Fresh laughter and response from the room. She went on satisfied.
"An, yer know, if I can't make the knickers at 'ome, I can't make 'em awy from 'ome. For ther aint no shops as want kids squallin round, as fer as I can make out. An Jimmy's a limb, as boys mos'ly are in my egsperience. Larst week 'e give the biby a 'alfpenny and two o' my biggest buttons to swaller, an I ony jest smacked 'em out of 'er in time. Ther'd be murder done if I was to leave 'em. An 'ow 'ud I be able to pay anyone fer lookin' after em? I can't git much, yer know, shop or no shop. I aint wot I was."
She stopped, and pointed significantly to her chest. Tressady shuddered as the curate whispered to him.
"I've been in orspital—cut about fearful. I can't go at the pace them shops works at. They'd give me the sack, double-quick, if I was to go try in 'em. No, it's settin as does it—settin an settin. I'm at it by seven, an my 'usband—yer can see im there—e'll tell yer."
She stopped, and pointed to a burly ruffian standing amid a group of "pals" round the door. This gentleman had his arms folded, and was alternately frowning and grinning at this novel spectacle of his wife as a public performer. Bribes had probably been necessary to bring him to consent to the spectacle at all. But he was not happy, and when his wife pointed at him, and the meeting turned to look, he suddenly took a dive head-foremost into the crowd about him; so that when the laughter and horse-play that followed had subsided, it was seen that Mr. Tom Dickson's place knew him no more.
Meanwhile Mrs. Dickson stood grinning—grinning wide and visibly. It was the strangest mirth, as though hollow pain and laughter strove with each other for the one poor indomitable face.
"Well, ee could 'a told yer, if e'd ad the mind," she said, nodding, "for ee knows. Ee's been out o' work this twelve an a arf year—well, come, I'll bet yer, anyway, as ee 'asn't done a 'and's turn this three year—an I don't blime im. Fust, there isn't the work to be got, and then yer git out of the way o' wantin it. An beside, I'm used to im. When Janey—no, it were Sue!—were seven month old, he come in one night from the public, an after ee'd broke up most o' the things, he says to me, 'Clear out, will yer!' An I cleared out, and Sue and me set on the doorstep till mornin. And when mornin come, Tom opened the door, an ee says, 'What are you doin there, mother? Why aint yer got my breakfast?' An I went in an got it. But, bless yer, nowadays—the women won't do it!—"
Another roar went up from the meeting. Mrs. Dickson still grinned.
"An so there's nothink but settin', as I said before—settin' till yer can't set no more. If I begin o' seven, I gets Mr. Dickson to put the teathings an the loaf andy, so as I don't 'ave to get up more'n jes to fetch the kettle; and the chillen gets the same as me—tea an bread, and a red 'erring Sundays; an Mr. Dickson, 'e gets 'is meals out. I gives 'im the needful, and 'e don't make no trouble; an the children is dreadful frackshus sometimes, and gets in my way fearful. But there, if I can set—set till I 'ear Stepney Church goin twelve—I can earn my ten shillin a week, an keep the lot of 'em. Wot does any lidy or genelman want, a comin' meddlin down 'ere? Now, that's the middle an both ends on it. Done? Well, I dessay I is done. Lor, I ses to em in the orspital it do seem rummy to me to be layin abed like that. If Tom was 'ere, why, 'e'd—"
She made a queer, significant grimace. But the audience laughed no longer. They stared silently at the gaunt creature, and with their silence her own mood changed.
Suddenly she whipped up her apron. She drew it across her eyes, and flung it away again passionately.
"I dessay we shall be lyin abed in Kingdom Come," she said defiantly, yet piteously. "But we've got to git there fust. An I don't want no shops, thank yer!"
She rambled on a little longer, then, at a sign from the lady-secretary, made a grinning curtsy to the audience and departed.
"What do they get out of that?" said Watton, in Tressady's ear—"Poor galley-slave in praise of servitude!"
"Her slavery keeps her alive, please."
"Yes—and drags down the standard of a whole class!"
"You'll admit she seemed content?"
