety +about a world you never planned and cannot mend. Whose duty is it to cry +for the moon? + +"Better get down here, I think," said Watton, signalling to the +tram-conductor, "and find out whether they have really gone, or not." + +They stopped, half-way down the Mile End Road, before a piece of wall +with a door in it. A trim maiden of fifteen in a spotless cotton frock +and white apron opened to them. + +Inside was a small flagged courtyard and the old-fashioned house that +Marcella Maxwell, a year before,--some time after their first lodging had +been given up,--had rescued from demolition and the builder, to make an +East End home out of it. Somewhere about 1750 some City tradesman had +built it among fields, and taken his rest there; while somewhat later, in +a time of Evangelical revival, a pious widow had thrown out a low room to +one side for class-meetings. In this room Marietta now held her +gatherings, and both Tressady and Watton knew it well. + +The little handmaid bubbled over with willing talk. Oh, yes, there was a +meeting up Manx Road, and her Ladyship had gone with Lord Naseby, and +Lady Madeleine, and Mr. Everard, the inspector, and, she thought, one or +two besides. She expected the ladies back about ten, and they were to +stay the night. + +"An they do say, sir," she said eagerly, looking up at Watton, whom she +knew, "as there'll be a lot o' rough people at the meetin." + +"Oh! I daresay," said Watton. "Well, we're going up, too, to look +after her." + +As they walked on they talked over the general situation in the district, +and Watton explained what he knew of this particular meeting. In the +first place, he repeated, he could not see that Lady Maxwell understood +as yet the sort of opposition that the Bill was rousing, especially in +these East End districts. The middle-class and parliamentary resistance +she had always appreciated; but the sort of rage that might be awakened +among a degraded class of workers by proposals that seemed to threaten +their immediate means of living, he believed she had not yet realised, in +anything like its full measure and degree. And he feared that this +meeting might be a disagreeable experience. + +For it was the direct fruit of an agitation that, as Tressady knew, was +in particular Fontenoy's agitation. The Free Workers' League, which had +called upon the trade-unionist of Mile End to summon the meeting, and to +hear therein what both sides had to say, was, in fact, Fontenoy's +creation. It had succeeded especially in organising the women +home-workers of Mile End and Poplar. Two or three lady-speakers employed +by the League had been active to the point of frenzy in denouncing the +Bill and shrieking "Liberty!" in the frightened ear of Mile End. Watton +could not find a good word for any of them--was sure that what mostly +attracted them was the notoriety of the position, involving, as it did, +a sort of personal antagonism to Lady Maxwell, who had, so to speak, +made Mile End her own. And to be Lady Maxwell's enemy was, Watton +opined, the next best thing, from the point of view of advertisement, to +being her friend. + +"Excellent women, I daresay," said Tressady, laughing--"talking excellent +sense. But, tell me, what is this about Naseby--why Naseby?--on all these +occasions?" + +"Why not, indeed?" said Watton. "Ah! you don't know? It seems to be +Naseby that's going to get the egg out of the hat for us." + +And he plunged eagerly into the description of certain schemes wherewith +Naseby had lately astonished the Maxwell circle. Tressady listened, +languidly at first, then with a kind of jealous annoyance that +scandalised himself. How well he could understand the attraction of such +things for her quick mind! Life was made too easy for these "golden +lads." People attributed too much importance to their fancies. + +Naseby, in fact,--but so much George already knew,--had been for some +months now the comrade and helper of both the Maxwells. His friends still +supposed him to be merely the agreeable and fashionable idler. In +reality, Naseby for some years past had been spending all the varied +leisure that his commission in the Life Guards allowed him upon the work +of a social and economic student. He had joined the staff of a well-known +sociologist, who was at the time engaged in an inquiry into certain +typical East London trades. The inquiry had made a noise, and the +evidence collected under it had already been largely used in the debates +on the Maxwell Bill. Tressady, for instance, had much of it by heart, +although he never knew, until he became a haunter of Lady Maxwell's +circle, that Naseby had played any part in the gathering of it. + +At the same time, as George had soon observed, Naseby was no blind +follower of the Maxwells. In truth, under his young gaiety and coolness +he had the temper of the student, who was more in love with his problem +itself than with any suggested solution of it. As he had told Lady +Betty, he had "no opinions"--would himself rather leave the sweated +trades alone, and trust to much slower and less violent things than +law-making. All this the Maxwells knew perfectly, and liked and trusted +him none the less. + +Now, however, it seemed there was a new development. If the Bill passed, +Naseby had a plan. He was already a rich man, independently of the +marquisate to come. His grandmother had left him a large preliminary +fortune, and through his friends and connections besides he seemed to +command as much money as he desired. And of this money, supposing the +Bill passed, he proposed to make original and startling use. He had +worked out the idea of a syndicate furnished with, say, a quarter of a +million of money, which should come down upon a given district of the +East End, map it out, buy up all the existing businesses in its typical +trade, and start a system of new workshops proportioned to the +population, supplying it with work just as the Board schools supply it +with education. The new scheme was to have a profit-sharing element: the +workers were to be represented on the syndicate, and every nerve was to +be strained to secure the best business management. The existing +middlemen would be either liberally bought out, or absorbed into the new +machine. It was by no means certain that they would show it any strong +resistance. + +Tressady made a number of unfriendly comments on the scheme as Watton +detailed it. A bit of amateur economics, which would only help the Bill +to ruin a few more people than would otherwise have gone down! + +"Ah! well," said Watton, "if this thing passes there are bound to be +experiments, and Naseby means to be in 'em. So do I, only I haven't got a +quarter of a million. Here's our road! We're late, of course--the +meeting's begun. I say, just look at this!" + +For Manx Road, as they turned into it, was already held by another big +meeting of its own. The room in the Board school which crossed the end of +the street must be full, and this crowd represented, apparently, those +who had been turned away. + +As the two friends pushed their way through, Tressady's quick eye +recognised in the throng a number of familiar types. Well-to-do +"pressers" and machinists, factory-girls of different sorts, hundreds of +sallow women, representing the home-workers of Mile End, Bow, and +Stepney--poor souls bowed by toil and maternity, whose marred fingers +labour day and night to clothe the Colonies and the army; their husbands +and brothers, too, English slop-tailors for the most part, of the humbler +sort--the short side-street was packed with them. It was an anxious, +sensitive crowd, Tressady thought, as he elbowed his passage through it. +A small thing might inflame it; and he saw a number of rough lads on the +skirts of it. + +Jews, too, there were in plenty. For the stress of this Bill had brought +Jew and Gentile together in a new comradeship that amazed the East End. +Here were groups representing the thrifty, hard-working London Jew of +the second generation,--small masters for the most part, pale with the +confinement and "drive" of the workshop,--men who are expelling and +conquering the Gentile East Ender, because their inherited passion for +business is not neutralised by any of the common English passions for +spending--above all by the passion for drink. Here, too, were men of a +far lower type and grade--the waste and refuse of the vast industrial +mill. Tressady knew a good many of them by sight--sullen, quick-eyed +folk, who buy their "greeners" at the docks, and work them day and night +at any time of pressure; whose workshops are still flaring at two +o'clock in the morning, and alive again by the winter dawn; who fight +and flout the law by a hundred arts, and yet, brutal and shifty as many +of them are, have a curious way of winning the Gentile inspector's +sympathy, even while he fines and harasses them, so clearly are they and +their "hands" alike the victims of a huge world-struggle that does but +toss them on its surge. + +These gentry, however, were hard hit by more than one clause of the +Maxwell Bill, and they were here to-night to protest, as they had been +already protesting at many meetings, large and small, all over the East +End. And they had their slaves with them,--ragged, hollow-eyed creatures, +newly arrived from Russian Poland, Austria, or Romania, and ready to +shout or howl in Yiddish as they were told,--men whose strange faces and +eyes under their matted shocks of black or reddish hair suggested every +here and there the typical history and tragic destiny of the race which, +in other parts of the crowd, was seen under its softer and more +cosmopolitan aspects. + +As the two men neared the door of the school, where the press was +densest, they were recognised as probably belonging to the Maxwell party, +and found themselves a good deal jeered and hustled, and could hardly +make any way at all. However, a friendly policeman came to their aid. +They were passed into a lobby, and at last, with much elbowing and +pushing, found themselves inside the schoolroom. + +So crowded was the place and so steaming the atmosphere, that it was +some minutes before Tressady could make out what was going on. Then he +saw that Naseby was speaking--Naseby, looking remarkably handsome and +well curled, and much at his ease, besides, in the production of a string +of Laodicean comments on the Bill, his own workshop scheme, and the +general prospects of East End labour. He described the scheme, but in +such a way as rather to damn it than praise it; and as for the Bill +itself, which he had undertaken to compare with former Factory Bills, +when he sat down he left it, indeed, in a parlous case--a poor, limping, +doubtful thing, quite as likely to ruin the East End as to do it a hand's +turn of good. + +Just as the speaker was coming to his peroration Tressady suddenly caught +sight of a delicate upraised profile on the platform, behind Naseby. The +repressed smile on it set him smiling, too. + +"What on earth do they make Naseby speak for!" said Watton, indignantly. +"Idiocy! He spoils everything he touches. Let him give the money, and +other people do the talking. You can see the people here don't know what +to make of him in the least. Look at their faces.--Who's he talking to?" + +"Lady Madeleine, I think," said Tressady. "What amazing red hair that +girl has! and what queer, scared eyes! It is like an animal--one wants to +stroke her." + +"Well, Naseby strokes her," said Watton, laughing. "Look at her; she +brightens up directly he comes near." + +Tressady thought of the tale Fontenoy had just told him, and wondered. +Consolation seemed to come easy to maidens of quality. + +Meanwhile various trade-unionists--sturdy, capable men, in black +coats--were moving and seconding resolutions; flinging resentful +comments, too, at Naseby whenever occasion offered. Tressady heard very +little of what they had to say. His eyes and thoughts were busy with the +beautiful figure to the left of the chair. Its dignity and charm worked +upon him like a spell--infused a kind of restless happiness. + +When he woke from his trance of watching, it was to turn upon Watton +with impatience. How long was this thing going on? The British workman +spoke with deplorable fluency. Couldn't they push their way through to +the platform? + +Watton looked at the crowd, and shrugged his shoulders. + +"Not yet--I say! who's this they've put up. Come, my dear fellow, that +looks like the real thing!" + +Tressady turned, and saw an old man, a Jew, with a long greyish beard, +coming slowly to the front of the platform. His eyes were black and deep, +sunk under white brows; he was decently but poorly dressed; and he began +to speak with a slight German accent, in an even, melancholy voice, +rather under-pitched, which soon provoked the meeting. He was +vociferously invited to speak up or sit down; and at the first +interruption he stopped timorously, and looked towards the Chair. + +An elderly, grey-haired woman was presiding--no doubt to mark the +immense importance of the Bill for the women of the East End. She came +forward at the man's appeal. + +"My friends," she said quietly, "you let this man speak, and don't you be +hard on him. He's got a sad story to tell you, and he won't be long about +it. You give him his chance. Some of you shall have yours soon." + +Up. The speaker was the paid secretary of one of the women's unions; but +she had been a tailoress for years, and had known a tragic life. Once, at +a meeting where some flippant speaker had compared the reality and +frequency of "starvation" in London to the reality and frequency of the +sea serpent, Tressady had seen her get up and, with a sudden passion, +describe the death of her own daughter from hardship and want, with the +tears running down her cheeks. Her appeal to the justice of the meeting +succeeded, and the old man was allowed to go on. It soon appeared that he +had been put up by one of the tailoring unions to denounce the long hours +worked in some of the Whitechapel and Spitalfields workshops. His H facts +were appalling. But he put them badly, with a dull, stumbling voice, and +he got no hold on the meeting at all till suddenly he stepped forward, +paused,--his miserable face working, his head turning from if side to +side,--and finally said, with a sharp change of note: + +"And now, if you please, I will tell you how it was about Isaac--my +brother Isaac. It was Mr. Jacobs "--he looked round, and pointed to the +tradeunion secretary who had been speaking before him--"Mr. Jacobs it +was that put it in my mind to come here and tell you about Isaac. For the +way Isaac died was like this. He and I were born in Spitalfields; he +wasn't one of your greeners--he was a reg'lar good worker, first-rate +general coat-hand, same as me. But he got with a hard master. And last +winter season but one there came a rush. And Isaac must be working six +days a week--and he must be working fourteen hours a day--and, more'n +that, he must be doing his bastes overtime, two hours one time, and an +hour or so, perhaps, another; anyway, they made it up to half a +day--eight hours and more in the week. _You_ know how they reckon it." + +He stopped, grinning feebly. The trade-unionists about the platform +shouted or groaned in response. The masters round the door, with their +"greeners," stood silent. + +"And about Wednesday in the third week," he went on, "he come to the +master, and he says--Isaac was older than me, and his chest it would be +beginning to trouble him pretty bad, so he says: 'I'm done,' he says; 'I +must go home. You can get another chap to do my bastes to-night--will +you?' And the master says to Isaac: 'If you don't do your bastes +overtime, if you're too high and mighty,' he says, 'why, there's plenty +as will, and you don't need to come to-morrow neither.' And Isaac had his +wife Judith at home, and four little uns; and he stopped and done his +bastes, of _course_. And next night he couldn't well see, and he'd been +dreadful sick all day, and he says to the master again, he says as he +must go home. And the master, he says the same to him--and Isaac stops. +And on Friday afternoon he come home. And the shop had been steamin hot, +but outside it was a wind to cut yer through. And his wife Judith says to +him, 'Isaac, you look starved!' and she set him by the fire. And he sat +by the fire, and he didn't say nothing. Then his hands fell down sudden +like that--" + +The old man let his hands drop heavily by his side with a simple dramatic +gesture. By this time there was not a sound in the crowded room. Even the +wildest and most wolfish of the greeners were staring silently, craning +brown necks forward. + +"And his wife ran to him, and he falls against her; and he says, 'Lay me +down, Judith, and don't you let em wake me--not the young uns,' he says +'not for nothing and nobody. For if it was the trump of the Most High,' +he says--and Isaac was a religious man, and careful in his speech--'I +must have my sleep.' And she laid him down, and the children and she +watched--and by midnight Isaac turned himself over. He just opened his +eyes once, and groaned. And he never spoke no more--he was gone before +mornin.--And his master gave Judith five shillings towards the coffin, +and the men in the shop, they raised the rest." + +The old man paused. He stood considering a moment, his face and ragged +beard thrown out--a spot of greyish white--against the figures behind, +his eyes blinking painfully under the gas. + +"Well, we've tried many things," he said at last. "We've tried strikes +and unions, and it isn't no good. There's always one treading on +another, and if you don't do it, someone else will. It's the _law_ as'll +have to do it. You may take that and smoke it!--you won't get nothing +else. Why!"--his hoarse voice trembled--"why, they use us up cruel in the +sort of shop I work for. Ten or twelve years, and a man's all to pieces. +It's the irons, and the heat, and the sitting--_you_ know what it is. +I've lasted fifteen year, but I'm breaking up now. If my master give me +the sack for speaking here I'll have nothing but the Jewish Board of +Guardians to look to. All the same, I made up my mind as I'd come and say +how they served Isaac." + +He stopped abruptly, and stood quite still a moment, fronting the +meeting, as though appealing to them, through the mere squalid physical +weakness he could find no more words to express. Then, with a sort of +shambling bow, he turned away, and the main body of the meeting clapped +excitedly, while at the back some of the "sweaters" grinned, and chatted +sarcastic things in Yiddish with their neighbours. Tressady saw Lady +Maxwell rise eagerly as the old man passed her, take his hand, and find +him a seat. + +"That, I suppose, was an emotion," said Tressady, looking down upon his +companion. + +"Or an argument," said Watton--"as you like!" + +One other "emotion" of the same kind--the human reality at its simplest +and cruellest--Tressady afterwards remembered. + +A "working-woman" was put up to second an amendment condemning the +workshops clause, which had been moved in an angry speech by one of +"Fontenoy's ladies," a shrill-voiced, fashionable person, the secretary +to the local branch of the Free Workers' League. Tressady had yawned +impatiently through the speech, which had seemed to him a violent and +impertinent performance. But as the speaker sat down he was roused by an +exclamation from a man beside him. + +"_That_ woman!" cried a tall curate, straining on tiptoe to see. "No! +They ought to be ashamed of themselves!" + +Tressady wondered who and why; but all that he saw was that a thin, tall +woman was being handed along the bench in front of him, while her +neighbours and friends clapped her on the back as she passed, laughing +and urging her on. Then, presently, there she stood on the platform, a +thin, wand-like creature, with her battered bonnet sideways on her head, +a woollen crossover on her shoulders, in spite of July, her hands clasped +across her chest, her queer light eyes wandering and smiling hither and +thither. In her emaciation, her weird cheerfulness, she was like a figure +from a Dance of Death. But what was amazing was her self-possession. + +"Now yer laffin' at me," she began in a conversational tone, nodding +towards the group of women she had just left. "You go 'long! I told the +lidy I'd speak, an I will. Well, they comes to me, an they ses, Mrs. +Dickson, yer not to work at 'ome no longer--they'll put yer in prison if +yer do't, they ses; yer to go out ter work, same as the shop 'ands, they +ses; and what's more, if they cotch Mr. Butterford--that's my landlord; +p'raps yer dunno 'im--" + +She looked down at the meeting with a whimsical grin, her eyes screwed up +and her crooked brows lifted, so that the room roared merely to look at +her. The trim lady-secretary, however, bent forward with an air of +annoyance. She had not, perhaps, realised that Mrs. Dickson was so much +of a character. + +"If they cotch Mr. Butterford, they'll make 'im pay up smart for lettin +yer do such a thing as make knickers in 'is 'ouse. So I asks the lidy, +Wot's ter become o' me an the little uns? An she says she done know, but +yer mus come and speak Tuesday night, she says--Manx Road Schools, she +says--if yer want to perwent em making a law ov it. Which I'm a doin +of--aint I?" + +Fresh laughter and response from the room. She went on satisfied. + +"An, yer know, if I can't make the knickers at 'ome, I can't make 'em +awy from 'ome. For ther aint no shops as want kids squallin round, as +fer as I can make out. An Jimmy's a limb, as boys mos'ly are in my +egsperience. Larst week 'e give the biby a 'alfpenny and two o' my +biggest buttons to swaller, an I ony jest smacked 'em out of 'er in +time. Ther'd be murder done if I was to leave 'em. An 'ow 'ud I be able +to pay anyone fer lookin' after em? I can't git much, yer know, shop or +no shop. I aint wot I was." + +She stopped, and pointed significantly to her chest. Tressady shuddered +as the curate whispered to him. + +"I've been in orspital--cut about fearful. I can't go at the pace them +shops works at. They'd give me the sack, double-quick, if I was to go try +in 'em. No, it's _settin_ as does it--settin an settin. I'm at it by +seven, an my 'usband--yer can see im there--e'll tell yer." + +She stopped, and pointed to a burly ruffian standing amid a group of +"pals" round the door. This gentleman had his arms folded, and was +alternately frowning and grinning at this novel spectacle of his wife as +a public performer. Bribes had probably been necessary to bring him to +consent to the spectacle at all. But he was not happy, and when his wife +pointed at him, and the meeting turned to look, he suddenly took a dive +head-foremost into the crowd about him; so that when the laughter and +horse-play that followed had subsided, it was seen that Mr. Tom Dickson's +place knew him no more. + +Meanwhile Mrs. Dickson stood grinning--grinning wide and visibly. It was +the strangest mirth, as though hollow pain and laughter strove with each +other for the one poor indomitable face. + +"Well, ee _could_ 'a told yer, if e'd ad the mind," she said, nodding, +"for ee knows. Ee's been out o' work this twelve an a arf year--well, +come, I'll bet yer, anyway, as ee 'asn't done a 'and's turn this three +year--an I don't blime im. Fust, there isn't the work to be got, and +then yer git out of the way o' wantin it. An beside, I'm used to im. +When Janey--no, it were Sue!--were seven month old, he come in one +night from the public, an after ee'd broke up most o' the things, he +says to me, 'Clear out, will yer!' An I cleared out, and Sue and me +set on the doorstep till mornin. And when mornin come, Tom opened the +door, an ee says, 'What are you doin there, mother? Why aint yer got my +breakfast?' An I went in an got it. But, bless yer, nowadays--the +_women won't do it_!--" + +Another roar went up from the meeting. Mrs. Dickson still grinned. + +"An so there's nothink but _settin_', as I said before--settin' till yer +can't set no more. If I begin o' seven, I gets Mr. Dickson to put the +teathings an the loaf andy, so as I don't 'ave to get up more'n jes to +fetch the kettle; and the chillen gets the same as me--tea an bread, and +a red 'erring Sundays; an Mr. Dickson, 'e gets 'is meals out. I gives +'im the needful, and 'e don't make no trouble; an the children is +dreadful frackshus sometimes, and gets in my way fearful. But there, if +I can _set_--set till I 'ear Stepney Church goin twelve--I can earn my +ten shillin a week, an keep the lot of 'em. Wot does any lidy or +genelman want, a comin' meddlin down 'ere? Now, that's the middle an +both ends on it. Done? Well, I dessay I is done. Lor, I ses to em in the +orspital it do seem rummy to me to be layin abed like that. If Tom was +'ere, why, 'e'd--" + +She made a queer, significant grimace. But the audience laughed no +longer. They stared silently at the gaunt creature, and with their +silence her own mood changed. + +Suddenly she whipped up her apron. She drew it across her eyes, and flung +it away again passionately. + +"I dessay we shall be lyin abed in Kingdom Come," she said defiantly, yet +piteously. "But we've got to git there fust. An I don't want no shops, +thank yer!" + +She rambled on a little longer, then, at a sign from the lady-secretary, +made a grinning curtsy to the audience and departed. + +"What do they get out of that?" said Watton, in Tressady's ear--"Poor +galley-slave in praise of servitude!" + +"Her slavery keeps her alive, please." + +"Yes--and drags down the standard of a whole class!" + +"You'll admit she seemed content?" + +"It's that content we want to kill.--Ah! _at last!_" and Watton clapped +loudly, followed by about half the meeting, while the rest sat silent. +Then Tressady perceived that the chair-woman had called upon Lady Maxwell +to move the next resolution, and that the tall figure had risen. + +She came forward slowly, glancing from side to side, as though doubtful +where to look for her friends. She was in black, and her head was covered +with a little black lace bonnet, in the strings of which, at her throat, +shone a small diamond brooch. The delicate whiteness of her face and +hands, and this sparkle of light on her breast, that moved as she moved, +struck a thrill of pleasure through Tressady's senses. The squalid +monotony and physical defect of the crowd about him passed from his mind. +Her beauty redressed the balance. "'Loveliness, magic, and grace--they +are here; they are set in the world!'--and ugliness and pain have not +conquered while this face still looks and breathes." This, and nothing +less, was the cry of the young man's heart and imagination as he +strained forward, waiting for her voice. + +Then he settled himself to listen--only to pass gradually from +expectation to nervousness, from nervousness to dismay. + +What was happening? She had once told him that she was not a speaker, and +he had not believed her. She had begun well, he thought, though with a +hesitation he had not expected. But now--had she lost her thread--or +what? Incredible! when one remembered her in private life, in +conversation. Yet these stumbling sentences, this evident distress! + +Tressady found himself fidgeting in sympathetic misery. He and Watton +looked at each other. + +A little more, and she would have lost her audience. She _had_ lost it. +At first there had been eager listening, for she had plunged +straightway into a set explanation and defence of the Bill point by +point, and half the room knew that she was Lord Maxwell's wife. But by +the end of ten minutes their attention was gone. They were only staring +at her because she was handsome and a great lady. Otherwise, they +seemed not to know what to make of her. She grew white; she wavered. +Tressady saw that she was making great efforts, and all in vain. The +division between her and her audience widened with every sentence, and +Fontenoy's lady-organiser, in the background, sat smilingly erect. +Tressady, who had been at first inclined to hate the thought of her +success in this Inferno, grew hot with wrath and irritation. His own +vanity suffered in her lack of triumph. + +Amazing! How _could_ her personal magic--so famous on so many +fields--have deserted her like this in an East End schoolroom, before +people whose lives she knew, whose griefs she carried in her heart? + +Then an idea struck him. The thought was an illumination--he understood. +He shut his eyes and listened. Maxwell's sentences, Maxwell's +manner--even, at times, Maxwell's voice! He had been rehearsing to her +his coming speech in the House of Lords, and she was painfully repeating +it! To his disgust, Tressady saw the reporters scribbling away--no doubt +they knew their business! Aye, there was the secret. The wife's adoration +showed through her very failure--through this strange conversion of all +that was manly, solid, and effective in Maxwell, into a confused mass of +facts and figures, pedantic, colourless, and cold! + +Edward Watton began to look desperately unhappy. "Too long," he said, +whispering in Tressady's ear, "and too technical. They can't follow." + +And he looked at a group of rough factory-girls beginning to scuffle with +the young men near them, at the restless crowd of "greeners," at the +women in the centre of the hall lifting puzzled faces to the speaker, as +though in a pain of listening. + +Tressady nodded. In the struggle of devotion with a half-laughing +annoyance he could only crave that the thing should be over. + +But the next instant his face altered. He pushed forward instinctively, +turning his back on Watton, hating the noisy room, that would hardly +let him hear. + +Ah!--those few last sentences, that voice, that quiver of passion--they +were her own--herself, not Maxwell. The words were very simple, and a +little tremulous--words of personal reminiscence and experience. But for +one listener there they changed everything. The room, the crowd, the +speaker--he saw them for a moment under another aspect: that poetic, +eternal aspect, which is always there, behind the veil of common things, +ready to flash out on mortal eyes. He _felt_ the woman's heart, oppressed +with a pity too great for it; the delicate, trembling consciousness, like +a point in space, weighed on by the burden of the world; he stood, as it +were, beside her, hearing with her ears, seeing the earth-spectacle as +she saw it, with that terrible second sight of hers: the all-environing +woe and tragedy of human things--the creeping hunger and pain--the +struggle that leads no whither--the life that hates to live and yet +dreads to die--the death that cuts all short, and does but add one more +hideous question to the great pile that hems the path of man. + +A hard, reluctant tear rose in his eyes. Is it starved tailoresses and +shirtmakers alone who suffer? Is there no hunger of the heart, that +matches and overweighs the physical? Is it not as easy for the rich as +the poor to miss the one thing needful, the one thing that matters and +saves? Angrily, and in a kind of protest, he put out his hand, as it +were, to claim his own share of the common pain. + +"Make way there! make way!" cried a police-sergeant, holding back the +crowd, "and let the lady pass." + +Tressady did his best to push through with Lady Maxwell on his arm. But +there was an angry hum of voices in front of him, an angry pressure round +the doors. + +"We shall soon get a cab," he said, bending over her. "You are very +tired, I fear. Please lean upon me." + +Yet he could but feel grateful to the crowd. It gave him this joy of +protecting and supporting her. Nevertheless, as he looked ahead, he +wished that they were safely off, and that there were more police! + +For this meeting, which had been only mildly disorderly and inattentive +while Marcella was speaking, had suddenly flamed, after she sat down, +into a fierce confusion and tumult--why, Tressady hardly now understood. +A man had sprung up to speak as she sat down who was apparently in bad +repute with most of the unions of the district. At any rate, there had +been immediate uproar and protest. The trade-unionists would not hear +him--hurled names at him--"thief," "blackleg"--as he attempted to speak. +Then the Free Workers, for whom this dubious person had been lately +acting, rose in a mass and booed at the unionists; and finally some of +the dark-eyed, black-bearded "greeners" near the door, urged on, +probably, by the masters, whose slaves they were, had leaped the benches +near them, shouting strange tongues, and making for the hostile throng +around the platform. + +Then it had been time for Naseby and the police to clear the platform and +open a passage for the Maxwell party. Unfortunately, there was no outlet +to the back, no chance of escaping the shouting crowd in Manx Road. +Tressady, joining his friends at last by dint of his height and a free +play of elbows, found himself suddenly alone with Lady Maxwell, Naseby +and Lady Madeleine borne along far behind, and no chance but to follow +the current, with such occasional help as the police stationed along the +banks of it might be able to give. + +Outside, Tressady strained his eyes for a cab. + +"Here, sir!" cried the sergeant in front, carving a passage by dint of +using his own stalwart frame as a ram. + +They hurried on, for some rough lads on the edges of the crowd had +already begun stone-throwing. The faces about them seemed to be partly +indifferent, partly hostile. "Look at the bloomin bloats!" cried a wild +factory-girl with a touzled head as Lady Maxwell passed. "Let 'em stop at +'ome and mind their own 'usbands--yah!" + +"Garn! who paid for your bonnet?" shouted another, until a third girl +pulled her back, panting, "If you say that any more I'll scrag yer!" For +this third girl had spent a fortnight in the Mile End Road house, getting +fed and strengthened before an operation. + +But here was the cab! Lady Maxwell's foot was already on the step, when +Tressady felt something fly past him. + +There was a slight cry. The form in front of him seemed to waver a +moment. Then Tressady himself mounted, caught her, and in another moment, +after a few plunges from the excited horse, they were off down Manx +Road, followed by a shouting crowd that gradually thinned. + +"You are hurt!" he said. + +"Yes," she said faintly, "but not much. Will you tell him to drive first +to Mile End Road?" + +"I have told him. Can I do anything to stop the bleeding?" + +He looked at her in despair. The handkerchief, and the delicate hand +itself that she was holding to her brow, were dabbled in blood. + +"Have you a silk handkerchief to spare?" she asked him, smiling slightly +and suddenly through her pallor, as though at their common predicament. + +By good fortune he had one. She took off her hat, and gave him a few +business-like directions. His fingers trembled as he tried to obey her; +but he had the practical sense that the small vicissitudes and hardships +of travel often develop in a man, and between them they adjusted a rough +but tolerable bandage. + +Then she leant against the side of the cab, and he thought she would +have swooned. There was a pause, during which he watched the quivering +lines of the lips and nostrils and the pallor of the cheeks with a +feeling of dismay. + +But she did not mean to faint, and little by little her will answered to +her call upon it. Presently she said, with eyes shut and brow contracted: + +"I _trust_ the others are safe. Oh! what a failure--what a failure! I am +afraid I have done Aldous harm!" + +The tone of the last words touched Tressady deeply. Evidently she could +hardly restrain her tears. + +"They were not worthy you should go and speak to them," he said quickly. +"Besides, it was only a noisy minority." + +She did not speak again till they drew up before the house in the Mile +End Road. Then she turned to him. + +"I was to have stayed here for the night, but I think I must go home. +Aldous might hear that there had been a disturbance. I will leave a +message here, and drive home." + +"I trust you will let me go with you. We should none of us be happy to +think of you as alone just yet. And I am due at the House by eleven." + +She smiled, assenting, then descended, leaning heavily upon him in +her weakness. + +When she reappeared, attended by her two little servants, all frightened +and round-eyed at their mistress's mishap, she had thrown a thick lace +scarf round her head, which hid the bandage and gave to her pale beauty a +singularly touching, appealing air. + +"I wish I could see Madeleine," she said anxiously, standing beside the +cab and looking up the road. "Ah!" + +For she had suddenly caught sight of a cab in the distance driving +smartly up. As it approached, Naseby and Lady Madeleine were plainly to +be seen inside it. The latter jumped out almost at Marcella's feet, +looking more scared than ever as she saw the bandage and the black scarf +twisted round the white face. But in a few moments Marcella had soothed +her, and given her over, apparently, to the care of another lady staying +in the house. Then she waved her hand to Naseby, who, with his usual +coolness, asked no questions and made no remarks, and she and Tressady +drove off. + +"Madeleine will stay the night," Marcella explained as they sped towards +Aldgate. "That was our plan. My secretary will look after her. She has +been often here with me lately, and has things of her own to do. But I +ought not to have taken her to-night. Lady Kent would never have forgiven +me if she had been hurt. Oh! it was all a mistake--all a great mistake! I +suppose I imagined--that is one's folly--that I could really do some +good--make an effect." + +She bit her lip, and the furrow reappeared in the white brow. + +Tressady felt by sympathy that her heart was all sore, her moral being +shaken and vibrating. After these long months of labour and sympathy and +emotion, the sudden touch of personal brutality had unnerved her. + +Mere longing to comfort, to "make-up," overcame him. + +"You wouldn't talk of mistake--of failing--if you knew how to be near +you, to listen to you, to see you, touches and illuminates some of us!" + +His cheek burnt, but he turned a manly, eager look upon her. + +Her cheek, too, flushed, and he thought he saw her bosom heave. + +"Oh no!--no!" she cried. "How _impossible!_--when one feels oneself so +helpless, so clumsy, so useless. Why couldn't I do better? But perhaps it +is as well. It all prepares one--braces one--against--" + +She paused and leaned forward, looking out at the maze of figures and +carriages on the Mansion House crossing, her tight-pressed lips trembling +against her will. + +"Against the last inevitable disappointment." That, no doubt, was what +she meant. + +"If you only understood how loth some of us are to differ from you," he +cried,--"how hard it seems to have to press another view,--to be +already pledged." + +"Oh yes!--_please_--I know that you are pledged," she said, in +hasty distress, her delicacy shrinking as before from the direct +personal argument. + +They were silent a little. Tressady looked out at the houses in Queen +Victoria Street, at the lamplit summer night, grudging the progress of +the cab, the approach of the river, of the Embankment, where there would +be less traffic to bar their way--clinging to the minutes as they passed. + +"Oh! how could they put up that woman?" she said presently, her eyes +still shut, her hand shaking, as it rested on the door. "How _could_ +they? It is the thought of women like that--the hundreds and thousands of +them--that goads one on. A clergyman who knows the East End well said to +me the other day, 'The difference between now and twenty years ago is +that the women work much more, the men less.' I can never get away from +the thought of the women! Their lives come to seem to me the mere refuse, +the rags and shreds, that are thrown every day into the mill and ground +to nothing--without a thought--without a word of pity, an hour of +happiness! Cancer--three children left out of nine--and barely forty, +though she looked sixty! They tell me she may live eighteen months. Then, +when the parish has buried her, the man has only to hold up his finger to +find someone else to use up in the same way. And she is just one of +thousands." + +"I can only reply by the old, stale question," said Tressady, sturdily. +"Did we make the mill? Can we stop its grinding? And if not, is it fair +even to the race that has something to gain from courage and gaiety--is +it _reasonable_ to take all our own poor little joy and drench it in +this horrible pain of sympathy, as you do! But we have said all these +things before." + +He bent over to her, smiling. But she did not look up. And he saw a tear +which her weakness, born of shock and fatigue, could not restrain, steal +from the lashes on the cheek. Then he added, still leaning towards her: + +"Only, what I never have said--I think--is what is true to-night. At last +you have made one person feel--if that matters anything!--the things you +feel. I don't know that I am particularly grateful to you! And, +practically, we may be as far apart as ever. But I was without a sense +when I went into this game of politics; and now--" + +His heart beat. What would he not have said, mad youth!--within the +limits imposed by her nature and his own dread--to make her look at him, +to soften this preposterous sadness! + +But it needed no more. She opened her eyes, and looked at him with a wild +sweetness and gratitude which dazzled him, and struck his memory with the +thought of the Southern, romantic strain in her. + +"You are very kind and comforting!" she said; "but then, from the +first--somehow--I knew you were a friend to us. One felt it--through all +difference." + +The little sentences were steeped in emotion--emotion springing from +many sources, fed by a score of collateral thoughts and memories--with +which Tressady had, in truth, nothing to do. Yet the young man gulped +inwardly. She had been a tremulous woman till the words were said. +Now--strange!--through her very gentleness and gratefulness, a barrier +had risen between them. Something stern and quick told him this was +the very utmost of what she could ever say to him--the farthest limit +of it all. + +They passed under Charing Cross railway bridge. Beside them, as they +emerged, the moon shone out above the darks and silvers of the river, and +in front, the towers of Westminster rose purplish grey against a west +still golden. + +"How were things going in the House this afternoon?" she asked, looking +at the towers. "Oh! I forgot. You see, the clock says close on eleven. +Please let me drop you here. I can manage by myself quite well." + +He protested, and she yielded, with a patient kindness that made him +sore. Then he gave his account, and they talked a little of Monday's +division and of the next critical votes in Committee--each of them, so he +felt in his exaltation, a blow dealt to her--that he must help to deal. +Yet there was a fascination in the topic. Neither could get away from it. + +Presently, Pall Mall being very full of traffic, they had to wait a +moment at the corner of the street that turns into St. James's Square. In +the pause Tressady caught sight of a man on the pavement. The man smiled, +looked astonished, and took off his hat. Lady Maxwell bowed coldly, and +immediately looked away. Tressady recognised Harding Watton. But neither +he nor she mentioned his name. + +In another minute he had seen her vanish within the doors of her own +house. Her hand had rested gently, willingly, in his. + +"I am so grateful!" she had said; "so will Maxwell be. We shall meet +soon, and laugh over our troubles!" + +And then she was gone, and he was left standing a moment, bewildered. + +Eleven? What had he to do? + +Then he remembered his pair, and that he had promised to call for Letty +at a certain house, and take her on to a late ball. The evening, in fact, +instead of ending, was just beginning. He could have laughed, as he got +back into his cab. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile Marcella had sped through the outer hall into the inner, where +one solitary light, still burning, made a rather desolate dark-in-light +through the broad, pillared space. A door opened at the farther side. + +"Aldous!" + +"You!" + +He came out, and she flew to him. He felt her trembling as she touched +him. In ten words she told him something of what had happened. Then +he saw the bandage round her temple. His countenance fell. She knew +that he turned white, and loved him for it. How few things had power +to move him so! + +He wanted to lead her back into his library, where he was at work. But +she resisted. + +"Let me go up to Annette," she said. "The little wound--oh! it is not +much, I _know_ it is not much--ought to be properly seen to. We will do +it between us in a moment. Then come--I will send her down for you. I +want to tell you." + +But in her heart of hearts she was just a little afraid of telling him. +What if an exaggerated version should get into the papers--if it should +really do him harm--at this critical moment! She was always tormented by +this dread, a dread born of long-past indiscretions and mistakes. + +He acquiesced, but first he insisted on half leading, half carrying her +upstairs; and she permitted it, delighting in his strong arm. + +Half an hour later she sent for him. The maid found him pacing up and +down the hall, waiting. + +When he entered her room she was lying on her sofa in a white wrapper of +some silky stuff. The black lace had been drawn again round her head, and +he saw nothing but a very pale face and her eager, timid eyes--timid for +no one in the world but him. As he caught sight of her, she produced in +him that exquisite mingled impression of grace, passion, self-yielding, +which in all its infinite variations and repetitions made up for him the +constant poem of her beauty. But though she knew it, she glanced at him +anxiously as he approached her. It had been to her a kind of luxury of +feeling, in the few moments that she had been waiting for him, to cherish +a little fear of him--of his displeasure. + +"Now describe exactly what you have been doing," he said, sitting down by +her with a troubled face and taking her hand, as soon as he had assured +himself that the cut was slight and would leave no scar. + +She told her tale, and was thrilled to see that he frowned. She laid her +hand on his shoulder. + +"It is the first public thing I have done without consulting you. I meant +to have asked you yesterday, but we were both so busy. The meeting was +got up rather hurriedly, and they pressed me to speak, after all the +arrangements were made." + +"We are both of us too busy," he said, rather sadly; "we glance, and nod, +and bustle by--" + +He did not finish the quotation, but she could. Her eyes scanned his +face. "Do you think I ought to have avoided such a thing at such a time? +Will it do harm?" + +His brow cleared. He considered the matter. + +"I think you may expect some of the newspapers to make a good deal of +it," he said, smiling. + +And, in fact, his own inherited tastes and instincts were all chafed by +her story. His wife--the wife of a Cabinet Minister--pleading for her +husband's Bill, or, as the enemy might say, for his political existence, +with an East End meeting, and incidentally with the whole +public--exposing herself, in a time of agitation, to the rowdyism and +the stone-throwing that wait on such things! The notion set the +fastidious old-world temper of the man all on edge. But he would never +have dreamed of arguing the matter so with her. A sort of high chivalry +forbade it. In marrying her he had not made a single condition--would +have suffered tortures rather than lay the smallest fetter upon her. In +consequence, he had been often thought a weak, uxorious person. Maxwell +knew that he was merely consistent. No sane man lays his heart at the +feet of a Marcella without counting the cost. + +She did not answer his last remark. But he saw that she was wistful and +uneasy, and presently she laid her fingers lightly on his. + +"Tell me if I am too much away from you--too much occupied with +other people." + +He sighed,--the slightest sigh,--but she winced. "I had just an hour +before dinner," he said; "you were not here, and the house seemed very +empty. I would have come down to fetch you, but there were some important +papers to read before to-morrow." A Cabinet meeting was fixed, as she +knew, for the following day. "Then, I have been making Saunders draw up a +statement for the newspapers in answer to Watton's last attack, and it +would have been a help to talk to you before we sent it off. Above all, +if I had known of the meeting I should have begged you not to go. I ought +to have warned you yesterday, for I knew that there was some ugly +agitation developing down there. But I never thought of you as likely to +face a mob. Will you please reflect"--he pressed her hand almost roughly +against his lips--"that if that stone had been a little heavier, and +flung a little straighter--" + +He paused. A dew came to her eyes, a happy glow to her cheek. As for her, +she was grateful to the stone that had raised such heart-beats. + +Perhaps some instinct told him not to please her in this way too much, +for he rose and walked away a moment. + +"There! don't let's think of it, or I shall turn tyrant after all, and +plunge into 'shalls' and 'sha'n'ts'! You _know_ you carry two lives, and +all the plans that either of us care about, in your hand. You say that +Tressady brought you home?" + +He turned and looked at her. + +"Yes. Edward Watton brought him to the meeting." + +"But he has been down to see you there several times before, as well as +coming here?" + +"Oh yes! almost every week since we met at Castle Luton." + +"It is curious," said Maxwell, thoughtfully; "for he will certainly vote +steadily with Fontenoy all through. His election speeches pledged him +head over ears." + +"Oh! of course he will vote," said Marcella, moving a little uneasily; +"but one cannot help trying to modify his way of looking at things. And +his tone _is_ changed." + +Maxwell stood at the foot of her sofa, considering, a host of perplexed +and unwelcome notions flitting across his mind. In spite of his idealist +absorption in his work, his political aims, and the one love of his +life, he had the training of a man of the world, and could summon the +shrewdness of one when he pleased. He had liked this young Tressady, for +the first time, at Castle Luton, and had seen him fall under Marcella's +charm with some amusement. But this haunting of their camp in the East +End, at such a marked and critical moment, was strange, to say the least +of it. It must point, one would think, to some sudden and remarkable +strength of personal influence. + +Had she any real consciousness of the power she wielded? Once or twice, +in the years since they had been married, Maxwell had watched this spell +of his wife's at work, and had known a moment of trouble. "If I were the +fellow she had talked and walked with so," he had once said to himself, +"I must have fallen in love with her had she been twenty times another +man's wife!" Yet no harm had happened; he had only reproached himself for +a gross mind without daring to breathe a word to her. + +And he dared not now. Besides, how absurd! The young man was just +married, and, to Maxwell's absent, incurious eyes, the bride had seemed a +lively, pretty little person enough. No doubt it was the nervous strain +of his political life that made such fancies possible to him. Let him not +cumber her ears with them! + +Then gradually, as he stood at her feet, the sight of her, breathing +weakness, submission, loveliness, her eyes raised to his, banished every +other thought from his happy heart, and drew him like a magnet. + +Meanwhile she began to smile. He knelt down beside her, and she put both +hands on his shoulders. + +"Dear!" she said, half laughing and half crying, "I did speak so badly; +you would have been ashamed of me. I couldn't hold the meeting. I didn't +persuade a soul. Lord Fontenoy's ladies had it all their own way. And +first I was dreadfully sorry I couldn't do such a thing decently--sorry +because of one's vanity, and sorry because I couldn't help you. And now I +think I'm rather glad." + +"Are you?" said Maxwell, drily; "as for me, I'm enchanted! There!