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.