"It's that content we want to kill.—Ah! at last!" and Watton clapped loudly, followed by about half the meeting, while the rest sat silent. Then Tressady perceived that the chair-woman had called upon Lady Maxwell to move the next resolution, and that the tall figure had risen.
She came forward slowly, glancing from side to side, as though doubtful where to look for her friends. She was in black, and her head was covered with a little black lace bonnet, in the strings of which, at her throat, shone a small diamond brooch. The delicate whiteness of her face and hands, and this sparkle of light on her breast, that moved as she moved, struck a thrill of pleasure through Tressady's senses. The squalid monotony and physical defect of the crowd about him passed from his mind. Her beauty redressed the balance. "'Loveliness, magic, and grace—they are here; they are set in the world!'—and ugliness and pain have not conquered while this face still looks and breathes." This, and nothing less, was the cry of the young man's heart and imagination as he strained forward, waiting for her voice.
Then he settled himself to listen—only to pass gradually from expectation to nervousness, from nervousness to dismay.
What was happening? She had once told him that she was not a speaker, and he had not believed her. She had begun well, he thought, though with a hesitation he had not expected. But now—had she lost her thread—or what? Incredible! when one remembered her in private life, in conversation. Yet these stumbling sentences, this evident distress!
Tressady found himself fidgeting in sympathetic misery. He and Watton looked at each other.
A little more, and she would have lost her audience. She had lost it. At first there had been eager listening, for she had plunged straightway into a set explanation and defence of the Bill point by point, and half the room knew that she was Lord Maxwell's wife. But by the end of ten minutes their attention was gone. They were only staring at her because she was handsome and a great lady. Otherwise, they seemed not to know what to make of her. She grew white; she wavered. Tressady saw that she was making great efforts, and all in vain. The division between her and her audience widened with every sentence, and Fontenoy's lady-organiser, in the background, sat smilingly erect. Tressady, who had been at first inclined to hate the thought of her success in this Inferno, grew hot with wrath and irritation. His own vanity suffered in her lack of triumph.
Amazing! How could her personal magic—so famous on so many fields—have deserted her like this in an East End schoolroom, before people whose lives she knew, whose griefs she carried in her heart?
Then an idea struck him. The thought was an illumination—he understood. He shut his eyes and listened. Maxwell's sentences, Maxwell's manner—even, at times, Maxwell's voice! He had been rehearsing to her his coming speech in the House of Lords, and she was painfully repeating it! To his disgust, Tressady saw the reporters scribbling away—no doubt they knew their business! Aye, there was the secret. The wife's adoration showed through her very failure—through this strange conversion of all that was manly, solid, and effective in Maxwell, into a confused mass of facts and figures, pedantic, colourless, and cold!
Edward Watton began to look desperately unhappy. "Too long," he said, whispering in Tressady's ear, "and too technical. They can't follow."
And he looked at a group of rough factory-girls beginning to scuffle with the young men near them, at the restless crowd of "greeners," at the women in the centre of the hall lifting puzzled faces to the speaker, as though in a pain of listening.
Tressady nodded. In the struggle of devotion with a half-laughing annoyance he could only crave that the thing should be over.
But the next instant his face altered. He pushed forward instinctively, turning his back on Watton, hating the noisy room, that would hardly let him hear.
Ah!—those few last sentences, that voice, that quiver of passion—they were her own—herself, not Maxwell. The words were very simple, and a little tremulous—words of personal reminiscence and experience. But for one listener there they changed everything. The room, the crowd, the speaker—he saw them for a moment under another aspect: that poetic, eternal aspect, which is always there, behind the veil of common things, ready to flash out on mortal eyes. He felt the woman's heart, oppressed with a pity too great for it; the delicate, trembling consciousness, like a point in space, weighed on by the burden of the world; he stood, as it were, beside her, hearing with her ears, seeing the earth-spectacle as she saw it, with that terrible second sight of hers: the all-environing woe and tragedy of human things—the creeping hunger and pain—the struggle that leads no whither—the life that hates to live and yet dreads to die—the death that cuts all short, and does but add one more hideous question to the great pile that hems the path of man.