--so +much penalty you _shall_ have." + +She pressed his lips with her hand. + +"Don't spoil my pretty speech. I am only glad because--because public +life and public success make one stand separate--alone. I have gone +far enough to know how it might be. A new passion would come in, and +creep through one like a poison. I should win you votes--and our +hearts would burn dry! There! take me--scold me--despise me. I am a +poor thing--but yours!" + +With such a humbleness might Diana have wooed her shepherd, stooping her +goddess head to him on the Latmian steep. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +George went back to the House, and stayed for half an hour or so, +listening to a fine speech from a member of a former Liberal Cabinet. The +speech was one more sign of the new cleavage of parties that was being +everywhere brought about by the pressure of the new Collectivism. + +"We always knew," said the speaker, referring to a Ministry in which +he had served seven years before, "that we should be fighting +Socialism in good earnest before many years were over; and we knew, +too, that we should be fighting it as put forward by a Conservative +Government. The hands are the hands of the English Tory, the voice is +the voice of Karl Marx." + +The Socialists sent forth mocking cheers, while the Government benches +sat silent. The rank-and-file of the Conservative party already hated the +Bill. The second reading must go through. But if only some rearrangement +were possible without rushing the country into the arms of +revolutionists--if it were only conceivable that Fontenoy, or even the +old Liberal gang, should form a Government, and win the country, the +Committee stage would probably not trouble the House long. + +Meanwhile in the smoking-rooms and lobbies the uncertainties of the +coming division kept up an endless hum of gossip and conjecture. Tressady +wandered about it all like a ghost, indifferent and preoccupied, careful +above all to avoid any more talk with Fontenoy. While he was in the House +itself he stood at the door or sat in the cross-benches, so as to keep a +space between him and his leader. + +A little before twelve he drove home, dressed hastily, and went off to a +house in Berkeley Square, where he was to meet Letty. He found her +waiting for him, a little inclined to be reproachful, and eager for her +ball. As they drove towards Queen's Gate she chattered to him of her +evening, and of the people and dresses she had seen. + +"And, you foolish boy!" she broke out, laughing, and tapping him on the +hand with her fan--"you looked so glum this morning when I couldn't go +and see Lady Tressady--and--what do you think? Why, she has been at a +party to-night--at a party, my dear!--and _dressed_! Mrs. Willy Smith +told me she had seen her at the Webers'." + +"I daresay," said George, rather shortly; "all the same, this morning she +was very unwell." + +Letty shrugged her shoulders, but she did not want to be disagreeable and +argue the point. She was much pleased with her dress--with the last +glance of herself that she had caught in the cloak-room looking-glass +before leaving Berkeley Square--and, finally, with this well-set-up, +well-dressed husband beside her. She glanced at him every now and then as +she put on a fresh pair of gloves. He had been very much absorbed in this +tiresome Parliament lately, and she thought herself a very good and +forbearing wife not to make more fuss. Nor had she made any fuss about +his going down to see Lady Maxwell at the East End. It did not seem to +have made the smallest difference to his opinions. + +The thought of Lady Maxwell brought a laugh to her lips. + +"Oh! do you know, Harding was so amusing about the Maxwells to-day!" she +said, turning to Tressady in her most good-humoured and confiding mood. +"He says people are getting so tired of her,--of her meddling, and her +preaching, and all the rest of it,--and that everybody thinks him so +absurd not to put a stop to it. And Harding says that it doesn't succeed +even--that Englishmen will never stand petticoat government. It's all +very well--they have to stand it in some forms!" + +And, stretching her slim neck, she turned and gave her husband a tiny +flying kiss on the cheek. Mechanically grateful, George took her hand in +his, but he did not make her the pretty speech she expected. Just before +she spoke he was about to tell her of his evening--of the meeting, and of +his drive home with Lady Maxwell. He had been far too proud hitherto, and +far too confident in himself, to make any secret to Letty of what he did. +And, luckily, she had raised no difficulties. In truth, she had been too +well provided with amusements and flatteries of her own since their +return from the country to leave her time or opportunities for jealousy. +Perhaps, secretly, the young husband would have been more flattered if +she had been more exacting. + +But as she quoted Harding something stiffened in him. Later, after the +ball, when they were alone, he would tell her--he would try and make her +understand what sort of a woman Marcella Maxwell was. In his trouble of +mind a confused plan crossed his thoughts of trying to induce Lady +Maxwell to make friends with Letty. But a touch of that charm, that +poetry!--he asked no more. + +He glanced at his wife. She looked pretty and young as she sat beside +him, lost in a pleasant pondering of social successes. But he wondered, +uncomfortably, why she must use such a thickness of powder on her still +unspoilt complexion; and her dress seemed to him fantastic, and not +over-modest. He had begun to have the strangest feeling about their +relation, as though he possessed a double personality, and were looking +on at himself and her, wondering how it would end. It was characteristic, +perhaps, of his half-developed moral life that his sense of ordinary +husbandly responsibility towards her was not strong. He always thought of +her as he thought of himself--as a perfectly free agent, dealing with him +and their common life on equal terms. + +The house to which they were going belonged to very wealthy people, and +Letty was looking forward feverishly to the cotillon. + +"They say, at the last dance they gave, the cotillon gifts cost eight +hundred pounds," she said gleefully, to George. "They always do things +extraordinarily well." + +No doubt it was the prospect of the cotillon that had brought such a +throng together. The night was stifling; the stairs and the supper-room +were filled with a struggling mob; and George spent an hour of purgatory +wondering at the gaieties of his class. + +He had barely more than two glimpses of Letty after they had fought their +way into the room. On the first occasion, by stretching himself to his +full height so as to look over the intervening crowd, he saw her seated +in a chair of state, a mirror in one hand and a lace handkerchief in the +other. Young men were being brought up behind her to look into the glass +over her shoulder, and she was merrily brushing their images away. +Presently a tall, dark fellow advanced, with jet-black moustache and red +cheeks. Letty kept her handkerchief suspended a moment over the +reflection in the glass. George could see the corners of her lips +twitching with amusement. Then she quietly handed the mirror to the +leader of the cotillon, rose, gathered up her white skirt a little, the +music struck up joyously, and she and Lord Cathedine spun round the room +together, followed by the rest of the dancers. + +George meanwhile found few people to talk to. He danced a few dances, +mostly with young girls in the white frocks of their first season--a +species of partner for which, as a rule, he had no affinity at all. But +on the whole he passed the time leaning against the wall in a corner, +lost in a reverie which was a vague compound of this and that, there and +here; of the Manx Road schoolroom, its odours and heats, its pale, +uncleanly crowd absorbed in the things of daily bread, with these gay, +scented rooms, and this extravagance of decoration, that made even +flowers a vulgarity, with these costly cotillon gifts--pins, bracelets, +rings--that were being handed round and wondered over by people who had +already more of such things than they could wear; of these rustling +women, in their silks and diamonds, with that gaunt stooping image of the +loafer's wife, smiling her queer defiance at pain and fate, and letting +meddling "lidies" know that without sixteen hours' "settin" she could not +keep her husband and children alive. Stale commonplace, that all the +world knows by heart!--the squalor of the _pauperum tabernae_ dimming the +glory of the _regum turres_. Yet there are only a few men and women in +each generation who really pass into the eclipsing shadow of it. Others +talk--_they_ feel and struggle. There were many elements in Tressady's +nature that might seem destined to force him into their company. Yet +hitherto he had resolutely escaped his destiny--and enjoyed his life. + +About supper-time he found himself near Lady Cathedine, a thin-faced, +silent creature, whose eyes suddenly attracted him. He took her down to +supper, and spent an exceedingly dull time. She had the air of one pining +to talk, to confide herself. Yet in practice it was apparently impossible +for her to do it. She fell back into monosyllables or gentle banalities; +and George noticed that she was always restlessly conscious of the +movements in the room--who came in, who went out--and throwing little +frightened glances towards the door. + +He was glad indeed when his task was over. On their way to the +drawing-rooms they passed a broad landing, which on one side led out to a +balcony, and had been made into a decorated bower for sitting-out. At +the farther end he saw Letty sitting beside Harding Watton. Letty was +looking straight before her, with a flushed and rather frowning face. +Harding was talking to her, and, to judge from his laughing manner, was +amusing himself, if not her. + +George duly found Lady Cathedine a seat, and returned himself to ask +Letty whether it was not time to go. He found, however, that she had been +carried off by another partner, and could only resign himself to a fresh +twenty minutes of boredom. He leant, yawning, against the wall, feeling +the evening interminable. + +Then a Harrow and Oxford acquaintance came up to him, and they chatted +for a time behind a stand of flowers that stood between them and one of +the doorways to the ballroom. At the end of the dance George saw Lady +Cathedine hurrying up to this door with the quick, furtive step that was +characteristic of her. She passed on the other side of the flowers, and +George heard her say to someone just inside the room: + +"Robert, the carriage has come!" + +A pause; then a thick voice said, in an emphatic undertone: + +"Damn the carriage!--go away!" + +"But, Robert, you know we _promised_ to look in at Lady Tuam's on the +way home." + +The thick voice dropped a note lower. + +"Damn Lady Tuam! I shall come when it suits me." + +Lady Cathedine fell back, and George saw her cross the landing, and drop +into a chair beside an old general, who was snoozing in a peaceful corner +till his daughters should see fit to take him home. The old general took +no notice of her, and she sat there, playing with her fan, her rather +prominent grey eyes staring out of her white face. + +Both George and his friend, as it happened, had heard the conversation. +The friend raised his eyebrows in disgust. + +"What a brute that fellow is! They have been married four months. +However, she was amply warned." + +"Who was she?" + +"The daughter of old Wickens, the banker. He married her for her money, +and lives upon it religiously. By now, I should think, he has dragged her +through every torture that marriage admits of." + +"So soon?" said George, drily. + +"Well," said the friend, laughing, "no doubt it admits of a great many." + +"I am ready to go home," said a voice at Tressady's elbow. + +Something in the intonation surprised him, and he turned quickly. + +"By all means," he said, throwing an astonished look at his wife, who had +come up to him on Lord Cathedine's arm. "I will go and look for the +carriage." + +What was the matter, he asked himself as he ran downstairs--what was the +meaning of Letty's manner and expression? + +But by the time he had sent for the carriage the answer had suggested +itself. No doubt Harding Watton had given Letty news of that hansom in +Pall Mall, and no doubt, also--He shrugged his shoulders in annoyance. +The notion of having to explain and excuse himself was particularly +unpalatable. What a fool he had been not to tell Letty of his East End +adventure on their way to Queen's Gate. + +He was standing in a little crowd at the foot of the stairs when Letty +swept past him in search of her wraps. He smiled at her, but she held her +head erect as though she did not see him. + +So there was to be a scene. George felt the rise of a certain inner +excitement. Perhaps it was as well. There were a good many things he +wanted to say. + +At the same time, the Cathedine episode had filled him with a new disgust +for the violences and brutalities to which the very intimacy of the +marriage relation may lead. If a scene there was to be, he meant to be +more or less frank, and at the same time to keep both himself and her +within bounds. + + * * * * * + +"You can't deny that you made a secret of it from me," cried Letty, +angrily. "I asked you what had been doing in the House, and you never let +me suspect that you had been anywhere else the whole evening." + +"I daresay," said George, quietly. "But I never meant to make any +mystery. Something you said about Lady Maxwell put me off telling +you--then. I thought I would wait till we got home." + +They were in George's study--the usual back-room on the ground-floor, +which George could not find time to make comfortable, while Letty had +never turned her attention to it. Tressady was leaning against the +mantelpiece. He had turned up a solitary electric light, and in the cold +glare of it Letty was sitting opposite to him, angrily upright. The ugly +light had effaced the half-tones of the face and deepened the lines of +it, while it had taken all the grace from her extravagant dress and +tumbled flowers. She seemed to have lost her prettiness. + +"Something I said about Lady Maxwell?" she repeated scornfully. "Why +shouldn't I say what I like about Lady Maxwell? What does she matter +either to you or to me that I should not laugh at her if I please? +Everybody laughs at her." + +"I don't think so," said Tressady, quietly. "I have seen her to-night in +a curious and touching scene--in a meeting of very poor people. She tried +to make a speech, by the way, and spoke badly. She did not carry the +meeting with her, and towards the end it got noisy. As we came out she +was struck with a stone, and I got a hansom for her, and drove her home +to St. James's Square. We were just turning into the Square when Harding +saw us. I happened to be with her in the crowd when the stone hit her. +What do you suppose I could do but bring her home?" + +"Why did you go? and why didn't you tell me at once?" + +"Why did I go?" Tressady hesitated, then looked down upon his wife. +"Well!--I suppose I went because Lady Maxwell is very interesting to +watch--because she is sympathetic and generous, and it stirs one's mind +to talk to her." + +"Not at all!" cried Letty, passionately. "You went because she is +handsome--because she is just a superior kind of flirt. She is always +making women anxious about their husbands under this pretence of +politics. Heaps of women hate her, and are afraid of her." + +She was very white, and could hardly save herself from the tears of +excitement. Yet what was working in her was not so much Harding Watton's +story as this new and strange manner of her husband's. She had sat +haughtily silent in the carriage on their way home, fully expecting him +to question her--to explain, entreat, excuse himself, as he had generally +been ready to do whenever she chose to make a quarrel. But he, too, said +nothing, and she could not make up her mind how to begin. Then, as soon +as they were shut into his room her anger had broken out, and he had not +yet begun to caress and appease her. Her surprise had brought with it a +kind of shock. What was the matter? Why was she not mistress as usual? + +As she made her remark about Marcella, Tressady smiled a little, and +played with a cigarette he had taken up. + +"Whom do you mean?" he asked her. "One often hears these things said of +her in the vague, and never with any details. I myself don't believe it. +Harding, of course, believes anything to her disadvantage." + +Letty hesitated; then, remembering all she could of Harding's ill-natured +gossip, she flung out some names, exaggerating and inventing freely. The +emphasis with which she spoke reddened all the small face again--made it +hot and common. + +Tressady raised his shoulders as she came to the end of her tirade. + +"Well, you know I don't believe all that--and I don't think Harding +believes it. Lady Maxwell, as you once said yourself, is not, I suppose, +a woman's woman. She gets on better, no doubt, with men than with women. +These men you speak of are all personal and party friends. They support +Maxwell, and they like her. But if anybody is jealous, I should think +they might remember that there is safety in numbers." + +"Oh, that's all very well! But she wants _power_, and she doesn't care a +rap how she gets it. She is a dangerous, intriguing woman--and she just +trades upon her beauty!" + +Tressady, who had been leaning with his face averted from her, turned +round with sparkling eyes. + +"You foolish child!" he said slowly--"you foolish child!" + +Her lips twitched. She put out a shaking hand to her cloak, that had +fallen from her arms. + +"Oh! very well. I sha'n't stay here to be talked to like that, so +good-night." + +He took no notice. He walked up to her and put his hands on her +shoulders. + +"Don't you know what it is"--he spoke with a curious imperiousness--"that +protects any woman--or any man either for the matter of that--from +Marcella Maxwell's beauty? Don't you know that she adores her husband?" + +"That's a pose, of course, like everything else," cried Letty, trying to +move herself away; "you once said it was." + +"Before I knew her. It's not a pose--it's the secret of her whole life." + +He walked back to the mantelpiece, conscious of a sudden rise of inward +bitterness. + +"Well, I shall go to bed," said Letty, again half rising. "You might, I +think, have had the kindness and the good taste to say you were sorry I +should have the humiliation of finding out where my husband spends his +evenings, from Harding Watton!" + +Tressady was stung. + +"When have I ever concealed what I did from you?" he asked her hotly. + +Letty, who was standing stiff and scornful, tossed her head +without speaking. + +"That means," said Tressady after a pause, "that you don't take my word +for it--that you suspect me of deceiving you before to-night?" + +Letty still said nothing. His eyes flashed. Then a pang of conscience +smote him. He took up his cigarette again with a laugh. + +"I think we are both a pair of babies," he said, as he pretended to look +for matches. "You know very well that you don't really think I tell you +mean lies. And let me assure you, my dear child, that fate did not mean +Lady Maxwell to have lovers--and that she never will have them. But when +that's said there's something else to say." + +He went up to her again, and touched her arm. + +"You and I couldn't have this kind of scene, Letty, could we, if +everything was all right?" + +Her breast rose and fell hurriedly. + +"Oh! I supposed you would want to retaliate--to complain on your side!" + +"Yes," he said deliberately, "I think I do want to complain. Why is it +that--I began to like going down to see Lady Maxwell--why did I like +talking to her at Castle Luton? Well! of course it's pleasant to be with +a beautiful person--I don't deny that in the least. But she might have +been as beautiful as an angel, and I mightn't have cared twopence about +her. She has something much less common than beauty. It's very simple, +too--I suppose it's only _sympathy_--just that. Everybody feels the same. +When you talk to her she seems to care about it; she throws her mind into +yours. And there's a charm about it--there's no doubt of that." + +He had begun his little speech meaning to be perfectly frank and +honest--to appeal to her better nature and his own. But something +stopped him abruptly, perhaps the sudden perception that he was after +playing the hypocrite--perhaps the consciousness that he was only making +matters worse. + +"It's a pity you didn't say all these things before," she said, with +a hard laugh, "instead of denouncing the political woman, as you +used to do." + +He sat down on the arm of the chair beside her, balancing lightly, with +his hands in his pockets. + +"Did I denounce the political woman? Well, the Lord knows I'm not in love +with her now! It isn't politics, my dear, that are attaching--it's the +kind of human being. Ah! well, don't let's talk of it. Let's go back to +that point of sympathy. There's more in it than I used to think. Suppose, +for instance, you were to try and take a little more interest in my +political work than you do? Suppose you were to try and see money matters +from my point of view, instead of driving us"--he paused a moment, then +went on coolly, lifting his thin, long-chinned face to her as she stood +quivering beside him--"driving us into expenses that will, sooner or +later, be the ruin of us--that rob us, too, of self-respect. Suppose you +were to take a little more account, also, of my taste in people? I am +afraid I don't like Harding, though he is your cousin, and I don't +certainly see why he should furnish our drawing-rooms and empty our purse +for us as he has been doing. Then, as to Lord Cathedine, I'm really not +over-particular, but when I hear that fellow's in the house, my impulse +is to catch the nearest hansom and drive away from it. I heard him speak +to his wife to-night in a way for which he ought to be kicked down Oxford +Street--and, in general, I should say that it takes the shine off a +person to be much seen with Cathedine." + +The calm attitude--the voice, just a shade interrogative, exasperated +Letty still more. She, too, sat down, her cheeks flaming. + +"I am _extremely_ obliged to you! You really couldn't have been more +frank. I am sorry that _nothing_ I do pleases you. You must be quite +sorry by now you married me--but really I didn't force you! Why should I +give up my friends? You know very well you won't give up Lady Maxwell." + +She looked at him keenly, her little foot beating the ground. +George started. + +"But what is there to give up?" he cried. "Come and see her +yourself--come with me, and make friends with her. You would be +quite welcome." + +But as he spoke he knew that he was talking absurdly, and that Letty had +reason for her laugh. + +"Thank you! Lady Maxwell made it _quite_ plain to me at Castle Luton that +she didn't want _my_ acquaintance. I certainly sha'n't force myself upon +her any more. But if you'll give up going to see her--well, perhaps I'll +see what can be done to meet your wishes; though, of course, I think all +you say about Harding and Lord Cathedine is just unreasonable prejudice!" + +George was silent. His mind was torn between the pricks of a conscience +that told him Letty had in truth, as far as he was concerned, a far more +real grievance than she imagined, and a passionate intellectual contempt +for the person who could even distantly imagine that Marcella Maxwell +belonged to the same category as other women, and was to be won by the +same arts as they. At last he broke out impatiently: + +"I cannot possibly show discourtesy to one who has been nothing but +kindness to me, as she is to scores of others--to old friends like Edward +Watton, or new ones like--" + +"She wants your vote, of course!" threw in Letty, with an excited laugh. +"_Either_ she is a flirt--_or_ she wants your vote. Why should she take +so much notice of you? She isn't your side--she wants to get hold of +you--and it makes you ridiculous. People just laugh at you and her!" She +turned upon him passionately. A little more, and the wish to say the +wounding, venomous thing would have grown like a madness upon her. But +George kept his self-possession. + +"Well, they may laugh," he said, with a strong effort to speak +good-humouredly. "But politics aren't managed like that, as you and they +will find out. Votes are not so simple as they sound." + +He got up and walked away from her as he spoke. As usual, his mood was +beginning to cool. He saw no way out. They must both accept the _status +quo_. No radical change was possible. It is character that makes +circumstance, and character is inexorable. + +"Well, of course I didn't altogether believe that you would really be +such a fool, and wreck all your prospects!" said Letty, violently, her +feverish eyes intent the while on her husband and on the thin fingers +once more busied with the cigarette. "There now! I think we have had +enough of this! It doesn't seem to have led to much, does it?" + +"No," said George, coolly; "but perhaps we shall come to see more alike +in time. I don't want to tyrannise--only to show you what I think. Shall +I carry up your cloak for you?" + +He approached her punctiliously. Letty gathered her wraps upon her arm in +a disdainful silence, warding him off with a gesture. As he opened the +door for her she turned upon him: + +"You talk of my extravagance, but you never seem to consider what you +might do to make up to me for the burden of being your mother's relation! +You expect me to put up with the annoyance and ridicule of belonging to +her--and to let her spend all your money besides. I give you fair warning +that I sha'n't do it! I shall try and spend it on my side, that she +sha'n't get it." + +She was perfectly conscious that she was behaving like a vixenish child, +but she could not restrain herself. This strange new sense that she could +neither bend nor conquer him was becoming more than she could bear. + +George looked at her, half inclined to shake her first, and then insist +on making friends. He was conscious that he could probably assert himself +with success if he tried. But the impulse failed him. He merely said, +without any apparent temper, "Then I shall have to see if I can invent +some way of protecting both myself and you." + +She flung through the door, and almost ran through the long passage to +the stairs, in a sobbing excitement. A sudden thought struck George as he +stood looking after her. He pursued her, caught her at the foot of the +stairs, and held her arm strongly. + +"Letty! I wasn't to tell you, but I choose to break my promise. Don't be +too cruel, my dear, or too angry. My mother is dying!" + +She scanned him deliberately, the flushed face--the signs of strongly +felt yet strongly suppressed emotion. The momentary consciousness flew +through her that he was at bottom a very human, impressionable +creature--that if she could but have broken down and thrown herself on +his neck, this miserable evening might open for both of them a new way. +But her white-heat of passion was too strong. She pushed him away. + +"She made you believe that this morning? Then I'd better hurry up at +Ferth; for of course it only means that there will be a fresh list of +debts directly!" + +He let her go, and she heard him walk quickly back to his study and +shut the door. She stared after him triumphantly for a moment, then +rushed upstairs. + +In her room her maid was waiting for her. Grier's sallow face and gloomy +eyes showed considerable annoyance at being kept up so late. But she said +nothing, and Letty, who in general was only too ready to admit the woman +to a vulgar familiarity, for once held her tongue. Her state of +excitement and exhaustion, however, was evident, and Grier bestowed many +furtive, examining glances upon her mistress in the course of the +undressing. She thought she had heard "them" quarrelling on the stairs. +What a pity she had been too tired and cross to listen! + +Of course they must come to quarrelling! Grier's sympathies were +tolerably impartial. She had no affection for her mistress, and she +cordially disliked Sir George, knowing perfectly well that he thought ill +of her. But she had a good place, and meant to keep it if she could. To +which end she had done her best to strengthen a mean hold on Letty. Now, +as she was brushing out Letty's brown hair, and silently putting two and +two together the while, an idea occurred to her which pleased her. + +After Grier had left her, Letty could not make up her mind to go to bed. +She was still pacing up and down the room in her dressing-gown, when she +heard a knock--Grier's knock. + +"Come in!" + +"Please, my lady," said Grier, appearing with something in her hand, +"doesn't this belong to your photograph box? I found it on the floor in +Sir George's dressing-room this morning." + +Letty hastily took it from her, and, in spite of an instant effort to +control herself, the red flushed again into a cheek that had been very +pale when Grier came in. + +"Where did you find it?" + +"It had tumbled off Sir George's table, I think," said Grier, with +elaborate innocence; "someone must have took it out of your photo-box." + +"Thank you," said Letty, shortly. "You may go, Grier." + +The maid went, and Letty was left standing with the photograph in +her hands. + +Two days before Tressady had been in Edward Watton's room in St. +James's Street, and had seen this amateur photograph of Marcella +Maxwell and her boy on Watton's table. The poetic charm of it had +struck him so forcibly that he had calmly put it in his pocket, telling +the protesting owner that he in his _rôle_ of great friend could easily +procure another, and must beware of a grudging spirit. Watton had +laughed and submitted, and Tressady had carried off the picture, +honestly meaning to present it to Letty for a collection of +contemporary "beauties" she had just begun to make. + +Later in the day, as he was taking off his coat in the evening to dress +for dinner, Tressady drew out the photograph. A sudden instinct, which he +himself could hardly have explained, made him delay handing it over to +Letty. He thrust it into the top tray of his collar-and-shirt wardrobe. +Two days later the butler, coming in a hurry before breakfast to put out +his master's clothes, shook the photograph out of the folds of the shirt, +where it had hidden itself, without noticing what he had done. The +picture slipped between the wardrobe and the wall of the recess in which +it stood, was discovered later in the day by the housemaid, and given to +Lady Tressady's maid. + +Letty laid the photograph down on the dressing-table, and stood leaning +upon her hands, looking at it. Marcella was sitting under one of the +cedars of Maxwell Court with her boy beside her. A fine corner of the old +house made a background, and the photographer had so dealt with his +picture as to make it a whole, full of significance, and culminating in +the two faces--the sensitive, speaking beauty of the mother, the sturdy +strength of the child. Marcella had never looked more wistful, more +attaching. It was the expression of a woman at rest, in the golden moment +of her life, yet conscious--as all happiness is conscious--of the common +human doom that nothing escapes. Meanwhile the fine, lightly furrowed +brow above the eyes spoke action and power; so did the strong waves of +black hair blown back by the breeze. A noble, strenuous creature, yet +quivering through and through with the simplest, most human instincts. So +one must needs read her, as one looked from the eyes to the eager clasp +of the arm about the boy. + +Letty studied it, as though she would pierce and stab it with looking. +Then, with a sudden wild movement, she took up the picture, and tore it +into twenty pieces. The pieces she left strewn on the floor, so that they +must necessarily strike the eye of anyone coming into the room. And in a +few more minutes she was in bed, lying still and wakeful, with her face +turned away from the door. + +About an hour afterwards there was a gentle knock at her door. She made +no answer, and Tressady came in. He stepped softly, thinking she was +asleep, and presently she heard him stop, with a stifled exclamation. She +made no sound, but from his movement she guessed that he was picking up +the litter on the floor. Then she heard it thrown into the basket under +her writing-table, and she waited, holding her breath. + +Tressady walked to a far window, drew a curtain back softly, and stood +looking out at the starlight over the deserted street. Once, finding him +so still, she ventured a hasty glance at him over the edge of the sheet. +But she could see nothing. And after a time he turned and came to his +accustomed place beside her. In twenty minutes at latest, she knew, much +to her chagrin, that he was asleep. + +She herself had no sleep. She was stung to wakefulness by that recurrent +sense of the irrevocable which makes us say to ourselves in wonder, "How +can it have happened? Two hours ago--such a little while--it had not +happened!" And the mind clutches at the bygone hour, so near, so +eternally distant--clutches at its ghost, in vain. + +Yet it seemed to her now that she had been jealous from the first moment +when she and George had come into contact with Marcella Maxwell. During +the long hours of this night her jealousy burnt through her like a hot +pain--jealousy, mixed with reluctant memory. Half consciously she had +always assumed that it had been a piece of kindness on her part to marry +George Tressady at all. She had almost condescended to him. After all, +she had played with ambitions so much higher! At any rate, she had taken +for granted that he would always admire and be grateful to her--that in +return for her pretty self she might at least dispose of him and his as +she pleased. + +And now, what galled her intolerably was this discernment of the way in +which--at least since their honeymoon--he must have been criticising +and judging her--judging her by comparison with another woman. She +seemed to see at a glance, the whole process of his mind, and her +vanity writhed under it. + +How much else than vanity? As she turned restlessly from side to side, +possessed by plans for punishing George, for humiliating Lady Maxwell, +and avenging herself, she said to herself that she did not care,--that it +was not worth caring about,--that she would either bring George to his +senses, or manage to amuse herself without him. + +But in reality she was held tortured and struggling all the time in the +first grip of that masterful hold wherewith the potter lifts his clay +when he lays it on the eternal whirring of the wheel. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +The newspapers of the morning following these events--that is to say, +of Saturday, July 5--gave very lively accounts of the East End meeting, +at which, as some put it, Lady Maxwell "had got her answer" from the +East End mob. The stone-throwing, the blow, the woman, and the cause +were widely discussed that same day throughout the clubs and +drawing-rooms of Mayfair and Belgravia, no less than among the clubs and +"publics" of the East End; and the guests at country-house parties as +they hurried out of town for the Sunday, carried the gossip of the +matter far and wide. The Maxwells went down alone to Brookshire, and the +curious visitors who called in St. James's Square "to inquire" came away +with nothing to report. + +"A put-up thing, the whole business," said Mrs. Watton, indignantly, to +her son Harding, as she handed him the "Observer," on the Sunday morning, +in the dining-room of the family house in Tilney Street. "Of course, a +little martyrdom just now suits her book excellently. How that man _can_ +let her make him a laughing-stock in this way--" + +"A laughing-stock?" said Harding, smiling. "Not at all. Don't spoil your +first remark, mother. For, of course, it is all practical politics. The +handsomest woman in England doesn't give her temple to be gashed for +nothing. You will see what her friends will make out of it!--and out of +the brutal violence of our mob." + +"Disgusting!" said Mrs. Watton, playing severely with the lid of the +mustard-pot that stood beside her. + +She and Harding were enjoying a late breakfast _tête-à-tête._ The old +Squire had finished long before, and was already doing his duty with a +volume of sermons in the library upstairs, preparatory to going to +church. Mrs. Watton and Harding, however, would accompany him thither +presently; for Harding was a great supporter of the Establishment. + +The son raised his shoulders at his mother's adjective. + +"What I want to know," he said, "is whether Lady Maxwell is going to bag +George Tressady, or not. He brought her home from the meeting on Friday." + +"Brought her home from the meeting?--_George Tressady?_" + +Mrs. Watton raised her masculine head and frowned at her son, as though +he were, in some sense, personally responsible for this unseemly fact. + +"He has been haunting her in the East End for weeks. I got that out of +Edward. But, of course, one knew that was going to happen as soon as +one saw them together at Castle Luton. She throws her flies cleverly, +that woman!" + +"All I can say is," observed Mrs. Watton, ponderously, "that in any +decent state of society such a woman would be banned!" + +Harding rose, and stood by the open window caressing his moustache. It +was a perception of long standing with him, that life would have been +better worth living had his mother possessed a sense of humour. + +"It seems to me," his mother resumed after a pause, "that someone at +least should give Letty a hint." + +"Oh! Letty can take care of herself," said Watton, laughing. He might +have said, if he had thought it worth while, that somebody had already +given Letty a hint. Tressady, it appeared, disliked him. Well, people +that disliked you were fair game. However, in spite of Tressady's +dislike, he had been able to amuse himself a good deal with Letty and +Letty's furnishing during the last few months. Harding, who prided +himself on the finest of tastes, liked to be consulted; he liked +anything, also, that gave him importance, if it were only with the master +of a curiosity shop, and, under cover of Letty's large dealings, he had +carried off various spoils of his own for his rooms in the Temple--spoils +which were not to be despised--at a very moderate price indeed. + +"Who could have thought George Tressady would turn out such a weak +creature," said his mother, rising, "when one remembers how Lord Fontenoy +believed in him?" + +"And does still believe in him, more or less," said Harding; "but +Fontenoy will have to be warned." + +He looked at the clock, to see if there was time for a cigarette before +church, lit it, and, leaning against the window, gazed towards the hazy +park with a meditative air. + +"Do you mean there is any question of his ratting?" said his mother. + +Harding raised his eyebrows. + +"Well, no--hardly anything so gross as that. But you can see all the +spirit has gone out of him. He does no work for us. The party gets +nothing out of him." + +Harding spoke as if he had the party in his pocket. His mother looked at +him with a severely concealed admiration. There were few limits to her +belief in Harding. But it was not her habit to flatter her sons. + +"What makes one so mad," she said, as she sailed towards the door in a +stiff rustle of Sunday brocade, "is the way in which the people who +admire her talk of her. When one thinks that all this 'slumming,' and all +this stuff about the poor, only means keeping her husband in office and +surrounding herself with a court of young men, it turns one sick!" + +"My dear mother, we keep all our little hypocrisies," said Harding, +indulgently. "Don't forget that Lady Maxwell provides me with a deal of +good copy." + +And after his mother had left him he smoked on, thinking with pleasure of +an article of his on "The Woman of the Slums," packed with allusions to +Marcella Maxwell, which was to appear in the next number of the +"Haymarket Reporter," the paper that he and Fontenoy were now running. +Harding was not the editor. He disliked drudgery and office-hours; and +his father was good for enough to live upon. But he was a powerful +adviser in the conduct of the new journal, and wrote, perhaps, the +smartest articles. + +The paper, indeed, was written by the smartest people conceivable, and +had achieved the smartest combinations. "Liberty" was its catchword; but +the employer must be absolute. To care or think about religion was +absurd; but whoso threw a stone at the Established Church, let him die +the death. Christianity must be steadily, even ferociously supported; in +the policing of an unruly world it was indispensable. But the perennial +butt of the paper was the fool who "went about doing good." The young men +who lived in "settlements," for instance, and gave University Extension +Lectures--the paper pursued all such with a hungry malice, only less +biting than that wherewith day by day it attacked Lord Maxwell, the arch +offender of all the philanthropic tribe. To help a man who had toiled his +ten or twelve hours in the workshop or the mine to read Homer or Dante in +the evening,--well! in the language of Hedda Gabler "people don't do +these things,"--not people with any sense of the humorous or the seemly. +Harding and his crew had required a good deal of help in their time +towards the reading of those authors; that, however, was only their due, +and in the order of the universe. The same universe had sent the miner +below to dig coals for his betters, while Harding Watton went to college. + +But the last and worst demerit in the eyes of Harding and his set was +that old primitive offence that Cain already found so hard to bear. Half +the violence which the new paper had been lavishing on Maxwell--apart +from passionate conviction of the Fontenoy type, which also spoke through +it--sprang from this source. Maxwell, in spite of his obvious drawbacks, +threatened to succeed, to be accepted, to take a large place in English +political life. And his wife, too, reigned, and had her way without the +help of clever young men who write. There was the sting. Harding at any +rate found it intolerable. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile, in spite of newspapers to right of it and newspapers to left +of it, the political coach clattered on. + +The following day--Monday--was a day of early arrivals, packed benches, +and much excitement in the House of Commons; for the division on the +second reading was to be taken after the Home Secretary's reply on the +debate. Dowson was expected to get up about ten o'clock, and it was +thought that the division would be over by eleven. + +On this afternoon and evening Fontenoy was ubiquitous. At least so it +seemed to Tressady. Whenever one put one's head into the Smoking-room or +the Library, whenever one passed through the Lobby, or rushed on to the +Terrace for ten minutes' fresh air, Fontenoy's great brow and rugged face +were always to be seen, and always in fresh company. + +The heterogeneous character of the Opposition with which the Government +was confronted, the conflicting groups and interests into which it was +split up, offered large scope for the intriguing, contriving genius of +the man. And he was spending it lavishly. The small eyes were more +invisible, the circles round them more saucer-like than ever. + +Meanwhile George Tressady had never been so keenly conscious as on +this critical afternoon that his party had begun to drop him out of +its reckonings. Consultations that would once have included him as a +matter of course were going on without him. During the whole of this +busy day Fontenoy even had hardly spoken to him; the battle was +leaving him on one side. + +Well, what room for bitterness?--though, with the unreason that no man +escapes, he was not without bitterness. He had disappointed them as a +debater--and, in other ways, what had he done for them since Whitsuntide? +No doubt also the mention of his name in the reports of the Mile End +meeting had not been without its effect. He believed that Fontenoy's +personal regard for him still held. Otherwise, he was beginning to feel +himself placed in a tacit isolation. + +What wonder, good Lord! During the dinner-hour he found himself in a +corner of the library, dreaming over a biography of Lord Melbourne. Poor +Melbourne! in those last tragic years of waiting and pining, every day +expecting the proffer of office that never came and the familiar +recognition that would be his no more. But Melbourne was old, and had +had his day. + +"I wanted to speak to you," said a hoarse voice, over his shoulder. + +"Say on, and sit down," said George, smiling, and pushing forward a chair +beside him. "I should think you'll want a week's sleep after this." + +"Have you got some time to spare this week," said Fontenoy, abruptly, as +he sat down. + +George hesitated. + +"Well, no. I ought to go down to the country immediately, and see after +my own affairs and the strike, before Committee begins. There is a +meeting of coal-owners on Wednesday." + +"What I want wouldn't take long," said Fontenoy, persistently, after a +pause. "I hear you have been going round workshops lately?" + +His keen, peremptory eyes fixed his companion. + +"I had a round or two with Everard," said George. "We saw a fair +representative lot." + +The thought that flashed through Fontenoy's mind was, "Why the deuce +didn't you speak of it to me?" Aloud, he said with impatience: + +"Representing what Everard chose to show, I should think. However, what I +want is this. You know the series of extracts from reports that has been +going on lately in the 'Chronicle.'" + +George nodded. + +"We want something done to correct the impression that has been made. You +and I know perfectly well that the vast majority of workshops work +factory-hours and an average of four and a half days a week. You have +just had personal experience, and you can write. Will you do three or +four signed articles for the 'Reporter' this week or next? Of course the +office will give you every help." + +George considered. + +"I think not," he said presently, looking up. "I shouldn't do it well. +Perhaps I have become too conscious of the exceptions--the worst cases. +Frankly, the whole thing has become more of a problem to me than it was." + +Fontenoy moved, and grunted uneasily. + +"Does that mean," he said at last, in his harshest manner, "that you +will feel any difficulty in--?" + +"In voting? No. I shall vote right enough. I am all for delay. This +particular Bill doesn't convince me any more than it did. But I don't +want to take a strong public part just at present." + +The two men eyed each other in silence. + +"I thought there was something brewing," said Fontenoy at last. + +"Well, I'm not sorry to have had these few words," was George's reply, +after a pause. "I wanted to tell you that, though I shall vote, I don't +think I shall speak much more. I don't believe I'm the stuff people in +Parliament ought to be made of. I shall be remorseful presently for +having led you into a mistake!" He forced a smile. + +"I made no mistake," said Fontenoy, grimly, and departed. Then, as he +walked down the corridor, he completed his sentence--"except in not +seeing that you were the kind of man to be made a fool of by women!" + +First of all, a hasty marriage with a silly girl who could be no help to +him or to the cause; now, according to Watton--who had called upon +Fontenoy that morning, at his private house, to discuss various matters +of business--the Lady-Maxwell fever in a pronounced form. Most likely. It +was the best explanation. + +The leader's own sense of annoyance and disappointment was considerable. +There was no man for whom he had felt so much personal liking as for +Tressady since the fight began. + +Somewhere before midnight the division on the second reading was taken, +amid all those accompaniments of crowd, expectation, and commotion, that +are usually evoked by the critical points of a contested measure. The +majority for Government was forty-four--less by twenty-four votes than +its normal figure. + +As the cheers and counter-cheers subsided, George found himself borne +into the Lobby with the crowd pouring out of the House. As he approached +the door leading to the outer lobby, a lady in front of him turned. +George received a lightning impression of beauty, of a kind of anxious +joy, and recognised Marcella Maxwell. + +She held out her hand. + +"Well, the first stage is over!" she said. + +"Yes, and well over," he said, smiling. "But you have shed a great many +men already." + +"Oh! I know--I know. The next few weeks will be intolerable; one will +feel sure of nobody." Then her voice changed--took a certain shyness. "A +good many people from here are coming down to us at Mile End during the +next few weeks--will you come some time, and bring Lady Tressady?" + +"Thank you," said George, rather formally. "It is very kind of you." +Then, in another voice: "And you are really none the worse?" + +His eyes sought the injured temple, and she instinctively put up her +hand to the black wave of hair that had been drawn forward so as to +conceal the mark. + +"Oh no! That boy was not an expert, luckily. How absurd the papers +have been!" + +George shook his head. + +"I don't know what else one could expect," he said, laughing. + +"Not at all!"--the flush mounted in the delicate hollow of the cheek. +"Why should there be any more fuss about a woman's being struck than a +man? We don't want any of this extra pity and talk." + +"Human nature, I am afraid," said George, raising his shoulders. Did she +really suppose that women could mix in the political fight on the same +terms as men--could excite no more emotion there than men? Folly! + +Then Maxwell, who was standing behind her, came forward, greeted Tressady +kindly, and they talked for a few minutes about the evening's debate. The +keen look of the elder scanned the younger's face and manner the while +with some minuteness. As for George, his dialogue with the Minister, at +which more than one passer-by threw looks of interest and amusement, gave +him no particular pleasure. Maxwell's qualities were not of the kind that +specially appealed to him; nor was he likely to attract Maxwell. +Nevertheless, he could have wished their ten minutes' talk to last +interminably, merely because of the excuse it gave him to be near +her!--played upon by her movements and her tones. He talked to Maxwell of +speeches, and votes, and little incidents of the day. And all the time he +knew how she was surrounded; how the crowd that was always gathering +about her came and went; with whom she talked; above all, how that eager, +sensitive charm which she had shown in its fulness to him--perhaps to +him only, beside her husband, of all this throng--played through her +look, her voice, her congratulations, and her dismays. For had he not +seen her in distress and confusion--seen her in tears, wrestling with +herself? His heart caressed the thought like a sacred thing, all the time +that he was conscious of her as the centre of this political throng--the +adored, detested, famous woman, typical in so many ways of changing +custom and of an expanding world. + +Then, in a flash, as it were, the crowd had thinned, the Maxwells had +gone, and George was running down the steps of the members' entrance, +into the rain outside. He seemed to carry with him the scent of a +rose,--the rose she had worn on her breast,--and his mind was tormented +with the question he had already asked himself: "How is it going to end?" + +He pushed on through the wet streets, lost in a hundred miseries and +exaltations. The sensation was that of a man struggling with a rising +tide, carried helplessly in the rush and swirl of it. Yet conscience had +very little to say, and, when it did speak, got little but contempt for +its pains. What had any clumsy code, social or moral, to do with it? When +would Marcella Maxwell, by word or look or thought, betray the man she +loved? Not till + +A' the seas gang dry, my dear, +An the rocks melt wi' the sun! + +How he found his way home he hardly knew; for it was a moment of blind +crisis with him. All that crowded, dramatic scene of the House--its +lights, its faces, its combinations--had vanished from his mind. What +remained was a group of three people, contemplated in a kind of +terror--terror of what this thing might grow to! Once, in St. James's +Street, the late hour, the soft, gusty night, suddenly reminded him of +that other gusty night in February when he had walked home after his +parting with Letty, so well content with himself and the future, and +had spoken to Marcella Maxwell for the first time amid that little +crowd in the Mall. Nothing had been irreparable then. He had his life +in his hands. + +As for this passion, that was creeping into all his veins, poisoning and +crippling all his vitalities, he was still independent enough of it to be +able to handle it with the irony it deserved. For it was almost as +ludicrous as it was pitiable. He did not want any man of the world, any +Harding Watton, to tell him that. + +What amazed him was the revelation of his own nature that was coming out +of it. He had always been rather proud to think of himself as an +easygoing fellow with no particular depths. Other men were proud of a +"storm period"--of feasting and drinking deep--made a pose of it. +Tressady's pose had been the very opposite. Out of a kind of good taste, +he had wished to take life lightly, with no great emotion. And marriage +with Letty had seemed to satisfy this particular canon. + +Now, for the first time, certain veils were drawn aside, and he knew what +this hunger for love, and love's response, can do with a man--could do +with _him_, were it allowed its scope! + +Had Marcella Maxwell been another woman, less innocent, less secure! + +As it was, Tressady no sooner dared to give a sensuous thought to her +beauty than his own passion smote him back--bade him beware lest he +should be no longer fit to speak and talk with her, actually or +spiritually. For in this hopeless dearth of all the ordinary rewards and +encouragements of love he had begun to cultivate a sort of second, or +spiritual, life, in which she reigned. Whenever he was alone he walked +with her, consulted her, watched her dear eyes, and the soul playing +through them. And so long as he could maintain this dream he was +conscious of a sort of dignity, of reconciliation with himself; for the +passions and tragedies of the soul always carry with them this dignity, +as Dante, of all mortals, knew first and best. + +But with the turn into Upper Brook Street, the dream suddenly and +painfully gave way. He saw his own house, and could forget Letty and the +problem of his married life no more. What was he going to do with her and +it? What relation was he going to establish with his wife, through all +these years that stretched so interminably before them? Remorse mingled +with the question. But perhaps impatience, still more--impatience of his +own misery, of this maze of emotion in which he felt himself entangled, +as it were against his will. + +During the three days which had passed since his quarrel with Letty, +their common life had been such a mere confusion of jars and discomforts +that George's hedonist temper was almost at the end of its patience; yet +so far, he thought, he had not done badly in the way of forbearance. +After the first moment of angry disgust, he had said to himself that the +tearing up of the photograph was a jealous freak, which Letty had a right +to if it pleased her. At any rate, he had made no comment whatever upon +it, and had done his best to resume his normal manner with her the next +day. She had been, apparently, only the more enraged; and, although there +had been no open quarrelling since, her cutting, contemptuous little airs +had been very hard to bear. Nor was it possible for George to ignore her +exasperated determination to have her own way in the matter both of +friends and expenses. + +As he took his latch-key out of the lock, and turned up the electric +light, he saw two handsome marqueterie chairs standing in the hall. He +went to look at them in some perplexity. Ah! no doubt they had been sent +as specimens. Letty had grown dissatisfied with the chairs originally +bought for the dining-room. He remembered to have heard her say something +about a costly set at a certain Asher's, that Harding had found. + +He studied them for a few moments, his mouth tightening. Then, instead of +going upstairs, he went into his study, and sat down to his table to +write a letter. + +Yes--he had better go off to Staffordshire by the early train; and this +letter, which he would put upon her writing-desk in the drawing-room, +should explain him to Letty. + +The letter was long and candid, yet by no means without tenderness. "I +have written to Asher," it said, "to direct him to send in the morning +for the chairs I found in the hall. They are too expensive for us, and I +have told him that I will not buy them, I need not say that in writing to +him I have avoided every word that could be annoying to you. If you would +only trust me, and consult me a little about such things,--trifles as +they be,--life just now would be easier than it is." + +Then he passed to a very frank statement of their financial position, and +of his own steady resolve not to allow himself to drift into hopeless +debt. The words were clear and sharp, but not more so than the course of +the preceding six weeks made absolutely necessary. And their very +sharpness led him to much repentant kindness at the end. No doubt she was +disappointed both in him and in his circumstances; and, certainly, +differences had developed between them that they had never foreseen at +the time of their engagement. But to "make a good thing" of living +together was never easy. He asked her not to despair, not to judge him +hardly. He would do his best--let her only give him back her confidence +and affection. + +He closed the letter, and then paced restlessly about the little room for +a time. It seemed to him that he was caught in a vice--that neither +happiness, nor decent daily comfort, nor even the satisfactions of +ambition, were ever to be his. + +Next day he was off to Euston before Letty was properly awake. She found +his letter waiting for her when she descended, and spent the day in a +pale excitement. Yet by the end of it she had pretty well made up her +mind. She would have to give in on the money question. George's figures +and her natural shrewdness convinced her that the ultimate results of +fighting him in this matter could only be more uncomfortable for herself +than for him. But as to her freedom in choosing her own friends, or as +to her jealousy of Lady Maxwell, she would never give in. If George had +ceased to court his wife, then he could have nothing to say if she +looked for the amusement and admiration that were her due from other +people. There was no harm in that. Everybody else did it; and she was +not going to be pretty and young for nothing. Whereupon she sat down and +wrote a line to Lord Cathedine to tell him that she and "Tully" would be +at the Opera on the following night, and to beg him to make sure that +she got her "cards for Clarence House." Moreover, she meant to make use +of him to procure her a card for a very smart ball, the last of the +season, which was coming off in a fortnight. That could be arranged, no +doubt, at the Opera. + + * * * * * + +George returned from the North in a few days looking, if possible, +thinner and more careworn than when he went. He had found the strike a +very stubborn business. Burrows was riding the storm triumphantly; and +while upon his own side Tressady looked in vain for a "man," there was a +dogged determination to win among the masters. George's pugnacity shared +it fully. But he was beginning to ask himself a number of questions about +these labour disputes which, apparently, his co-employers did not ask +themselves. Was it that here, no less than in matters that concerned the +Bill before Parliament, _her_ influence, helped by the power of an +expanding mind, had developed in him that fatal capacity for sympathy, +for the double-seeing of compromise, which takes from a man all the joy +of battle. + +Letty, at any rate, was not troubled by anything of the sort. When he +came back he found that she was ready to be on fairly amicable terms with +him. Moreover, she had postponed the more expensive improvements and +changes she had begun to make at Perth against his will; nor was there +any sign of the various new purchases for the London house with which she +had threatened him. On the other hand, she ceased to consult him about +her own engagements; and she let him know, though without any words on +the subject, that she had entirely broken with his mother--would neither +see her nor receive her. As her attitude on this point involved--or, +apparently, must involve--a refusal to accept her husband's statement +made solemnly under strong emotion, George's pride took it in absolute +silence. No doubt it was her revenge upon him for their crippled +income--and for Lady Maxwell. + +The effect of her behaviour on this point was to increase his own pity +for his mother. He told her frankly that Letty could not get over the +inroads upon their income and the shortening of their resources produced +by the Shapetsky debt, just at a time when they should have been able to +spend, and were already hampered by the state of the coal trade. It would +be better that she and Letty should not meet for a time. He would do his +best to make it up. + +Lady Tressady took his news with a curious equanimity. + +"Well, she always hated me!" she said--"I don't exactly know why--and was +a little jealous of my gowns, too, I think. Don't mind, George. I must +say it out. You know, she doesn't really dress very well--Letty doesn't. +Though, my goodness, the bills! Wait till you see them before you call +_me_ extravagant. You should make her go to that new woman--what do they +call her? She's a _darling_, and such a style! Never mind about Letty; +you needn't bother. I daresay she isn't very nice to _you_ about it. But +if you don't come and see me, I shall cut my throat, and leave a note on +the dressing-table. It would spoil your career dreadfully, so you'd +better take care." + +But, indeed, George came, without any pressing, almost every day. He saw +her in her bursts of gaiety and affectation, when the habits of a +lifetime asserted themselves as strongly as ever; and he saw her in her +moments of pain and collapse, when she could hide the omens of inexorable +physical ill neither from herself nor him. By the doctor's advice, he +ceased to press her to give in, to resign herself to bed and invalidism. +It was best, even physically, to let her struggle on. And he was both +astonished and touched by her pluck. She had never been so repellent to +him as on those many occasions in the past when she had feigned illness +to get her way. Now that Death was really knocking, the half-gay, +half-frightened defiance with which she walked the palace of life, one +moment listening to the sounds at the gate, the next throwing herself +passionately into the revelry within, revealed to the son a new fact +about her--a fact of poetry unutterably welcome. + +Even her fawning dependents, the Fullertons, ceased to annoy him. They +were poor parasites, but she thought for them, and they professed to love +her in return. She had emptied her life of finer things, but this +relation of patron and flatterer, such as it was, did something to fill +the vacancy; and George made no further effort to disturb it. + +It was surprising, indeed, how easily, as the weeks went on, he came +to bear many of those ways of hers which had once set him most on +edge--even her absurd outbursts of affection towards him, and +preposterous praise of him in public. In time he submitted even to +being flown at and kissed before the Fullertons. Amazing into what new +relations that simple perspective of _the end_ will throw all the +stuff of life! + + * * * * * + +In Parliament the weeks rushed by. The first and comparatively +non-contentious sections of the Bill passed with a good deal of talk and +delay. George spoke once or twice, without expecting to speak, +instinctively pleasing Fontenoy where he could. They had now but little +direct intercourse. But George did not feel that his leader had become +his enemy, and was not slow to recognise a magnanimity he had not +foreseen. Yet, after all, he had not offered the worst affront to party +discipline. Fontenoy could still count on his vote. As to the rest of +his party, he saw that he was to be finally reckoned as a "crank," and +let alone. It was not, he found, altogether to be regretted. The position +gave him a new freedom of speech. + +Meanwhile he and Marcella Maxwell rarely met. Week after week passed, and +still Tressady avoided those gatherings at the Mile End house, of which +he heard full accounts from Edward Watton. He once formally asked Letty +if she would go with him to one of Lady Maxwell's East End "evenings," +and she, with equal formality, refused. But he did not take advantage of +her refusal to go himself. Was it fear of his own weakness, or +compunction towards Letty, or the mere dread of being betrayed into +something at once ridiculous and irreparable? + +At the same time, it was surprising how often during these weeks he had +occasion to pass through St. James's Square. Once or twice he saw her go +out or come in, and sometimes was near enough to catch the sudden smile +and look which surely must be the smile and look she gave her friends, +and not to every passing stranger! Once or twice, also, he met her for a +few minutes in the Lobby, or on the Terrace, but always in a crowd. She +never repeated her invitation. He divined that she was, perhaps, vexed +with herself for having seemed to press the point on the night of the +second reading. + + * * * * * + +July drew to an end. The famous "workshop clause" had been debated for +nearly ten days, the whole country, as it were, joining in. One evening +in the last week of the month Naseby and Lady Madeleine were sitting +together in a corner of a vast drawing-room in Carlton House Terrace. +The drawing-room was Mrs. Allison's. She had returned about a fortnight +before from Bad Wildheim, and was now making an effort, for the boy's +sake, to see some society. As she moved about the room in her black silk +and lace she was more gentle, but in a sense more inaccessible, than +ever. She talked with everyone, but her eyes followed her son's auburn +head, with its strange upstanding tufts of hair above the fair, freckled +face; or they watched the door, even when she was most animated. She +looked ill and thin, and the many friends who loved her would have +gladly clung about her and cherished her. But it was not easy to cherish +Mrs. Allison. + +"Do you see how our hostess keeps a watch for Fontenoy?" said Naseby, in +a low voice, to Lady Madeleine. + +Madeleine turned her startled face to him. Nature had given her this +hunted look--the slightly open mouth, the wide eyes of one who +perpetually hears or expects bad news. Naseby did not like it, and had +tried to laugh her out of her scared ways before this. But he had no +sooner laughed at her than he found himself busy--to use Watton's +word--in "stroking" and making it up to her, so tender and clinging was +the girl's whole nature, so golden was her hair, so white her skin! + +"Isn't it the division news she is expecting?" + +"Yes--but don't look so unhappy! She will bear up--even if they are +beaten. And they will be beaten. Fontenoy's hopes have been going down. +The Government will get through this clause at all events--by a shave." + +"What a fuss everybody is making about this Bill!" + +"Well, you don't root up whole industries without a fuss. But, certainly, +Maxwell has roused the country finely." + +"_She_ will break down if it goes on," said Lady Madeleine, in a +melancholy voice. + +Naseby laughed. + +"Not at all! Lady Maxwell was made for war--she thrives on it. Don't you, +too, enjoy it?" + +"I don't know," said the girl, drearily. "I don't know what I was +made for." + +And over her feather fan her wide eyes travelled to the distant ogress +figure of her mother, sitting majestical in black wig and diamonds beside +the Russian Ambassador. Naseby's also travelled thither--unwillingly. It +was a disagreeable fact that Lady Kent had begun to be very amiable to +him of late. + +Lady Madeleine's remark made him silent a moment. Then he looked at +her oddly. + +"I am going to offend you," he said deliberately. "I am going to tell you +that you were made to wear white satin and pearls, and to look as you +look this evening." + +The girl flushed hotly. + +"I knew you despised women," she said, in a strained voice, staring back +at him reproachfully. During her months of distress and humiliation she +had found her only comfort in "movements" and "causes"--in the moral +aspirations generally--so far as her mother would allow her to have +anything to do with them. She had tried, for instance, to work with +Marcella Maxwell--to understand her. + +But Naseby held his ground. + +"Do I despise women because I think they make the grace and poetry of the +world?" he asked her. "And, mind you, I don't draw any lines. Let them be +county councillors and guardians, and inspectors, and queens as much as +they like. I'm very docile. I vote for them. I do as I'm told." + +"Only, you don't think that _I_ can do anything useful!" + +"I don't think you're cut out for a 'platform woman,' if that's what you +mean," he said, laughing--"even Lady Maxwell isn't. And if she was, she +wouldn't count. The women who matter just now--and you women are getting +a terrible amount of influence--more than you've had any time this half +century--are the women who sit at home in their drawing-rooms, wear +beautiful gowns, and attract the men who are governing the country to +come and see them." + +"Lady Maxwell doesn't sit at home and wear beautiful gowns!" + +"I vow she does!" said Naseby, with spirit. "I can vouch for it. I was +caught that way myself. Not that I belong to the men who are governing +the country. And now she has roped me to her chariot for good and all. +Ah, Ancoats! how do you do?" + +He got up to make room for the master of the house as he spoke. But as +he walked away he said to himself, with a kind of delight: "Good! she +didn't turn a hair." + +Lady Madeleine, indeed, received her former suitor with a cool dignity +that might have seemed impossible to anyone so plaintively pretty. He +lingered beside her, twirling his carefully pointed moustache, that +matched the small Richelieu chin, and looking at her with a furtive +closeness from time to time. + +"Well--so you have just come back from Paris?" she said indifferently. + +"Yes; I stayed a day or two after my mother. One didn't want to come back +to this dull hole." + +"Did you see the new piece at the Francais?" + +He made a face. + +"Not I! One couldn't be caught by such _vieux jeu_ as that! There was a +splendid woman in one of the _cafés chantants_--but I suppose you don't +go to _cafés chantants?"_ + +"No," said Madeleine, eyeing him over her fan with a composure that +astonished herself. "No, I don't go to _cafés chantants_." + +Ancoats looked blank a moment, then resumed, with fervour: + +"This woman's divine--_épatant_! Then, at the Chat Noir--but--ah! well, +perhaps you don't go to the Chat Noir?" + +"No, I don't go to the Chat Noir." + +He fidgeted for a minute. She sat silent. Then he said: + +"There are some new French pictures in the next room. Will you come and +see them?" + +"Thank you, I think I'll stay here," she said coldly. + +He lingered another second or two, then departed. The girl drew a long +breath, then instinctively turned her white neck to see if Naseby had +really left her. Strange! he too, from far away, was looking round. In +another moment he was making his way slowly back to her. + + * * * * * + +"Ah, there's Tressady! Now for news." + +The remark was Naseby's. He and Lady Madeleine were, as it happened, +inspecting the very French pictures that the girl had just refused to +look at in Ancoats's company. + +But now they hurried back to the main drawing-room where the Tressadys +were already surrounded by an eager crowd. + +"Eighteen majority," Tressady was saying. "The Socialists saved it at +the last moment, after growling and threatening till nobody knew what +was going to happen. Forty Ministerialists walked out, twenty more, at +least, were away unpaired, and the Old Liberals voted against the +Government to a man." + +"Oh! they'll go--they'll go on the next clause," said an elderly peer, +whose ruddy face glowed with delight. "Serve them right, too! Maxwell's +whole aim is revolution made easy. The most dangerous man we have had for +years! Looks so precious moderate, too, all the time. Tell me how did +Slade vote after all?" + +And Tressady found himself buttonholed by one person after another; +pressed for the events and incidents of the evening: how this person had +voted, how that; how Ministers had taken it; whether, after this Pyrrhic +victory there was any chance of the Bill's withdrawal, or at least of +some radical modification in the coming clauses. Almost everyone in the +crowded room belonged, directly or indirectly, to the governing political +class. Barely three people among them could have given a coherent account +of the Bill itself. But to their fathers and brothers and cousins would +belong the passing or the destroying of it. And in this country there is +no game that amuses so large a number of intelligent people as the +political game. + +"I don't know why he should look so d--d excited over it," said Lord +Cathedine to Naseby in a contemptuous aside, with a motion of the head +towards Tressady, showing pale and tall above the crowd. "He seems to +have voted straight this time, but he's as shaky as he can be. You +never know what that kind of fellow will be up to. Ah, my lady! and +how are you?" + +He made a low bow, and Naseby, turning, saw young Lady Tressady +advancing. + +"Are you, too, talking politics?" said Letty, with affected disgust, +giving her hand to Cathedine and a smile to Naseby. + +"We will now talk of nothing but your scarlet gown," said Cathedine in +her ear. "Amazing!" + +"You like it?" she said, with nonchalant self-possession. "It makes me +look dreadfully wicked, I know." And she threw a complacent glance at a +mirror near, which showed her a gleam of white shoulders in a setting of +flame-coloured tulle. + +"Well, you wouldn't wish to look good," said Cathedine, pulling his +black moustache. "Any fool can do that!" + +"You cynic!" she said, laughing. "Come and talk to me over there. Have +you got me my invitations?" + +Cathedine followed, a disagreeable smile on his full lips, and they +settled themselves in a corner out of the press. Nor were they disturbed +by the sudden hush and parting of the crowd when, five minutes later, +amid a general joyous excitement, Fontenoy walked in. + +Mrs. Allison forgot her usual dignity, and hurried to meet the leader as +he came up to her, with his usual flushed and haggard air. + +"Magnificent!" she said tremulously. "Now you are going to win!" + +He shook his head, and would hardly let himself be congratulated by any +of the admirers, men or women, who pressed to shake hands with him. To +most of them he said, impatiently, that it was no good hallooing till +one was out of the wood, that for his own part he had expected more, and +that the Government might very well rally on the next clause. Then, when +he had effectively chilled the enthusiasm of the room, he drew his +hostess aside. + +"Well, and are you happier?" he said to her in a low voice, his whole +expression changing. + +"Oh, dear friend! don't think of me," she said, putting out a thin hand +to him with a grateful gesture. "Yes, the boy has been very good--he +gives me a great deal of his time. But how can one _know_--how can one +possibly know?" + +Her pale, small face contracted with a look of pain. Fontenoy, too, +frowned as he looked across at Ancoats, who was leaning against the wall +in an affected pose, and quoting bits from a new play to George Tressady. + +After a pause, he said: + +"I think if I were you I should cultivate Tressady. Ancoats likes him. It +might be possible some time for you to work through him." + +The mother assented eagerly, then said, with a smile: + +"But I gather you don't find him much to be depended on in the House?" + +Fontenoy shrugged his shoulders. + +"Lady Maxwell has bedevilled him somehow. You're responsible!" + +"Poor Castle Luton! You must tell me how it and I can make up. But you +don't mean that there is any thought of his going over?" + +"His vote's all safe--I suppose. He would make too great a fool of +himself if he failed us there. But he has lost all heart for the +business. And Harding Watton tells me it's all her doing. She has been +taking him about in the East End--getting her friends to show him round." + +"And _now_ you are in the mood to put the women down--to show them +their place?" + +She looked at him with gentle humour--a very delicate high-bred figure, +in her characteristic black-and-white. Fontenoy's whole aspect changed as +he caught the reference to their own relation. The look of premature old +age, of harsh fatigue, was for the moment effaced by something young and +ardent as he bent towards her. + +"No--I take the rough with the smooth. Lady Maxwell may do her worst. We +have the counter-charm." + +A flush showed itself in her lined cheek. She was fourteen years older +than he, and had refused a dozen times to marry him. But she would have +found it hard to live without his devotion, and she had brought him by +now into such good order that she dared to let him know it. + + * * * * * + +Half an hour later George and Letty mounted another palatial staircase, +and at the top of it Letty put on fresh smiles for a new hostess. George, +tired out with the drama of the day, could hardly stifle his yawns; but +Letty had treated the notion of going home after one party when, they +might, if they pleased, "do" four, with indignant amazement. + +So here they were at the house of one of the greatest of bankers, and +George stalked through the rooms in his wife's train, taking +comparatively little part in the political buzz all about him, and +thinking mostly of a hurried little talk with Mrs. Allison that had taken +up his last few minutes in her drawing-room. Poor thing! But what could +he do for her? The lad was as stage-struck as ever--could barely talk +sense on any other subject, and not much on that. + +But if he, owing to the clash of an inner struggle, was weary of +politics, the world in general could think and speak of nothing else. The +rooms were full of politicians and their wives, of members just arrived +from the House, of Ministers smiling at each other with lifted eyebrows, +like boys escaped from a birching. A tempest of talk surged through the +rooms--talk concerned with all manner of great issues, with the fate of a +Government, the rousing of a country, the fortunes of individual +statesmen. Through it all the little host himself, a small fair-haired +man, with the tired eyes and hot-house air of the financier, walked about +from group to group, gossiping over the incidents of the division, and +now and then taking up some newcomer to be introduced to his pretty and +fashionable wife. + +Somewhere in the din George stumbled across Lady Leven, who was talking +merrily to young Bayle; and found her, notwithstanding, very ready to +turn and chat with him. + +"Of course we are all waiting for the Maxwells," she said to him. "Will +they come, I wonder?" + +"Why not?" + +"Do people show on their way to disaster? I think I should stay at home +if I were she." + +"Why, they have to hearten their friends!" + +"No good," said Betty, pursing her pretty lips; "and they have +fought so hard." + +"And may win yet," said George, an odd sparkle in his eye, as he stood +looking over his tiny companion to the door. "Nobody is sure of anything, +I can tell you." + +"I don't believe _you_ care," she said audaciously, shaking her golden +head at him. + +"Pray, why?" + +"Oh! you don't seem at all desperate," she said coolly. "Perhaps you're +like Frank--you think the other side make so much better points than you +do. 'If Dowson makes another speech,' Frank said to me yesterday, 'I vow +I shall rat!' There's a way of talking of your own chiefs. Oh! I shall +have to take him out of politics." + +And she unfurled her fan with a jerk half melancholy, half decided. +Then, suddenly, a laugh flashed over her face; she raised herself +eagerly on tiptoe. + +"Ah! bravo!" she said. "Here they are!" + +George turned with the crowd, and saw them enter, Marcella first, +in a blaze of diamonds; then the quiet face and square shoulders of +her husband. + +Nothing, he thought, could have been better than the manner in which both +bore themselves as they passed through the throng, answering the +greetings of friend and foe, and followed by the keen or hostile scrutiny +of hundreds. There was no bravado, no attempt to disguise the despondency +that must naturally follow on a division so threatening and in many ways +so wounding. Maxwell looked grey with fatigue and short nights, while her +black eyes passed wistfully from friend to friend, and had never been +more quick, more responsive. Their cause was in danger; nevertheless, the +impression on Tressady's mind was of two people consciously in the grip +of forces infinitely greater than they--forces that would hold on their +path whatever befell their insignificant mortal agents. + +I steadier step when I recall, +Howe'er I slip, thou canst not fall. + +So cries the thinker to his mistress, Truth. And in the temper of that +cry lies the secret of brave living. One looker-on, at least,--and that +an opponent,--recalled the words as he watched Marcella and her husband +taking their way through the London crowd, amid the doubts of their +friends and the half-concealed triumph of their foes. + +It seemed to him that he could have no chance of speech with her. But +presently, from the other side of the room, he saw that she had +recognised and was greeting him, and, do what he would, he must needs +make his way to her. + +She welcomed him with great friendliness, and without a word of small +reproach on the score of the weeks he had let pass without coming to see +her. They fell into talk about the speeches of the evening. George +thought he could see that she, or Maxwell speaking through her, was +dissatisfied with Dowson's conduct of the Bill in the House, and chafing +under the constitutional practice that made it necessary to give him so +large a share in the matter. But she said nothing ungenerous; nor was +there any bitterness towards the many false friends who had deserted them +that night in the division-lobby. She spoke with eager hope of a series +of speeches Maxwell was about to make in the North, and then she turned +upon her companion. + +"You haven't spoken since the second reading--on any of the fighting +points, at least. I have been wondering what you thought of many things." + +George threw his head back against the wall beside her, and was silent a +moment. At last he said, looking down upon her: + +"Perhaps, very often I haven't known what to think." + +She started--reddened ever so little. "Does that mean"--she hesitated for +a phrase--"that you have moved at all on the main question?" + +"No," he said deliberately--"no! I think as I always did, that you are +calling in law to do what law can't do. But perhaps I appreciate better +than I once did what provokes you to it. It seems to me difficult now to +meet the case your side is putting forward by a mere _non possumus_. One +wants to stop the machine a bit and think it out. So much I admit." + +She met his smile with a curious, tremulous look. Instinctively he +guessed that this partial triumph in him of her cause--of Maxwell's +cause--had let flow some inner font of feeling. + +"If you only knew," she said, "how all this Parliamentary rush and +clatter seem to me beside the mark. People talk to me of divisions and +votes. I think all the time of persons I know--of faces of +children--sick-beds, horrible rooms--" + +She had turned her face from the crowd towards the open window, in whose +recess they were standing. As she spoke they both fell back a little into +comparative solitude, and he drew her on to talk--trying in a young eager +way to make her rest in his kindness, to soothe her weariness and +disappointment. And as she spoke, he clutched at the minutes; he threw +more and more sympathy at her feet to keep her talking, to enchain her +there beside him, in her lovely whiteness and grace. And, mingled with it +all, was the happy guess that she liked to linger with him--that amid +all this hard clamour of public talk and judgment she felt him a friend +in a peculiar sense--a friend whose loyalty grew with misfortune. As for +this wild-beast world, that was thwarting and libelling her, he began to +think of it with a blind, up-swelling rage--a desire to fight and win +for her--to put down-- + +"Tressady, your wife sent me to find you. She wishes to go home." + +The voice was Harding Watton's. That observant young man advanced bowing, +and holding out his hand to Lady Maxwell. + +When Marcella had drifted once more into the fast-melting crowd, George +found himself face to face with Letty. She was very white, and stared at +him with wide, passionate eyes. + +And on the way home George, with all his efforts, could not keep the +peace. Letty flung at him a number of bitter and insulting things that he +found very hard to bear. + +"What do you want me to do?" he said to her at last, impatiently. "I have +hardly spoken six sentences to Lady Maxwell, since the meeting, till +tonight--I suppose because you wished it. But neither you nor anyone else +shall make me rude to her. Don't be such a fool, Letty! Make friends with +her, and you will be ashamed of saying or even thinking such things." + +Whereat Letty burst into hysterical tears, and he soon found himself +involved in all the remorseful, inconsequent speeches to which a man in +such a plight feels himself driven. She allowed herself to be calmed, +and they had a dreary making-up. When it was over, however, George was +left with the uneasy conviction that he knew very little of his wife. She +was not of a nature to let any slight to her go unpunished. What was she +planning? What would she do? + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +"Hullo! Are you come back?" + +The speaker was George Tressady. He was descending the steps of his club +in Fall Mall, and found his arm caught by Naseby, who had just dismissed +his hansom outside. + +"I came back last night. Are you going homewards? I'll walk across the +Square with you." + +The two men turned into St. James's Square, and Naseby resumed: + +"Yes, we had a most lively campaign. Maxwell spoke better than I ever +heard him." + +"The speeches have been excellent reading, too. And you had good +meetings?" + +"Splendid! The country is rallying, I can tell you. The North is now +strong for Maxwell and the Bill--or seems to be." + +"Just as we are going to kick it out in the House! It's very queer--for +no one could tell, a month ago, how the big towns were going. And it +looked as though London even were deserting them." + +"A mere wave, I think. At least, I'll bet you anything they'll win this +Stepney election. Shall we get the division on the hours clause +to-morrow?" + +"They say so." + +"If you know your own interests, you'll hurry up," said Naseby, smiling. +"The country is going against you." + +"I imagine Fontenoy has got his eye on the country! He's been letting the +Socialists talk nonsense till now to frighten the steady-going old +fellows on the other side or putting up our men to mark time. But I saw +yesterday there was a change." + +"Between ourselves, hasn't he been talking a good deal of nonsense on his +own account?" + +Naseby threw a glance of laughing inquiry at his companion. George +shrugged his shoulders in silence. It had become matter of public remark +during the last few days that Fontenoy was beginning at last to show the +strain of the combat--that his speeches were growing hysterical and his +rule a tyranny. His most trusted followers were now to be heard grumbling +in private over certain aspects of his bearing in the House. He had come +into damaging collision with the Speaker on one or two occasions, and had +made here and there a blunder in tactics which seemed to show a weakening +of self-command. Tressady, indeed, knew enough to wonder that the man's +nerve and coolness had maintained themselves in their fulness so long. + +"So Maxwell took a party to the North?" said George, dropping the subject +of Fontenoy. + +"Lady Maxwell, of course--myself, Bennett, and Madeleine Penley. It was a +pleasure to see Lady Maxwell. She has been dreadfully depressed in town +lately. But those trade-union meetings in Lancashire and Yorkshire were +magnificent enough to cheer anyone up." + +George shook his head. + +"I expect they come too late to save the Bill." + +"I daresay. Well, one can't help being tremendously sorry for her. I +thought her looking quite thin and ill over it. It makes one doubt about +women in politics! Maxwell will take it a deal more calmly, unless one +misunderstands his cool ways. But I shouldn't wonder if _she_ had a +breakdown." + +George made no reply. Naseby talked a little more about Maxwell and the +tour, the critical side of him gaining upon the sympathetic with every +sentence. At the corner of King Street he stopped. + +"I must go back to the club. By the way, have you heard anything of +Ancoats lately?" + +George made a face. + +"I saw him in a hansom last night, late, crossing Regent Circus with a +young woman--_the_ young woman, to the best of my belief." + +In the few moments' chat that followed Tressady found that Naseby, like +Fontenoy, regarded him as the new friend who might be able to do +something for a wild fellow, now that mother and old friends were alike +put aside and ignored. But, as he rather impatiently declared--and was +glad to declare--such a view was mere nonsense. He had tried, for the +mother's sake, and could do nothing. As for him, he believed the thing +was very much a piece of _blague_-- + +"Which won't prevent it from taking him to the devil," said Naseby, +coolly; "and his mother, by all accounts, will die of it. I'm sorry for +her. He seems to think tremendous things of you. I thought you might, +perhaps, have knocked it out of him." George shook his head again, and +they parted. + +In truth, Tressady was not particularly flattered by Ancoats's fancy for +him. He did not care enough about the lad in return. Yet, in response to +one or two outbreaks of talk on Ancoats's part--talks full of a stagey +railing at convention--he had tried, for the mother's sake, to lecture +the boy a little--to get in a word or two that might strike home. But +Ancoats had merely stared a moment out of his greenish eyes, had shaken +his queer mane of hair, as an animal shakes off the hand that curbs it, +had changed the subject at once, and departed. Tressady had seen very +little of him since. + +And had not, in truth, taken it to heart. He had neither time nor mind to +think about Ancoats. Now, as he walked home to dinner, he put the subject +from him impatiently. His own moral predicament absorbed him--this weird, +silent way in which the whole political scene was changing in aspect and +composition under his eyes, was grouping itself for him round one +figure--one face. + +Had he any beliefs left about the Bill itself? He hardly knew. In truth +it was not his reason that was leading him. It now was little more than a +passionate boyish longing to wrench himself free from this odious task of +hurting and defeating Marcella Maxwell. The long process of political +argument was perhaps tending every day to the loosening and detaching of +those easy convictions of a young Chauvinism, that had drawn him +originally to Fontenoy's side. Intellectually he was all adrift. At the +same time he confessed to himself, with perfect frankness, that he could +and would have served Fontenoy happily enough, but for another +influence--another voice. + +Yet his old loyalty to Fontenoy tugged sorely at his will. And with this +loyalty of course was bound up the whole question of his own personal +honour and fidelity--his pledges to his constituents and his party. + +Was there no rational and legitimate way out? He pondered the political +situation as he walked along with great coolness and precision. When the +division on the hours clause was over the main struggle on the Bill, as +he had all along maintained, would be also at an end. If the Government +carried the clause--and the probability still was that they would carry +it by a handful of votes--the two great novelties of the Bill would have +been affirmed by the House. The homework in the scheduled trades would +have been driven by law into inspected workshops, and the male workers in +these same trades would have been brought under the time-restrictions of +the Factory Acts. + +Compared to these two great reforms, or revolutions, the remaining +clause--the landlords clause--touched, as he had already said to +Fontenoy, questions of secondary rank, of mere machinery. Might not a man +thereupon--might not he, George Tressady--review and reconsider his +whole position? + +He had told Fontenoy that his vote was safe; but must that pledge extend +to more than the vital stuff, the main proposals of the Bill? The hours +clause?--yes. But after it? + +Fontenoy, no doubt, would carry on the fight to the bitter end, counting +on a final and hard-wrung victory. The sanguine confidence which had +possessed him about the time of the second reading was gone. He did not, +Tressady knew, reckon with any certainty on turning out the Government in +this coming division. The miserable majority with which they had carried +the workshops clause would fall again--it would hardly be altogether +effaced. That final wiping-out would come--if indeed it were attained--in +the last contest of all, to which Fontenoy was already heartening and +urging on his followers. + +Fontenoy's position, of course, in the matter was clear. It was that of +the leader and the irreconcilable. + +But for the private member, who had seen cause to modify some of his +opinions during the course of debate, who had voted loyally with his +party up till now--might not the division on the hours clause be said to +mark a new stage in the Bill--a stage which restored him his freedom? + +The House would have pronounced on the main points of the Bill; the +country was rallying in a remarkable and unexpected way to the +Government--might it not be fairly argued that the war had been carried +far enough? + +He already, indeed, saw signs of that backing down of opposition which he +had prophesied to Fontenoy. The key to the whole matter lay, he believed, +in the hands of the Old Liberals, that remnant of a once great host, who +were now charging the Conservative Government with new and damaging +concessions to the Socialist tyranny. These men kept a watchful eye on +the country; they had maintained all along that the country had not +spoken. George had already perceived a certain weakening among them. And +now, this campaign of Maxwell's, this new enthusiasm in the industrial +North--no doubt they would have their effect. + +He hurried on, closely weighing the whole matter, the prey to a strange +and mingled excitement. + +Meanwhile the streets through which he walked had the empty, listless air +which marks a stage from which the actors have departed. It was nearing +the middle of August, and society had fled. + +All the same, as he reflected with a relief which was not without its +sting, he and Letty would not be alone at dinner. Some political friends +were coming, stranded, like themselves, in this West End, which had by +now covered up its furniture and shut its shutters. + +What a number of smart invitations had been showering upon them during +the last weeks of the season, and were now still pursuing them, for the +country-house autumn! The expansion of their social circle had of late +often filled George with astonishment. No doubt, he said to +himself,--though with a curious doubtfulness,--Letty was very successful; +still, the recent rush of attentions from big people, who had taken no +notice of them on their marriage, was rather puzzling. It had affected +her so far more than himself. For he had been hard pressed by Parliament +and the strike, and she had gone about a good deal alone--appearing, +indeed, to prefer it. + + * * * * * + +"Come out with me on the Terrace," said Marcella to Betty Leven; "I had +rather not wait here. Aldous, will you take us through?" + +She and Betty were standing in the inner lobby of the House of Commons. +The division had just been called and the galleries cleared. Members were +still crowding into the House from the Library, the Terrace, and the +smoking-rooms; and all the approaches to the Chamber itself were filled +with a throng about equally divided between the eagerness of victory and +the anxieties of defeat. + +Maxwell took the ladies to the Terrace, and left them there, while he +himself went back to the House. Marcella took a seat by the parapet, +leant both hands upon it, and looked absently at the river and the +clouds. It was a cloudy August night, with a broken, fleecy sky, and +gusts of hot wind from the river. A few figures and groups were moving +about the Terrace in the flickering light and shade--waiting like +themselves. + +"Will you be very sad if it goes wrongly?" said Betty, in a low voice, as +she took her friend's hand in hers. + +"Yes--" said Marcella, simply. Then, after a pause, she added, "It will +be all the harder after this time in the North. Everything will have come +too late." + +There was a silence; then Betty said, not without sheepishness, "Frank's +all right." + +Marcella smiled. She knew that little Betty had been much troubled by +Frank's tempers of late, and had been haunted by some quite serious +qualms about his loyalty to Maxwell and the Bill. Marcella had never +shared them. Frank Leven had not grit enough to make a scandal and desert +a chief. But Betty's ambition had forced the boy into a life that was +not his; had divided him from the streams and fields, from the country +gentleman's duties and pleasures, that were his natural sphere. In this +hot town game of politics, this contest of brains and ambitions, he was +out of place--was, in fact, wasting both time and capacity. Betty would +have to give way, or the comedy of a lovers' quarrel might grow to +something ill-matched with the young grace and mirth of such a pair of +handsome children. + +Marcella meant to tell her friend all this in due time. Now she +could only wait in silence, listening for every sound, Betty's soft +fingers clasping her own, the wind as it blew from the bridge +cooling her hot brow. + +"Here they are!" said Betty. + +They turned to the open doorway of the House. A rush of feet and voices +approached, and the various groups on the Terrace hurried to meet it. + +"Just saved! By George, what a squeak!" said a man's voice in the +distance; and at the same moment Maxwell touched his wife on the +shoulder. + +"A majority of ten! Nobody knew how it had gone till the last moment." + +She put up her face to him, leaning against him. + +"I suppose it means we can't pull through?" He bent to her. + +"I should think so. Darling, don't take it to heart so much!" + +In the darkness he felt the touch of her lips on his hand. Then she +turned, with a white cheek and smiling mouth, to meet the greetings and +rueful congratulations of the friends that were crowding about them. + +The Terrace was soon a moving mass of people, eagerly discussing the +details of the division. The lamps, blown a little by the wind, threw +uncertain lights on faces and figures, as they passed and re-passed +between the mass of building on the one hand and the wavering darkness of +the river on the other. To Marcella, as she stood talking to person after +person--talking she hardly knew what--the whole scene was a dim +bewilderment, whence emerged from time to time faces or movements of +special significance. + +Now it was Dowson, the Home Secretary, advancing to greet her, with his +grey shaven face, eyelids somewhat drooped, and the cool, ambiguous look +of one not quite certain of his reception. He had been for long a close +ally of Maxwell's. Marcella had thought him a true friend. But certainly, +in his conduct of the Bill of late there had been a good deal to suggest +the attitude of a man determined to secure himself a retreat, and +uncertain how far to risk his personal fortunes on a doubtful issue. So +that she found herself talking to him with a new formality, in the tone +of those who have been friends, yet begin to foresee the time when they +may be antagonists. + +Or, again, it was Fontenoy--Fontenoy's great head and overhanging brows, +thrown suddenly into light against the windy dusk. He was walking with a +young viscount whose curls, clothes, and shoulders were alike +unapproachable by the ordinary man. This youth could not forbear an +exultant twitching of the lip as he passed the Maxwells. Fontenoy +ceremoniously took off his hat. Marcella had a momentary impression of +the passionate, bull-like force of the man, before he disappeared into +the crowd. His eye had wavered as it met hers. Out of courtesy to the +woman he had tried not to _look_ his triumph. + +And now it was quite another face--thin, delicately marked, a noticeable +chin, an outstretched hand. + +She was astonished by her own feeling of pleasure. + +"Tell me," she said quickly, as she moved eagerly forward--"tell me! is +it about what you expected?" + +They turned towards the river. George Tressady hung over the wall +beside her. + +"Yes. I thought it might be anything from eight to twenty." + +"I suppose Lord Fontenoy now thinks the end quite certain." + +"He may. But the end is not certain!" + +"But what can prevent it! The despairing thing for us is, that if the +country had been roused earlier, everything might have been different. +But now the House--" + +"Has got out of hand? It may be; but I find a great many people affected +by Lord Maxwell's speeches in the North, and his reception there. +To-day's result was inevitable, but, if I'm not mistaken, we shall now +see a number of new combinations." + +The sensitive face became in a moment all intelligence. She played the +politician, and cross-examined him. He hesitated. What he was doing was +already a treachery. But he only hesitated to give way. They lingered by +the wall together, discussing possibilities and persons; and when Maxwell +at last turned from his own conversations to suggest to his wife that it +was time to go home, she came forward with a mien of animation that +surprised him. He greeted Tressady with friendliness, and then, as though +a thought had struck him, suddenly drew the young man aside. + +"Ancoats, of course," said George to himself; and Ancoats it was. + +Maxwell, without preliminaries, and taking his companion's knowledge of +the story for granted--no doubt on Fontenoy's information--said a few +words about the renewal of the difficulty. Did he not think it had all +begun again? Yes, George had some reason to think so. "If you can do +anything for us--" + +"Of course! but what can I do? As we all know, Ancoats does not sit still +to be scolded." + +Their colloquy lasted only a minute or two; yet when it was over, and +the Maxwells had gone, George was left with a vivid impression of the +great man's quiet strength and magnanimity. No one could have guessed +from his anxious and well-considered talk on this private matter that he +was in the very heat of a political struggle that must affect all his +own fortunes. Tressady had been accustomed to spend his wit on the +heavier sides of Maxwell's character. To-night, he said to himself, half +in a passion, grudging the confession, that it was not wonderful she +loved him! + +She! The remembrance of how her whole nature had brightened from its +cloud as he drew out for her his own forecast of what might still happen; +the sweet confidence and charm that she had shown him; the intimacy of +the tone she had allowed between them; the mingling all through of a +delicate abstinence from anything