A hard, reluctant tear rose in his eyes. Is it starved tailoresses and shirtmakers alone who suffer? Is there no hunger of the heart, that matches and overweighs the physical? Is it not as easy for the rich as the poor to miss the one thing needful, the one thing that matters and saves? Angrily, and in a kind of protest, he put out his hand, as it were, to claim his own share of the common pain.
"Make way there! make way!" cried a police-sergeant, holding back the crowd, "and let the lady pass."
Tressady did his best to push through with Lady Maxwell on his arm. But there was an angry hum of voices in front of him, an angry pressure round the doors.
"We shall soon get a cab," he said, bending over her. "You are very tired, I fear. Please lean upon me."
Yet he could but feel grateful to the crowd. It gave him this joy of protecting and supporting her. Nevertheless, as he looked ahead, he wished that they were safely off, and that there were more police!
For this meeting, which had been only mildly disorderly and inattentive while Marcella was speaking, had suddenly flamed, after she sat down, into a fierce confusion and tumult—why, Tressady hardly now understood. A man had sprung up to speak as she sat down who was apparently in bad repute with most of the unions of the district. At any rate, there had been immediate uproar and protest. The trade-unionists would not hear him—hurled names at him—"thief," "blackleg"—as he attempted to speak. Then the Free Workers, for whom this dubious person had been lately acting, rose in a mass and booed at the unionists; and finally some of the dark-eyed, black-bearded "greeners" near the door, urged on, probably, by the masters, whose slaves they were, had leaped the benches near them, shouting strange tongues, and making for the hostile throng around the platform.
Then it had been time for Naseby and the police to clear the platform and open a passage for the Maxwell party. Unfortunately, there was no outlet to the back, no chance of escaping the shouting crowd in Manx Road. Tressady, joining his friends at last by dint of his height and a free play of elbows, found himself suddenly alone with Lady Maxwell, Naseby and Lady Madeleine borne along far behind, and no chance but to follow the current, with such occasional help as the police stationed along the banks of it might be able to give.
Outside, Tressady strained his eyes for a cab.
"Here, sir!" cried the sergeant in front, carving a passage by dint of using his own stalwart frame as a ram.
They hurried on, for some rough lads on the edges of the crowd had already begun stone-throwing. The faces about them seemed to be partly indifferent, partly hostile. "Look at the bloomin bloats!" cried a wild factory-girl with a touzled head as Lady Maxwell passed. "Let 'em stop at 'ome and mind their own 'usbands—yah!"
"Garn! who paid for your bonnet?" shouted another, until a third girl pulled her back, panting, "If you say that any more I'll scrag yer!" For this third girl had spent a fortnight in the Mile End Road house, getting fed and strengthened before an operation.
But here was the cab! Lady Maxwell's foot was already on the step, when
Tressady felt something fly past him.
There was a slight cry. The form in front of him seemed to waver a moment. Then Tressady himself mounted, caught her, and in another moment, after a few plunges from the excited horse, they were off down Manx Road, followed by a shouting crowd that gradually thinned.
"You are hurt!" he said.
"Yes," she said faintly, "but not much. Will you tell him to drive first to Mile End Road?"
"I have told him. Can I do anything to stop the bleeding?"
He looked at her in despair. The handkerchief, and the delicate hand itself that she was holding to her brow, were dabbled in blood.
"Have you a silk handkerchief to spare?" she asked him, smiling slightly and suddenly through her pallor, as though at their common predicament.
By good fortune he had one. She took off her hat, and gave him a few business-like directions. His fingers trembled as he tried to obey her; but he had the practical sense that the small vicissitudes and hardships of travel often develop in a man, and between them they adjusted a rough but tolerable bandage.
Then she leant against the side of the cab, and he thought she would have swooned. There was a pause, during which he watched the quivering lines of the lips and nostrils and the pallor of the cheeks with a feeling of dismay.