touching on his own personal position, +with an unspoken recognition of it--the impulse of a generosity that +could not help rewarding what seemed to it the yielding of an adversary; +these things filled him with a delicious pleasure as he walked home. In a +hundred directions--political, social, spiritual--the old horizons of the +mind seemed to be lightening and expanding. The cynical, indifferent +temper of his youth was breaking down; the whole man was more +intelligent, capable, tender. Yet what sadness and restlessness of soul +as soon as the brief moment of joy had come and gone! + +A few afternoons of Supply encroached upon the eight days that still +remained before the last clause of the Bill came to a division. But the +whole eight days, nevertheless, were filled with the new permutations and +combinations which Tressady had foreseen. The Government carried the +Stepney election, and in other quarters the effects of the speechmaking +in the North began to be visible. Rumours of the syndicate already formed +to take over large numbers of workshops in both the Jewish and Gentile +quarters of the East End, and of the hours and wages that were likely to +obtain in the new factories, were driving a considerable mass of +working-class opinion, which had hitherto held aloof, straight for the +Government, and splitting up much of that which had been purely hostile. + +Nevertheless, the situation in the House itself was hardly changing with +the change in the country. The Socialist members very soon developed the +proposal to make the landlords responsible for the carrying-out of the +new Act into a furious general attack on the landlords of London. Their +diatribes kept up the terrors which had already cost the Government so +many men. It was not possible, not seemly, to yield, as Maxwell was +yielding, all along the line to these fellows! + +But the Old Liberals, or the New Whigs, as George had expected, were +restless. They felt the country, and they had no affection for landlords +as such. Did a man arise who could give them a lead, there was no saying +how soon they might not break away from the Fontenoy combination. +Fontenoy felt it, and prowled among them like a Satan, urging them to +complete their deed, to give the _coup de grâce_. + +On the Wednesday afternoon before the Friday on which he thought the +final vote would be taken, George let himself into his own house about +six o'clock, thankful to feel that he had a quiet evening before him. He +had been wandering about the House of Commons and its appurtenances all +day, holding colloquies with this person and that, unable to see his +way--to come to any decision. And, as was now usual, he and Fontenoy had +been engaged in steering out of each other's way as much as possible. + +As he went upstairs he noticed a letter lying on the step. He took it up, +and found an open note, which he read, at first without thinking of it: + +"My dear Lady,--Chatsworth can't be done. I have thrown my flies with +great skill, but--no go! I don't seem to have influence enough in that +quarter. But I have various other plans on hand. You shall have a jolly +autumn, if I can manage it. There are some Scotch invitations I can +certainly get you--and I should like to show you the ways of those +parts. By the way, I hope your husband shoots decently. People are very +particular. And you really must consult me about your gowns--I'm deuced +clever at that sort of thing! I shall come to-morrow, when I have packed +off my family to the country. Don't know why God made families! + +"Yours always, + +"CATHEDINE." + +"George! is that you?" cried Letty from above him, in a voice half angry, +half hesitating; "and--and--that's my note. Please give it me at once." + +He finished it under her eyes, then handed it to her with formal +courtesy. They walked into the drawing-room, and George shut the door. He +was very pale, and Letty quailed a little. + +"So Cathedine has been introducing us into society," he said, "and +advising you as to your gowns. Was that--quite necessary--do you think?" + +"It's very simple what he has been doing," was her angry reply. "You +never take any pains to make life amusing to me, so I must look +elsewhere, if I want society--that's all." + +"And it never occurs to you that you are thereby incurring an unseemly +obligation to a man whom I dislike, whom I have warned you against, who +bears everywhere an evil name? You think I am likely to enjoy--to put up +with, even--the position of being asked on sufferance--as your +appendage--provided I 'shoot decently'?" + +His tone of scorn, his slight figure, imperiously drawn up, sent her a +challenge, which she answered with sullen haste. + +"That's all nonsense, of course! And he wouldn't be rude to you if you +weren't always rude to him." + +"Rude to him!" He smiled. "But now, let us get to the bottom of this +thing. Did Cathedine get us the cards for Clarence House--and that +Goodwood invitation?" + +Letty made no answer. She stared at him defiantly, twisting and +untwisting the ribbons of her blue dress. + +George reddened hotly. His personal pride in matters of social manners +was one of his strongest characteristics. + +"Let me beg you, at any rate, to write and tell Lord Cathedine that we +will not trouble him for any more of these kind offices. And, moreover, I +shall not go to any of these houses in the autumn unless I am quite +certain he has had nothing to do with it." + +"I have accepted," said Letty, breathing hard. + +"I cannot help that. You should have been frank with me. I am not going +to do what would destroy my own self-respect." + +"No--you prefer making love to Lady Maxwell!" + +He looked steadily a moment at her pallor and her furious eyes. Then he +said, in another tone: + +"Letty, does it ever occur to you that we have not been married yet five +months? Are our relations to each other to go on for ever like this? I +think we might make something better of them." + +"That's your lookout. But as to these invitations, I have accepted them, +and I shall go." + +"I don't think you will. You would find it wouldn't do. Anyway, +Cathedine must be written to." + +"I shall do nothing of the kind!" she cried. + +"Then I shall write myself." + +She rose, quivering with passion, supporting herself on the arm of +her chair. + +"If you do, I will find some way of punishing you for it. Oh, if I had +never made myself miserable by marrying you!" + +Their eyes met. Then he said: + +"I think I had better go and dine at the club. We are hardly fit to be +together." + +"Go, for heaven's sake!" she said, with a disdainful gesture. + +Outside the door he paused a moment, head bent, hands clenched. Then a +wild, passionate look overspread his young face. "It is her evening," he +said to himself. "Letty turns me out. I will go." + +Meanwhile Letty stood where he had left her till she had heard the +street-door close. The typical, significant sound knelled to her heart. +She began to walk tempestuously up and down, crying with excitement. + +Time passed on. The August evening closed in; and in this deserted London +nobody came to see her. She dined alone, and afterwards spent what seemed +to her interminable hours pacing the drawing-room and meditating. At last +there was a pause in the rush of selfish or jealous feeling which had +been pulsing through her for weeks past, dictating all her actions, +fevering all her thoughts. And there is nothing so desolate as such a +pause, to such a nature. For it means reflection; it means putting one's +life away from one, and looking at it as a whole. And to the Lettys of +this world there is no process more abhorrent--none they will spend more +energy in escaping. + +It was inexplicable, intolerable that she should be so unhappy. What was +it that tortured her so--hatred of Marcella Maxwell, or pain that she had +lost her husband? But she had never imagined herself in love with him +when she married him. He had never obtained from her before a tenth part +of the thought she had bestowed upon him during the past six weeks. +During all the time that she had been flirting with Cathedine, and +recklessly placing herself in his power by the favours she asked of him, +she saw now, with a kind of amazement, that she had been thinking +constantly of George, determined to impress him with her social success, +to force him to admire her and think much of her. + +Cathedine? Had he any real attraction for her? Why, she was afraid of +him, she knew him to be coarse and brutal, even while she played with him +and sent him on her errands. When she compared him with George--even +George as she had just seen him in this last odious scene--she felt the +tears of anger and despair rising. + +But to be forced to dismiss him at George's word, to submit in this +matter of the invitations, to let herself be trampled on, while George +gave all his homage, all his best mind, to Lady Maxwell--something +scorching flew through her veins as she thought of it. Never! never! +She would find, she had already thought of, a startling way of +avenging herself. + +Late at night George came home. She had locked her door, and he turned +into his dressing-room. When the house was quiet again, she pressed her +face into the pillows, and wept till she was amazed at her own pain, and +must needs turn her rage upon herself. + + * * * * * + +When Tressady arrived at the house in Mile End Road he found the pretty, +bare room where Marcella held her gatherings full of guests. The East End +had not "gone out of town." The two little workhouse girls, in the +whitest of caps and aprons, were carrying round trays of coffee and +cakes; and beyond the open window was a tiny garden, backed by a huge +Board School and some tall warehouses, yet as pleasant within its own +small space as a fountain and flowers, constantly replenished from +Maxwell Court, could make it. + +Amid the medley of workmen, union officials, and members of Parliament +that the room contained, George was set first of all to talk to a young +schoolmaster or two, but he had never felt so little able to adjust his +mind to strangers. The thought of his home miseries burnt within him. +When could he get his turn with her? He was thirsty for the sound of her +voice, the kindness of her eyes. + +She had received him with unusual warmth, and an eagerness of look that +seemed to show she had at least as much to say to him as he to her. And +at last his turn came. She took some of her guests into the garden. +George followed, and they found themselves side by side. He noticed that +she was very pale. Yet how was it that fatigue and anxiety instead of +marring her physical charm, only increased it? This thin black dress in +which the tall figure moved so finely, the black lace folded in a fashion +all her own about her neck and breast, the waving lines of hair above the +delicate stateliness of the brow--those slight tragic hollows in cheek +and temple with their tale of spirit and passionate feeling, and all the +ebb and flow of noble life--he had never felt her so rare, so adorable. + +"Well! what do you think of it all to-day? Are you still inclined to +prophesy?" she asked him, smiling. + +"I might be--if I saw any chance of the man you want. But he doesn't seem +to be forthcoming, and--" + +"And to-morrow is the end!" + +"The Government has quite made up its mind not to take defeat--not to +accept modifications?" + +She shook her head. + +They were standing at the end of the garden, looking into the brightly +lit windows of the Board School, where evening-classes were going on. She +gave a long sigh. + +"As for us personally, we can only be thankful to have it over. Neither +of us could have borne it much longer. I suppose, when the crisis is all +over, we shall go away for a long time." + +By "the crisis" she meant, of course, the resignation of Ministers and +a change of Government. So that a few days hence she would be no longer +within his reach at all. Maxwell, once out of office, would, no doubt, +for a long while to come prefer to spend the greater part of his time +in Brookshire, away from politics. A sudden sharp perception woke in +Tressady of what it would mean to him to find himself in a world +where, on going out of a morning, it would be no longer possible to +come across her. + +At last she broke the silence. + +"How little I really thought, in spite of all one's anxiety, that Lord +Fontenoy was going to win! He has played his cards amazingly well." + +George took no notice. Thoughts were whirling in his brain. + +"What would you say to me, I wonder," he said at last, "if _I_ were to +try the part?" + +He spoke in a bantering tone, poking at the black London earth with +his stick. + +"What part?" + +"Well, it seems to me I might put the case. One wants to argue the thing +in a common-sense way. I don't feel towards this clause as I did towards +the others. I know a good many men don't." + +He turned to her with a light composure. + +She stared in bewilderment. + +"I don't understand." + +"Well; why shouldn't one put the case? We have always counted on the +hostility of the country. But the country seems to be coming round. Some +of us now feel the Bill should have its chance--we are inclined to let +Ministers take the responsibility. But, gracious heavens!--to suppose the +House would pay any attention to me!" + +He took up a stone and jerked it over the wall. She did not speak for a +moment. At last she said: + +"It would be a grave thing for _you_ to do." + +He turned, and their eyes met, hers full of emotion, and his hesitating +and reflective. Then he laughed, his pride stung a little by her +expression. + +"You think I should do myself more harm, than good to anybody else?" + +"No.--Only it would be serious," she repeated after a pause. + +Instantly he dropped the subject as far as his own action was +concerned. He led her back into discussion of other people, and of the +situation in general. + +Then suddenly, as they talked, a host of thoughts fled cloud-like, +rising and melting, through Marcella's memory. She remembered with what +prestige--considering his youth and inexperience--he had entered +Parliament, the impression made by the short and brilliant campaign of +his election. Now, since the real struggle of the session had begun, his +energies seemed to have been unaccountably in abeyance, and eclipse. +People she noticed had ceased to talk of him. But supposing, after all, +there had been a crisis of mind and conviction underlying it?--supposing +that now, at the last moment, in a situation that cried out for a +leader, something should suddenly release his powers and gifts to do +their proper work-- + +It vexed her to realise her own excitement, together with an odd +shrinking and reluctance that seemed to be fighting with it. All in a +moment, to Tressady's astonishment, she recalled the conversation to the +point where it had turned aside. + +"And you think--you _really_ think"--her voice had a nervous appealing +note--"that even at this eleventh hour--No, I don't understand!--I +_can't_ understand!--why, or how you should still think it possible to +change things enough!" + +He felt a sting of pleasure, and the passing sense of hurt pride was +soothed. At least he had conquered her attention, her curiosity! + +"I am sure that anything might still happen," he said stubbornly. + +"Well, only let it be settled!" she said, trying to speak lightly, "else +there will be nothing left of some of us." + +She raised her hand, and pushed back her hair with a childish gesture of +weariness, that was quite unconscious, and therefore touching. + +As she spoke, indeed, the thought of a strong man harassed with overwork, +and patiently preparing to lay down his baffled task, and all his +cherished hopes, captured her mind, brought a quick rush of tears even to +her eyes. Tressady looked at her; he saw the moisture in the eyes, the +reddening of the cheek, the effort for self-control. + +"Why do you let yourself feel it so much?" he said resentfully; "it is +not natural, nor right." + +"That's our old quarrel, isn't it?" she answered, smiling. + +He was staring at the ground again, poking with his stick. + +"There are so many things one _must_ feel," he said in a bitter low +voice; "one may as well try to take politics calmly." + +She looked down upon him, understanding, but not knowing how to meet him, +how to express herself. His words and manner were a confession of +personal grief,--almost an appeal to her,--the first he had ever made. +Yet how to touch the subject of his marriage! She shrank from it +painfully. What ominous, disagreeable things she had heard lately of the +young Lady Tressady from people she trusted! Why, oh! why had he ruined +his own life in such a way! + +And with the yearning towards all suffering which was natural to her, +there mingled so much else--inevitable softness and gratitude for that +homage towards herself, which had begun to touch and challenge all the +loving, responsive impulse which was at the root of her character--an +eager wish to put out a hand and guide him--all tending to shape in her +this new longing to rouse him to some critical and courageous action, +action which should give him at least the joy that men get from the +strenuous use of natural powers, from the realisation of themselves. And +through it all the most divinely selfish blindness to the real truth of +the situation! Yet she tried not to think of Maxwell--she wished to think +only of and for her friend. + +After his last words they stood side by side in silence for a few +moments. But the expression of her eyes, of her attitude, was all +sympathy. He must needs feel that she cared, she understood, that his +life, his pain, his story mattered to her. At last she said, turning her +face away from him, and from the few people who had not yet left the +garden to go and listen to some music that was going on in the +drawing-room: + +"Sometimes, the best way to forget one's own troubles--don't you +think?--is to put something else first for a time--perhaps in your +case, the public life and service. Mightn't it be? Suppose you thought it +all really out, what you have been saying to me--gave yourself up to +it--and then _determined_. Perhaps afterwards--" + +She paused--overcome with doubt, even shyness--and very pale too, as she +turned to him again. But so beautiful! The very perplexity which spoke in +the gently quivering face as it met his, made her lovelier in his eyes. +It seemed to strike down some of the barrier between them, to present her +to him as weaker, more approachable. + +But after waiting a moment, he gave a little harsh laugh. + +"Afterwards, when one has somehow settled other people's affairs, one +might see straighter in one's own? Is that what you mean?" + +"I meant," she said, speaking with difficulty, "what I have often +found--myself--that it helps one sometimes, to throw oneself altogether +into something outside one's own life, in a large disinterested way. +Afterwards, one comes back to one's own puzzles--with a fresh strength +and hope." + +"Hope!" he said despondently, with a quick lifting of the shoulders. +Then, in another tone-- + +"So that's your advice to me--to take this thing seriously--to take +myself seriously--to think it out?" + +"Yes, yes," she said eagerly; "don't trifle with it--with what you might +think and do--till it is too late to think and do anything." + +Suddenly it flashed across them both how far they had travelled since +their first meeting in the spring. Her mind filled with a kind of dread, +an uneasy sense of responsibility--then with a tremulous consciousness of +power. It was as though she felt something fluttering like a bird in her +hands. And all the time there echoed through her memory a voice speaking +in a moonlit garden--"You know--you don't mind my saying it?--nobody is +ever converted--politically--nowadays." + +No, but there may be honest advance and change--why not? And if she had +influenced him--was it not Maxwell's work and thought that had spoken +through her? + +"Well, anyway," said Tressady's voice beside her, "whatever +happens--you'll believe--" + +"That you won't help to give us the _coup de grâce_ unless you must?" she +said, half laughing, yet with manifest emotion. "Anyway, I should have +believed that." + +"And you really care so much?" he asked her again, looking at her +wondering. + +She suddenly dropped her head upon her hands. They were alone now in the +moonlit garden, and she was leaning over the low wall that divided them +from the school enclosure. But before he could say anything--before he +could even move closer to her--she had raised her face again, and drawn +her hand rapidly across her eyes. + +"I suppose one is tired and foolish after all these weeks," she said, +with a breaking voice--"I apologise. You see when one comes to see +everything through another's eyes--to live in another's life--" He felt +a sudden stab, then a leap of joy--hungry, desolate joy--that she should +thus admit him to the very sanctuary of her heart--let him touch the +"very pulse of the machine." At the same moment that it revealed the +eternal gulf between them, it gave him a delicious passionate sense of +intimity--of privilege. + +"You have--a marvellous idea of marriage"--he said, under his breath, as +he moved slowly beside her towards the house. + +She made no answer. In another minute she was talking to him of +indifferent things, and immediately afterwards he found himself parted +from her in the crowd of the drawing-room. + +When the party dispersed and he was walking alone towards Aldgate through +the night, he could do nothing but repeat to himself fragments of what +she had said to him--lost all the time in a miserable yearning memory of +her eyes and voice. + +His mind was made up. And as he lay sleepless and solitary through the +night, he scarcely thought any more of the strait to which his married +life had come. Forty-eight hours hence he should have time for that. For +the present he had only to "think out" how it might be possible for him +to turn doubt and turmoil into victory, and lay the crown of it at +Marcella Maxwell's feet. + +Meanwhile Marcella, on her return to St. James's Square, put her hands on +Maxwell's shoulders, and said to him, in a voice unlike herself: "Sir +George Tressady was at the party to-night. I _think_ he may be going to +throw Lord Fontenoy over. Don't be surprised if he speaks in that sense +to-morrow." + +Maxwell looked extraordinarily perturbed. + +"I hope he will do nothing of the kind," he said, with decision. "It will +do him enormous harm. All the conviction he has ever shown has been the +other way. It will be thought to be a mere piece of caprice and +indiscipline." + +Marcella said nothing. She walked away from him, her hands clasped behind +her, her soft skirt trailing--a pale muse of meditation--meditation in +which for once she did not invite him to share. + +"Tressady, by all that's wonderful!" said a member of Fontenoy's party to +his neighbour. "What's _he_ got to say?" + +The man addressed bent forward, with his hands on his knees, to look +eagerly at the speaker. + +"I knew there was something up," he said. "Every time I have come across +Tressady to-day he has been deep with one or other of those fellows"--he +jerked his head towards the Liberal benches. "I saw him buttonholing +Green in the Library, then with Speedwell on the Terrace. And just look +at their benches! They're as thick as bees! Yes, by George! there _is_ +something up." + +His young sportsman's face flushed with excitement, and he tried hard +through the intervening heads to get a glimpse of Fontenoy. But nothing +was to be seen of the leader but a hat jammed down over the eyes, a +square chin, and a pair of folded arms. + +The House, indeed, throughout the day had worn an aspect which, to the +experienced observer--to the smooth-faced Home Secretary, for instance, +watching the progress of this last critical division--meant that +everything was possible, the unexpected above all. Rumours gathered and +died away. Men might be seen talking with unaccustomed comrades; and +those who were generally most frank had become discreet. It was known +that Fontenoy's anxiety had been growing rapidly; and it was noticed that +he and the young viscount who acted as the Whip of the party had kept an +extraordinarily sharp watch on all their own men through the dinner-hour. + +Fontenoy himself had spoken before dinner, throwing scorn upon the +clause, as the ill-conceived finish of an impossible Bill. So the +landlords were to be made the executants, the police, of this precious +Act? Every man who let out a tenement-house in workmen's dwellings was to +be haled before the law and punished if a tailor on his premises did his +work at home, if a widow took in shirtmaking to keep her children. Pass, +for the justice or the expediency of such a law in itself. But who but a +madman ever supposed you could get it carried out! What if the landlords +refused or neglected their part? _Quis custodiet?_ And was Parliament +going to make itself ridiculous by setting up a law, which, were it a +thousand times desirable, you simply could not enforce? + +The speech was delivered with amazing energy. It abounded in savage +epigram and personality; and a month before it would have had great +effect. Every Englishman has an instinctive hatred of paper reforms. + +During the dinner-hour Tressady met Fontenoy in the Lobby, and +suddenly stopped to speak. The young man was deeply flushed and +holding himself stiffly erect. "If you want me," he said--"you will +find me in the Library. I don't want to spring anything upon you. You +shall know all I know." + +"Thank you," said the other with slow bitterness--"but we can look after +ourselves. I think you and I understood each other this morning." + +The two men parted abruptly. Tressady walked on, stung and excited afresh +by the memory of the hateful half hour he had spent that morning in +Fontenoy's library. For after all, when once he had come to his decision, +he had tried to behave with frankness, with consideration. + +Fontenoy hurried on to look for the young viscount with the curls and +shoulders, and the two men stood about the inner lobby together, Fontenoy +sombrely watching everybody who came out or in. + +It was about ten o'clock when Tressady caught the Speaker's eye. He +rose in a crowded House, a House conscious not only that the division +shortly to be taken would decide the fate of a Government, but vaguely +aware, besides, that something else was involved--one of those +personal incidents that may at any moment make the dullest piece of +routine dramatic, or rise into history by the juxtaposition of some +great occasion. + +The House had not yet made up its opinion about him as a speaker. He had +done well; then, not so well. And, moreover, it was so long since he had +taken any part in debate that the House had had time to forget whatever +qualities he might once have shown. + +His bearing and voice won him a first point. For youth, well-bred and +well-equipped, the English House of Commons has always shown a +peculiar indulgence. Then members began to bend eagerly forward, to +crane necks, to put hands to ears. The Treasury Bench was seen to be +listening as one man. + +Before the speech was over many of those present had already recognised +in it a political event of the first order. The speaker had traced with +great frankness his own relation to the Bill--from an opinion which was +but a prejudice, to a submission which was still half repugnance. He drew +attention to the remarkable and growing movement in support of the +Maxwell policy which was now spreading throughout the country, after a +period of coolness and suspended judgment; he pointed to the probable +ease with which, as it was now seen, the "harassed trades" would adapt +themselves to the new law; he showed that the House, in at least three +critical divisions, and under circumstances of enormous difficulty, had +still affirmed the Bill; that the country, during the progress of the +measure, had rallied unmistakably to the Government, and that all that +remained was a question of machinery. That being so, he--and, he +believed, some others--had reconsidered their positions. Their electoral +pledges, in their opinion, no longer held, though they would be ready at +any moment to submit themselves to consequences, if consequences there +were to be. + +Then, taking up the special subject-matter of the clause, he threw +himself upon his leader's speech with a nervous energy, an information, +and a resource which held the House amazed. He tore to pieces +Fontenoy's elaborate attack, showed what practical men thought of the +clause, and with what careful reliance upon their opinion and their +experience it had been framed; and, finally--with a reference not +lacking in a veiled passion that told upon the House, to those "dim +toiling thousands" whose lot, "as it comes to work upon the mind, is +daily perplexing if not transforming the thoughts and ideals of such men +as I"--he, in the plainest terms, announced his intention of voting with +the Government, and sat down, amid the usual mingled storm, in a +shouting and excited House. + +The next hour passed in a tumult. One speaker after another got up from +the Liberal benches--burly manufacturers and men of business, who had so +far held a strong post in the army of resistance--to tender their +submission, to admit that the fight had gone far enough, that the country +was against them, and that the Bill must be borne. What use, too, in +turning out a Government which would either be sent back with redoubled +strength or replaced by combinations that had no attractions whatever +from men of moderate minds? Sadness reigned in the speeches of this +Liberal remnant; nor could the House from time to time forbear to jeer +them. But they made their purpose plain, and the Government Whip, +standing near the door, gleefully struck off name after name from his +Opposition list. + +Then followed the usual struggle between the division that all men +wanted and the speakers that no man could endure. But at last the bell +was rung, the House cleared. As Tressady turned against the stream of +his party, Fontenoy, with a sarcastic smile, stood elaborately aside to +let him pass. + +"We shall soon know what you have cost us," he said hoarsely in +Tressady's ear; then, advancing a little towards the centre of the +floor, he looked up markedly and deliberately at the Ladies' Gallery. +Tressady made no reply. He held his fair head higher than usual as he +passed on his unaccustomed way to the Aye Lobby. Many an eager eye +strained back to see how many recruits would join him as he reached the +Front Opposition Bench; many a Parliamentary Nestor watched the young +man's progress with a keenness born of memory--memory that burnt anew +with the battles of the past. + +"Do you remember Chandos," said one old man to another--"young Chandos, +that went for Peel in '46 against his party? It was my first year in +Parliament. I can see him now. He was something like this young fellow." + +"But _his_ ratting changed nothing," said his companion, with an uneasy +laugh; and they both struggled forward among the Noes. + +Twenty minutes later the tellers were at the table, and the moment that +was to make or mar a great Ministry had come. + +"Ayes, 306; Noes, 280. The Ayes have it!" + +"By Jove, he's done it!--the Judas!" cried a young fellow, crimson with +excitement, who was standing beside Fontenoy! + +"Yes--he's done it!" said Fontenoy, with grim composure, though the hand +that held his hat shook. "The curtain may now fall." + +"Where is he?" shouted the hot bloods around him, hooting and groaning, +as their eyes searched the House for the man who had thus, in an +afternoon, pulled down and defeated all their hopes. + +But Tressady was nowhere to be seen. He had left the House just as the +great news, surging like a wave through Lobby and corridor, reached a +group of people waiting in a Minister's private room--and Marcella +Maxwell knew that all was won. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +"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." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +The door opened silently, and there came in a figure that for a moment +was hardly recognised by either Maxwell or his wife. Shrunken, pale, and +grief-stricken, Ancoats's poor mother entered, her eye seeking eagerly +for Maxwell, perceiving nothing else. She was in black, her veil +hurriedly thrown back, and the features beneath it were all blurred by +distress and fatigue. + +Marcella hurried to her. Mrs. Allison took her hand in both her own with +the soft, appealing motion habitual to her, then said hastily, still +looking at Maxwell: + +"Maxwell, the boy has gone. He left me two days ago. This morning, in my +trouble, I sent for Lord Fontenoy, my kind, kind friend. And he persuaded +me to come to you at once. I begged him to come too--" + +She glanced timidly from one to the other, implying many things. + +But even with this preface, Maxwell's greeting of his defeated +antagonist was ceremony itself. The natural instinct of such a man is to +mask victory in courtesy. But a paragraph that morning in Fontenoy's +paper--a paragraph that he happened to have seen in Lord Ardagh's +room--had appealed to another natural instinct, stronger and more +primitive. It amazed him that even this emergency and Mrs. Allison's +persuasions could have brought the owner of the paper within his doors +on this particular morning. + +Fontenoy, immersed in the correspondence of the morning, had not yet +chanced to see the paragraph, which was Harding Watton's. Yet, if he had, +he could not have shown a more haughty and embarrassed bearing. He was +there under a compulsion he did not know how to resist, a compulsion of +tears and grief; but the instinct for manners, which so often upon +occasion serves the man of illustrious family, as well, almost, as good +feeling or education may serve another, had been for the time weakened in +him by the violences and exhaustion of the political struggle, and he did +not feel certain that he could trust himself. He was smarting still +through every nerve, and the greeting especially that Maxwell's tall wife +extended to him was gall and bitterness. She meanwhile, as she advanced +towards him, was mostly struck with the perfection of his morning dress. +The ultra-correctness and strict fashion that he affected in these +matters were generally a surprise to those who knew him only by +reputation. + +After five minutes' question and answer the Maxwells understood something +of the situation. A servant of Ancoats's had been induced to disclose +what he knew. There could be no question that the young fellow had gone +off to Normandy, where he possessed a chalet close to Trouville, in the +expectation that his fair lady would immediately join him there. She had +not yet started. So much Fontenoy had already ascertained. But she had +thrown up a recent engagement within the last few days, and before +Ancoats's flight all Fontenoy's information had pointed to the likelihood +of a _coup_ of some sort. As for the boy himself, he had left his mother +at Castle Luton, three days before, on the pretext of a Scotch visit, and +had instead taken the evening train to Paris, leaving a letter for his +mother in which the influence of certain modern French novels of the +psychological kind could perhaps be detected. "The call of the heart that +drives me from you," wrote this incredible young man, "is something +independent of myself. I wring my hands, but I follow where it leads. +Love has its crimes,--that I admit,--but they are the only road to +experience. And experience is all I care to live for! At any rate, I +cannot accept the limits that you, mother, would impose upon me. Each of +us must be content to recognise the other's personality. I have tried to +reconcile you to an affection that must be content to be irregular. You +repel it and me, under the influence of a bigotry in which I have ceased +to believe. Suffer me, then, to act for myself in this respect. At any +time that you like to call upon me I will be your dutiful son, so long as +this matter is not mentioned between us. And let me implore you not to +bring in third persons. They have already done mischief enough. Against +them I should know how to protect myself." + +Maxwell returned the letter with a disgust he could hardly repress. +Everything in it seemed to him as pinchbeck as the passion itself. Mrs. +Allison took it with the same miserable look, which had in it, Marcella +noticed, a certain strange sternness, as of some frail creature nerving +itself to desperate things. + +"Now what shall we do?" said Maxwell, abruptly. + +Fontenoy moved forward. "I presume you still command the same persons you +set in motion before? Can you get at them to-day?" + +Maxwell pondered. "Yes, the clergyman. The solicitor-brother is too far +away. Your idea is to stop the girl from crossing?" + +"If it were still possible." Fontenoy dropped his voice, and his gesture +induced Maxwell to follow him to the recess of a distant window. + +"The chief difficulty, perhaps," said Fontenoy, resuming, "concerns the +lad himself. His mother, you will understand, cannot run any risk of +being brought in contact with that woman. Nor is she physically fit for +the voyage; but someone must go, if only to content her. There has been +some wild talk of suicide, apparently--mere bombast, of course, like so +much of it, but she has been alarmed." + +"Do you propose, then, to go yourself?" + +"I am of no use," said Fontenoy, decisively. + +Maxwell had cause to know that the statement was true, and did not press +him. They fell into a rapid consultation. + +Meanwhile, Marcella had drawn Mrs. Allison to the sofa beside her, and +was attempting a futile task of comfort. Mrs. Allison answered in +monosyllables, glancing hither and thither. At last she said in a low, +swift voice, as though addressing herself, rather than her companion, "If +all fails, I have made up my mind. I shall leave his house. I can take +nothing more from him." + +Marcella started. "But that would deprive you of all chance, all hope of +influencing him," she said, her eager, tender look searching the other +woman's face. + +"No; it would be my duty," said Mrs. Allison, simply, crossing her hands +upon her lap. Her delicate blue eyes, swollen with weeping, the white +hair, of which a lock had escaped from its usual quiet braids and hung +over her blanched cheeks, her look at once saintly and indomitable--every +detail of her changed aspect made a chill and penetrating impression. +Marcella began to understand what the Christian might do, though the +mother should die of it. + +Meanwhile she watched the two men at the other side of the room, with a +manifest eagerness for their return. Presently, indeed, she half rose +and called: + +"Aldous!" + +Lord Maxwell turned. + +"Are you thinking of someone who might go to Trouville?" she asked him. + +"Yes, but we can hit on no one," he replied, in perplexity. + +She moved towards him, bearing herself with a peculiar erectness +and dignity. + +"Would it be possible to ask Sir George Tressady to go?" she said +quietly. + +Maxwell looked at her open-mouthed for an instant. Fontenoy, behind him, +threw a sudden, searching glance at the beautiful figure in grey. + +"We all know," she said, turning back to the mother, "that Ancoats likes +Sir George." + +Mrs. Allison shrunk a little from the clear look. Fontenoy's rage of +defeat, however modified in her presence, had nevertheless expressed +itself to her in phrases and allusions that had both perplexed and +troubled her. _Had_ Marcella indeed made use of her beauty to decoy a +weak youth from his allegiance? And now she spoke his name so simply. + +But the momentary wonder died from the poor mother's mind. + +"I remember," she said sadly, "I remember he once spoke to me very kindly +about my son." + +"And he thought kindly," said Marcella, rapidly; "he is kind at heart. +Aldous! if Cousin Charlotte consents, why not at least put the case to +him? He knows everything. He might undertake what we want, for her +sake,--for all our sakes,--and it might succeed." + +The swift yet calm decision of her manner completed Maxwell's +bewilderment. + +His eyes sought hers, while the others waited, conscious, somehow, of a +dramatic moment. Fontenoy's flash of malicious curiosity made him even +forget, while it lasted, the little tragic figure on the sofa. + +"What do you say, Cousin Charlotte?" said Maxwell at last. + +His voice was dry and business-like. Only the wife who watched him +perceived the silent dignity with which he had accepted her appeal. + +He went to sit beside Mrs. Allison, stooping over her, while they talked +in a low key. Very soon she had caught at Marcella's suggestion, with an +energy of despair. + +"But how can we find him?" she said at last, looking helplessly round +the room, at the very chair, among others, where Tressady had just +been sitting. + +Maxwell felt the humour of the situation without relishing it. + +"Either at his own house," he said shortly, "or the House of Commons." + +"He may have left town this morning. Lord Fontenoy thought"--she looked +timidly at her companion--"that he would be sure to go and explain +himself to his constituents at once." + +"Well, we can find out. If you give me instructions,--if you are sure +this is what you want,--we will find out at once. Are you sure?" + +"I can think of nothing better," she said, with a piteous gesture. +"And if he goes, I have only one message to give him. Ancoats knows +that I have exhausted every argument, every entreaty. Now let him tell +my son"--her voice grew firm, in spite of her look of anguish--"that +if he insists on surrendering himself to a life of sin I can bear him +company no more. I shall leave his house, and go somewhere by myself, +to pray for him." + +Maxwell tried to soothe her, and there was some half-whispered talk +between them, she quietly wiping away her tears from time to time. + +Meanwhile, Marcella and Fontenoy sat together a little way off, he at +first watching Mrs. Allison, she silent, and making no attempt to play +the hostess. Gradually, however, the sense of her presence beside him, +the memory of Tressady's speech, of the scene in the House of the night +before, began to work in his veins with a pricking, exciting power. His +family was famous for a certain drastic way with women; his father, the +now old and half-insane Marquis, had parted from his mother while +Fontenoy was still a child, after scenes that would have disgraced an +inn parlour. Fontenoy himself, in his reckless youth, had simply avoided +the whole sex, so far as its reputable members were concerned; till one +woman by sympathy, by flattery perhaps, by the strange mingling in +herself of iron and gentleness, had tamed him. But there were brutal +instincts in his blood, and he became conscious of them as he sat beside +Marcella Maxwell. + +Suddenly he broke out, bending forward, one hand on his knee, the other +nervously adjusting the eyeglass without which he was practically blind. + +"I imagine your side had foreseen last night better than we had?" + +She drew herself together instantly. + +"One can hardly say. It was evident, wasn't it, that the House as a whole +was surprised? Certainly, no one could have foreseen the numbers." + +She met his look straight, her white hand playing with Mrs. +Allison's card. + +"Oh! a slide of that kind once begun goes like the wind," said Fontenoy. +"Well, and are you pleased with your Bill--not afraid of your +promises--of all the Edens you have held out?" + +The smile that he attempted roused such ogerish associations in Marcella, +she must needs say something to give colour to the half-desperate laugh +that caught her. + +"Did you suppose we should be already _en penitence?_" she asked him. + +The man's wrath overcame him. So England--all the serious forces of the +country--were to be more and more henceforward at the mercy of this kind +of thing! He had begun the struggle with a scornful disbelief in current +gossip. He--politically and morally the creation of a woman--had yet not +been able to bring himself to fear a woman. And now he sat there, +fiercely saying to himself that this woman, playing the old game under +new names, had undone him. + +"Ah! I see," he said. "You are of the mind of the Oxford don--never +regret, never retract, never apologise?" + +The small, reddish eyes, like needle-points, fixed the face before him. +She looked up, her beautiful lips parting. She felt the insult--marvelled +at it! On such an errand, in her own house! Scorn was almost lost in +astonishment. + +"A quotation which nobody gets right--isn't it so?" she said calmly. "If +a wise man said it, I suppose he meant, 'Don't explain yourself to the +wrong people,' which is good advice, don't you think?" + +She rose as she spoke, and moved away from him, that she might listen to +what her husband was saying. Fontenoy was left to reflect on the folly of +a man who, being driven to ask a kindness of his enemy, cannot keep his +temper in the enemy's house. Yet his temper had been freshly tried since +he entered it. The whole suggestion of Tressady's embassy was to himself +galling in the extreme. "There is a meaning in it," he thought; "of +course she thinks it will save appearances!" There was no extravagance, +no calumny, that this cold critic of other men's fervours was not for the +moment ready to believe. + +Nevertheless, as he threw himself back in his chair, and his eye caught +Mrs. Allison's bent figure on the other side of the room, he knew that he +must needs submit--he did submit--to anything that could give that torn +heart ease. Of his two passions, one, the passion for politics, seemed +for the moment to have lost itself in disgust and disappointment; to the +other he clung but the more strongly. Once or twice in her talk with +Maxwell, Mrs. Allison raised her gentle eyes and looked across to +Fontenoy. "Are you there, my friend?" the glance seemed to say, and a +thrill spread itself through the man's rugged being. Ah, well! the +follies of this young scapegrace must wear themselves out in time, and +either he would marry and so free his mother, or he would so outrage her +conscience that she would separate herself from him. Then would come +other people's rewards. + +Presently, indeed, Mrs. Allison rose from her seat and advanced to him +with hurried steps. + +"We have settled it, I think; Maxwell will do all he can. It seems hard +to trust so much to a stranger like Sir George Tressady, but if he will +go--if Ancoats likes him? We must do the best, mustn't we?" + +She raised to him her delicate, small face, in a most winning dependence. +Fontenoy did not even attempt resistance. + +"Certainly--it is not a chance to lose. May I suggest also"--he looked +at Maxwell--"that there is no time to lose?" + +"Give me ten minutes, and I am off," said Maxwell, hurriedly carrying a +bundle of unopened letters to a distance. He looked through them, to see +if anything especially urgent required him to give instructions to his +secretary before leaving the house. + +"Shall I take you home?" said Fontenoy to Mrs. Allison. + +She drew her thick veil round her head and face, and said some tremulous +words, which unconsciously deepened the gloom on Fontenoy's face. +Apparently they were to the effect that before going home she wished to +see the Anglican priest in whom she especially confided, a certain Father +White, who was to all intents and purposes her director. For in his +courtship of this woman of fifty, with her curious distinction and her +ethereal charm, which years seemed only to increase, Fontenoy had not one +rival, but two--her son and her religion. + +Fontenoy's fingers barely touched those of Maxwell and his wife. As he +closed the door behind Mrs. Allison, leaving the two together, he said to +himself contemptuously that he pitied the husband. + +When the latch had settled, Maxwell threw down his letters and crossed +the room to his wife. + +"I only half understood you," he said, a flush rising in his face. "You +really mean that we, on this day of all days--that I--am to personally +ask this kindness of George Tressady?" + +"I do!" she cried, but without attempting any caress. "If I could only go +and ask it myself!" "That would be impossible!" he said quickly. + +"Then you, dear husband--dear love!--go and ask it for me! Must we +not--oh! do see it as I do!--must we not somehow make it possible to be +friends again, to wipe out that--that half-hour once for all?"--she threw +out her hand in an impetuous gesture. "If you go, he will feel that is +what we mean--he will understand us at once--there is nothing vile in +him--nothing! Dear, he never said a word to me I could resent till this +morning. And, alack, alack! was it somehow my fault?" She dropped her +face a moment on the back of the chair she held. "How I am to play my own +part--well! I must think. But I cannot have such a thing on my heart, +Aldous--I cannot!" + +He was silent a moment; then he said: + +"Let me understand, at least, what it is precisely that we are doing. Is +the idea that it should be made possible for us all to meet again as +though nothing had happened?" + +She shrank a moment from the man's common sense; then replied, +controlling herself: + +"Only not to leave the open sore--to help him to forget! He must know--he +does know"--she held herself proudly--"that I have no secrets from you. +So that when the time comes for remembering, for thinking it over, he +will shrink from you, or hate you. Whereas, what I want"--her eyes filled +with tears--"is that he should _know_ you--only that! I ought to have +brought it about long ago." + +"Are you forgetting that I owe him this morning my political existence?" + +The voice betrayed the inner passion. + +"He would be the last person to remember it!" she cried. "Why not take it +quite, quite simply?--behave so as to say to him, without words, 'Be our +friend--join with us in putting out of sight what hurts us no less than +you to think of. Shut the door upon the old room--pass with us into a +new!'--oh! if I could explain!" + +She hid her face in her hands again. + +"I understand," he said, after a long pause. "It is very like you. I am +not quite sure it is very wise. These things, to my mind, are best left +to end themselves. But I promised Mrs. Allison; and what you ask, dear, +you shall have. So be it." + +She lifted her head hastily, and was dismayed by the signs of +agitation in him as he turned away. She pursued him timidly, laying +her hand on his arm. + +"And then--" + +Her voice sank to its most pleading note. He caught her hand; but she +withdrew herself in haste. + +"And then," she went on, struggling for a smile, "then you and I have +things to settle. Do you think I don't know that I have made all your +work, and all your triumph, gall and bitterness to you--do you think I +don't know?" + +She gazed at him with a passionate intensity through her tears, yet by +her gesture forbidding him to come near her. What man would not have +endured such discomforts a thousand times for such a look? + +He stooped to her. + +"We are to talk that out, then, when I come back?--Please give these +letters to Saunders--there is nothing of importance. I will go first to +Tressady's house." + + * * * * * + +Maxwell drove away through the sultry streets, his mind running on his +task. It seemed to him that politics had never put him to anything so +hard. But he began to plan it with his usual care and precision. The +butler who opened the door of the Upper Brook Street house could only say +that his master was not at home. + +"Shall I find him, do you imagine, at the House of Commons?" + +The butler could not say. But Lady Tressady was in, though just on the +point of going out. Should he inquire? + +But the visitor made it plain that he had no intention of disturbing Lady +Tressady, and would find out for himself. He left his card in the +butler's hands. + +"Who was that, Kenrick?" said a sharp voice behind the man as the hansom +drove away. Letty Tressady, elaborately dressed, with a huge white hat +and lace parasol, was standing on the stairs, her pale face peering out +of the shadows. The butler handed her the card, and telling him to get +her a cab at once, she ran up again to the drawing-room. + +Meanwhile Maxwell sped on towards Westminster, frowning over his problem. +As he drove down Whitehall the sun brightened to a naked midday heat, +throwing its cloak of mists behind it. The gilding on the Clock Tower +sparkled in the light; even the dusty, airless street, with its withered +planes, was on a sudden flooded with gaiety. Two or three official or +Parliamentary acquaintances saluted the successful minister as he passed; +and each was conscious of a certain impatience with the gravity of the +well-known face. That a great man should not be content to look victory, +as well as win it, seemed a kind of hypocrisy. + +In the House of Commons, a few last votes and other oddments of the now +dying session were being pushed through to an accompaniment of empty +benches. Tressady was not there, nor in the library. Maxwell made his way +to the upper lobby, where writing-tables and materials are provided in +the window-recesses for the use of members. + +He had hardly entered the lobby before he caught sight at its further end +of the long straight chin and fair head of the man he was in quest of. +And almost at the same moment, Tressady, who was sitting writing amid a +pile of letters and papers, lifted his eyes and saw Lord Maxwell +approaching. + +He started, then half rose, scattering his papers. Maxwell bowed as he +neared the table, then stopped beside it, without offering his hand. + +"I fear I may be disturbing you," he said, with simple but cold courtesy. +"The fact is I have come down here on an urgent matter, which may perhaps +be my excuse. Could you give me twenty minutes, in my room?" + +"By all means," said Tressady. He tried to put his papers together, but +to his own infinite annoyance his hand shook. He seemed hardly to know +what to do with them. + +"Do not let me hurry you," said Maxwell, in the same manner. "Will you +follow me at your leisure?" + +"I will follow you immediately," said Tressady; "as soon as I have put +these under lock and key." + +His visitor departed. Tressady remained standing a moment by the table, +his blue eyes, unusually wide open, fixed absently on the river, a dark +red flush overspreading the face. Then he rapidly threw his papers +together into a black bag that stood near, and walked with them to his +locker in the wall. + +For an hour after he left Marcella Maxwell he had wandered blindly up +and down the Green Park; at the end of it a sudden impulse had driven +him to the House, as his best refuge both from Letty and himself. There +he found waiting for him a number of letters, and a sheaf of telegrams +besides from his constituency, with which he had just begun to grapple +when Maxwell interrupted him. Some hours of hard writing and thinking +might, he thought, bring him by reaction to some notion of what to do +with the next days and nights--how to take up the business of his +private life again. + +Now, as he withdrew his key from the lock, in a corridor almost empty of +inhabitants, abstraction seized him once more. He leant against the wall +a moment, with his hands in his pockets, seeing her face--the tears on +her cheek--feeling the texture of her dress against his lips. Barely two +hours ago! No doubt she had confided all to Maxwell in the interval. The +young fellow burnt with mingled rage and shame. This interview with the +husband seemed to transform it all to vaudeville, if not to farce. How +was he to get through it with any dignity and self-command? Moreover, a +passionate resentment towards Maxwell developed itself. His telling of +his secret had been no matter for a common scandal, a vulgar jealousy. +_She_ knew that--she could not have so misrepresented him. A sense of the +situation to which he had brought himself on all sides made his pride +feel itself in the grip of something that asked his submission. Yet why, +and to whom? + +He walked along through the interminable corridors towards Maxwell's room +in the House of Lords, a prey to what afterwards seemed to him the +meanest moment of his life. Little knowing the pledges that a woman had +given for him, he did say to himself that Maxwell owed him much--that he +was not called upon to bear everything from a man he had given back to +power. And all the time his thoughts built a thorn-hedge about her face, +her pity. Let him see them no more, not even in the mirror of the mind. +Great heaven! what harm could such as he do to her? + +By the time he reached Maxwell's door he seemed to himself as hard and +cool as usual. As he entered, the minister was standing by an oriel +window, overlooking the river, turning over the contents of a +despatch-box that had just been brought him. He advanced at once; and +Tressady noticed that he had already dismissed his secretary. + +"Will you sit by the window?" said Maxwell. "The day promises to be +extraordinarily hot." + +Tressady took the seat assigned him. Maxwell's grey eye ran over the +young man's figure and bearing. Then he bent forward from a chair on the +other side of a small writing-table. + +"You will probably have guessed the reason of my intrusion upon you--you +and I have already discussed this troublesome affair--and the kind manner +in which you treated our anxieties then--" + +"Ancoats!" exclaimed Tressady, with a start he could not control. "You +wish to consult me about Ancoats?" + +A flash of wonder crossed the other's mind. "He imagined--" Instinctively +Maxwell's opening mildness stiffened into a colder dignity. + +"I fear we may be making an altogether improper claim upon you," he said +quietly; "but this morning, about an hour ago, Ancoats's mother came to +us with the news that he had left her two days ago, and was now +discovered to be at Trouville, where he has a chalet, waiting for this +girl, of whom we all know, to join him. You will imagine Mrs. Allison's +despair. The entanglement is in itself bad enough. But she--I think you +know it--is no ordinary woman, nor can she bring any of the common +philosophy of life to bear upon this matter. It seems to be sapping her +very springs of existence, and the impression she left upon myself--and +upon Lady Maxwell"--he said the words slowly--"was one of the deepest +pity and sorrow. As you also know, I believe, I have till now been able +to bring some restraining influence to bear upon the girl, who is of +course not a girl, but a very much married woman, with a husband always +threatening to turn up and avenge himself upon her. There is a good man, +one of those High Church clergymen who interest themselves specially in +the stage, who has helped us many times already. I have telegraphed to +him, and expect him here before long. We know that she has not yet left +London, and it may be possible again, at the eleventh hour, to stop her. +But that--" + +"Is not enough," said Tressady, quickly, raising his head. "You want +someone to grapple with Ancoats?" + +Face and voice were those of another man--attentive, normal, sympathetic. +Maxwell observed him keenly. + +"We want someone to go to Ancoats; to represent to him his mother's +determination to leave him for good if this disgraceful affair goes on; +to break the shock of the girl's non-arrival to him, if, indeed, we +succeed in stopping her; and to watch him for a day or two, in case there +should be anything in the miserable talk of suicide with which he seems +to have been threatening his mother." + +"Oh! Suicide! Ancoats!" said Tressady, throwing back his head. + +"We rate him, apparently, much the same," said Maxwell, drily. "But it +is not to be wondered at that the mother should be differently affected. +She sent you"--the speaker paused a moment--"what seemed to me a +touching message." + +Tressady bent forward. + +"'Tell him that I have no claim upon him--that I am ashamed to ask this +of him. But he once said some kind words to me about my son, and I know +that Ancoats desired his friendship. His help _might_ save us. I can say +no more.'" + +Tressady looked up quickly, reddening involuntarily. + +"Was Fontenoy there--did he agree?" + +"Fontenoy agreed," said Maxwell, in the same measured voice. "In fact, +you grasp our petition. To speak frankly, my wife suggested it, and I was +deputed to bear it to you. But I need not say that we are quite prepared +to find that you are not able to do what we have ventured to ask of you, +or that your engagements will not permit it." + +A strange gulp rose in Tressady's throat. He understood--oh! he +understood her--perfectly. + +He leant back in his chair, looking through the open window to the +Thames. A breeze had risen and was breaking up the thunderous sky into +gay spaces of white and blue. The river was surging and boiling under the +tide, and strings of barges were mounting with the mounting water, +slipping fast along the terrace wall. The fronts of the various buildings +opposite rose in shadow against the dazzling blue and silver of the +water. Here over the river, even for this jaded London, summer was still +fresh; every mast and spar, every track of boat or steamer in the burst +of light, struck the eye with sharpness and delight. + +Each line and hue printed itself on Tressady's brain. Then he turned +slowly to his companion. Maxwell sat patiently waiting for his reply; and +for the first time Tressady received, as it were, a full impression of a +personality he had till now either ignored or disliked. In youth Maxwell +had never passed for a handsome man. But middle life and noble habit were +every year giving increased accent and spiritual energy to the youth's +pleasant features; and Nature as she silvered the brown hair, and drove +deep the lines of thought and experience, was bringing more than she took +away. A quiet, modest fellow Maxwell would be to the end; not witty; not +brilliant; more and more content to bear the yoke of the great +commonplaces of life as subtlety and knowledge grew; saying nothing of +spiritual things, only living them--yet a man, it seemed, on whom England +would more and more lay the burden of her fortunes. + +Tressady gazed at him, shaken with new reverences, new compunctions. +Maxwell's eyes were drawn to his--mild, penetrating eyes, in which for an +instant Tressady seemed to read what no words would ever say to him. Then +he sprang up. + +"There is an afternoon train put on this month. I can catch it. Tell me, +if you can, a few more details." + +Maxwell took out a half-sheet of notes from his pocket, and the two men +standing together beside the table went with care into a few matters it +was well for Tressady to know. Tressady threw a quick intelligence into +his questions that inevitably recalled to Maxwell the cut-and-thrust of +his speech on the preceding evening; nor behind his rapid discussion of a +vulgar business did the constrained emotion of his manner escape his +companion. + +At last all was settled. At the last moment an uneasy question rose in +Maxwell's mind. "Ought _we_, at such a crisis, to be sending him away +from his wife?" But he could not bring himself to put it, even lightly, +into words, and as it happened Tressady did not leave him in doubt. + +"I am glad you caught me," he said nervously, in what seemed an awkward +pause, while he looked for his hat, forgetting where he had put it. "I +was intending to leave London to-night. But my business can very well +wait till next week. Now I think I have everything." + +He gathered up a new Guide-Chaix that Maxwell had put into his hand, saw +that the half-sheet of notes was safely stowed into his pocket-book, and +took up his hat and stick. As he spoke, Maxwell had remembered the +situation and Mrs. Allison's remark. No doubt Tressady had proposed to go +north that night on a mission of explanation to his Market Malford +constituents, and it struck one of the most scrupulous of men with an +additional pang, that he should be thus helping to put private motives in +the way of public duty. But what was done was done. And it seemed +impossible that either should speak a word of politics. + +"I ought to say," said Tressady, pausing once more as they moved +together towards the door, "that I have not ultimately much hope for +Mrs. Allison. If this entanglement is put aside, there will be something +else. Trouville itself, in August, I should imagine, is a place of +_bonnes fortunes_ for the man who wants them, and Ancoats's mind runs to +such things." + +He spoke with a curious eagerness, like one who pleads that his good-will +shall not be judged by mere failure or success. + +Maxwell raised his shoulders. + +"Nothing that can happen will in the least affect our gratitude to +_you_," he said gravely. + +"Gratitude!" muttered the young man under his breath. His lip trembled. +He looked uncertainly at his companion. Maxwell did not offer his hand, +yet as he opened the door for his visitor there was a quiet cordiality +and kindness in his manner that made his renewed words of thanks sound +like a strange music in Tressady's ears. + + * * * * * + +When the minister was once more alone he walked back to the window, and +stood looking down thoughtfully on the gay pageant of the river. She was +right--she was always right. There was nothing vile in that young fellow, +and his face had a look of suffering it pained Maxwell to remember. Why +had he personally not come to know him better? "I think too little of +men, too much of machinery," he said to himself, despondently; +"unconsciously I leave the dealing with human beings far too often to +her, and then I wonder that a man sees and feels her as she is!" + +Yet as he stood there in the sunshine a feeling of moral relief stole +upon him, the feeling that rewards a man who has tried to deal greatly +with some common and personal strait. Some day, not yet, he would make +Tressady his friend. He calmly felt it to be within his power. + +Unless the wife!--He threw up his hand, and turned back to his +writing-table. What was to be done with that letter? Had Tressady +any knowledge of it? Maxwell could not conceive it possible that he +had. But, no doubt, it would come to his knowledge, as well as +Maxwell's reply. + +For he meant to reply, and as he glanced at the clock on his table he saw +that he had just half an hour before his clergyman-visitor arrived. +Instantly, in his methodical way, he sat down to his task, labouring it, +however, with toil and difficulty, when it was once begun. + +The few words he ultimately wrote ran as follows: + +"Dear Lady Tressady,--Your letter was a great surprise and a great pain +to me. I believe you will recognise before long that you wrote it under a +delusion, and that you have said in it both unkind and unjust things of +one who is totally incapable of wronging you or anyone else. My wife read +your letter, for she and I have no secrets. She will try and see you at +once, and I trust you will not refuse to see her. She will prove to you, +I think, that you have been giving yourself quite needless torture, for +which she has no responsibility, but for which she is none the less +sorrowful and distressed. + +"I have treated your letter in this way because it is impossible to +ignore the pain and trouble which drove you to write. I need not say that +if it became necessary for me to write or act in another way, I should +think only of my wife. But I will trust to the effect upon you of her own +words and character; and I cannot believe that you will misconstrue the +generosity that prompts her to go to you. + +"Is it not possible, also, that your misunderstanding of your husband +may be in its own way as grave as your misunderstanding of Lady Maxwell? +Forgive an intrusive question, and believe me, + +"Yours faithfully, + +"MAXWELL." + +He read it anxiously over and over, then took a hasty copy of it, and +finally sealed and sent it. He was but half satisfied with it. How was +one to write such a letter without argument or recrimination? The poor +thing had a vulgar, spiteful, little soul; that was clear from her +outpouring. It was also clear that she was miserable; nor could Maxwell +disguise from himself that in a sense she had ample cause. From that hard +fact, with all its repellent and unpalatable consequences, a weaker man +would by now have let his mind escape, would at any rate have begun to +minimise and make light of George Tressady's act of the morning. In +Maxwell, on the contrary, after a first movement of passionate resentment +which had nothing whatever in common with ordinary jealousy, that act was +now generating a compelling and beneficent force, that made for healing +and reparation. Marcella had foreseen it, and in her pain and penitence +had given the impulse. For all things are possible to a perfect +affection, working through a nature at once healthy and strong. + +Yet when Maxwell was once more established in his room at the Privy +Council, overwhelmed with letters, interviews, and all the routine of +official business, those who had to do with him noticed an unusual +restlessness in their even-tempered chief. In truth, whenever his work +left him free for a moment, all sorts of questions would start up in his +mind: "Is she there? Is that woman hurting and insulting her? Can I do +nothing? My love! my poor love!" + + * * * * * + +But Marcella's plans so far had not prospered. + +When George Tressady, after hastily despatching his most urgent business +at the House, drove up to his own door in the afternoon just in time to +put his things together and catch a newly-put-on dining-train to Paris, +he found the house deserted. The butler reminded him that Letty +accompanied by Miss Tulloch had gone to Hampton Court to join a river +party for the day. George remembered; he hated the people she was to be +with, and instinct told him that Cathedine would be there. + +A rush of miserable worry overcame him. Ought he to be leaving her? + +Then, in the darkness of the hall, he caught sight of a card lying on the +table. _Her card_! Amazement made him almost dizzy, while the man at his +arm explained. + +"Her ladyship called just after luncheon. She thought she would have +found my lady in--before she went out. But her ladyship is coming again, +probably this evening, as she wished to see Lady Tressady particularly." + +Tressady gave the man directions to pack for him immediately, then took +the card into his study, and stood looking at it in a tumult of feeling. +Ah! let him begone--out of her way! Oh, heavenly goodness and compassion! +It seemed to him already that an angel had trodden this dark house, and +that another air breathed in it. + +That was his first thought. Then the rush of sore longing, of unbearable +self-contempt, stirred all his worser self to life again. Had she not +better after all have left him and Letty alone! What did such lives as +theirs matter to her? + +He ran upstairs to make his last preparations, wrote a few lines to Letty +describing Mrs. Allison's plight and the errand on which he was bound, +and in half an hour was at Charing Cross. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +"Did you ring, my lady?" + +"Yes. Kenrick, if Lady Maxwell calls to see me to-night, you will say, +please, that I am particularly engaged, and unable to receive anyone." + +Letty Tressady had just come in from her river party. Dressed in a +delicate gown of lace and pale green chiffon, she was standing beside her +writing-table with Lady Maxwell's card in her hand. Kenrick had given it +to her on her arrival, together with the message which had accompanied +it, and she had taken a few minutes to think it over. As she gave the man +his order, the energy of the small figure, as it half turned towards the +door, the brightness of the eyes under the white veil she had just thrown +back, no less than the emphasis of her tone, awakened in the butler the +clear perception that neither the expected visit nor his mistress's +directions were to be taken as ordinary affairs. After he left the +drawing-room, Grier passed him on the stairs. He gave her a slight +signal, and the two retired to some nether region to discuss the secrets +of their employers. + +Meanwhile Letty, having turned on the electric light in the room, walked +to the window and set it half open behind the curtain. In that way she +would hear the carriage approaching, it was between eight and nine +o'clock. No doubt Lady Maxwell would drive round after dinner. + +Then, still holding the card lightly in her hand, she threw herself on +the sofa. She was tired, but so excited that she could not rest--first, +by the memory of the day that had just passed; still more by the thought +of the rebuff she was about to administer to the great lady who had +affronted her. No doubt her letter had done its work. The remembrance of +it tilled her with an uneasy joy. Did George know of it by now? She did +not care. Lady Maxwell, of course, was coming to try and appease her, to +hush it up. There had been a scene, it was to be supposed, between her +and her stiff husband. Letty gloated over the dream of it. Tears, +humiliation, reproaches, she meted them all out in plenty to the woman +she hated. Nor would things end there. Why, London was full of gossip! +Harding's paragraph--for of course it was Harding's--had secured that. +How clever of him! Not a name!--not a thing that could be taken hold +of!--yet so clear. Well!--if she, Letty, was to be trampled on and set +aside, at any rate other people should suffer too. + +So George had gone off to France, leaving her alone, without "Good-bye." +She did not believe a word of his excuse; and, if it were true, it was +only another outrage that he should have thought twice of such a matter +at such a crisis. But it was probably a mere device of his and +_hers_--she would find out for what. + +Her state of tension was too great to allow her to stay in the same place +for more than a few minutes. She got up, and went to the glass before the +mantelpiece. Taking out the pins that held her large Gainsborough hat, +she arranged her hair with her hands, putting the curls of the fringe in +their right place, fastening up some stray ends. She had given orders, as +we have seen, to admit no one, and was presumably going to bed. +Nevertheless, her behaviour was instinctively the behaviour of one who +expects a guest. + +When, more or less to her satisfaction, she had restored the symmetry of +the little curled and crimped head, she took her face between her hands, +and stared at her own reflection. Memories of the party she had just +left, of the hot river, the slowly filling locks, the revelry, the +champagne, danced in her mind, especially of a certain walk through a +wood. She defiantly watched the face in the glass grow red, the eyelids +quiver. Then, like the tremor from some volcanic fire far within, a +shudder ran through her. She dropped her head on her hands. She +hated--_hated_ him! Was it to-morrow evening she had told him he might +come? She would go down to Ferth. + +Wheels in the quiet street! Letty flew to the window like an excited +child, her green and white twinkling through the room. + +A brougham, and a tall figure in black stepping slowly out of it. Letty +sheltered herself behind a curtain, held her breath, and listened. + +Presently her lower lip dropped a little. What was Kenrick about? The +front door had closed, and Lady Maxwell had not re-entered her carriage. + +She opened the drawing-room door with care, and was stooping over the +banisters when she saw Kenrick on the stairs. He seemed to be coming +from the direction of George's study. + +"What have you been doing?" she asked him in a hard under-voice, looking +at him angrily. "I told you not to let Lady Maxwell in." + +"I told her, my lady, that you were engaged and could see no one. Then +her ladyship asked if she might write a few lines to you and send them +up, asking when you would be able to see her. So I showed her into Sir +George's study, my lady, and she is writing at Sir George's desk." + +"You should have done nothing of the sort," said Letty, sharply. "What is +that letter?" + +She took it from his hand before the butler, somewhat bewildered by the +responsibilities of his position, could explain that he had just found it +in the letterbox, where it might have been lying some little time, as he +had heard no knock. + +She let him go downstairs again, to await Lady Maxwell's exit, and +herself ran back to read her letter, her heart beating, for the address +of the sender was on the envelope. + +When she had finished she threw it down, half suffocating. + +"So I am to be lectured and preached to besides. Good heavens! In his +lofty manner, I suppose, that people talk of. Prig--odious, +insufferable prig! So I have mistaken George, have I? My own husband! +And insulted her--_her_! And she is actually downstairs, writing to me, +in my own house!" + +She locked her hands, and began stormily to pace the room again. The +image of her rival, only a few feet from her, bending over George's +table, worked in her with poisonous force. Suddenly she swept to the bell +and rang it. A door opened downstairs. She ran to the landing. + +"Kenrick!" + +"Yes, my lady." She heard a pause, and the soft rustle of a dress. + +"Tell Lady Maxwell, please"--she struggled hard for the right, the +dignified tone--"that if it is not too late for her to stay, I am now +able to see her." + +She hurried back into the drawing-room and waited. _Would_ she come? +Letty's whole being was now throbbing with one mad desire. If Kenrick +let her go! + +But steps approached; the door was thrown open. + +Marcella Maxwell came in timidly, very pale, the dark eyes shrinking from +the sudden light of the drawing-room. She was bareheaded, and wore a long +cloak of black lace over her white evening dress. Letty's flash of +thought as she saw her was twofold: first, hatred of her beauty, then +triumph in the evident nervousness with which her visitor approached her. + +Without making the slightest change of position, the mistress of the +house spoke first. + +"Will you please tell me," she said, in her sharpest, thinnest voice, "to +what I owe the honour of this visit?" + +Marcella paused half-way towards her hostess. + +"I read your letter to my husband," she said quietly, though her voice +shook, "and I thought you would hardly refuse to let me speak to you +about it." + +"Then perhaps you will sit down," said Letty, in the same voice; and she +seated herself. + +If she had wished to heighten the effect of her reception by these small +discourtesies she did not succeed. Rather, Marcella's self-possession +returned under them. She looked round simply for a chair, brought one +forward within speaking distance of her companion, moving once more, in +her thin, tall grace, with all that unconscious dignity Letty had so +often envied and admired from a distance. + +But neither dignity nor grace made any bar to the emotion that filled +her. She bent forward, clasping her hands on her knee. + +"Your letter to my husband made me so unhappy--that I could not help +coming," she said, in a tone that was all entreaty, all humbleness. +"Not--of course--that it seemed to either of us a true or just account of +what had happened"--she drew herself up gently--"but it made me +realise--though indeed I had realised it before I read it--that in my +friendship with your husband I had been forgetting--forgetting those +things--one ought to remember most. You will let me put things, won't +you, in my own way, as they seem to me? At Castle Luton Sir George +attracted me very much. The pleasure of talking to him there first made +me wish to try and alter some of his views--to bring him across my poor +people--to introduce him to our friends. Then, somehow, a special bond +grew up between him and me with regard to this particular struggle in +which my husband and I"--she dropped her eyes that she might not see +Letty's heated face--"have been so keenly interested. But what I ought to +have felt--from the very first--was, that there could be, there ought to +have been, something else added. Married people "--she spoke hurriedly, +her breath rising and falling--"are not two, but one--and my first step +should have been to come--and--and ask you to let me know you too--to +find out what your feelings were, whether you wished for a +friendship--that--that I had perhaps no right to offer to Sir George +alone. I have been looking into my own heart"--her voice trembled +again--"and I see that fault, that great fault. To be excluded myself +from any strong friendship my husband might make, would be agony to me!" +The frank, sudden passion of her lifted eyes sent a thrill even through +Letty's fierce and hardly, kept silence. "And that I wanted to say to +you, first of all. I wronged my own conception of what marriage should +be, and you were quite, quite right to be angry!" + +"Well, I think it's quite clear, isn't it, that you forgot from the +beginning George had a wife?" cried Letty, in her most insulting voice. +"That certainly can't be denied. Anybody could see that at Castle Luton!" + +Marcella looked at her in perplexity. What could suggest to her how to +say the right word, touch the right chord? Would she be able to do more +than satisfy her own conscience and then go, leaving this strange little +fury to make what use she pleased of her visit and her avowals? + +She shaded her eyes with her hand a moment, thinking. Then she said: + +"Perhaps it is of no use for me to ask you to remember how full our +minds--my husband's and mine--have been of one subject--one set of +ideas. But, if I am not keeping you too long, I should like to give you +an account, from my point of view, of the friendship between Sir George +and myself. I think I can remember every talk of ours, from our first +meeting in the hospital down to--down to this morning." + +"This morning!" cried Letty, springing up. "This _morning_! He went to +you to-day?" + +The little face convulsed with passion raised an intolerable distress +in Marcella. + +"Yes, he came to see me," she said, her dark eyes, full of pain, full, +too, once more, of entreaty, fixed upon her interrogator. "But do let me +tell you! I never saw anyone in deeper trouble--trouble about +you--trouble about himself." + +Letty burst into a wild laugh. + +"Of course! No doubt he went to complain of me--that I flirted--that I +ill-treated his mother--that I spent too much money--and a lot of other +pleasant little things. Oh! I can imagine it perfectly. Besides that, I +suppose he went to be thanked. Well, he deserved _that_. He has thrown +away his career to please you; so if you didn't thank him, you ought! +Everybody says his position in Parliament now isn't worth a straw--that +he must resign--which is delightful, of course, for his wife. And I saw +it all from the beginning--I understood exactly what you _wanted_ to do +at Castle Luton--only I couldn't believe then--I was only six weeks +married--" + +A wave of excitement and self-pity swept over her. She broke off +with a sob. + +Marcella's heart was wrung. She knew nothing of the real Letty Tressady. +It was the wife as such, slighted and set aside, that appealed to the +imagination, the remorse of this happy, this beloved woman. She rose +quickly, she held out her hands, looking down upon the little venomous +creature who had been pouring these insults upon her. + +"Don't--_don't_ believe such things," she said, with sobbing breath. "I +never wronged you consciously for a moment. Can't you believe that Sir +George and I became friends because we cared for the same kind of +questions; because I--I was full of my husband's work and everything that +concerned it; because I liked to talk about it, to win him friends. If it +had ever entered my mind that such a thing could pain and hurt you--" + +"Where have you sent him to-day?" cried Letty, peremptorily, interrupting +her, while she drew her handkerchief fiercely across her eyes. + +Instantly Marcella was conscious of the difficulty of explaining her own +impulse and Maxwell's action. + +"Sir George told me," she said, faltering, "that he must go away from +London immediately, to think out some trouble that was oppressing him. +Only a few minutes after he left our house we heard from Mrs. Allison +that she was in great distress about her son. She came, in fact, to beg +us to help her find him. I won't go into the story, of course; I am sure +you know it. My husband and I talked it over. It occurred to us that if +Maxwell went to him--to Sir George--and asked him to do us and her this +great kindness of going to Ancoats and trying to bring him back to his +mother, it would put everything on a different footing. Maxwell would +get to know him,--as I had got to know him. One would find a way--to +silence the foolish, unjust things--that have been said--I suppose--I +don't know--" + +She paused, confused by the difficulties in her path, her cheeks hot and +flushed. But the heart knew its own innocence. She recovered herself; she +came nearer. + +"--If only--at the same time--I could make you realise how truly--how +bitterly--I had felt for any pain you might have suffered--if I could +persuade you to look at it all--your husband's conduct and mine--in its +true light, and to believe that he cares--he _must_ care--for nothing in +the world so much as his home--as you and your happiness!" + +The nobleness of the speaker, the futility of the speech, were about +equally balanced! Candour was impossible, if only for kindness' sake. And +the story, so told, was not only unconvincing, it was hardly intelligible +even, to Letty. For the two personalities moved in different worlds, and +what had seemed to the woman who was all delicate impulse and romance the +natural and right course, merely excited in Letty, and not without +reason, fresh suspicion and offence. If words had been all, Marcella had +gained nothing. + +But a strange tumult was rising in Letty's breast. There was something in +this mingling of self-abasement with an extraordinary moral richness and +dignity, in these eyes, these hands that would have so gladly caught and +clasped her own, which began almost to intimidate her. She broke out +again, so as to hold her own bewilderment at bay: + +"What right had you to send him away--to plan anything for _my_ husband +without my consent? Oh, of course you put it very finely; I daresay you +know about all sorts of things _I_ don't know about; I'm not clever, I +don't talk politics. But I don't quite see the good of it, if it's only +to take husbands away from their wives. All the same, I'm not a +hypocrite, and I don't mean to pretend I'm a meek saint. Far from it. +I've no doubt that George thinks he's been perfectly justified from the +beginning, and that I have brought everything upon myself. Well! I don't +care to argue about it. Don't imagine, please, that I have been playing +the deserted wife all the time. If people injure me, it's not my way to +hold my tongue, and I imagine that, after all, I do understand my own +husband, in spite of Lord Maxwell's kind remarks!" She pointed scornfully +to Maxwell's letter on the table. "But as soon as I saw that nothing I +said mattered to George, and that his whole mind was taken up with your +society, why, of course, I took my own measures! There are other men in +the world--and one of them happens to amuse me particularly at this +moment. It's your doing and George's, you see, if he doesn't like it!" + +Marcella recoiled in sudden horror, staring at her companion with wide, +startled eyes. Letty braved her defiantly, her dry lips drawn into a +miserable smile. She stood, looking very small and elegant, beside her +writing-table, her hand, blazing with rings, resting lightly upon it, the +little, hot withered face alone betraying the nerve tension behind. + +The situation lasted a few seconds, then with a quick step Marcella +hurried to a chair on the further side of the room, sank into it, and +covered her face with her hands. + +Letty's heart seemed to dip, as it were, into an abyss. But there was a +frenzied triumph in the spectacle of Marcella's grief and tears. + +_Marcella Maxwell_--thus silenced, thus subdued! The famous name, with +all that it had stood for in Letty's mind, of things to be envied and +desired, echoed in her ear, delighted her revenge. She struggled to +maintain her attitude. + +"I don't know why what I said should make you so unhappy," she said +coldly, after a pause. + +Marcella did not reply. Presently Letty saw that she was resting her +cheek on her hand and gazing before her into vacancy. At last she turned +round, and Letty could satisfy herself that in truth her eyes were wet. + +"Is there no one," asked the full, tremulous voice, "whom you care for, +whom you would send for now to advise and help you?" + +"Thank you!" said Letty, calmly, leaning against the little +writing-table, and beating the ground slightly with her foot. "I don't +want them. And I don't know why you should trouble yourself about it." + +But for the first time, and against its owner's will, the hard +tone wavered. + +Marcella rose impetuously again, and came towards her. + +"When one thinks of all the long years of married life," she said, still +trembling, "of the children that may come--" + +Letty lifted her eyebrows. + +"If one happened to wish for them. But I don't happen to wish for them, +never did. I daresay it sounds horrid. Anyway, one needn't take that into +consideration." + +"And your husband? Your husband, who must be miserable, whose great gifts +will be all spoiled unless you will somehow give up your anger and make +peace. And instead of that, you are only thinking of revenging yourself, +of making more ruin and pain. It breaks one's heart! And it would need +such a _little_ effort on your part, only a few words written or spoken, +to bring him back, to end all this unhappiness!" + +"Oh! George can take care of himself," said Letty, provokingly; "so can +I. Besides, you have sent him away." + +Marcella looked at her in despair. Then silently she turned away, and +Letty saw that she was searching for some gloves and a handkerchief she +had been carrying in her hand when she came in. + +Letty watched her take them up, then said suddenly, "Are you going away?" + +"It is best, I think. I can do nothing." + +"I wish I knew why you came to see me at all! They say, of course, +you are very much in love with Lord Maxwell. Perhaps--that made you +sorry for me?" + +Marcella's pride leapt at the mention by those lips of her own married +life. Then she drove her pride down. + +"You have put it better than I have been able to do, all the time." Her +mouth parted in a slight, sad smile--"Good-night." + +Letty took no notice. She sat down on the arm of a chair near her. Her +eyes suddenly blazed, her face grew dead-white. + +"Well, if you want to know--" she said--"no, don't go--I don't mean to +let you go just yet--I _am_ about the most miserable wretch going! There, +you may take it or leave it; it's true. I don't suppose I cared much +about George when I married him; plenty of girls don't. But as soon as he +began to care about _you_,--just contrariness, I suppose,--I began to +feel that I could kill anybody that took him from me, and kill myself +afterwards! Oh, good gracious! there was plenty of reason for his getting +tired of me. I'm not the sort of person to let anyone get the whip-hand +of me, and I _would_ spend his money as I liked, and I _would_ ask the +persons I chose to the house; and, above all, I wasn't going to be +pestered with looking after and giving up to his _dreadful_ mother, who +made my life a burden to me. Oh! why do you look so white? Well, I +daresay it does sound atrocious. I don't care. Perhaps you'll be still +more horrified when you know that they came round this afternoon, when I +was out and George was gone, to tell me that Lady Tressady was +frightfully ill--dying, I think my maid said. And I haven't given it +another thought since--not one--till now"--she struck one hand against +the other--"because directly afterwards the butler told me of your visit +this afternoon, and that you were coming again--and I wasn't going to +think of anything else in the world but you, and George. No, don't look +like that, don't come near me--I'm not mad. I assure you I'm not mad! But +that's all by the way. What was I saying? Oh! that George had cause +enough to stop caring about me. Of course he had; but if he's lost to +me--I shall give him a good deal more cause before we've done. That +other man--you know him--Cathedine--gave me a kiss this afternoon, when +we were in a wood together"--the same involuntary shudder overtook her, +while she still held her companion at arm's length. "Oh, he is a +brute--a _brute_! But what do I care what happens to me? It's so strange +I don't--rather creditable, I think--for after all I like parties, and +being asked about. But now George hates me--and let you send him away +from me--why, of course, it's all simple enough! I--Don't--don't come. I +shall never, never forgive--it's just being tired--" + +But Marcella sprang forward. Mercifully, there is a limit to nerve +endurance, and Letty in her raving had overpassed it. She sank gasping on +a sofa, still putting out her hand as though to protect herself. But +Marcella knelt beside her, the tears running down her cheeks. She put her +arms--arms formed for tenderness, for motherliness--round the girl's +slight frame. "Don't--don't repulse me," she said, with trembling lips, +and suddenly Letty yielded. She found herself sobbing in Lady Maxwell's +embrace, while all the healing, all the remorse, all the comfort that +self-abandonment and pity can pour out on such a plight as hers, +descended upon her from Marcella's clinging touch, her hurried, +fragmentary words. Assurances that all could be made right entreaties for +gentleness and patience--revelations of her own inmost heart as a wife, +far too sacred for the ears of Letty Tressady--little phrases and +snatches of autobiography steeped in an exquisite experience: the nature +Letty had rained her blows upon, kept nothing back, gave her all its +best. How irrelevant much of it was!--chequered throughout by those +oblivions, and optimisms, and foolish hopes by which such a nature as +Marcella's protects itself from the hard facts of the world. By the time +she had ranged through every note of entreaty and consolation, Marcella +had almost persuaded herself and Letty that George Tressady had never +said a word to her beyond the commonplaces of an ordinary friendship; she +had passionately determined that this blurred and spoiled marriage could +and should be mended, and that it lay with her to do it; and in the +spirit of her audacious youth she had taken upon herself the burden of +Letty's character and fate, vowing herself to a moral mission, to a long +patience. The quality of her own nature, perhaps, made her bear Letty's +violences and frenzies more patiently than would have been possible to a +woman of another type; generous remorse and regret, combined with her +ignorance of Letty's history and the details of Letty's life, led her +even to look upon these violences as the effects of love perverted, the +anguish of a jealous heart. Imagination, keen and loving, drew the +situation for her in rapid strokes, draped Letty in the subtleties and +powers of her own heart, and made forbearance easy. + +As for Letty, her whole being surrendered itself to a mere ebb and flow +of sensations. That she had been able thus to break down the barriers of +Marcella's stateliness filled her all through, in her passion as in her +yielding, with a kind of exultation. A vision of a tall figure in a white +and silver dress, sitting stiff and unapproachable beside her in the +Castle Luton drawing-room, fled through her mind now and then, only +to make the wonder of this pleading voice, these confidences, this +pity, the more wonderful. But there was more than this, and better +than this. Strange up-wellings of feelings long trampled on and +suppressed--momentary awakenings of conscience, of repentance, of +regret--sharp realisations of an envy that was no longer ignoble but +moral, softer thoughts of George, the suffocating, unwilling recognition +of what love meant in another woman's life--these messengers and +forerunners of diviner things passed and repassed through the spaces of +Letty's soul as she lay white and passive under Marcella's yearning look. +There was a marvellous relief besides, much of it a physical relief, in +this mere silence, this mere ceasing from angry railing and offence. + +Marcella was still sitting beside her, holding her hands, and talking in +the same low voice, when suddenly the loud sound of a bell clanged +through the house. Letty sprang up, white and startled. + +"What can it be? It's past ten o'clock. It can't be a telegram." + +Then a guilty remembrance struck her. She hurried to the door as +Kenrick entered. + +"Lady Tressady's maid would like to see you, my lady. They want Sir +George's address. The doctors think she will hardly live over to-morrow." + +And behind Kenrick, Justine, the French maid, pushed her way in, weeping +and exclaiming. Lady Tressady, it seemed, had been in frightful pain all +the afternoon. She was now easier for the moment, though dangerously +exhausted. But if the heart attacks returned during the next twenty-four +hours, nothing could save her. The probability was that they would +return, and she was asking piteously for her son, who had seen her, +Justine believed, the day before these seizures began, just before his +departure for Paris, and had written. "Et la pauvre âme!" cried the +Frenchwoman at last, not caring what she said to this amazing +daughter-in-law, "elle est là toujours, quand les douleurs s'apaisent un +peu, écoutant, espérant--et personne ne vient--_personne_! Voulez-vous +bien, madame, me dire où on peut trouver Sir George?" + +"Poste Restante, Trouville," said Letty, sullenly. "It is the only +address that I know of." + +But she stood there irresolute and frowning, while the French girl, +hardly able to contain herself, stared at the disfigured face, demanding +by her quick-breathing silence, by her whole attitude, something else, +something more than Sir George's address. + +Meanwhile Marcella waited in the background, obliged to hear what passed, +and struck with amazement. It is perhaps truer of the moral world than +the social that one half of it never conceives how the other half lives. +George Tressady's mother--alone--dying--in her son's absence--and Letty +Tressady knew nothing of her illness till it had become a question of +life and death, and had then actually refused to go--forgotten the +summons even! + +When Letty, feverish and bewildered, turned back to the companion +whose heart had been poured out before her during this past hour of +high emotion, she saw a new expression in Lady Maxwell's eyes from +which she shrank. + +"Ought I to go?" she said fretfully, almost like a peevish child, putting +her hand to her brow. + +"My carriage is downstairs," said Marcella, quickly. "I can take you +there at once. Is there a nurse?" she asked, turning to the maid. + +Oh, yes; there was an excellent nurse, just installed, or Justine could +not have left her mistress; and the doctor close by could be got at a +moment's notice. But the poor lady wanted her son, or at least some one +of the family,--Justine bit her lip, and threw a nervous side glance at +Letty,--and it went to the heart to see her. The girl found relief in +describing her mistress's state to this grave and friendly lady, and +showed more feeling and sincerity in speaking of it than might have been +expected from her affected dress and manner. + +Meanwhile Letty seemed to be wandering aimlessly about the room. Marcella +went up to her. + +"Your hat is here, on this chair. I have a shawl in the carriage. Won't +you come at once, and leave word to your maid to bring after you what +you want? Then I can go on, if you wish it, and send your telegram to +Sir George." + +"But you wanted him to do something?" said Letty, looking at her +uncertainly. + +"Mothers come first, I think!" said Marcella, with a smile of wonder. +"It is best to write it before we go. Will you tell me what to say?" + +She went to the writing-table, and had to write the telegram with small +help from Letty, who in her dazed, miserable soul was still fighting some +demonic resistance or other to the step asked of her. Instinctively and +gradually, however, Marcella took command of her. A few quiet words to +Justine sent her to make arrangements with Grier. Then Letty found a +cloak that had been sent for being drawn round her shoulders, and was +coaxed to put on her hat. In another minute she was in the Maxwells' +brougham, with her hand clasped in Marcella's. + +"They will want me to sit up," she said, dashing an irrelevant tear from +her eyes, as they drove away. "I am so tired--and I hate illness!" + +"Very likely they won't let you see her to-night. But you will be there +if the illness comes on again. You would feel it terribly if--if she died +all alone, with Sir George away." + +"Died!" Letty repeated, half angrily. "But that would be so +horrible--what could I do?" + +Marcella looked at her with a strange smile. + +"Only be kind, only forget everything but her!" + +The softness of her voice had yet a severity beneath it that Letty felt, +but had no spirit to resent, Rather it awakened an uneasy and painful +sense that, after all, it was not she who had come off conqueror in this +great encounter. The incidents of the last half-hour seemed in some +curious way to have reversed their positions. Letty, smarting, felt that +her relation to George's dying mother had revealed her to Lady Maxwell +far more than any wild and half-sincere confessions could have done. Her +vanity felt a deep inner wound, yet of a new sort. At any rate, +Marcella's self-abasement was over, and Letty instinctively realised that +she would never see it again, while at the same time a new and clinging +need had arisen in herself. The very neighbourhood of the personality +beside her had begun to thrill and subjugate her. She had been conscious +enough before--enviously, hatefully conscious--of all the attributes and +possessions that made Maxwell's wife a great person in the world of +London. What was stealing upon her now was glamour and rank and influence +of another kind. + +Not unmixed, no doubt, with more mundane thoughts! No ordinary preacher, +no middle-class eloquence perhaps would have sufficed--nothing less +dramatic and distinguished than the scene which had actually passed, than +a Marcella at her feet. Well! there are many modes and grades of +conversion. Whether by what was worst in her, or what was best; whether +the same weaknesses of character that had originally inflamed her had now +helped to subdue her or no, what matter? So much stood--that one short +hour had been enough to draw this vain, selfish nature within a moral +grasp she was never again to shake off. + +Meanwhile, as they drove towards Warwick Square Marcella's only thought +was how to hand her over safe to her husband. A sense of agonised +responsibility awoke in the elder woman at the thought of Cathedine. But +no more emotion--only common sense and gentleness. + +As they neared Warwick Square, Letty withdrew her hand. + +"I don't suppose you will ever want to see me again," she said huskily, +turning her head away. + +"Do you think that very possible between two people who have gone +through such a time as you and I have?" said Marcella, pale, but +smiling. "When may I come to see you to-morrow? I shall send to inquire, +of course, very early." + +Some thought made Letty's breath come quickly. "Will you come in the +afternoon--about four?" she said hastily. "I suppose I shall be here." +They were just stopping at the door in Warwick Square. "You said you +would tell me--" + +"I have a great deal to tell you.... I will come, then, and see if you +can be spared.... Good-night. I trust she will be better! I will go on +and send the telegram." + +Letty felt her hand gravely pressed, the footman helped her out, and +in another minute she was mounting the stairs leading to Lady +Tressady's room, having sent a servant on before her to warn the nurse +of her arrival. + +The nurse came out, finger on lip. She was very glad to see Lady +Tressady, but the doctor had left word that nothing whatever was to be +allowed to disturb or excite his patient. Of course, if the attack +returned--But just now there was hope. Only it was so difficult to keep +her quiet. Instead of trying to sleep, she was now asking for Justine, +declaring that Justine must read French novels aloud to her, and bring +out two of her evening