But she did not mean to faint, and little by little her will answered to her call upon it. Presently she said, with eyes shut and brow contracted:
"I trust the others are safe. Oh! what a failure—what a failure! I am afraid I have done Aldous harm!"
The tone of the last words touched Tressady deeply. Evidently she could hardly restrain her tears.
"They were not worthy you should go and speak to them," he said quickly.
"Besides, it was only a noisy minority."
She did not speak again till they drew up before the house in the Mile
End Road. Then she turned to him.
"I was to have stayed here for the night, but I think I must go home. Aldous might hear that there had been a disturbance. I will leave a message here, and drive home."
"I trust you will let me go with you. We should none of us be happy to think of you as alone just yet. And I am due at the House by eleven."
She smiled, assenting, then descended, leaning heavily upon him in her weakness.
When she reappeared, attended by her two little servants, all frightened and round-eyed at their mistress's mishap, she had thrown a thick lace scarf round her head, which hid the bandage and gave to her pale beauty a singularly touching, appealing air.
"I wish I could see Madeleine," she said anxiously, standing beside the cab and looking up the road. "Ah!"
For she had suddenly caught sight of a cab in the distance driving smartly up. As it approached, Naseby and Lady Madeleine were plainly to be seen inside it. The latter jumped out almost at Marcella's feet, looking more scared than ever as she saw the bandage and the black scarf twisted round the white face. But in a few moments Marcella had soothed her, and given her over, apparently, to the care of another lady staying in the house. Then she waved her hand to Naseby, who, with his usual coolness, asked no questions and made no remarks, and she and Tressady drove off.
"Madeleine will stay the night," Marcella explained as they sped towards Aldgate. "That was our plan. My secretary will look after her. She has been often here with me lately, and has things of her own to do. But I ought not to have taken her to-night. Lady Kent would never have forgiven me if she had been hurt. Oh! it was all a mistake—all a great mistake! I suppose I imagined—that is one's folly—that I could really do some good—make an effect."
She bit her lip, and the furrow reappeared in the white brow.
Tressady felt by sympathy that her heart was all sore, her moral being shaken and vibrating. After these long months of labour and sympathy and emotion, the sudden touch of personal brutality had unnerved her.
Mere longing to comfort, to "make-up," overcame him.
"You wouldn't talk of mistake—of failing—if you knew how to be near you, to listen to you, to see you, touches and illuminates some of us!"
His cheek burnt, but he turned a manly, eager look upon her.
Her cheek, too, flushed, and he thought he saw her bosom heave.
"Oh no!—no!" she cried. "How impossible!—when one feels oneself so helpless, so clumsy, so useless. Why couldn't I do better? But perhaps it is as well. It all prepares one—braces one—against—"
She paused and leaned forward, looking out at the maze of figures and carriages on the Mansion House crossing, her tight-pressed lips trembling against her will.
"Against the last inevitable disappointment." That, no doubt, was what she meant.
"If you only understood how loth some of us are to differ from you," he cried,—"how hard it seems to have to press another view,—to be already pledged."
"Oh yes!—please—I know that you are pledged," she said, in hasty distress, her delicacy shrinking as before from the direct personal argument.
They were silent a little. Tressady looked out at the houses in Queen Victoria Street, at the lamplit summer night, grudging the progress of the cab, the approach of the river, of the Embankment, where there would be less traffic to bar their way—clinging to the minutes as they passed.
"Oh! how could they put up that woman?" she said presently, her eyes still shut, her hand shaking, as it rested on the door. "How could they? It is the thought of women like that—the hundreds and thousands of them—that goads one on. A clergyman who knows the East End well said to me the other day, 'The difference between now and twenty years ago is that the women work much more, the men less.' I can never get away from the thought of the women! Their lives come to seem to me the mere refuse, the rags and shreds, that are thrown every day into the mill and ground to nothing—without a thought—without a word of pity, an hour of happiness! Cancer—three children left out of nine—and barely forty, though she looked sixty! They tell me she may live eighteen months. Then, when the parish has buried her, the man has only to hold up his finger to find someone else to use up in the same way. And she is just one of thousands."