dresses, that she might decide on some +alteration in the trimmings. "I daren't fight with her," said the +nurse, evidently in much perplexity. "But if she only raises herself in +bed she may kill herself." + +She hurried back to her patient, promising to inform the daughter-in-law +at once if there was a change for the worse, and Letty, infinitely +relieved, made her way to the spare room of the house, where Grier was +already unpacking for her. + +After a hasty undressing she threw herself into bed, longing for sleep. +But from a short nightmare dream she woke up with a start. Where was she? +In her mother-in-law's house,--she could actually hear the shrill +affected voice laughing and talking in the room next door,--and brought +there by Marcella Maxwell! The strangeness of these two facts kept her +tossing restlessly from side to side. And where was George? Just arrived +at Paris, perhaps. She thought of the glare and noise of the Gare du +Nord--she heard his cab rattling over the long stone-paved street +outside. In the darkness she felt a miserable sinking of heart at the +thought of his going with every minute farther, farther away from her. +Would he ever forgive her that letter to Lord Maxwell, when he knew of +it? Did she want him to forgive her? + +A mood that was at once soft and desolate stole upon her, and made her +cry a little. It sprang, perhaps, from a sense of the many barriers she +had heaped up between herself and happiness. The waves of feeling, half +self-assertive, half repentant, ebbed and flowed. One moment she yearned +for the hour when Marcella was to come to her; the next, she hated the +notion of it. So between dream and misery, amid a maze of thought without +a clue, Letty's night passed away. By the time the morning dawned, the +sharp conviction had shaped itself within her that she had grown older, +that life had passed into another stage, and could never again be as it +had been the day before. Two emotions, at least, or excitements, had +emerged from all the rest and filled her mind--the memory of the scene +with Marcella, and the thought of George's return. + + + + +PART III + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +"My dear, you don't mean to say you have had her here for ten days?" + +The speaker was Betty Leven, who had just arrived at Maxwell Court, and +was sitting with her hostess under the cedars in front of the magnificent +Caroline mansion, which it was the never-ending task of Marcella's life +to bring somehow into a democratic scheme of things. + +A still September afternoon, lightly charged with autumn mists, lay +gently on the hollows of the park. Betty was in her liveliest mood and +her gayest dress. Her hat, a marvel in poppies, was perched high upon no +less ingenious waves and frettings of hair. Her straw-coloured gown, +which was only simple for the untrained eye, gave added youth even to +her childish figure; and her very feet, clothed in the smallest and most +preposterous of shoes, had something merry and provocative about them, +as they lay crossed upon the wooden footstool Marcella had pushed +towards her. + +The remark just quoted followed upon one made by her hostess, to the +effect that Lady Tressady would be down to tea shortly. + +"Now, Betty," said Marcella, seriously, though she laughed, "I meant to +have a few words with you on this subject first thing--let's have them. +Do you want to be very kind to me, or do you ever want me to be very +nice to you?" + +Betty considered. + +"You can't do half as much for me now as you once could, now that Frank's +going to leave Parliament," she remarked, with as much worldly wisdom as +her face allowed. "Nevertheless, the quality of my nature is such that, +sometimes, I might even be nice to you for nothing. But information +before benevolence--why have you got her here?" + +"Because she was fagged and unhappy in London, and her husband had gone +to take his mother abroad, after first doing Maxwell a great kindness," +said Marcella,--not, however, without embarrassment, as Betty saw,--"and +I want you to be kind to her." + +"Reasons one and two no reasons at all," said Betty, meditating; "and the +third wants examining. You mean that George Tressady went after Ancoats?" + +Marcella raised her shoulders, and was silent. + +"If you are going to be stuffy and mysterious," said Betty, with +vivacity, "you know what sort of a hedgehog I can be. How can you expect +me to be nice to Letty Tressady unless you make it worth my while?" + +"Betty, you infant! Well, then, he did go after Ancoats--got him safely +away from Trouville, brought him to Paris to join Mrs. Allison, and, in +general, has laid us all under very great obligations. Meanwhile, she was +very much tired out with nursing her mother-in-law--" + +"Oh, and such a mother-in-law--such a jewel!" ejaculated Betty. + +"And I brought her down here to rest, till he should come back from +Wildheim and take her home. He will probably be here to-night." + +The speaker reddened unconsciously during her story, a fact not +lost on Betty. + +"Well, I knew most of that before," said Betty, quietly. "And what sort +of a time have you been having this ten days?" + +"I have been very glad to have her here," came the quick reply. "I ought +to have known her long ago." + +Betty looked at the speaker with a half-incredulous smile. + +"You have been 'collecting' her, I suppose, as Hallin collects grasses. +Of course, what I pine to know is what sort of a time _she's_ had. You're +not the easiest person in the world to get on with, my lady." + +"I know that," said Marcella, sighing; "but I don't think she has +been unhappy." + +Betty's green eyes opened suddenly to the light. + +"Are you ever going to tell me the truth? Have you got her under your +thumb? Does she adore you?" + +"Betty, don't be an idiot!" + +"I expect she does," said Betty, thoughtfully, a myriad thoughts and +conjectures passing through her quick brain as she studied her friend's +face and attitude. "I see exactly what fate is going to happen to you in +middle life. Women couldn't get on with you when you were a girl--you +didn't like them, nor they you; and now everywhere I hear the young women +beginning to talk about you, especially the young married women; and in a +few years you will have them all about you like a cluster of doves, +cooing and confessing, and making your life a burden to you." + +"Well, suppose you begin?" said Marcella, with meaning. "I'm quite ready. +How are Frank's spirits since the great decision?" + +"Frank's spirits?" said Betty. She leisurely took off her glove. "Frank's +spirits, my dear, if you wish to know, are simply an affront to his wife. +My ruined ambitions appear to affect him as Parrish's food does the baby. +I prophesy he will have gained a stone by Christmas." + +For the great step had been taken. Betty had given way, and Frank was to +escape from politics. For three years Betty had held him to his task--had +written his speeches, formed his opinions, and done her very best to +train him for a statesman. But the young man had in truth no opinions, +save indeed whatever might be involved in the constant opinion that +Heaven had intended him for a country gentleman and a sportsman, and for +nothing else. And at last a mixture of revolt and melancholy had served +his purpose. Betty was subdued; the Chiltern Hundreds were in sight. The +young wife, with many sighs, had laid down all dreams of a husband on the +front bench. But--in compensation--she had regained her lover, and the +honeymoon shone once more. + +"Frank came to see me yesterday," said Marcella, smiling. + +Betty sprang forward. + +"What did he say? Didn't he tell you I was an angel? Now there's a +bargain! Repeat to me every single word he said, and I will devote +myself, body and bones, to Letty Tressady." + +"Hush!" said Marcella, laying two fingers on the pretty mouth. "Here +she comes." + +Letty Tressady, in fact, had just emerged from a side-door of the house, +and was slowly approaching the two friends on the terrace. Lady Leven's +discerning eye ran over the advancing figure. Marcella heard her make +some exclamation under her breath. Then she rose with little, hurrying +steps, and went to greet the newcomer with a charming ease and kindness. + +Letty responded rather nervously. Marcella looked up with a smile, and +pointed to a low chair, which Letty took with a certain stiffness. It was +evident to Marcella that she was afraid of Lady Leven, who had, indeed, +shown a marked indifference to her society at Castle Luton. + +But Betty was disarmed. The "minx" had lost her colour, and, for the +moment, her prettiness. She looked depressed, and talked little. As to +her relation to Marcella Betty's inquisitive brain indulged itself in a +score of conjectures. "How like her!" she thought to herself, "to forget +the wife's existence to begin with, and then to make love to her by way +of warding off the husband!" + +Meanwhile, aloud, Lady Leven professed herself exceedingly dissatisfied +with the entertainment provided for her. Where were the gentlemen? What +was the good of one putting on one's best frock to come down to a Maxwell +Court Saturday to find only a "hen tea-party" at the end? Marcella +protested that there were only too many men somewhere on the premises +already, and more--with their wives--were arriving by the next train. +But Maxwell had taken off such as had already appeared for a long +cross-country walk. + +Betty demanded the names, and Marcella gave them obediently. Betty +perceived at once that the party was the party of a political chief +obliged to do his duty. She allowed herself a good many shrugs of her +small shoulders. "Oh, Mrs. Lexham,--very charming, of course,--but what's +the good of being friends with a person who has five hundred people in +London that call her Kelly? Lady _Wendover_? I ought to have had notice. +A good mother? I should think she is! That's the whole point against her. +She always gives you the idea of having reared fifteen out of a possible +twelve. To see her beaming on her offspring makes me positively ashamed +of being in the same business myself. Don't you agree, Lady Tressady?" + +But Letty, whose chief joy a month before would have been to dart in on +such a list with little pecking proofs of acquaintance, was leaning back +listlessly in her chair, and could only summon a forced smile for answer. + +"And Sir George, too, is coming to-night, isn't he?" said Lady Leven. + +"Yes, I expect my husband to-night," said Letty, coldly, without looking +at her questioner. Betty glanced quickly at the expression of the eyes +which were bent upon the further reaches of the park; then, to Letty's +astonishment, she bent forward impulsively and laid her little hand on +Lady Tressady's arm. + +"Do you mind telling me," she said in a loud whisper, with a glance over +her shoulder, "your candid opinion of _her_ as a country lady?" + +Letty, taken aback, turned and laughed uneasily; but Betty went rattling +on. "Have you found out that she treats her servants like hospital +nurses; that they go off and on duty at stated hours; that she has +workshops and art schools for them in the back premises; and that the +first footman has just produced a cantata which has been sent in to the +committee of the Worcester Festival (Be quiet, Marcella; if it isn't +that, it's something near it); that she teaches the stable boys and the +laundry maids old English dances, and the _pas de quatre_ once a +fortnight, and acts showman to her own pictures for the benefit of the +neighbourhood once a week? I came once to see how she did it, but I found +her and the Gairsley ironmonger measuring the ears of the Holbeins--it +seems you can't know anything about pictures now unless you have measured +all the ears and the little fingers, which I hope you know; I didn't!--so +I fled, as she hadn't a word to throw to me, even as one of the public. +Then perhaps you don't know that she has invented a whole, new, and +original system of game-preserving--she and Frank fight over it by the +hour--that she has upset all the wage arrangements of the county--that, +perhaps, you do know, for it got into the papers--and a hundred other +trifles. Has she revealed these things?" + +Letty looked in perplexity from Betty's face, full of sweetness and +mirth, to Marcella's. + +"She hasn't talked about them," she said, hesitating. "Of course, I +haven't understood a good many things that are done here--" + +"Don't try," said Marcella, first laughing and then sighing. + +Nothing appeased, Lady Leven chattered away, while Letty watched her +hostess in silence. She had come down to the Court gloating somewhat, in +spite of her very real unhappiness, over the prospect of the riches and +magnificence she was to find there. And to discover that wealth might be +merely the source of one long moral wrestle to the people who possessed +it, burdening them with all sorts of problems and remorses that others +escaped, had been a strange and, on the whole, jarring experience to her. +Of course there must be rich and poor; of course there must be servants +and masters. Marcella's rebellion against the barriers of life had been a +sort of fatigue and offence to Letty ever since she had been made to feel +it. And daily contact with the simple, and even Spartan, ways of living +that prevailed--for the owners of it, at least--in the vast house, with +the overflowing energy and humanity that often made its mistress a +restless companion, and led her into a fair percentage of mistakes--had +roused a score of half-scornful protests in the small, shrewd mind of her +guest. Nevertheless, when Marcella was kind, when she put Letty on the +sofa, insisting that she was tired, and anxiously accusing herself of +some lack of consideration or other; when she took her to her room at +night, seeing to every comfort, and taking thought for luxuries that in +her heart she despised; or when, very rarely, and turning rather pale, +she said a few words--sweet, hopeful, encouraging--about George's return, +then Letty was conscious of a strange leap of something till then +unknown, something that made her want to sob, that seemed to open to her +a new room in the House of Life. Marcella had not kissed her since the +day of their great scene; they had been "Lady Maxwell" and "Lady +Tressady" to each other all the time, and Letty had but realised her own +insolences and audacities the more, as gradually the spiritual dignity of +the woman she had raved at came home to her. But sometimes when Marcella +stood beside her, unconscious, talking pleasantly of London folk or +Ancoats, or trying to inform herself as to Letty's life at Ferth, a +half-desolate intuition would flash across the younger woman of what it +might be to be admitted to the intimate friendship of such a nature, to +feel those long, slender arms pressed about her once more, not in pity or +remonstrance, as of one trying to exorcise an evil spirit, but in mere +love, as of one asking as well as giving. The tender and adoring +friendship of women for women, which has become so marked a feature of +our self-realising generation, had passed Letty by. She had never known +it. Now, in these unforeseen circumstances, she seemed to be trembling +within reach of its emotion; divining it, desiring it, yet forced onward +to the question, "What is there in me that may claim it?" + +Marcella, indeed, after their first stormy interview, had once more +returned to the subject of it. She had told the story of her friendship +with George Tressady, very gently and plainly, in a further conversation, +held between them at the elder Lady Tressady's house during that odd +lady's very odd convalescence; till, indeed, she reached the last scene. +She could not bring herself to deliver the truth of that. Nor was it +necessary. Letty's jealousy had guessed it near enough long ago. But when +all else was told, Letty had been conscious at first of a half-sore +resentment that there was so little to tell. In her secret soul she knew +very well what had been the effect on George. Her husband's mind had been +gradually absorbed by another ideal in which she had no part; nor could +she deny that he had suffered miserably. The memory of his face as he +asked her to "forgive him" when she fled past him on that last wretched +night was enough. But suffered for what? A few talks about politics, a +few visits to poor people, an office of kindness after a street accident +that any stranger must have rendered, a few meetings in the House and +elsewhere! + +Letty's vanity was stabbed anew by the fact that Lady Maxwell's +offence was so small. It gave her a kind of measure of her own hold +upon her husband. + +Once, indeed, Marcella's voice and colour had wavered when she made +herself describe how, on the Mile End evening, she had been conscious of +pressing the personal influence to gain the political end. But good +heavens!--Letty hardly understood what the speaker's evident compunction +was about. Why, it was all for Maxwell! What had she thought of all +through but Maxwell? Letty's humiliation grew as she understood, and as +in the quiet of Maxwell Court she saw the husband and wife together. + +Her anger and resentment might very well only have transferred themselves +the more hotly to George. But this new moral influence upon her had a +kind of paralysing effect. The incidents of the weeks before the crisis +excited in her now a sick, shamed feeling whenever she thought of them. +For contact with people on a wholly different plane of conduct, if such +persons as Letty can once be brought to submit to it, will often produce +effects, especially on women, like those one sees produced every day by +the clash of two standards of manners. It means simply the recognition +that one is unfit to be of certain company, and perhaps there are few +moral ferments more penetrating. Probably Letty would have gone to her +grave knowing nothing of it, but for the accident which had opened to her +the inmost heart of a woman with whom, once known, not even her vanity +dared measure itself. + +George and she had already met since the day when he had gone off to +Paris in search of Ancoats. The telegram sent to him by Marcella on the +night of his mother's violent illness had, indeed, been recalled next +day. Lady Tressady, following the idiosyncrasies of her disease, sprang +from death to life--and life of the sprightliest kind--in the course of a +few hours. The battered, grey-haired woman--so old, do what she would, +under the betraying hand of physical decay!--no sooner heard that George +had been sent for than she at once and peremptorily telegraphed to him +herself to stay away. "I'm not dead yet," she wrote to him afterwards, +"in spite of all the fuss they've made with me. I was simply ashamed to +own such a cadaverous-looking wretch as you were when you came here last, +and if you take my advice you'll stay at Trouville with Lord Ancoats and +amuse yourself. As to that young man, of course it's no good, and his +mother's a great fool to suppose that you or anybody else can prevent +his enjoying himself. But these High Church women are so extraordinary." + +Letty, indeed, remembering her mother-in-law's old ways, and finding +them little changed as far as she herself was concerned, was puzzled and +astonished by the new relations between mother and son. On the smallest +excuse or none, Lady Tressady, a year before, would have been ready to +fetch him back from furthest land without the least scruple. Now, +however, she thought of him, or for him, incessantly. And one day Letty +actually found her crying over an official intimation from the lawyer +concerned that another instalment of the Shapetsky debt would be due +within a month. But she angrily dried her tears at sight of Letty, and +Letty said nothing. + +George, however, came back within about ten days of his departure, having +apparently done what he was commissioned to do, though Letty took so +little interest in the Ancoats affair that she barely read those portions +of his letters in which he described the course of it. His letters, +indeed, with the exception of a few ambiguous words here and there, dealt +entirely with Trouville, Ancoats, or the ups and downs of public opinion +on the subject of his action and speech in the House. Letty could only +gather from a stray phrase or two that he enjoyed nothing; but evidently +he could not yet bring himself to speak of what had happened. + +When he did come back, the husband and wife saw very little of each +other. It was more convenient that he should stay in Upper Brook Street +while she remained at her mother-in-law's; and altogether he was hardly +three days in London. He rushed up to Market Malford to deliver his +promised speech to his constituents, and immediately afterwards, on the +urgent advice of the doctors, he went off to Wildheim with his mother and +the elderly cousin whose aid he had already invoked. Before he went, he +formally thanked his wife--who hardly spoke to him unless she was +obliged--for her attention to his mother, and then lingered a little, +looking no less "cadaverous," certainly, than when he had gone away, and +apparently desiring to say more. + +"I suppose I shall be away about a fortnight," he said at last, "if one +is to settle her comfortably. You haven't told me yet what you would like +to do. Couldn't you get Miss Tulloch to go down with you to Ferth, or +would you go to your people for a fortnight?" + +He was longing to ask her what had come of that promised visit of Lady +Maxwell's. But neither by letter nor by word of mouth had Letty as yet +said a word of it. And he did not know how to open the subject. During +the time that he was with his wife and mother, nothing was seen of +Marcella in Warwick Square, and an interview that he was to have had with +Maxwell, by way of supplement to his numerous letters, had to be +postponed because of overcrowded days on both sides. So that he was still +in the dark. + +Letty at first made no answer to his rather lame proposals for her +benefit. But just as he was turning away with a look of added +worry, she said: + +"I don't want to go home, thank you, and I still less want to go +to Ferth." + +"But you can't stay in London. There isn't a soul in town; and it would +be too dull for you." + +He gazed at her in perplexity, praying, however, that he might not +provoke a scene, for the carriage that was to take him and his mother to +the station was almost at the door. + +Letty rose slowly, and folded up some embroidery she had been +playing with. Then she took a note from her work-basket, and laid it +on the table. + +"You may read that if you like. That's where I'm going." + +And she quickly went out of the room. + +George read the note. His face flushed, and he hurriedly busied himself +with some of his preparations for departure. When his wife came into the +room again he went up to her. + +"You could have done nothing so likely to save us both," he said huskily, +and then could think of nothing more to say. He drew her to him as though +to kiss her, but a blind movement of the old rage with him or +circumstance leapt in her, and she pulled herself away. The thought of +that particular moment had done more perhaps than anything else to thin +and whiten her since she had been at Maxwell Court. + +And now he would be here to-night. She knew both from her host himself +and from George's letters that Lord Maxwell had specially written to him +begging him to come to the Court on his return, in order to join his wife +and also to give that oral report of his mission for which there had been +no time on his first reappearance. Maxwell had spoken to her of his wish +to see her husband, without a tone or a word that could suggest anything +but the natural friendliness and good-will of the man who has accepted a +signal service from his junior. But Letty avoided Maxwell when she could; +nor would he willingly have been left alone with this thin, sharp-faced +girl whose letter to him had been like the drawing of an ugly veil from +nameless and incredible things. He was sorry for her; but in his strong, +deep nature he felt a repulsion for her he could not explain; and to +watch Marcella with her amazed him. + + * * * * * + +Immediately after tea, Lady Leven's complaints of her entertainment +became absurd. Guests poured in from the afternoon train, and a variety +of men, her husband foremost among them, were soon at her disposal, +asking nothing better than to amuse her. + +Letty Tressady meanwhile looked on for a time at the brilliant crowd +about her on the terrace, with a dull sense of being forgotten and of no +account. She said to herself sullenly that of course no one would want to +talk to her; it was not her circle, and she had even few acquaintances +among them. + +Then, to her astonishment, she began to find herself the object of an +evident curiosity and interest to many people among the throng. She +divined that her name was being handed from one to the other, and she +soon perceived that Marcella had been asked to introduce to her this +person and that, several of them men and women whose kindness, a few +weeks before, would have flattered her social ambitions to the highest +point. Colour and nerve returned, and she found herself sitting up, +forgetting her headache, and talking fast. + +"I am delighted to have this opportunity of telling you, Lady Tressady, +how much I admired your husband's great speech," said the deep and +unctuous voice of the grey-haired Solicitor-General as he sank into a +chair beside her. "It was not only that it gave us our Bill, it gave the +House of Commons a new speaker. Manner, voice, matter--all of it +excellent! I hope there'll be no nonsense about his giving up his seat. +Don't you let him! He will find his feet and his right place before long, +and you'll be uncommonly proud of him before you've done." + +"Lady Tressady, I'm afraid you've forgotten me," said a plaintive voice; +and, on turning, Letty saw the red-haired Lady Madeleine asking with +smiles to be remembered. "Do you know, I was lucky enough to get into the +House on the great day? What a scene it was! You were there, of course?" + +When Letty unwillingly said "No," there was a little chorus of +astonishment. + +"Well, take my advice, my dear lady," said the Solicitor-General, +speaking with lazy patronage somewhere from the depths of comfort,--he +was accustomed to use these paternal modes of speech to young +women,--"don't you miss your husband's speeches. We can't do without our +domestic critics. But for the bad quarters of an hour that lady over +there has given me, I should be nowhere." + +And he nodded complacently towards the wife as stout as himself, who was +sitting a few yards away. She, hearing her name, nodded back, with smiles +aside to the bystanders. Most of the spectators, however, were already +acquainted with a conjugal pose which was generally believed to be not +according to facts, and no one took the cue. + +Then presently Mr. Bennett--the workmen's member from the North--was at +Letty's elbow saying the most cordial things of the absent George. Bayle, +too, the most immaculate and exclusive of private secretaries, who was at +the Court on a wedding visit with a new wife, chose to remember Lady +Tressady's existence for the first time for many months, and to bestow +some of his carefully adapted conversation upon her. While, last of all, +Edward Watton came up to her with a cousinly kindness she had scarcely +yet received from him, and, drawing a chair beside her, overflowed with +talk about George, and the Bill, and the state of things at Market +Malford. In fact, it was soon clear even to Letty's bewildered sense that +till her husband should arrive she was perhaps, for the moment, the +person of most interest to this brilliant and representative gathering of +a victorious party. + +Meanwhile she was made constantly aware that her hostess remembered her. +Once, as Marcella passed her, after introducing someone to her, Letty +felt a hand gently laid on her shoulder and then withdrawn. Strange waves +of emotion ran through the girl's senses. When would George be here? +About seven, she thought, when they would all have gone up to dress. He +would have arrived from Wildheim in the morning, and was to spend the day +doing business in town. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Letty was lying on a sofa in her bedroom. Her maid was to come to her +shortly, and she was impatiently listening to every sound that approached +or passed her door. The great clock in the distant hall struck seven, and +it seemed to her intolerably long before she heard movements in the +passage, and then Maxwell's voice outside. + +"Here is your room, Sir George. I hope you don't mind a few ghosts! It is +one of the oldest bits of the house." + +Letty sprang up. She heard the shutting of the passage door, then +immediately afterwards the door from the dressing-room opened, and George +came through. + +"Well!" she said, staring at him, her face flushing; "surely you are +very late?" + +He came up to her, and put his arms round her, while she stood passive. +"Not so very," he said, and she could hear that his voice was unsteady. +"How are you? Give me a kiss, little woman--be a little glad to see me!" + +He looked down upon her wistfully. On the journey he had been conscious +of great weariness of mind and body, a longing to escape from struggle, +to give and receive the balm of kind looks and soft words. He had come +back full of repentance towards her, if she had only known, full too of a +natural young longing for peace and good times. + +She let him kiss her, but as he stooped to her it suddenly struck her +that she had never seen him look so white and worn. Still; after all this +holiday-making! Why? For love of a woman who never gave him a thought, +except of pity. Bitterness possessed her. She turned away indifferently. + +"Well, you'll only just have time to dress. Is someone unpacking for +you?" + +He looked at her. + +"Is that all you have to say?" + +She threw back her head and was silent. + +"I was very glad to come back to you," he said, with a sigh, "though I--I +wish it were anywhere else than here. But, all things considered, I did +not see how to refuse. And you have been here the whole fortnight?" + +"Yes." + +"Have you"--he hesitated--"have you seen a great deal of Lady Maxwell?" + +"Well, I suppose I have--in her own house." Then she broke out, her +heart leaping visibly under her light dressing-gown. "I don't blame +_her_ any more, if you want to know that; she doesn't think of anyone in +the world but him." + +The gesture of her hand seemed to pursue the voice that had been just +speaking in the corridor. + +He smiled. + +"Well, at least I'm glad you've come to see that!" he said quietly. "And +is that all?" + +He had walked away from her, but at his renewed question he turned +back quickly, his hands in his pockets. Something in the look of him +gave her a moment of pleasure, a throb of possession. But she showed +nothing of it. + +"No, it's not all"--her pale blue eyes pierced him. "Why did you go and +see her that morning, and why have you never told me since?" + +He started, and shrugged his shoulders. + +"If you have been seeing much of her," he replied, after a pause, "you +probably know as much as I could tell you." + +"No," she said steadily; "she has told me much about +everything--but that." + +He walked restlessly about for a few seconds, then returned, holding out +his hands. + +"Well, my dear, I said some mad and miserable things. They are as dead +now as if they had never been spoken. And they were not love-making--they +were crying for the moon. Take me, and forget them. I am an +unsatisfactory sort of fellow, but I will do the best I can." + +"Wait a bit," she said, retreating, and speaking with a hard +incisiveness. "There are plenty of things you don't know. Perhaps you +don't know, for instance, that I wrote to Lord Maxwell? I sat up writing +it that night--he got it the same morning you saw her." + +"You wrote to Maxwell!" he said in amazement--then, under his breath--"to +complain of her. My God!" + +He walked away again, trying to control himself. + +"You didn't suppose," she said huskily, "I was going to sit down calmly +under your neglect of me? I might have been silly in not--not seeing what +kind of a woman she was; that's different--besides, of course, she ought +to have thought more about me. But _that's_ not all!" + +Her hand shook as she stood leaning on the sofa. George turned, and +looked at her attentively. + +"The day you left I went to Hampton Court with the Lucys. Cathedine was +there. Of course I flirted with him all the time, and as we were going +through a wood near the river he said abominable things to me, and +kissed me." + +Her brows were drawn defiantly. Her eyes seemed to be riveted to his. He +was silent a moment, the colour dyeing his pale face deep. Then she heard +his long breath. + +"Well, we seem to be about quits," he said, in a bitter voice. "Have you +seen him since?" + +"No. That's Grier knocking--you'd better go and dress." + +He paused irresolutely. But Letty said, "Come in," and he retreated into +his dressing-room. + +Husband and wife hurried down together, without another word to each +other. When George at last found himself at table between Lady Leven and +Mr. Bayle's new and lively wife, he had never been so grateful before to +the ease of women's tongues. In his mental and physical fatigue, he could +scarcely bear even to let himself feel the strangeness of his presence in +this room--at her table, in Maxwell's splendid house. _Not_ to +feel!--somehow to recover his old balance and coolness--that was the cry +of the inner man. + +But the situation conquered him. _Why_ was he here? It was barely a month +since in her London drawing-room he had found words for an emotion, a +confession it now burnt him to remember. And here he was, breaking bread +with her and Maxwell, a few weeks afterwards, as though nothing lay +between them but a political incident. Oh! the smallness, the triviality +of our modern life! + +Was it only four weeks, or nearly? What he had suffered in that time! An +instant's shudder ran through him, during an interval, while Betty's +unwilling occupation with her left-hand neighbour left memory its chance. +All the flitting scenes of the past month, Ancoats's half-vicious +absurdities, the humours of the Trouville beach, the waves of its grey +sea, his mother's whims and plaints, the crowd and heat of the little +German watering-place where he had left her--was it he, George Tressady, +that had been really wrestling with these things and persons, walking +among them, or beside them? It seemed hardly credible. What was real, +what remained, was merely the thought of some hours of solitude, beside +the Norman sea, or among the great beech-woods that swept down the hills +about Bad Wildheim. Those hours--they only--had stung, had penetrated, +had found the shrinking core of the soul. + +What in truth was it that had happened to him? After weeks of a growing +madness he had finally lost his self-command, had spoken passionately, +as only love speaks, to a married woman, who had no thought for any man +in the world but her husband, a woman who had immediately--so he had +always read the riddle of Maxwell's behaviour--reported every incident +of his conversation with her to the husband, and had then tried her +best, with an exquisite kindness and compunction, to undo the mischief +her own charm had caused. For that effort, in the first instance, +George, under the shock of his act and her pain, had been, at intervals, +speechlessly grateful to her; all his energies had gone into pitiful, +eager response. Now, her attempt, and Maxwell's share in it, seemed to +have laid him under a weight he could no longer bear. His acceptance of +Maxwell's invitation had finally exhausted his power of playing the +superhuman part to which she had invited him. He wished with all his +heart he had not accepted it! From the moment of her greeting--with its +mixture of shrinking and sweetness--he had realised the folly, the +humiliation even, of his presence in her house. He could not rise--it +was monstrous, ludicrous almost, that she should wish it--to what she +seemed to ask of him. + +What had he been in love with? He looked at her once or twice in +bewilderment. Had not she herself, her dazzling, unconscious purity, +debarred him always from the ordinary hopes and desires of the sensual +man? His very thought had moved in awe of her, had knelt before her. +Throughout there had been this half-bitter glorying in the strangeness of +his own case. The common judgment in its common vileness mattered nothing +to him. He had been in love with love, with grace, with tenderness, with +delight. He had seen, too late, a vision of the _best_; had realised +what things of enchantment life contains for the few, for the +chosen--what woman at her richest can be to man. And there had been a cry +of personal longing--personal anguish. + +Well!--it was all done with. As for friendship, it was impossible, +grotesque. Let him go home, appease Letty, and mend his life. He +constantly realised now, with the same surprise, as on the night before +his confession, the emergence within himself, independent as it were of +his ordinary will, and parallel with the voice of passion or grief, of +some new moral imperative. Half scornfully he discerned in his own nature +the sort of paste that a man inherits from generations of decent dull +forefathers who have kept the law as they understood it. He was conscious +of the same "ought" vibrating through the moral sense as had governed +their narrower lives and minds. It is the presence or the absence indeed +of this dumb compelling power that in moments of crisis differentiates +one man from another. He felt it; wondered perhaps that he should feel +it; but knew, nevertheless, that he should obey it. Yes, let him go home, +make his wife forgive him, rear his children--he trusted to God there +would be children!--and tame his soul. How strange to feel this tempest +sweeping through him, this iron stiffening of the whole being, amid this +scene, in this room, within a few feet of that magic, that voice-- + + * * * * * + +"Thank goodness I have got rid of my man at last!" said Betty's laughing +whisper in his ear. "Three successive packs of hounds have I followed +from their cradles to their graves. Make it up to me, Sir George, at +once! Tell me everything I want to know!" + +George turned to her smiling. + +"About Ancoats?" + +"Of course. Now don't be discreet!--I know too much already. How did he +receive you?" + +George laughed--not noticing that instead of laughing with him, little +Betty was staring at him open-eyed over her fan. + +"To begin with, he invited me to fight--coffee and pistols before +eight, on the following morning, in the garden of his chalet, which +would not have been at all a bad place, for he is magnificently +installed. I came from his enemies, he said. They had prevented the +woman he loved from joining him, and covered him with ridicule. As +their representative I ought to be prepared to face the consequences +like a man. All this time he was storming up and down, in a marvellous +blue embroidered smoking suit--" + +"Of course, to go with the hair," put in Betty. + +"I said I thought he'd better give me some dinner before we talked it +out. Then he looked embarrassed and said there were friends coming. I +replied, '_Tant mieux.'_ He inquired fiercely whether it was the part of +a gentleman to thrust himself where he wasn't wanted. I kept my temper, +and said I was too famished to consider. Then he haughtily left the room, +and presently a servant came and asked for my luggage, which I had left +at the station, and showed me a bedroom. Ancoats, however, appeared again +to invite me to withdraw, and to suggest the names of two seconds who +would, he assured me, be delighted to act for me. I pointed out to him +that I was unpacked, and that to turn me out dinnerless would be simply +barbarous. Then, after fidgeting about a little, he burst out laughing in +an odd way, and said, 'Very well--only, mind, I didn't ask you.' Sure +enough, of course I found a party." + +George paused. + +"You needn't tell me much about the party," said Betty, nervously, +"unless it's necessary." + +"Well, it wasn't a very reputable affair, and two young women were +present." + +"No need to talk about the young women," said Betty, hastily. + +George bowed submission. + +"I only mentioned them because they are rather necessary to the story. +Anyway, by the time the company was settled Ancoats suddenly threw off +his embarrassment, and, with some defiant looks at me, behaved himself, I +imagine, much as he would have done without me. When all the guests were +gone, I asked him whether he was going to keep up the farce of a _grande +passion_ any more. He got in a rage and vowed that if 'she' had come, of +course all those creatures, male and female, would be packed off. I +didn't suppose that he would allow the woman he loved to come within a +mile of them? I shrugged my shoulders and declined to suppose anything +about his love affairs, which seemed to me too complicated. Then, of +course, I had to come to plain speaking, and bring in his mother." + +"That she should have produced such a being!" cried Betty; "that he +should have any right in her at all!" + +"That she should keep such a heart for him!" said George, raising his +eyebrows. "He turned rather white, I was relieved to see, when I told him +from her that she would leave his house if the London affair went on. +Well, we walked up and down in his garden, smoking, the greater part of +the night, till I could have dropped with fatigue. Every now and then +Ancoats would make a dash for the brandy and soda on the verandah; and in +between I had to listen to tirades against marriage, English prudery, and +English women,--quotations from Gautier and Renan,--and Heaven knows +what. At last, when we were both worn out, he suddenly stood still and +delivered his ultimatum. 'Look here--if you think I've no grievances, +you're much mistaken. Go back and tell my mother that if she'll marry +Fontenoy straight away I'll give up Marguerite!' I said I would deliver +no such impertinence. 'Very well,' he said; 'then I will. Tell her I +shall be in Paris next week, and ask her to meet me there. When are you +going?' 'Well,' I said, rather taken aback, 'there is such an institution +as the post. Now I've come so far, suppose you show me Trouville for a +few days?' He muttered something or other, and we went to bed. +Afterwards, he behaved to me quite charmingly, would not let me go, and I +ended by leaving him at the door of an hotel in Paris where he was to +meet his mother. But on the subject of Fontenoy it is an _idée fixe_. He +chafes under the whole position, and will yield nothing to a man who, as +he conceives, has no _locus standi_. But if his pride were no longer +annoyed by its being said that his mother had sacrificed her own +happiness to him, and if the situation were defined, I _think_ he might +be more amenable. I think they might marry him." + +"That's how the man puts it!" said Betty, tightening her lip. "Of course +_any_ marriage is desirable for _any_ woman!" + +"I was thinking of Mrs. Allison," said George, defensively. "One can't +think of a Lady Ancoats till she exists." + +"_Merci!_ Never mind. Don't apologise for the masculine view. It has to +be taken with the rest of you. Do you understand that matrimony is in the +air here to-night? Have you been talking to Lady Madeleine?" + +"No, not yet. But how handsome she's grown! I see Naseby's not far off." + +George turned smiling to his companion. But, as he did so, again +something cold and lifeless in his own face and in the expression +underlying the smile pricked little Betty painfully. Marcella had made +her no confidences, but there had been much gossip, and Letty Tressady's +mere presence at the Court set the intimate friend guessing very near +the truth. + +She did her best to chatter on, so as to keep him at least +superficially amused. But both became more and more conscious of two +figures, and two figures only, at the crowded table--Letty Tressady, +who was listening absently to Edward Watton with oppressed and indrawn +eyes, and Lady Maxwell. + +George, indeed, watched his wife constantly. He hungered to know more of +that first scene between her and Lady Maxwell, or he thought with bitter +repulsion of the letter she had confessed to him. Had he known of it,--in +spite of that strange, that compelling letter of Maxwell's, so reticent, +and yet in truth so plain,--he could hardly have come as a guest to +Maxwell's house. As for her revelations about Cathedine, he felt little +resentment or excitement. For the future a noxious brute had to be kept +in order--that was all. It was his own fault, he supposed, much more than +hers. The inward voice, as before, was clear enough. "I must just take +her home and be good to her. _She_ shirked nothing--now, no doubt, she +expects me to do my part." + +"Do you notice those jewels that Lady Maxwell is wearing to-night?" said +Betty at last, unable to keep away from the name. + +"I imagine they are a famous set?" + +"They belonged to Marie Antoinette. At last Maxwell has made her have +them cleaned and reset. What a pity to have such desperate scruples as +she has about all your pretty things!" + +"Must diamonds and rubies, then, perish out of the world?" he asked her, +absently, letting his eyes rest again upon the beautiful head and neck. + +Betty made some flippant rejoinder, but as she watched him, she +was not gay. + + * * * * * + +George had had but a few words with his hostess before dinner, and +afterwards a short conversation was all that either claimed. She had +hoped and planned so much! On the stage of imagination before he +came--she had seen his coming so often. All was to be forgotten and +forgiven, and this difficult visit was to lead naturally and without +recall to another and happier relation. And now that he was here she felt +herself tongue-tied, moving near him in a dumb distress. Both realised +the pressure of the same necessities, the same ineluctable facts; and +tacitly, they met and answered each other, in the common avoidance of a +companionship which could after all avail nothing. Once or twice, as they +stood together after dinner, he noticed amid her gracious kindness, her +inquiries after Mrs. Allison or his mother, the search her eyes made for +Letty, and presently she began to talk with nervous, almost appealing, +emphasis--with a marked significance and intensity indeed--of Letty's +fatigue after her nursing, and the need she had for complete change and +rest. George found himself half resenting the implications of her manner, +as the sentences flowed on. He felt her love of influence, and was not +without a hidden sarcasm. In spite of his passionate gratitude to her, he +must needs ask himself, did she suppose that a man or a marriage was to +be remade in a month, even by her plastic fingers? Women envisaged these +things so easily, so childishly, almost. + +When he moved away, a number of men who had already been talking to him +after dinner, and some of the most agreeable women of the party besides, +closed about him, making him, as it were, the centre of a conversation +which was concerned almost entirely with the personalities and chances +of the political moment. He was scarcely less astonished than Letty had +been by his own position amongst the guests gathered under Maxwell's +roof. Never had he been treated with so much sympathy, so much deference +even. Clearly, if he willed it so, what had seemed the dislocation might +only be the better beginning of a career. Nonsense! He meant to throw it +all up as soon as Parliament met again in February. The state of his +money affairs alone determined that. The strike was going from bad to +worse. He must go home and look after his own business. It was a folly +ever to have attempted political life. Meanwhile he felt the stimulus of +his reception in a company which included some of the keenest brains in +England. It appealed to his intelligence and virility, and they +responded. Letty once, glancing at him, saw that he was talking briskly, +and said to herself, with contradictory bitterness, that he was looking +as well as ever, and was going, she supposed, to behave as if nothing +had happened. + +"What is the matter with you to-night, my lady?" said Naseby, taking a +seat beside his hostess. "May I be impertinent and guess?--you don't like +your gems? Lady Leven has been telling me tales about them. They are the +most magnificent things I ever saw. I condole with you." + +She turned rather listlessly to meet his bantering look. + +"'Come you in friendship, or come you in war?'" she said, pointing to a +seat beside her. "I have no fight in me. But I have a great many things +to say to you." + +He reddened for an instant, then recovered himself. + +"So have I to you," he said briskly. "In the first place, I have some +fresh news from Mile End." + +She half laughed, as who should say, "You put me off," then surrendered +herself with eagerness to the pleasure of his report. At the moment of +his approach, under pretence of talking to an elderly cousin of +Maxwell's, she had been lost in such an abstraction of powerless pity for +George Tressady--whose fair head, somehow, never escaped her, wherever it +moved--that she had hardly been able to bear with her guests or the +burden of the evening. + +But Naseby roused her. And, indeed, his story so far was one to set the +blood throbbing in the veins of a creature who, on one side pure woman, +was on the other half poet, half reformer. Since the passage of the +Maxwell Bill, indeed, Naseby and a few friends of his, some "gilded +youths" like himself, together with some trade-union officials of a long +experience, had done wonders. They had been planning out the industrial +reorganisation of a whole district, through its two staple trades, with +the enthusiastic co-operation of the workpeople themselves; and the +result so far struck the imagination. Everywhere the old workshops were +to be bought up, improved, or closed; everywhere factories in which life +might be decent, and work more than tolerable, were to be set up; +everywhere the prospective shortening of hours, and the doing away with +the most melancholy of the home trades was working already like the +incoming of a great slowly surging tide, raising a whole population on +its breast to another level of well-being and of hope. + +Most of what had been done or designed was of course already well known +to Maxwell's wife; she had indeed given substantial help to Naseby +throughout. But Naseby had some fresh advances to report since she was +last in East London, and she drank them in with an eagerness, which +somehow assuaged a hidden smart; while he wondered a little perhaps in +his philosopher's soul at the woman of our English day, with her +compunctions and altruisms, her entanglement with the old scheme of +things, her pining for a new. It had often seemed to him that to be a +Nihilist nurse among a Russian peasantry would be an infinitely easier +task than to reconcile the social remorses and compassions that tore his +companion's mind with the social pageant in which her life, do what she +would, must needs be lived. He knew that, intellectually, she no more +than Maxwell saw any way out of unequal place, unequal spending, unequal +recompense, if civilisation were to be held together; but he perceived +that morally she suffered. Why? Because she and not someone else had been +chosen to rule the palace and wear the gems that yet must be? In the end, +Naseby could but shrug his shoulders over it. Yet even his sceptical +temper made no question of sincerity. + +When all his budget was out, and her comments made, she leant back a +little in her chair, studying him. A smile came to play about her lips. + +"What do you want to say to me?" he asked her quickly. + +She looked round her to see that they were not overheard. + +"When did you see Madeleine last?" + +"At her brother's house, a fortnight ago." + +"Was she nice to you?" + +He bit his lip, and drew his brows a little together, under her scrutiny. + +"Do you imagine I am going to be cross-examined like this?" + +"Yes--reply!" + +"Well, I don't know what her conception of 'niceness' may be; it didn't +fit mine. She had got it into her head that I 'pitied' her, which seemed +to be a crime. I didn't see how to disprove it, so I came away." + +He spoke with a dry lightness, but she perceived anxiety and unrest under +his tone. She bent forward. + +"Do you know where Madeleine is now?" + +"Not in the least." + +"In the Long Gallery. I sent her there." + +"Upon my word!" he said, after a pause. "Do you want to rule us all?" +His cheek had flushed again; his look was half rebellious. + +A flash of pain struck through her brightness. + +"No, no!" she said, protesting. "But I know--you don't!" + +He rose deliberately, and bowed with the air of obeying her commands. +Then suddenly he bent down to her. + +"I knew perfectly well that she was in the Long Gallery! But I also knew +that Mrs. Bayle had chosen to join her there. The coast, you may +perceive, is now clear." + +He walked away. Marcella looked round, and saw an elegant little bride, +Mr. Bayle's new wife, rustling into the room again. She leant back in +her chair, half laughing, yet her eyes were wet. The new joy brought a +certain ease to old regrets. Only that word "rule" rankled a little. + +Yet the old regrets were all sharp and active again. It seemed to be +impossible now to talk with George Tressady, to make any real breach in +the barrier between them; but how impossible also not to think of +him!--of the young fellow, who had given Maxwell his reward, and said to +herself such sad, such agitating things! She did think of him. Her heart +ached to serve him. The situation made a new and a very troubling appeal +to her womanhood. + + * * * * * + +The night was warm, and still, and the windows were open to it as they +had been on that May night at Castle Luton. Maxwell came to look for +Tressady, and took him out upon a flagged terrace that ran the length of +the house. + +They talked first of the Ancoats incident, George supplementing his +letters by some little verbal pictures of Ancoats's life and surroundings +that made Maxwell laugh grimly from time to time. As to Mrs. Allison, +Maxwell reported that Ancoats seemed to have gained his point. There was +talk of the marriage coming off some time in the winter. + +"Well, Fontenoy has earned his prize," said George. + +"There are more than twelve years between them. But she seems to be one +of the women who don't age. I have seen her go through griefs that +would kill most women; and it has been like the passage of a storm over +a flower." + +"Religion, I suppose, carried to that point, protects one a good deal," +said George, not, in truth, feeling much interest in the matter or in +Mrs. Allison now that his task was done. + +"And especially religion of the type that allows you to give your soul +into someone else's keeping. There is no such anodyne," said Maxwell, +musing. "I have often noticed how Catholic women keep their youth and +softness. But now, do allow me a few words about yourself. Is what I hear +about your withdrawal from Parliament irrevocable?" + +George's reply led to a discussion in which Maxwell, without any attempt +at party proselytism, endeavoured to combat all that he could understand +of the young man's twofold disgust, disgust with his own random +convictions no less than with the working of the party machine. + +"Where do I belong?" he said. "I don't know myself. I ought never to have +gone in. Anyway, I had better stand aside for a time." + +"But evidently the Malford people want to keep you." + +"Well, and of course I shall consult their convenience as much as I can," +said George, unwillingly, but would say no more. + +Nothing, indeed, could be more flattering, more healing, than all that +was implied in Maxwell's earnestness, in the peculiar sympathy and +kindness with which the elder man strove to win the younger's confidence; +but George could not respond. His whole inner being was too sore; and his +mind ran incomparably more upon the damnable letter that must be lying +somewhere in the archives of the memory of the man talking to him, than +upon his own political prospects. The conversation ended for Maxwell in +mere awkwardness and disappointment,--deep disappointment if the truth +were known. Once roused his idealism was little less stubborn, less +wilful than Marcella's. + +When the ladies withdrew, a brilliant group of them stood for a moment on +the first landing of the great oak staircase, lighting candles and +chattering. Madeleine Penley took her candle absently from Marcella's +hand, saying nothing. The girl's curious face under its crown of gold-red +hair was transformed somehow to an extraordinary beauty. The frightened +parting of the lips and lifting of the brows had become rather a look of +exquisite surprise, as of one who knows at last "the very heart of love." + +"I am coming to you, presently," murmured Marcella, laying her cheek +against the girl's. + +"Oh, _do_ come!" said Madeleine, with a great breath, and she walked +away, unsteadily, by herself, into the darkness of the tapestried +passage, her white dress floating behind her. + +Marcella looked after her, then turned with shining eyes to Letty +Tressady. Her expression changed. + +"I am afraid your headache has been very bad all the evening," she said +penitently. "Do let me come and look after you." + +She went with Letty to her room, and put her into a chair beside the wood +fire, that even on this warm night was not unwelcome in the huge place. +Letty, indeed, shivered a little as she bent towards it. + +"Must you go so early?" said Marcella, hanging over her. "I heard Sir +George speak of the ten o'clock train." + +"Oh, yes," said Letty, "that will be best." + +She stared into the fire without speaking. Marcella knelt down +beside her. + +"You won't hate me any more?" she said, in a low, pleading voice, taking +two cold hands in her own. + +Letty looked up. + +"I should like," she said, speaking with difficulty, "if you cared--to +see you sometimes." + +"Only tell me when," said Marcella, laying her lips lightly on the hands, +"and I will come." Then she hesitated. "Oh, do believe," she broke out at +last, but still in the same low voice, "that all can be healed! Only show +him love,--forget everything else,--and happiness must come. Marriage is +so difficult--such an art--even for the happiest people, one has to learn +it afresh day by day." + +Letty's tired eyes wavered under the other's look. + +"I can't understand it like that," she said. Then she moved restlessly in +her chair. "Ferth is a terrible place! I wonder how I shall bear it!" + + * * * * * + +An hour later Marcella left Madeleine Penley and went back to her own +room. The smile and flush with which she had received the girl's last +happy kisses disappeared as she walked along the corridor. Her head +drooped, her arms hung listlessly beside her. + +Maxwell found her in her own little sitting-room almost in the dark. He +sat down by her and took her hand. + +"You couldn't make any impression on him as to Parliament?" she asked +him, almost whispering. + +"No. He persists that he must go. I think his private circumstances at +Ferth have a great deal to do with it." + +She shook her head. She turned away from him, took up a paper-knife, and +let it fall on the table beside her. He thought that she must have been +in tears, before he found her, and he saw that she could find no words in +which to express herself. Lifting her hand to his lips, he held it there, +silently, with a touch all tenderness. + +"Oh, why am I so happy!" she broke out at last, with a sob, almost +drawing her hand away. "Such a life as mine seems to absorb and batten +upon other people's dues--to grow rich by robbing their joy, joy that +should feed hundreds and comes all to me! And that besides I should +actually bruise and hurt--" + +Her voice failed her. + +"Fate has a way of being tolerably even, at last," said Maxwell, slowly, +after a pause. "As to Tressady, no one can say what will come of it. He +has strange stuff in him--fine stuff I think. He will pull himself +together. And for the wife--probably, already he owes you much! I saw her +look at you to-night--once as you touched her shoulder. Dear!--what +spells have you been using?" + +"Oh! I will do all I can--all I can!" Marcella repeated in a low, +passionate voice, as one who makes a vow to her own heart. + +"But after to-morrow he will not willingly come across us again," said +Maxwell, quietly. "That I saw." + +She gave a sad and wordless assent. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +Letty Tressady sat beside the doorway of one of the small red-brick +houses that make up the village of Ferth. It was a rainy October +afternoon, and through the door she could see the black main street +--houses and road alike bedabbled in wet and mire. At one point in the +street her eye caught a small standing crowd of women and children, most +of them with tattered shawls thrown over their heads to protect them from +the weather. She knew what it meant. They were waiting for the daily +opening of the soup kitchen, started in the third week of the great +strike by the Baptist minister, who, in the language of the Tory paper, +was "among the worst firebrands of the district." There was another soup +kitchen further down, to which George had begun to subscribe immediately +on his return to the place. She had thought it a foolish act on his part +thus to help his own men to fight him the better. But--now, as she +watched the miserable crowd outside the Baptist chapel, she felt the +teasing pressure of those new puzzles of her married life which had so +far done little else, it seemed, than take away her gaiety and her power +of amusing herself. + +Near her sat an oldish woman with an almost toothless mouth, who was +chattering to her in a tone that Letty knew to be three parts +hypocritical. + +"Well, the treuth is the men is that fool 'ardy when they gets a thing +into their yeds, there's no taakin wi un. There's plenty as done like the +strike, my lady, but they dursent say so--they'd be afeard o' losin the +skin off their backs, for soom o' them lads o' Burrows's is a routin +rough lot as done keer what they doos to a mon, an yo canna exspeck a +quiet body to stan up agen 'em. Now, my son, ee comes in at neet all +slamp and downcast, an I says to 'im, 'Is there noa news yet o' the Jint +Committee, John?' I ses to un. 'Noa, mither,' ee says, 'they're just +keepin ov it on.' An ee do seem so down'earted when ee sees the poor +soart ov a supper as is aw I can gie un to 'is stomach. Now, _I'm_ wun o' +thoase as _wants_ nuthin. The doctor ses, 'Yo've got no blude in yer, +Missus 'Ammersley, what 'ull yer 'ave?' An I says, '_Nuthin!_ it's sun +cut, an it's sun cooked, _nuthin!_' Noa, I've niver bin on t' parish--an +I _might_--times. An I don't 'old wi strikes. Lor, it is a poor pleace, +is ours--ain't it?--an nobbut a bit o' bread an drippin for supper." + +The old woman threw her eyes round her kitchen, bringing them back slyly +to Letty's face. Letty ended by leaving some money with her, and walking +away as dissatisfied with her own charity as she was with its recipient. +Perhaps this old body was the only person in the village who would have +begged of "Tressady's wife" at this particular moment. Letty, moreover, +had some reason to believe that her son was one of the roughest of +Burrows's bodyguard; while the old woman was certainly no worse off than +any of her neighbours. + +Outside, she was disturbed to find as she walked home, that the street +was full of people, in spite of the rain--of gaunt men and pinched +women, who threw her hostile and sidelong glances as she passed. She +hurried through them. How was it that she knew nothing of them--except, +perhaps, of the few toadies and parasites among them? How was one to +penetrate into this ugly, incomprehensible world of "the people"? The +mere idea of trying to do so filled her with distaste and ennui. She was +afraid of them. She wished she had not stayed so long with that old +gossip, Mrs. Hammersley, and that there were not so many yards of dark +road between her and her own gate. Where was George? She knew that he +had gone up to the pits that afternoon to consult his manager about some +defect in the pumping arrangements. She wished she had secured his +escort for the walk home. + +But before she left the village she paused irresolutely, then turned down +a side street, and went to see Mary Batchelor, George's old nurse, the +mother who had lost her only son in his prime. + +When, a few minutes later, she came up the lane, she was flatly conscious +of having done a virtuous thing--several virtuous things--that afternoon, +but certainly without any pleasure in them. She did not get on with Mary, +nor Mary with her. The tragic absorption of the mother--little abated +since the spring--in her dead boy seemed somehow to strike Letty dumb. +She felt pity, but yet the whole emotion was beyond her, and she shrank +from it. As for Mary, she had so far received Lady Tressady's visits with +a kind of dull surprise, always repeated and not flattering. Letty +believed that, in her inmost heart, the broken woman was offended each +time that it was not George who came. Moreover, though she never said a +word of it to Tressady's wife, she was known to be passionately on the +side of the strikers, and her manner gave the impression that she did not +want to be talking with their oppressors. Perhaps it was this feeling +that had reconciled her to the loutish lad who lived with her, and had +been twice "run in" by the police for stone-throwing at non-union men +since the beginning of the strike. At any rate, she took a great deal +more notice of him than she had done. + +No--they were not very satisfactory, these attempts of Letty's in the +village. She thought of them with a kind of inner exasperation as she +walked home. She had been going to a few old and sick people, and trying +to ignore the strike. But at bottom she felt an angry resentment towards +these loafing, troublesome fellows, who filled the village street when +they ought to have been down in the pits--who were starving their own +children no less than disturbing and curtailing the incomes of their +betters. Did they suppose that people were going to run pits for them for +nothing? Their drink and their religion seemed to her equally hideous. +She hated the two Dissenting ministers of the place only less than +Valentine Burrows himself, and delighted to pass their wives with her +head high in air. + +With these general feelings towards the population in her mind, why +these efforts at consolation and almsgiving? Well, the poor old people +were not responsible; but she did not see that any good had come of it. +She had said nothing about her visits to George, nor did-she suppose +that he had noticed them. He had been so incessantly busy since their +arrival with conferences and committees that she had seen very little of +him. It was generally believed that the strike was nearing its end, and +that the men were exhausted; but she did not think that George was very +hopeful yet. + +Presently, as she neared a dark slope of road, bordered with trees on +one side and the high "bank" of the main pit on the other, her thoughts +turned back to their natural and abiding subject--herself. Oh, the +dulness of life at Ferth during the last three weeks! She thought of +her amusements in town, of the country houses where they might now be +staying but for George's pride, of Cathedine, even; and a rush of +revolt and self-pity filled her mind. George always away, nothing to do +in the ugly house, and Lady Tressady coming directly--she said to +herself, suffocating, her small hands stiffening, that she felt fit to +kill herself. + +Half-way down the slope she heard steps behind her in the gathering +darkness, and at the same moment something struck her violently on the +shoulder. She cried out, and clutched at some wooden railings along the +road for support, as the lump of "dirt" from the bank which had been +flung at her dropped beside her. + +"Letty, is that you?" shouted a voice from the direction of the +village--her husband's voice. She heard running. In a few seconds George +had reached her and was holding her. + +"What is it struck you? I see! Cowards! _damned_ cowards! Has it broken +your arm? Try and move it." + +Sick with pain she tried to obey him. "No," she said faintly; "it is not +broken--I think not." + +"Good!" he cried, rejoicing; "probably only a bad bruise. The brute +mercifully picked up nothing very hard"--and he pushed the lump with +his foot. "Take my scarf, dear; let me sling it. Ah!--what was that? +Letty! can you be brave--can you let me go one minute? I sha'n't be out +of your sight." + +And he pointed excitedly to a dark spot moving among the bushes along the +lower edge of the "bank." + +Letty nodded. "I can stay here." + +George leapt the palings and ran. The dark spot ran too, but in queer +leaps and bounds. There was the sound of a scuffle, then George returned, +dragging something or someone behind him. + +"I knew it," he said, panting, as he came within earshot of his wife; "it +was that young ruffian, Mary Batchelor's grandson! Now you stand still, +will you? I could hold two of the likes of you with one hand. Madan!" + +He had but just parted from his manager on the path which led sideways up +the "bank," and waited anxiously to see if his voice would reach the +Scotchman's ears. But no one replied. He shouted again; then he put two +fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly towards the pit, holding the +struggling lad all the time. + +At the same moment a couple of heavily built men, evidently colliers, +came down the road from the village. George at once called to them from +across the palings. + +"Here, you there! this young rascal has been throwing a lump of dirt at +Lady Tressady, and has hit her badly on the arm. Will you two just walk +him up to the police-station for me, while I take my wife home?" + +The two men stopped and stared at the lady by the railings and at Sir +George holding the boy, whose white but grinning face was just visible in +the growing dusk. + +"Noa," said one of them at last, "it's noa business ov ourn--is +it, Bill?" + +"Noa," said the other, stolidly; and on they tramped. + +"Oh, you heroes!" George flung after them. "Attacking a woman in the dark +is about what you understand!--Madan!" + +He whistled again, and this time there was a hurrying from overhead. + +"Sir George!" + +"Come down here, will you, at once!" + +In a few more minutes the boy was being marched up the road to the +police-station in charge of the strong-wristed Scotch manager, and George +was free to attend to Letty. + +He adjusted a sling very fairly, then made her cling to him with her +sound arm; and they were soon inside their own gates. + +"You can't climb this hill," he said to her anxiously. "Rest at the +lodge, and let me go for the brougham." + +"I can walk perfectly well--and it will be much quicker." + +Involuntarily, he was surprised to find her rather belittling than +exaggerating the ill. As they climbed on in the dark, he helping her as +much as he could, both could not but think of another accident and +another victim. Letty found herself imagining again and again what the +scene with Lady Maxwell, after the East End meeting, might have been +like; while, as for him, a face drew itself upon the rainy dusk, which +the will seemed powerless to blot out. It was a curious and unwelcome +coincidence. His secret sense of it made him the more restlessly kind. + +"What were you in the village for?" he asked, bending to her; "I did not +know you had anything to do there!" + +"I had been to see old Bessie Hammersley and Mrs. Batchelor," she +said, in a tone that tried to be stiff or indifferent. "Bessie begged, +as usual." + +"That was very good of you. Have you been doing visiting, then, during +all these days I have been away?" + +"Yes--a few people." + +George groaned. + +"What's the use of it--or of anything? They hate us and we them. This +strike begins to eat into my very being. And the men will be beaten soon, +and the feeling towards the employers will be worse than ever." + +"You are sure they will be beaten?" + +"Before Christmas, anyway. I daresay there will be some bad times first. +To think a woman even can't walk these roads without danger of +ill-treatment! How is one to have any dealings with the brutes, or any +peace with them?" + +His rage and bitterness made her somehow feel her bruises less. She even +looked up in protest. + +"Well, it was only a boy, and you used to think he wasn't all there." + +"Oh! all there!" said George, scornfully. "There'd be half of them in +Bedlam if one had to make that excuse for them. There isn't a day passes +without some devilry against the non-union men somewhere. It was only +this morning I heard of two men being driven into a reservoir near +Rilston, and stoned in the water." + +"Perhaps we should do the same," she said unwillingly. + +"Lean on me more heavily--we shall soon be there. You think we should be +brutes too? Probably. We seem to be all brutes for each other--that's the +charming way this competitive world is managed. So you have been looking +after some of the old people, have you? You must have had a dull time of +it this last three weeks--don't think I don't know that!" + +He spoke with emotion. He thought he felt her grasp waver a little on his +arm, but she did not speak. + +"Suppose--when this business was over--I were to cut the whole +concern--let the pits and the house, and go right away? I daresay I +could." + +"Could you?" she said eagerly. + +"We shouldn't get so much money, you know, as in the best years. But +then it would be certain. What would you say to a thousand a year less?" +he asked her, trying to speak lightly. + +"Well, it doesn't seem easy to get on with what we have--even if we had +it," she said sharply. + +He understood the reference to his mother's debts, and was silent. + +But evidently the recollection, once introduced, generated the usual heat +and irritation in her, for, as they neared the front door, she suddenly +said, with an acerbity he had not heard for some weeks: + +"Of course, to have a country house, and not to be able to spend a +farthing upon it--to ask your friends, or have anything decent--is enough +to make anyone sick of it. And, above all, when we needn't have been here +at all this October--" + +She stopped, shrinking from the rest of the sentence, but not before he +had time to think, "She say _that_!--monstrous!" + +Aloud he coldly replied: + +"It is difficult to see where I could have been but here, this October." + +Then the door opened, and the light showed her to him pale, with lips +tight pressed from the pain of her injury. Instantly he forgot everything +but his natural pity and chivalry towards women. He led her in, and half +carried her upstairs. A little later she was resting on her bed, and he +had done everything he could for her till the doctor should come. She +seemed to have passed into an eclipse of temper or moodiness, and he got +little gratitude. + +The evening post brought her a letter which he took up to her himself. +He knew the clear, rapid hand, and he knew, too, that Letty had received +many such during the preceding month. He stood beside her a moment, +almost on the point of asking her to let him see it. But the words died +on his lips. And, perceiving that she would not read it while he was +there, he went away again. + +When he returned, carrying a new book and asking if he should read to +her, he found her lying with her cheek on her hand, staring into the +fire, and so white and miserable that his heart sank. Had he married her, +a girl of twenty-four, only to destroy her chance of happiness +altogether? A kind of terror seized him. He had been "good to her," so +far as she and his business had allowed him, since their return; there +had been very little outward jarring; but no one knew better than he that +there had not been one truly frank or reconciling moment. + +His own inner life during these weeks had passed in one obscure +continuous struggle--a sort of dull fever of the soul. And she had simply +held herself aloof from him. + +He knelt down beside her, and laid his face against hers. + +"Don't look so unhappy!" he said in a whisper, caressing her free hand. +She did not answer or make any response till, as he got up again in a +kind of despair as to what to do or say next, she hastily asked: + +"Has the constable been up here to see you?" + +He looked at her in surprise. + +"Yes. It is all arranged. The lad will be brought up before the +magistrates on Thursday." + +She fidgeted, then said abruptly: + +"I should like him to be let off." + +He hesitated. + +"That's very nice of you, but it wouldn't be very good for the district." + +She did not press the matter, but as he moved away she said fretfully: + +"I wish you'd read to me. The pain's horrid." + +Thankful, in his remorse, to do anything for her, he tried to amuse and +distract her as he best could. But in the middle of a magazine story she +interrupted him: + +"Isn't it the day after to-morrow your mother's coming?" + +"According to her letter this morning." He put down the book. "But I +don't think you'll be at all fit to look after her. Shall I write +to-night and suggest that she stays in London a little?" + +"No. I shall be all right, the doctor says. I want to tell +Esther"--Esther was the housemaid--"_not_ to get the Blue Room ready for +her. I looked in to-day, and it seemed damp. The back room over the +dining-room is smaller, but it's much warmer." + +She turned to look at him with a rather flushed face. + +"You know best," he said, smiling. "I am sure it will be all right. But I +sha'n't let her come unless you are better." + +He went on reading till it grew late, and it seemed to him she was +dropping off to sleep. He was stealing off by way of the large +dressing-room near by, where he had been installed since their return, +when, she said faintly, "Good-night!" + +He returned, and felt the drawing of her hot hand. He stooped and kissed +her. Then she turned away from him, and seemed to go instantly to sleep. + +He went downstairs to his library, and gathered about him some documents +he had brought back from the last meeting of the masters' committee, +which had to be read. But in reality he spent an hour of random thought. +When would she herself tell him anything of her relations to Lady +Maxwell, of the nature and causes of that strange subjection which, as +he saw quite plainly, had been brought about? She must know that he +pined to know; yet she held her secret only the more jealously, no doubt +to punish him. + +He thought of her visits to the village, half humorously, half sadly; +then of her speech about the Blue Room and his mother. They seemed to him +signs of some influence at work. + +But at last he turned back to his papers with a long impatient sigh. The +clear pessimism with which he was wont to see facts that concerned +himself maintained that all the surrounding circumstance of the case was +as untoward as it could be--this dull house, a troubled district, his +money affairs, the perpetual burden of his mother, Letty's own thirst for +pleasure, and the dying down in himself of the feelings that might +once--possibly--have made up to her for a good deal. The feelings might +be simulated. Was the woman likely to be deceived? That she was capable +of the fiercest jealousy had been made abundantly plain; and such a +temper once roused would find a hundred new provocations, day by day, in +the acts and doings of a husband who had ceased to be a lover. + +Two days later Lady Tressady arrived, with Justine, and her dogs, and +all her paraphernalia. She declared herself better, but she was a mere +shadow of the woman who had tormented George with her debts and +affectations at Malford House a twelvemonth before. She took Ferth +discontentedly, as usual, and was particularly cross with Letty's +assignment to her of the back room, instead of the larger spare room to +the front of the house. + +"Damp?--nonsense!" she said to Justine, who was trying to soothe her on +the night she arrived. "I suppose Lady Tressady has some friend of her +own coming to stay--that's, of _course_, what it is. _C'est parfaitement +clair, je te dis--parfaitement!_" + +The French maid reminded her that her daughter-in-law had said, on +showing her the room, she had only to express a wish to change, and the +arrangements should be altered at once. + +"I daresay," cried Lady Tressady. "But I shall ask _no_ favours of +her--and that, of course, she knew." + +"But, miladi, I need only speak to the housemaid." + +"Thank you! Then afterwards, whenever I had a pain or a finger-ache, it +would be, 'I told you so!' No! she has managed it very cleverly--very +cleverly indeed!--and I shall let it alone." + +Thenceforward, however, there were constant complaints of everything +provided for her--room, food, the dulness of the place, the manners of +her daughter-in-law. Whether it was that her illness had now reached a +stage when the will could no longer fight against it, and its only effect +was demoralising; or whether the strange flash of courage and natural +affection struck from the volatile nature by the first threat of death +could not in any case have maintained itself, it is hard to say. At any +rate, George also found it hard to keep up his new and better ways with +her. The fact was, he suffered through Letty. In a few days his +sympathies were all with her, and to his amazement he perceived before +long that, in spite of occasional sharp speeches and sulky moments that +only an angel could have forborne, she was really more patient under his +mother's idiosyncrasies than he was. Yet Lady Tressady, even now, was +rarely unmanageable in his presence, and could still restrain herself if +it was a question of his comfort and repose; whereas, it was clear that +she felt a cat-like impulse to torment Letty whenever she saw her. + +One recent habit, however, bore with special heaviness on himself. Oddly +enough, it was a habit of religious discussion. Lady Tressady in health +had never troubled herself in the least as to what the doctors of the +soul might have to say, and had generally gaily professed herself a +sceptic in religious matters, mostly, as George had often thought, for +the sake of escaping all inconvenient restrictions--such as family +prayers, or keeping Sunday, or observing Lent--which might have got in +the way of her amusements. + +But, now, poor lady, she was all curiosity and anxiety about this strange +other side of things, and inclined, too, to be rather proud of the +originality of her inquiries on the subject. So that night after night +she would keep George up, after an exhausting day, till the small hours, +while she declared her own views "on God, on Nature, and on Human Life," +and endeavoured to extract his. This latter part of the exercise was +indeed particularly attractive to her; no doubt because of its +difficulty. George had been a singularly reserved person in these +respect's all his life, and had no mind now to play the part of a +coal-seam for his mother to "pike" at. But "pike" she would incessantly. + +"Now, George, look here! what do you _really_ think about a future life? +Now don't try and get out of it! And don't just talk nonsense to me +because you think I'm ill. I'm not a baby--I really am not. Tell +me--seriously--what you think. Do you honestly expect there _is_ a +future life?" + +"I've told you before, mother, that I have no particular thoughts on that +subject. It isn't in my line," George would say, smiling profanely, but +uneasily, and wondering how long this bout of it might be going to last. + +"Don't be shocking, George! You _must_ have some ideas about it. Now, +don't hum and haw--just tell me what you think." And she would lean +forward, all urgency and expectation. + +A pause, during which George could think only of the ghastly figure on +the sofa. She sat upright, generally, against a prop of cushions, +dressed in a white French tea-gown, slim enough to begin, with, but far +too large now for the shrunk form--a bright spot of rouge on either +pinched cheek, and the dyed "fringe" and "coils" covering all the once +shapely head. Meanwhile her hand would play impatiently on her knee. +The hand was skin and bone; and the rings with which it was laden would +often slip off from it to the floor--a diversion of which George was +always prompt to avail himself. + +"Why don't you talk to Mr. Fearon, mother?" he would say gently at last. +"It's his business to discuss these things." + +"Talk to a clergyman! thank you! I hope I have more respect for my own +intelligence. What can a priest do for you? What does he know more than +anybody else? But I do want to know what my own son thinks. Now, George, +just answer me. If there _is_ a future life"--she spread out her hand +slowly on her lap--"what do you suppose your father's doing at this +moment? That's a thing I often think of, George. I don't think I want a +future life if it's to be just like the past. You know--you remember how +he used to be--poking about the house, and going down to the pits, +and--and--swearing at the servants, and having rows with me about the +accounts--and all his dear dreadful little ways? Yet, what else in the +world can you imagine him doing? As to singing hymns!" + +She raised her hands expressively. + +George laughed, and puffed away at his cigarette. But as he still said +nothing Lady Tressady began to frown. + +"That's the way you always get out of my questions," she said fretfully; +"it's so provoking of you." + +"I've recommended you to the professional," he said, patting her hand. +"What else could I do?" + +Her thin cheek flamed. + +"As if we couldn't be certain, anyway," she cried, "that the Christians +don't know anything about it. As M. d'Estrelles used to say to me at +Monte Carlo, if there's one thing clear, it is that we needn't bother +ourselves with _their_ doctrines!" + +"Needn't we?" said George. Then he looked at her, smiling. "And you think +M. d'Estrelles was an authority?" + +Odd recollections began to run through his mind of this elderly +French admirer of his mother's, whom he had seen occasionally +flitting about their London lodgings when, as a boy, he came up from +Eton for his _exeat_. + +"Oh! don't you scoff, George," said his mother, angrily. "M. d'Estrelles +was a very clever man, though he did gamble like a fool. Everybody said +his memory was marvellous. He used to quote me pages out of Voltaire and +the rest of them on the nights when we walked up and down the gardens at +Monte Carlo, after he'd cleared himself out. He always said he didn't see +why these things should be kept from women--why men shouldn't tell women +exactly what they think. And I know he'd been a Catholic in his youth, so +he'd had experience of both. However, I don't care about M. d'Estrelles. +I want your opinions. Now, George!"--her voice would begin to break--"how +can you be so unkind. You might really compose my mind a little, as the +doctors say!" + +And through her incorrigible levity he would see for a moment the terror +which always possessed her raise its head. Then it would be time for him +to go and put his arm round her, and try and coax her to bed. + +One night, after he had taken her upstairs, he came down so wearied and +irritable that he put all his letters aside, and tried to forget himself +in some miscellaneous reading. + +His knowledge of literature was no more complete than his character. +Certain modern English poets--Rossetti, Morris, Keats, and Shelley--he +knew almost by heart. And in travels and biography--mostly of men of +action--he had, at one time or another, read voraciously. But "the +classics he had not read," as with most of us, would have made a list of +lamentable length. + +Since his return to Ferth, however, he had browsed a good deal among the +books collected by his grandfather, mostly by way of distracting himself +at night from the troubles and worries of the day. + +On this particular night there were two books lying on his table. One was +a volume of Madame de Sévigné, the other St. Augustine's "Confessions." +He turned over first one, then the other. + +"Au reste, ma fille, une de mes grandes envies, ce serait d'être dévote; +je ne suis ni an Dieu, ni an Diable; cet état m'ennuie, quoiqu' entre +nous je le trouve le plus naturel du monde. On n'est point an Diable +parce qu'on craint Dieu, et qu' an fond on a un principe de religion; on +n'est point à Dieu aussi, parce que sa loi paroit dure, et qu' on n'aime +point à se détruire soi-même." + +"Admirable!" he thought to himself, "_admirable!_ We are all there--my +mother and I--three parts of mankind." + +But on a page of the other book he had marked these lines--for the +beauty of them: + +"Beatus qui amat te, et amicum in te, et inimicum propter te. Solus enim +nullum eorum amittit, cui omnes in illo cari sunt qui non amittitur." + +He hung over the fire, pondering the two utterances. + +"A marvellous music," he thought of the last. "But I know no more what it +means than I know what a symphony of Brahms' means. Yet some say they +know. Perhaps of _her_ it might be true." + +The weeks ran on. Outside, the strike was at its worst, though George +still believed the men would give in before Christmas. There was hideous +distress, and some bad rioting in different parts of the country. Various +attempts had been made by the employers to use and protect non-union +labour, but the crop of outrage they had produced had been too +threatening: in spite of the exasperation of the masters they had been +perforce let drop. The Press and the public were now intervening in good +earnest--"every fool thinks he can do our business for us," as George +would put it bitterly to Letty. Burrows was speaking up and down the +district with a superhuman energy, varied only by the drinking-bouts to +which he occasionally succumbed; and George carried a revolver with him +when he went abroad. + +The struggle wore him to death; the melancholy of his temperament had +never been so marked. At the same time Letty saw a doggedness in him, a +toughness like Fontenoy's own, which astonished her. Two men seemed to be +fighting in him. He would talk with perfect philosophy of the miners' +point of view, and the physical-force sanction by which the lawless among +them were determined to support it; but at the same time he belonged to +the stiffest set among the masters. + +Meanwhile, at home, friction and discomfort were constantly recurring. +In the course of three or four weeks Lady Tressady had several attacks +of illness, and it was evident that her weakness increased rapidly. And +with the weakness, alas! the ugly incessant irritability, that dried up +the tenderness of nurses, and made a battleground of the sick-room. +Though, indeed, she could never be kept in her room; she resented being +left a moment alone. She claimed, in spite of the anxieties of the +moment, to be constantly amused; and though George could sometimes +distract and quiet her, nothing that Letty did, or said, or wore was +ever tolerable to a woman who merely saw in this youth beside her a +bitter reminder of her own. + +At last, one day early in November, came a worse turn than usual. The +doctor was in the house most of the day, but George had gone off before +the alarm to a place on the further side of the county, and could not be +got at till the evening. + +He came in to find Letty waiting for him in the hall. There had been a +rally; the doctor had gone his way marvelling, and it was thought there +was no immediate danger. + +"But oh, the pain!" said Letty, under her breath, pressing her hands +together, and shivering. Her eyes were red, her cheeks pale; he saw that +she was on the point of exhaustion; and he guessed that she had never +seen such a sight before. + +He ran up to visit his mother, whom he found almost speechless from +weakness, yet waiting, with evident signs of impatience and temper, for +her evening food. And while he and Letty were at their melancholy dinner +together, Justine came flying downstairs in tears. Miladi would not eat +what had been taken to her. She was exciting herself; there would be +another attack. + +Husband and wife hurried from the room. In the hall they found the butler +just receiving a parcel left by the railway delivery-cart. + +George passed the box with an exclamation and a shudder. It bore a large +label, "From Worth et Cie," and was addressed to Lady Tressady. But Letty +stopped short, with a sudden look of pleasure. + +"You go to her. I will have this unpacked." + +He went up and coaxed his mother like a child to take her soup and +champagne. And presently, just as she was revived enough to talk to +him, Letty appeared. Her mother-in-law frowned, but Letty came gaily up +to the bed. + +"There is a parcel from Paris for you," she said, smiling. "I have had it +opened. Would you like it brought in?" + +Lady Tressady first whimpered, and said it should go back--what did a +dying woman want with such things?--then demanded greedily to see it. + +Letty brought it in herself. It was a new evening gown of the softest +greens and shell-pinks, fit for a bride in her first season. To see the +invalid, ashen-grey, stretching out her hand to finger it was almost more +than George could stand. But Letty shook out the rustling thing, put on +the skirt herself that Lady Tressady might see, and paraded up and down +in it, praising every cut and turning with the most ingenious ardour. + +"I sha'n't wear it, of course, till after Christmas," said Lady Tressady +at last, still looking at it with half-shut covetous eyes. "Isn't it +_darling_ the way the lace is put on! Put it away. George!--it's the +_first_ I've had from him this year." + +She looked up at him appealingly. He stooped and kissed her. + +"I am so glad you like it, mother dear. Can't you sleep now?" + +"Yes, I think so. Good-night. And good-night, Letty." + +Letty came, and Lady Tressady held her hand, while the blue eyes, still +bearing the awful impress of suffering, stared at her oddly. + +"It was nice of you to put it on, Letty. I didn't think you'd have done +it. And I'm glad you think it's pretty. I wish you would have one made +like it. Kiss me." + +Letty kissed her. Then George slipped his wife's arm in his, and they +left the room together. Outside Letty turned suddenly white, and nearly +fell. George put his arms round her, and carried her down to his study. +He put her on the sofa, and watched her tenderly, rubbing the cold hands. + +"How you _could_," he said at last, in a low voice, when he saw that +she was able to talk; "how you _could!_ I shall never forget that +little scene." + +"You'd have done anything, if you'd seen her this morning," she said, +with her eyes still closed. + +He sat beside her, silent, thinking over the miseries of the last few +weeks. The net result of them--he recognised it with a leap of +surprise--seemed to have been the formation of a new and secret bond +between himself and Letty. During all the time he had been preparing +himself for the worst this strange thing had been going on. How had it +been possible for her to be, comparatively, so forbearing? He could see +nothing in his past knowledge of her to explain it. + +He recalled the effort and gloom with which she had made her first +preparations for Lady Tressady. Yet she had made them. Is there really +some mystic power, as the Christians say, in every act of self-sacrifice, +however imperfect,--a power that represents at once the impelling and the +rewarding God,--that generates, moreover, from its own exercise, the +force to repeat itself? Personally such a point of view meant little to +him, nor did his mind dwell upon it long. All that he knew was that some +angel had stirred the pool--that old wounds smarted less--that hope +seemed more possible. + +Letty knew quite well that he was watching her in a new way, that there +was a new clinging in his touch. She, little more than he, understood +what was happening to her. From time to time during these weeks of +painful tension there had been hours of wild rebellion, when she had +hated her surroundings, her mother-in-law, and her general ill-luck as +fiercely as ever. Then there had followed strange appeasements, and +inflowing calms--moments when she had been able somehow to express +herself to one who cared to listen who poured upon her in return a +sympathy which braced while it healed. + +Suddenly she opened her eyes. + +"Do you want to hear about that first time when she came to see me?" she +whispered, her look wavering under his. + +He flushed and hesitated. Then he kissed her hand. + +"No, not now. You are worn out. Another time. But I love you for thinking +of telling me." + +A feeling of rest and well-being stole over her. Mercifully he made no +protestations, and she asked for none, but there was a gentle moving of +heart towards heart. And the memory of that hour, that night, made one of +the chief barriers between her and despair in the time that followed. + +Two days later a painless death, death in her sleep, overtook Lady +Tressady. Her delicate face, restored to its true years, and framed in +its natural grey hair, seemed for the first time beautiful to George when +he saw her in her coffin. He could not remember admiring her, even when +he was a boy, and she was reckoned among the handsomest women of her day. +Parting with her was like the snapping of a strain that had pulled life +out of its true bearings and proportions. An immense, inevitable relief +followed. But after her death Letty never said a harsh word of her, and +George had a queer, humble feeling that after all he might be found to +owe her much. + +For as November and December passed away the relation between the husband +and wife steadily settled and improved. "We shall rub along," George +said to himself in his frank, secret thoughts--"in the end it will be +much better perhaps than either of us could have hoped." That no doubt +was the utmost that could ever be said; but it was much. + +The night after his mother's death, Letty abruptly, violently even, as +though worked up to it by an inner excitement, told him the story of her +wrestle with Marcella. Then, throwing some letters into his hand she +broke into sobbing and ran away from him. When he went to look for her +his own eyes were wet. "Who else could have done such a thing?" he said; +and Letty made no protest. + +The letters gave him food for thought for many a day afterwards. They +were little less of a revelation to him than the motives and personality +lying behind them had been to Letty. In spite of all that he had felt for +the woman who had written them, they still roused in him a secret and +abiding astonishment. We use the words "spiritual," "poetic" in relation +to human conduct; we talk as though all that the words meant were +familiarly understood by us; and yet when the spiritual or the poetic +comes actually to walk among us, slips into the forms and functions of +our common life, we find it amazing, almost inhuman. It gives us some +trouble to take it simply, to believe in it simply. + +Yet nothing in truth could be a more inevitable outcome of character and +circumstance than these letters of Marcella Maxwell to George Tressady's +wife. Marcella had suffered under a strong natural remorse, and to free +her heart from the load of it she had thrown herself into an effort of +reconciliation and atonement with all the passion, the subtlety, and the +resource of her temperament. She had now been wooing Letty Tressady for +weeks, nor had the eager contriving ability she had been giving to the +process missed its reward. Letty fresh from the new impressions made upon +her by Marcella at home, and Marcella as a wife, by a beauty she could no +longer hate, and a charm to which she had been forced to yield, had found +herself amid the loneliness and dulness of Perth gradually enveloped and +possessed anew by the same influence, acting in ways that grew week by +week more personal, and more subduing. + +What to begin with could be more flattering either to heart or vanity +than the persistence with which one of the most famous women of her +time--watched, praised, copied, attacked, surrounded, as Letty knew her +to be, from morning till night--had devoted herself first to the +understanding, then to the capturing, of the smaller, narrower life. The +reaction towards a natural reserve, a certain proud, instinctive +self-defence, which had governed Marcella's manner during a great part of +Letty's visit to the Court, had been in these letters deliberately broken +down--at first with effort, then more and more frankly, more and more +sweetly. Day after day, as Letty knew, Marcella had taken time from +politics, from society, from her most cherished occupations, to write to +this far-off girl, from whom she had nothing either to gain or to fear, +who had no claims whatever on her friendship, had things gone normally, +while thick about the opening of their relation to each other hung the +memory of Letty's insults and Letty's violence. + +And the letters were written with such abandonment! As a rule Marcella +was a hasty or impatient correspondent. She thought letters a waste of +time; life was full enough without them. But here, with Letty, she +lingered, she took pains. The mistress of Les Rochers writing to her +absent, her exacting Pauline, could hardly have been more eager to +please. She talked--at leisure--of all that concerned her--husband, +child, high politics, the persons she saw, the gaieties she bore with, +the books she read, the schemes in which she was busied; then, with +greater tenderness, greater minuteness, of the difficulties and tediums +of Letty's life at Ferth, as they had been dismally drawn out for her in +Letty's own letters. The animation, the eager kindness of it all went for +much; the amazing self-surrender, self-offering, implied in every page +for much more. + +Strange!--as he read the letters George felt his own heart beating. Were +they in some hidden way meant for him too?--he seemed to hear in them a +secret message--a woman's yearning, a woman's response. + +At any rate, the loving, reconciling effort had done its work. Letty +could not be insensible to such a flattery, a compliment so unexpected, +so bewildering--the heart of a Marcella Maxwell poured out to her for the +taking. She neither felt it so profoundly, nor so delicately as hundreds +of other women could have felt it. Nevertheless the excitement of it had +thrilled and broken up the hardnesses of her own nature. And with each +yielding on her part had come new capacity for yielding, new emotions +that amazed herself; till she found herself, as it were, groping in a +strange world, clinging to Marcella's hand, trying to express feelings +that had never visited her before, one moment proud of her new friend +with a pride half moral, half selfish, the next, ill at ease with her, +and through it all catching dimly the light of new ideals. + +One day, as George walked into Letty's sitting-room, to discuss some +small business of the afternoon, he saw on her writing-table that same +photograph of Lady Maxwell and her boy, whereof an earlier copy had come +to such a tragic end in Letty's hands. He walked up to it with an +exclamation; Letty was not in the room. Suddenly, however, she came in. +He made no attempt whatever to disguise that he had been looking at the +photograph; he bent over it indeed a moment longer, deliberately. Then, +walking away to the window, he began speaking of the matter which had +brought him to look for his wife. Letty answered absently. The colour had +rushed to her face. Her hands fidgeted with the books and papers on her +table, and her mind was full of fevered remembrance. + +Presently George, having settled the little point he came to speak of, +fell silent. But he still stood by the window, looking out through the +rain-splashed glass to the wintry valley below with its chimneys and +straggling village. Letty, who was pretending to write a note, raised her +head, looked at him--the quick breath beating through the parted lips, +the blue eyes half wild, half miserable. She was not nearly so pretty as +she had been a year before. George had often noticed it; it made part of +his remorse. But the face was more troubling, infinitely more human; +and, in truth, he knew it much better, was more sensitively alive to it, +so to speak, than he ever had been in the days of their courtship. + +Before he left the room he came back to her, put his arm round her +shoulders and kissed her hair. She did not raise her head or say +anything. But when he had gone she looked up with a sudden fierce sob, +took the photograph from its place, and thrust it angrily into the drawer +in front of her. Afterwards she sat for some minutes, motionless, with +her handkerchief at her lips, trying to choke down the tears that had +seized her. And last of all, with trembling fingers, she took out the +picture again, wrapped it in some soft tissue paper that lay near, as +though propitiating it, and once more put it out of sight. + +What had made her first ask Marcella for it, and then place it on her +table where George might, nay, must see it? Some vague wish, no doubt, to +"make up"; to punish herself, while touching him. But the recollection of +him, bending over the picture, tortured her, gripped her at the heart for +many a day afterwards. She let it be seen no more. Yet that week she +wrote more fully, more incoherently, more piteously to Marcella than ever +before. She talked, not without bitterness and injustice, of her bringing +up, asked what she should read, spread out her puzzles with the poor, or +with her household--half angrily, as though she were accusing someone. +For the first time, as it were, she was seeking a teacher in the art of +living. And though the tone was still querulous, she knew, and Marcella +presently dared to guess, that the ugly house on the hill had in truth +ceased to be in the least dull or burdensome to her. George went in and +out of it. And for the woman that has come to hunger for her husband's +step, there is no more ennui. + + * * * * * + +Letty indeed hardly knew the strength of her own position. The reading +of Lady Maxwell's letters to his wife had cleared a number of relics +and fragments from George's mind. The day of passion was done. +Yes!