"I can only reply by the old, stale question," said Tressady, sturdily. "Did we make the mill? Can we stop its grinding? And if not, is it fair even to the race that has something to gain from courage and gaiety—is it reasonable to take all our own poor little joy and drench it in this horrible pain of sympathy, as you do! But we have said all these things before."
He bent over to her, smiling. But she did not look up. And he saw a tear which her weakness, born of shock and fatigue, could not restrain, steal from the lashes on the cheek. Then he added, still leaning towards her:
"Only, what I never have said—I think—is what is true to-night. At last you have made one person feel—if that matters anything!—the things you feel. I don't know that I am particularly grateful to you! And, practically, we may be as far apart as ever. But I was without a sense when I went into this game of politics; and now—"
His heart beat. What would he not have said, mad youth!—within the limits imposed by her nature and his own dread—to make her look at him, to soften this preposterous sadness!
But it needed no more. She opened her eyes, and looked at him with a wild sweetness and gratitude which dazzled him, and struck his memory with the thought of the Southern, romantic strain in her.
"You are very kind and comforting!" she said; "but then, from the first—somehow—I knew you were a friend to us. One felt it—through all difference."
The little sentences were steeped in emotion—emotion springing from many sources, fed by a score of collateral thoughts and memories—with which Tressady had, in truth, nothing to do. Yet the young man gulped inwardly. She had been a tremulous woman till the words were said. Now—strange!—through her very gentleness and gratefulness, a barrier had risen between them. Something stern and quick told him this was the very utmost of what she could ever say to him—the farthest limit of it all.
They passed under Charing Cross railway bridge. Beside them, as they emerged, the moon shone out above the darks and silvers of the river, and in front, the towers of Westminster rose purplish grey against a west still golden.
"How were things going in the House this afternoon?" she asked, looking at the towers. "Oh! I forgot. You see, the clock says close on eleven. Please let me drop you here. I can manage by myself quite well."
He protested, and she yielded, with a patient kindness that made him sore. Then he gave his account, and they talked a little of Monday's division and of the next critical votes in Committee—each of them, so he felt in his exaltation, a blow dealt to her—that he must help to deal. Yet there was a fascination in the topic. Neither could get away from it.
Presently, Pall Mall being very full of traffic, they had to wait a moment at the corner of the street that turns into St. James's Square. In the pause Tressady caught sight of a man on the pavement. The man smiled, looked astonished, and took off his hat. Lady Maxwell bowed coldly, and immediately looked away. Tressady recognised Harding Watton. But neither he nor she mentioned his name.
In another minute he had seen her vanish within the doors of her own house. Her hand had rested gently, willingly, in his.
"I am so grateful!" she had said; "so will Maxwell be. We shall meet soon, and laugh over our troubles!"
And then she was gone, and he was left standing a moment, bewildered.
Eleven? What had he to do?
Then he remembered his pair, and that he had promised to call for Letty at a certain house, and take her on to a late ball. The evening, in fact, instead of ending, was just beginning. He could have laughed, as he got back into his cab.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Marcella had sped through the outer hall into the inner, where one solitary light, still burning, made a rather desolate dark-in-light through the broad, pillared space. A door opened at the farther side.
"Aldous!"
"You!"
He came out, and she flew to him. He felt her trembling as she touched him. In ten words she told him something of what had happened. Then he saw the bandage round her temple. His countenance fell. She knew that he turned white, and loved him for it. How few things had power to move him so!
He wanted to lead her back into his library, where he was at work. But she resisted.
"Let me go up to Annette," she said. "The little wound—oh! it is not much, I know it is not much—ought to be properly seen to. We will do it between us in a moment. Then come—I will send her down for you. I want to tell you."
But in her heart of hearts she was just a little afraid of telling him. What if an exaggerated version should get into the papers—if it should really do him harm—at this critical moment! She was always tormented by this dread, a dread born of long-past indiscretions and mistakes.
He acquiesced, but first he insisted on half leading, half carrying her upstairs; and she permitted it, delighting in his strong arm.