--but to see her frequently, to be brought back into any of the old +social or political relations to her and Maxwell, from this his pride +shrank no less than his conscience. Yet there was a large party in his +constituency, and belonging to it some of the men whose probity and +intelligence he had come to rate most highly, who were pressing him +hard not to resign in February, and, indeed, not to resign at all. The +few public meetings he had so far addressed had been stormy indeed, but +on the whole decidedly friendly to him, and it was urged that he must +at least present himself for re-election, in which case his expenses +should be borne, and he should be left as unpledged as possible. Since +the passage of the Bill Fontenoy's reactionary movement had lost ground +largely in the constituency; and the position of independent member +with a general leaning to the Government was no doubt easily open to +George Tressady. + +But his whole soul shrank from such a renewal of the effort of +politics--probably because of that something in him, that enfeebling, +paralysing something, which in all directions made him really prefer the +half to the whole, and see barriers in the way of all enthusiasms. +Nevertheless, the arguments he had to meet, and the kind persuasions he +had to rebut, made these weeks all the more trying to him. + +The second week of December came, the beginning of the end so far as the +strike was concerned. The men's resources were exhausted; the masters +stood unbroken. They had met the men in a joint committee; but they had +steadily refused arbitration from outside. At the beginning of this week, +rioting broke out in a district where the Union had least strength, +caused, no doubt, by the rage of impending failure. By the middle of the +following week, men were going in here and there, and the stampede of +defeat had begun. + +George, passing through the pinched and lowering faces that lined the +village, hated the triumph of his class. On the 21st, he rode over to a +neighbouring town, where local committees, both of masters and men, +were sitting, to see if there was any final news as to the pits of his +own valley. + +About eight o'clock in the evening Letty heard his horse's hoofs +returning. She knew that he was accustomed to ride in the dark, but the +rumours of violence and excitement that filled the air had unnerved her, +and she had been listening to every sound for some time past. + +When the door was open she ran out. + +"Yes, I'm late," said George, in answer to her remonstrances; "but it is +all right--it was worth waiting for. The thing's over. Some of the men go +down to-morrow week, and the rest as we can find room for them." + +"On the masters' terms?" + +"Of course--or all but." + +She clapped her hands. + +"Oh, for goodness' sake, don't!" he said, as he hung up his hat, and she, +supposing that he was irritable from over-fatigue, managed to overlook +the sharpness of his tone. + +Their Christmas passed in solitude. George, more and more painfully alive +to the disadvantages of Ferth as the home of a young woman with a natural +love of gaiety, had tried, in spite of their mourning, to persuade Letty +to ask some friends to spend Christmas week with them. She had refused, +however, and they were still alone when the end of the strike arrived. + +The day before the men were to go back to work, George returned late from +a last meeting of the employers. Letty had begun dinner, and when he +walked into the dining-room she saw at once that some unusual excitement +or strain had befallen him. + +"Let me have some food!" was all he would say in answer to her first +questions, and she let him alone. When the servants were gone he +looked up. + +"I have had a shindy with Burrows, dear--rather a bad one. But that's +all. I walked down to the station with Ashton"--Ashton was a +neighbouring magistrate and coal-owner--"and there we found Valentine +Burrows. Two or three friends were in charge of him, and it has been +given out lately that he has been suffering from nervous breakdown, +owing to his exertions. All that I could see was that he was drunker +than usual--no doubt to drown defeat. Anyway, directly he saw me he +made a scene--foamed and shouted. According to him, I am at the bottom +of the men's defeat. It is all my wild-beast delight in the sight of +suffering,--my love of 'fattening on the misery of the collier,'--my +charming villanies of all sorts--that are responsible for everything. +Altogether he reached a fine flight! Then he got violent--tried to get +at me with his knobbed stick. Ashton and I, and the men with him, +succeeded in quelling him without bothering the police.--I don't think +anything more will come of it." + +And he stretched out his hand to some salted almonds, helping himself +with particular deliberation. + +After dinner, however, he lay down on a sofa in Letty's sitting-room, +obliged to confess himself worn out. She made him comfortable, and after +she had given him a cushion, she suddenly bent over him from behind and +kissed him. + +"Come here!" he said, with a smile, throwing up his hand to catch her. +But with an odd blush and conscious look, she eluded him. + +When, a little later, she came to sit by him with some needle-work she +found him restless and inclined to talk. + +"I wonder if we are always to live in this state of war for one's +bread and butter!" he said, impatiently throwing down a newspaper he +had been reading. "It doesn't tend to make life agreeable--does it? +Yet what on earth--" + +He threw back his head, with a stiff protesting air, staring +across the room. + +Letty had the sudden impression that he was not talking to her at all, +but to some third person, unseen. + +"_Either_ capital gets its fair remuneration"--he went on in an +argumentative voice--"and ability its fair wages--_or_ the Marxian state, +labour-notes, and the rest of it. There is no half-way house--absolutely +none. As for me, I am not going to lend my capital for nothing--nor to +give my superintendence for nothing. And I don't ask exorbitant pay for +either. It is quite simple. My conscience is quite clear." + +"I should think so!" said Letty, resentfully. "I wonder whether +Marcella--is all for the men? She has never mentioned the strike in +her letters." + +As the Christian name slipped out, she flushed, and he was conscious of a +curious start. But the breaking through of a long reticence was +deliberate on Letty's part. + +"Very likely she is all for the men," he said drily, after a pause. "She +never could take a strike calmly. Her instinct always was to catch hold +of any stick that could beat the employers--Watton and I used often to +tease her about it." + +He threw himself back against the sofa, with a little laugh that was +musical in Letty's ear. It was the first time that Lady Maxwell's name +had been mentioned between them in this trivial, ordinary way. The +young wife sat alert and straight at her work, her cheek still pink, +her eyes bright. + +But after a silence, George suddenly sprang up to pace the little room, +and she heard him say, under his breath, "_But who am I, that I should +be coercing them and trampling on them!--men old enough to be my +father--driving them down to-morrow--while I sleep--for a dog's wage!_" + +"George, what is the matter with you?" she cried, looking at him in +real anxiety. + +"Nothing! _nothing!_--Darling, who's ill? I saw the old doctor on the +road home, and he threw me a word as he passed about having been +here--looked quite jolly over it. What's wrong--one of the servants?" + +Letty put down her work upon her knee and her hands upon it. She grew red +and pale; then she turned away from him, pressing her face into the back +of her chair. + +He flew to her, and she murmured in his ear. + + * * * * * + +What she said was by no means all sweetness. There was mingled with it +much terror and some anger. Letty was not one of the women who take +maternity as a matter of course. + +But emotion and natural feeling had their way. George was dissolved in +joy. He threw himself at her feet, resting his head against her knee. + +"If he doesn't have your eyes and hair I'll disinherit him," he said, +with a gaiety which seemed to have effaced all his fatigue. + +"I don't want him," was her pettish reply; "but if _she_ has your chin, +I'll put her out to nurse. Oh! how I hate the thought of it!" and she +shuddered. + +He caught her hand, comforting her. Then, putting up both his own, he +drew her down to him. + +"After all, little woman, it hasn't turned out so badly?" he said in her +ear, with sad appeal. Their lips met, trembling. Suddenly Letty broke +into passionate weeping. George sprang up, gathered her upon his knee, +and they sat for long, in silence, clinging to each other. + +At last Letty drew back from him, pushing a hand against his shoulder. + +"You know--you didn't care a bit for me--when you married me," she said, +half bitter, half crying. + +"Didn't I? And you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. + +"Oh! I don't remember!" she said hurriedly, and dropped her face on his +coat again. + +"Well, we are going to care for each other," he said in a low voice, +after a pause. "That's what matters now, isn't it?" + +She made no reply, but she put up a hand, and touched his face. He turned +his lips to the hand and kissed it tenderly. There was a sore, sad spot +in each heart; and neither dared to look forward. But tonight there was a +sense of belonging to each other in a new and sacred way, of being drawn +apart, separated from the world, husband and wife, together. Through +George's mind there wandered half-astonished thoughts about this strange +compelling power of marriage,--the deep grip it makes on life--the almost +mechanical way in which it bears down resistance, provided only that +certain compunctions, certain scruples still remain for it to work on. + +George slept lightly, being over-tired. All through the night the vision +of the beaten men going down sullenly to their first shift seemed to +hold him as though in a nightmare. + +Between seven and eight o'clock a sound startled him. He found himself +standing by his bed, struggling to wake and collect himself. + +A sound that had shaken the house, passing like a dull thud through the +valley? A horror seized him. He looked at Letty, who was fast asleep; +then he walked noiselessly into his dressing-room, and began to hurry on +his clothes. + +Five minutes later he was running down the hill at his full speed. It was +bitterly cold and still; the first snow lay on the grass, and a raw grey +veil hung over the hills. As he came in sight of the distant pit-bank he +saw a crowd of women swarming up it; a confused and hideous sound of +crying and shrieking came to his ears; and at the same moment a boy, +panting and dead-white, ran through the lodge-gates to meet him. + +"Where is it, Sprowston?" + +"Oh, sir, it's No. 2 pit. The damp's comin up the upcast, and the cage is +blown to pieces. But the down shaft's all right, and Mr. Madan and Mr. +Macgregor were starting down as I come away. There was eighty-six men and +boys went down first shift." + +George groaned, and rushed on. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +England knows these scenes too well! + +When Tressady, out of breath with running, reached the top of the bank, +and threw a hurried look in front of him, his feeling was that he had +seen everything before--the wintry dawn, the crowds of pale men and +weeping women ranged on either hand, the police keeping the ground round +the shafts clear for the mine officials--even the set white face of his +manager, who, with Macgregor the fireman and two hewers, had just emerged +from the cage that was waiting at the mouth of the downcast shaft. + +As soon as Madan saw Tressady rounding the corner of the engine-house he +hurried towards his employer. + +"Have you been down yet?" Tressady cried to him. + +"Just come up, sir. We got about fifty yards--air fairly good--then we +found falls along the main intake. We got over three or four, till the +damp rose on us too bad--we had a rough bit getting back. I thought you'd +be here by now. Macgregor thinks from the direction in which things were +lying that the blast had come from Holford's Heading or thereabouts." + +And the manager hastily opened a map of the colliery he was carrying in +his hand against the wall of the engine-house, and pointed to the spot. + +"How many men there?" + +"About thirty-two in the workings round about--as near as I can +reckon it." + +"Any sign of the rest? How many went down?" + +"Eighty-six. A cageful of men and lads--just them from the +shaft-bottom--got up immediately after the explosion. Since then, not a +sound from anyone! The uptake shaft is chock-full of damp. Mitchell, in +the fan-room, had to run for it at first, it was coming up so fast." + +"Good God!" said George, under his breath; and the two men eyed each +other painfully. + +"Have you sent for the inspector?" said Tressady, after a moment. + +"He ought to be here in five minutes now, sir." + +"Got some baulks together?" + +"The men are piling them by the shaft at this moment." + +"Fan uninjured?" + +"Yes, sir--and speed increased." + +Followed by Madan, Tressady walked up to the shaft, and himself +questioned Macgregor and the two hewers. + +Then he beckoned to Madan, and the two walked in close converse towards +the lamphouse, discussing a plan of action. As they passed slowly along +the bank the eyes of the miserable terror-stricken throng to either side +followed every movement. But there was not a sound from anyone. Once +Tressady looked up and caught the faces of some men near him--dark +faces, charged with a meaning that seemed instantly to stiffen his own +nerve for what he had to do. + +"I give Dixon three more minutes," he said, impatiently looking at his +watch; "then we go down without him." + +Dixon was the inspector. He was well known throughout the district, a +plucky, wiry fellow, who was generally at the pit's mouth immediately +after an accident, ready and keen to go with any rescue party on any +errand, however dangerous--purely, as he himself declared, for +professional and scientific reasons. In this case, he lived only a mile +away, on the further side of the village, so that Madan's messenger had +not far to go. + +As he spoke, George felt his arm clutched from behind. He turned, and saw +Mary Batchelor, who had come forward from a group of women. + +"Sir George! Listen 'ere, Sir George." Her lined face and tear-blurred +eyes worked with a passion of entreaty. "The boy went down at five with +the rest. Don't yer bear 'im no malice. Ee's a poor sickly creetur, an +the Lord an't give 'im the full use of his wits." + +George smiled at the poor thing's madness, and touched her kindly on +the shoulder. + +"Don't you trouble yourself, Mary; all that can be done will be done--for +everybody. We are only giving Mr. Dixon another minute; then we go down. +Look here"--he drew her inside the door of the lamproom, which happened +to be close by, for an open-mouthed group, eager to hear whatever he +might be saying, had begun to press about them. "Can you take this +message from me up to the house? There'll be no news here, you know, for +a long time, and I left Lady Tressady asleep." + +He tore a half-sheet from the letter in his pocket, scribbled a few words +upon it, and put it into Mary's hand. + +The woman, with her shawl over her head, ran past the lamphouse towards +the entrance-gate as fast as her age would let her, while George +rejoined Madan. + +"Ah, there he is!" + +For the small, lean figure of the inspector was already passing the gate. + +Tressady hurried to meet him. + +By the time the first questions and answers were over, Tressady, looking +round for Madan, saw that the manager was speaking angrily to a tall man +in a rough coat and corduroy trousers who had entered the pit premises in +the wake of Mr. Dixon. + +"You take yourself off, Mr. Burrows! You're not wanted here." + +"Madan!" called Tressady, "attend to Mr. Dixon, please. I'll see to +that man." + +And he walked up to Burrows, while the men standing near crowded over the +line they had been told to keep. + +"What do you want?" he said, as he reached the newcomer. + +"I have come to offer myself for the rescue party. I've been a working +miner for years. I've had special experience in accidents before. I can +beat anybody here in physical strength." + +As he spoke the great heavily built fellow looked round him, and a +murmur of assenting applause came from the bystanders. + +Tressady studied him. + +"Are you fit?" he said shortly. + +Burrows flushed. Tressady's penetrating look forced his own to meet it. + +"As fit as you are," was his haughty reply. + +"Well"--said Tressady, slowly, "we don't want to be refusing strong men. +If Madan'll have you, you shall come. Mind, we're all under his orders." + +He went to the manager, and said a word in his ear. Madan, in response, +vouchsafed neither look nor remark to the man, whom he hated apparently +more bitterly than his employer did. But he made no further objection to +his joining the search party. + +Presently all preparations were made. Picked bands of firemen and +timbermen descended first, with Madan at their head. Then George, Mr. +Dixon, a couple of local doctors who had hurried up to offer their +services, and Burrows. + +As they shot down into the darkness George was conscious of a strange +exhilaration. Working on the indications given him by the first exploring +party, his mind was alive with conjectures as to the cause of the +accident, and with plans for dealing with the various obstacles that +might occur. Never during these weeks of struggle and noise and +objurgation had he felt so fit, so strenuous. At the bottom of the shaft +he had even to remind himself, with a shudder, of the dead men who must +be waiting for them in these blank depths. + +For some little distance from the shaft nothing was to be seen that +spoke of an explosion. Some lamps in the porch of the shaft and along the +main roadway were burning as usual, and the "journey" of trucks, from +which the "hookers-on" and engine-men had escaped at the first sign of +danger, was standing laden in the entrance of the mine. The door of the +under-manager's cabin, near the base of the shaft, was open. Madan looked +into the little den, where the lamp was still burning on the wall, and +groaned. The young fellow who was generally to be found there was a great +friend of his, and they attended the same chapel together. A little +farther an open cupboard was noticed with a wisp of spun yarn hanging out +from it--inflammable stuff, quite untouched. But about thirty yards +farther they came upon the first signs of mischief. A heavy fall of roof +had to be scrambled over, and beyond it afterdamp was clearly +perceptible. + +Here there was an exclamation from Burrows, who was to the front, and the +first victim showed out of the dark in the pale glow-worm light of the +lamps turned upon him. A man lay on his side, close against the wall, +with an unlocked lamp in his hands, which were badly burnt. But no other +part of him was burnt, and it was clear that he had died of afterdamp in +trying to escape. He had evidently come from one of the nearer +work-places, and fallen within a few yards of safety. The inspector +pounced upon the lamp at once, while the doctors knelt by the body. But +in itself the lamp told little. If it were the illegal unlocking of a +lamp that caused the disaster, neither this lamp nor this man could be at +fault; for he had died clearly on the verge of the explosion area, and +from the after-effects of the calamity. But the inspector, who had +barely looked at the dead man, turned the lamp round in his hands, +dissatisfied. + +"Bad pattern! bad pattern! If I had my way I'd fine every manager whose +lamps _could_ be unlocked," he said to himself, but quite audibly. + +"The fireman may have unlocked it, sir, to re-light his own or someone +else's," said Madan, stiffly, put at once on his defence. + +"Oh! I know you're within your legal right, Mr. Madan," said the +inspector, briskly. "_I_ haven't the making of the laws." + +And he sat down on the floor, taking the lamp to pieces, and bending his +shrewd, black-eyed face over it, all the time that the doctors were +examining its owner. He was, perhaps, one of the most humane men in his +profession, but a long experience had led him to the conclusion that in +these emergencies the fragments of a lamp, or a "tamping," or a "shot," +matter more to the community than dead men. + +Meanwhile George crouched beside the doctors, watching them. The owner of +the lamp was a strong, fair-haired young man, without a mark on him +except for the burning of the hands, the eyes quietly shut, the face at +peace. One of the colliers in the search party had burst out crying when +he saw him. The lad was his nephew, and had been a favourite in the pit, +partly because of his prowess as a football player. But the young life +had gone out irrevocably. The doctor shook his head as he lifted himself, +and they left him there, in order not to waste any chance of getting out +the living first. + +Twenty yards farther on three more bodies were found, two oldish men and +a boy, very little burnt. They also had been killed in escaping, dragged +down by the inexorable afterdamp. + +A little beyond this group a fall of mingled stone and coal from the roof +blocked the way so heavily that the hewers and timbermen had to be set to +work to open out and shore up before a passage could be made. Meanwhile +the air in the haulage road was clearing fast, and George could sit on a +lump of stone and watch the dim light playing on the figures of the men +at work. The blows struck echoed from floor to roof; the work of the bare +arms and backs, as they swayed and jerked, woke a clamour in the mine. +Were there any ears still to listen for them beyond that mass? He could +scarcely keep a limb quiet, as he sat looking on, for impatience and +excitement. Burrows meanwhile was wielding a pick with the rest, and +George envied him the bodily skill and strength that, in spite of his +irregular ways of life, were still left to him. + +To restore the ventilation-current was their first object, and the +foremost pick had no sooner gained the roadway on the other side than a +strong movement of the air was perceptible. Madan's face cleared. The +ventilation circuit between the downcast and upcast shafts must be +already in some sort re-established. Let them only get a few more +"stoppings" and brattices put temporarily to rights, and the fan, working +at its increased speed, would soon drive the renewed air-currents forward +again, and make it possible to get all over the mine. The hole made was +quickly enlarged, and the rescuers scrambled through. + +But still fall after fall on the further side delayed their progress, +and the work of repairing the blown-out stoppings by such wood brattice +as could be got at, was long and tedious. The rescuers toiled and +sweated, pausing every now and then to draw upon the food and drink sent +up from behind; and the hours flew unheeded. At last, upon the further +side of one of the worst of these falls--a loose mingled mass of rock and +coal--they came on indications that showed them they had reached the +centre and heart of the disaster. A door leading on the right to one of +the side-roads of the pit known as Holford's Heading was blown outwards, +and some trucks from the heading had been dashed across the main intake, +and piled up in a huddled and broken mass against the farther wall. Just +inside that door lay victim after victim, mostly on their faces, poor +fellows! as they had come running out from their stalls at the noise of +the explosion, only to meet the fiery blast that killed them. Two or +three had been flung violently against the sides of the heading, and were +left torn, with still bleeding wounds, as well as charred and blackened +by the flame. Of sixteen men and boys that lay in this place of death, +not one had survived to hear the stifled words--half groans, half sobs, +of the comrades who had found them. + +"But, thank God! no torture, no _thought_," said George to himself as he +went from face to face; "an instant--a flash--then nothingness." + +Many of the men were well known to him. He had seen them last hanging +about the village street, pale with famine--the hatred in their eyes +pursuing him. + +He knelt down an instant beside an elderly man whom he could remember +since he was quite a boy--a weak-eyed, sallow fellow, much given to +preaching--much given, too, it was said, to beating his wife and +children, as the waves of excitement took him. Anyway, a fellow who could +feel, whose nerves stung and tormented him, even in the courses of +ordinary life. He lay with his eyes half open, the face terribly +scorched, the hands clenched, as though he still fought with the death +that had overcome him. + +George covered the man's face with a handkerchief as the doctor left the +body. "_He_ suffered," he said, under his breath. The doctor heard him, +and nodded sadly. + +Hark! What was that? A cry--a faint cry! + +"They're some of them alive in the end workings," cried Madan, with a sob +of joy. "Come on, my lads! come on!" + +And the party--all but Mr. Dixon--leaving the dead, pushed on through +the foul atmosphere, over heaps of fallen stone and coal, in quest of +the living. + +"Leave me a man," said Mr. Dixon, detaining the manager a moment. "I stay +here. You have enough with you. If I judge right, it all began here." + +A collier stayed with him, unwillingly, panting all the time under the +emotion of the rescue the man imagined but was not to see. + +For while the inspector measured and sketched, far up the heading, in +some disused workings off a side-dip or roadway, Burrows was the first to +come upon twenty-five men, eighteen of whom were conscious and uninjured. +Two of them had strength enough, as they heard the footsteps and shouts +approaching, to stagger out into the heading to meet their rescuers. One, +a long, thin lad, came forward with leaps and gambols, in spite of his +weakness, and fell almost at Tressady's feet. As he recognised the tall +man standing above him, his bloodless mouth twitched into a broad grin. + +"I say, give us a chance. Take me out--won't you?" + +It was Mary Batchelor's grandson. In retribution for the assault on Letty +the lad had been sentenced to three weeks' imprisonment, and George had +not seen him since. He stooped now, and poured some brandy down the boy's +throat. "We'll get you out directly," he said, "as soon as we've looked +to the others." + +"There's some on 'em not worth takin out," said the boy, clinging to +George's leg. "They're dead. Take me out first." Then, with another grin, +as George disengaged himself, "Some on em's prayin." + +Indeed, the first sight of that little group was a strange and touching +one. About a dozen men sat huddled round one of their number, a Wesleyan +class-leader, who had been praying with them and reciting passages from +St. John. All of them, young or old, were dazed and bent from the effects +of afterdamp, and scarcely one of them had strength to rise till they +were helped to their feet. Nevertheless, the cry which had been heard by +their rescuers had not been a cry for help, but the voices of the little +prayer-meeting raised feebly through the darkness in the Old Hundredth. + +A little distance from the prayer-meeting, the sceptics of the party +leant against the wall or lay along the floor, unheeding; while seven +men were unconscious, and possibly dying. Two or three young fellows +meanwhile, who had been least touched by the afterdamp, had "amused +themselves," as they said, by riding up and down the neighbouring level +on the "jummer" or coal-truck of one of them. + +"Weren't you afraid?" Tressady asked one of these, turning a curious look +at him, while the doctors were examining the worst cases, and rough men +were sobbing and shaking each other's hands off. + +"Noa," said the young hewer, his face, like something cut out in +yellowish wax, returning the light from Tressady's lamp. "Noa, theer was +cumpany. Old Moses, there--ee saved us." + +Old Moses was the leader of the prayer-meeting. He was a fireman besides, +who had been for twenty-six years in the mine. At the time of the +explosion, it appeared, he had been in a working close to that door on +the heading where death had done so ghastly and complete a work. But the +flame in its caprice had passed him by, and he and another man had been +able to struggle through the afterdamp back along the heading, just in +time to stem the rush of men and boys from the workings at the farther +end. These men were at the moment in a madness of terror, and ready even +to plunge into the white death-mist advancing to meet them, obeying only +the instinct of the trapped animal to "get out." But Moses was able to +control them, to draw them back by degrees along the heading till, in the +distant workings where they were found, the air was more tolerable, and +they could wait for rescue. + +George was the first to help the old fireman to his feet. But instead of +listening to any praises of his own conduct, he was no sooner clinging to +Tressady's arm than he called to Madan: + +"Mr. Madan, sir!" + +"Aye, Moses." + +"Have ye heard aught of them in the West Heading yet?" + +"No, Moses; we must get these fellows out first. We'll go there next." + +"I left thirty men and boys there this morning at half-past six. It was +fair thronged up with them." The old man's voice shook. + +Meanwhile Madan and the doctors were busy with the transport of the seven +unconscious men, some of whom were already dying. Each of them had to be +carried on his back by two men, and as soon as the sick procession was +organised it was seen that only three of the search party were left +free--Tressady, Burrows, and the Scotch fireman, Macgregor. + +Up the level and along the heading, past the point where Dixon was still +at work, over the minor falls that everywhere attested the range of the +explosion, and through the pools of water that here and there gathered +the drippings of the mine, the seven men were tenderly dragged or +carried, till at last the party regained the main intake or roadway. + +George turned to Madan. + +"You will have your hands full with these poor fellows. Macgregor and +I--Mr. Burrows, if he likes--will push on to the West Heading." + +Madan looked uneasy. + +"You'd better go up, Sir George," he said, in a low voice, "and let me +go on. You don't know the signs of the roof as I do. Eight or nine hours +after an explosion is the worst time for falls. Send down another shift, +sir, as quick as you can." + +"Why should you risk more than I?" said George, quietly. "Stop! What time +is it?" He looked at his watch. Five o'clock--nearly nine hours since +they descended! He might have guessed it at three, if he had been asked. +Time in the midst of such an experience contracts to a pin's point. But +the sight of the watch stirred a pang in him. + +"Send word at once to Lady Tressady," he said, in Madan's ear, drawing +the manager to one side. "Tell her I have gone on a little farther, and +may be another hour or two in getting back. If she is down at the bank, +beg her from me to go home. Tell her the chances are that we may find the +other men as safe as these." + +Madan acquiesced reluctantly. George then plundered him of some dry +biscuits--of some keys, moreover, that might be useful in opening one or +two locked doors farther up the workings. + +"Macgregor, you'll come?" + +"Aye, Sir George." + +"You, Mr. Burrows?" + +"Of course," said Burrows, carelessly, throwing back his handsome head. + +Some of the rescued men turned and looked hard at their agent and leader +with their sunken eyes. Others took no notice. His prestige had been lost +in defeat; and George had noticed that they avoided speech with him. No +doubt this rescue party had presented itself to the agent as an opening +he dare not neglect. + +"Come on, then," said George; and the three men turned back towards the +interior of the pit. + +Old Moses, from whose clutch George had just freed himself, stopped short +and looked after them. Then he raised a hoarse voice: + +"Be you going to the West Heading, Sir George?" + +"Yes," George flung back over his shoulder, already far away. + +"The Lord go with yer, Sir George!" + +No answer. The old man, breathing hard, caught hold of one of his +stronger comrades and tottered on towards the shaft. Two or three of his +fellows gathered round him. "Aye," said one of them, out of Madan's +hearing, "ee's been a-squeezing of us through the ground, ee ave, but +ee's a plucky lot, is the boss." + +"They do say as Burrers slanged 'im fine at the station yesterday," said +another, hoarsely. "Called 'im the devil untied, one man told me." + +The first speaker, still haggard and bowed from the poison in his blood, +made no reply, and the movement of old Moses' lips, as he staggered +forward, helped on by the two others, his head hanging on his breast, +showed that he was praying. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile George and his two companions pushed cautiously on, Macgregor +trying the roof with his lamp from time to time for signs of fire-damp. +Two seams of coal were worked in the mine, one of which was "fiery." No +naked lights, therefore, were allowed, and all "shots" or charges for +loosening the coal were electrically fired. + +As they walked, they spoke now and then of the possible cause of the +disaster: whereof Dixon, as they passed him, had bluntly declined to say +a word till his task was done. George, with the characteristic contempt +of intelligence for the blunderer, threw out a few caustic remarks as to +the obstinate disobedience or carelessness of a certain type of +miner--disobedience which, in his own experience even, had already led to +a score of fatal accidents. Burrows, irritated apparently by his tone, +took up a provoking line of reply. Suppose a miner, set to choose between +the risk of bringing the coal-roof down on his head for lack of a proper +light to work by, and the risk of "being blown to hell" by the opening of +his lamp, did a mad thing sometimes, who were other people that they +should blame him? His large, ox-like eyes, clear in the light of his +lamp, turned a scornful defiance on his companion. "Try it yourself, my +fine gentleman"--that was what the expression of them meant. + +"He doesn't only risk his own life," said George, shortly. "That's the +answer.--I say, Macgregor, isn't this the door to the Meadows Pit? If +anything cut us off from the shaft, and supposing we couldn't get round +yet by the return, we might have to try it, mightn't we?" + +Macgregor assented, and George as he passed stepped up to the heavy +wooden door, and tried one of the keys he held, that he might be sure of +opening it in case of need. + +The door had been unopened for long, and he shook it backwards and +forwards to make the key bite. + +Meanwhile Macgregor had lingered a little behind, while Burrows had +walked on. Suddenly, above the rattle of the door a cracking noise was +heard. A voice of agony rang through the roadway. + +"Run, Sir George! run!" + +A rattle like thunder roared through the mine. It was heard at the +pithead, and the people crowded there ran hither and thither in dismay, +thinking it was another explosion. + + * * * * * + +Hours passed. At last in George's numbed brain there was a faint stir of +consciousness. He opened his eyes slowly. + +Oh, horror! oh, cruelty! to come back from merciful nothingness and peace +to this burning anguish, not to be borne, of body and mind. "I had died," +he thought--"it was done with," and a wild, impotent rage, as against +some brutality done him, surged through him. + +A little later he made a first slight movement, which was answered at +once by another movement on the part of a man sitting near him. The man +bent over him in the darkness and felt for his pulse. + +"Burrows!" The whisper was just perceptible. + +"Yes, Sir George." + +"What has happened? Where is Macgregor? Give me some brandy--there, in my +inner pocket." + +"No; I have it. Can you swallow it? I have tried several times before, +but your mouth was set--it ran down my fingers." + +"Give it me." + +Their fingers met, George feeling for the flask. As he moved his arm a +groan of anguish broke from him. + +"Drink it--if you possibly can." + +George put all the power of his being into the effort to swallow a few +drops. Still the anguish! "O God, my back! and the legs--paralysed!" + +The words were only spoken in the brain, but it seemed to him that he +cried them aloud. For a moment or two the mind swam again; then the +brandy began to sting. + +He slid down a hand slowly, defying the pain it caused him, to feel his +right leg. The trouser round the thigh hung in ribbons, but the fragments +lying on the flesh were caked and hard; and beneath him was a pool. His +reason worked with difficulty, but clearly. "Some bad injury to the +thigh," he thought. "Much bleeding--probably the bleeding has dulled the +worst pain. The back and shoulders burnt--" + +Then, in the same hesitating, difficult way he managed to lift his hand +to his head, which ached intolerably. The right temple and the hair upon +it were also caked and wet. + +He let his hand drop. "How long have I--?" he thought. For already his +revived consciousness could hardly maintain itself; something from the +black tunnels of the mine seemed to be perpetually pressing out upon it, +threatening to drown it like a flood. + +"Burrows!"--he felt again with his hand--"where's Macgregor?" + +A sob broke from the darkness beside him. + +"Crushed in an instant. I heard one cry. Why not we, too?" + +"It was such a bad fall?" + +"The whole mine seemed to come down." George felt the shudder of the huge +frame. "I escaped; you must have been caught by some of it. Macgregor was +right underneath it. But there was an explosion besides." + +"Macgregor's lamp? Broken?" whispered George, after a pause. + +"Possibly. It couldn't have been much, or we should have been killed +instantly. I was only stunned--a bit scorched, too--not badly. You're the +lucky one. I shall die by inches." + +"Cheer up!" said George, faintly. "I can't last--but they'll find you." + +"What chance for either of us," said Burrows, groaning. "The return must +be blocked, too, or they'd have got round to us by now." + +"How long--" + +"God knows! To judge by the time I've been sitting--since I got you +here--it's night long ago." + +"Since you got me here?" repeated George, with feeble interrogation. + +"When I came to I was lying with my face in a dampish sort of hollow, and +I suppose the afterdamp had lifted a bit, for I could raise my head. I +felt you close by. Then I dragged myself on a bit, till I felt some +brattice. I got past that, found a dip where the air was better, came +back for you, and dragged you here. I thought you were dead at first; +then I felt your heart. And since we got here I've found an air-pipe up +here along the wall, and broken it." + +George was silent. But the better atmosphere was affecting him somewhat, +and consciousness was becoming clearer. Only, what seemed to him a loud +noise disturbed him--tortured the wound in his head. Then, gradually, as +he bent his mind upon it, he made out what it was--a slow drip or trickle +of water from the face of the wall. The contrast between his imagination +and the reality supplied him with a kind of measure of the silence that +enwrapped them--silence that seemed in itself a living thing, charged +with the brooding vengeance of the earth upon the creatures that had been +delving at her heart. + +"Burrows!--that water--maddens me." He moved his head miserably. "Could +you get some? The brandy-flask has a cup." + +"There is a little pool by the brattice. I put my cap in as we got there, +and dashed it over you. I'll go again." + +George heard the long limbs drag themselves painfully along. Then he lost +count again of time, and all impressions on the ear, till he was roused +by the water at his lips and a hand dashing some on his brow. + +He drank greedily. + +"Thanks! Put it by me--there; that's safe. Now, Burrows, I'm dying. Leave +me. You can't do anything--and you--you might still try for it. There are +one or two ways that might be worth trying. Take these keys. I could +explain--" + +But the little thread of life wavered terribly as he spoke. Burrows had +to put his ear close to the scorched lips. + +"No," he said gloomily, "I don't leave a man while there's any life in +him. Besides, there's no chance--I don't know the mine." + +Suddenly, as though answering to the other's despair, a throb of such +agony rose in George it seemed to rive body and soul asunder. His poor +Letty!--his child that was to be!--his own energy of life, he had been so +conscious of at the very moment of descending to this hideous death--all +gone, all done!--his little moment of being torn from him by the +inexorable force that restores nothing and explains nothing. + +A picture flashed into his mind, an etching that he had seen in Paris in +a shop window--had seen and pondered over. "Entombed" was written +underneath it, and it showed a solitary miner, on whom the awful trap +has fallen, lifting his arms to his face in a last cry against the +universe that has brought him into being, that has given him nerve and +brain--for this! + +Wherever he turned his eyes in the blackness he saw it--the lifted arms, +the bare torso of the man, writhing under the agony of realisation--the +tools, symbols of a life's toil, lying as they had dropped for ever from +the hands that should work no more. It had sent a shudder through him, +even amid the gaiety of a Paris street. + +Then this first image was swept away by a second. It seemed to him that +he was on the pit bank again. It was night, but the crowd was still +there, and big fires lighted for warmth threw a glow upon the faces. +There were stars, and a pale light of snow upon the hills. He looked +into the engine-house. There she was--his poor Letty! O God! He tried to +get through to her, to speak to her. Impossible! + +A sound disturbed his dream. + +His ear and brain struggled with it--trying to give it a name. A man's +long, painful breaths--half sobs. Burrows, no doubt--thinking of the +woman he loved--of the poor emaciated soul George had seen him tending +in the cottage garden on that April day. + +He put out his hand and touched his companion. + +"Don't despair," he whispered; "you will see her again. How strange--we +two--we enemies--but this is the end. Tell me about her." + +"I took her from a ruffian who had nearly murdered her and the child," +said the hoarse voice after a pause. "She was happy--in spite of the +drink, in spite of everything--she would have been happy, till she died. +To think of her alone is too cruel. If people turned their backs on her, +I made up." + +"You will see her again," George repeated, but hardly knowing what the +words were he said. + +When he next spoke it was with an added strength that astonished his +companion. + +"Burrows, promise me something. Take a message from me to my wife. +Come nearer." + +Then, as he felt his companion's breath on his cheek, he roused himself +to speak plainly: + +"Tell her--I sent her my dear love--that I thanked her with all my heart +and soul for her love--that it was very hard to leave her--and our child. +Write the words for her, Burrows. Tell her it was impossible for me to +write, but I dictated this." He paused for a long time, then resumed: +"And tell her, too--my last wish was--that she should ask Lord and Lady +Maxwell--can you hear plainly?"--he repeated the names--"to be her +friends and guardians. And bid her ask them--from me--not to forsake her. +Have you understood? Will you repeat it?" + +Burrows, in the mood of one humouring the whim of the dying, repeated +what had been said to him word by word, his own sensuous nature swept the +while by the terrors of a death which seemed but one little step further +from himself than from Tressady. Yet he did his best to understand, and +recollect; and to the message so printed on his shrinking brain a woman's +misery owed its only comfort in the days that followed. + +"Thank you," said Tressady, painfully listening for the last word. "Give +me your hand. Good-bye. You and I--The world's a queer place--I wish I'd +turned you back at the pit's mouth. I wanted to show I bore no malice. +Well--at least I know--" + +The words broke off incoherently. Burrows caught the word "suffering," +and some phrase about "the men," then Tressady's head slipped back +against the wall, and he spoke no more. + +But the mind was active long afterwards. Again and again he seemed to +himself standing in a bright light, alive and free. Innumerable illusions +played about him. In one of the most persistent he was climbing the slope +of a Swiss meadow in May. Oh! the scent of the narcissus, heavy still +with the morning dew--the brush of the wet grass against his +ankles--those yellow anemones shining there beneath the pines--the roar +of the river in the gorge below--and beyond, far above, the grey peak, +sharp and tall against that unmatched brilliance of the blue. In another +he was riding alone in a gorge aflame with rhododendrons, and far down in +the plain--the burnt-up Indian plain--some great fortified town, grave on +its hill-top, broke the level lines--"A rose-red city, half as old as +time." Or, again, it was the sea in some glow of sunset, the white +reflections of the sails slipping down and down through the translucent +pinks and blues, till the eye lost itself in the infinity of shades and +tints, which the breeze--oh, the freshness of it!--was painting each +moment anew at its caprice--painting and blotting, over and over again, +as the water swung under the ship. + +But all through these freaks of memory some strange thing seemed to have +happened to him. He carried something in his arms--on his breast. The +anguish of his inner pity for Letty, piercing through all else, expressed +itself so. + +But sometimes, as the brain grew momentarily clearer, he would wonder, +almost in his old cynical way, at his own pity. She seemed to have come +to love him. But was it not altogether for her good that his flawed, +contradictory life should be cut violently from hers? Could their +marriage, ill-planted, ill-grown, have come in the end to any tolerable +fruit? His mind passed back, with bitterness, over the nine months of it; +not bitterness towards her--he seemed to be talking to her all the time, +as she lay hidden on his shoulder--bitterness towards himself, towards +the futility of his own life and efforts and desires. + +But why his more than any other? The futility, the insignificance of all +that man desires, all that waits on him--that old self-scorn, which began +with the race, tormented him none the less, in dying, for the myriads it +had haunted so before. An image of human fate, which had struck him in +some book, recurred to him now--an image of daisied grass, alive one +moment in the evening light--a quivering world of blades and dew, insects +and petals, a forest of innumerable lines, crossed by the innumerable +movements of living things--the next withdrawn into the night, all +silenced, all effaced. + +So life. Except, perhaps, for pain! His own pain never ceased. The only +eternity that seemed conceivable, therefore, was an eternity of pain. It +had become to him the last reality. What a horrible quickening had come +to him of that sense for misery, that intolerable compassion, which in +life he had always held to be the death of a man's natural energy! Again +and again, as consciousness still fought against the last surrender, it +seemed to him that he heard voices and hammerings in the mine. And while +he painfully listened, from the eternal darkness about him, dim tragic +forms would break in a faltering procession--men or young boys, burnt and +marred and slain like himself--turning to him faces he remembered. It was +as though the scorn for pity he had once flung at Marcella Maxwell had +been but the fruit of some obscure and shrinking foresight that he +himself should die drowned and lost in pity; for as he waited for death +his soul seemed to sink into the suffering of the world, as a spent +swimmer sinks into the wave. + +One perception, indeed, that was not a perception of pain, this piteous +submission to the human lot brought with it. The accusing looks of hungry +men, the puzzles of his own wavering heart, all social qualms and +compunctions--these things troubled him no more. In the wanderings of +death he was not without the solemn sense that, after all, he, George +Tressady, a man of no professions, and no enthusiasms, had yet paid his +share and done his part. + +Was there something in this thought that softened the dolorous way? +Once--nearly at the last--he opened his eyes with a start. + +"What is it? Something watches me. There is a sense of something that +supports--that reconciles. If--_if_--how little would it all matter! _Oh! +what is this that knows the road I came_--_the flame turned cloud, the +cloud returned to flame_--_the lifted, shifted steeps, and all the way!_" +His dying thought clung to words long familiar, as that of other men +might have clung to a prayer. There was a momentary sense of ecstasy, of +something ineffable. + +And with that sense came a rending of all barriers, a breaking of long +tension, a flooding of the soul with joy. Was it a passing under new +laws, into a new spiritual polity? He knew not; but as he lifted his +sightless eyes he saw the dark roadway of the mine expand, and a woman, +stepping with an exquisite lightness and freedom, came towards him. +Neither shrank nor hesitated. She came to him, knelt by him, and took +his hands. He saw the pity in her dark eyes. "_Is it so bad, my friend? +Have courage--the end is near." "Care for her--and keep me, too, in your +heart_," he cried to her, piteously. She smiled. Then light--blinding, +featureless light--poured over the vision, and George Tressady had +ceased to live. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, SIR GEORGE TRESSADY, VOL. II *** + +This file should be named 8sgt210.txt or 8sgt210.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8sgt211.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8sgt210a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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