Half an hour later she sent for him. The maid found him pacing up and down the hall, waiting.
When he entered her room she was lying on her sofa in a white wrapper of some silky stuff. The black lace had been drawn again round her head, and he saw nothing but a very pale face and her eager, timid eyes—timid for no one in the world but him. As he caught sight of her, she produced in him that exquisite mingled impression of grace, passion, self-yielding, which in all its infinite variations and repetitions made up for him the constant poem of her beauty. But though she knew it, she glanced at him anxiously as he approached her. It had been to her a kind of luxury of feeling, in the few moments that she had been waiting for him, to cherish a little fear of him—of his displeasure.
"Now describe exactly what you have been doing," he said, sitting down by her with a troubled face and taking her hand, as soon as he had assured himself that the cut was slight and would leave no scar.
She told her tale, and was thrilled to see that he frowned. She laid her hand on his shoulder.
"It is the first public thing I have done without consulting you. I meant to have asked you yesterday, but we were both so busy. The meeting was got up rather hurriedly, and they pressed me to speak, after all the arrangements were made."
"We are both of us too busy," he said, rather sadly; "we glance, and nod, and bustle by—"
He did not finish the quotation, but she could. Her eyes scanned his face. "Do you think I ought to have avoided such a thing at such a time? Will it do harm?"
His brow cleared. He considered the matter.
"I think you may expect some of the newspapers to make a good deal of it," he said, smiling.
And, in fact, his own inherited tastes and instincts were all chafed by her story. His wife—the wife of a Cabinet Minister—pleading for her husband's Bill, or, as the enemy might say, for his political existence, with an East End meeting, and incidentally with the whole public—exposing herself, in a time of agitation, to the rowdyism and the stone-throwing that wait on such things! The notion set the fastidious old-world temper of the man all on edge. But he would never have dreamed of arguing the matter so with her. A sort of high chivalry forbade it. In marrying her he had not made a single condition—would have suffered tortures rather than lay the smallest fetter upon her. In consequence, he had been often thought a weak, uxorious person. Maxwell knew that he was merely consistent. No sane man lays his heart at the feet of a Marcella without counting the cost.
She did not answer his last remark. But he saw that she was wistful and uneasy, and presently she laid her fingers lightly on his.
"Tell me if I am too much away from you—too much occupied with other people."
He sighed,—the slightest sigh,—but she winced. "I had just an hour before dinner," he said; "you were not here, and the house seemed very empty. I would have come down to fetch you, but there were some important papers to read before to-morrow." A Cabinet meeting was fixed, as she knew, for the following day. "Then, I have been making Saunders draw up a statement for the newspapers in answer to Watton's last attack, and it would have been a help to talk to you before we sent it off. Above all, if I had known of the meeting I should have begged you not to go. I ought to have warned you yesterday, for I knew that there was some ugly agitation developing down there. But I never thought of you as likely to face a mob. Will you please reflect"—he pressed her hand almost roughly against his lips—"that if that stone had been a little heavier, and flung a little straighter—"
He paused. A dew came to her eyes, a happy glow to her cheek. As for her, she was grateful to the stone that had raised such heart-beats.
Perhaps some instinct told him not to please her in this way too much, for he rose and walked away a moment.
"There! don't let's think of it, or I shall turn tyrant after all, and plunge into 'shalls' and 'sha'n'ts'! You know you carry two lives, and all the plans that either of us care about, in your hand. You say that Tressady brought you home?"
He turned and looked at her.
"Yes. Edward Watton brought him to the meeting."
"But he has been down to see you there several times before, as well as coming here?"
"Oh yes! almost every week since we met at Castle Luton."
"It is curious," said Maxwell, thoughtfully; "for he will certainly vote steadily with Fontenoy all through. His election speeches pledged him head over ears."
"Oh! of course he will vote," said Marcella, moving a little uneasily; "but one cannot help trying to modify his way of looking at things. And his tone is changed."
Maxwell stood at the foot of her sofa, considering, a host of perplexed and unwelcome notions flitting across his mind. In spite of his idealist absorption in his work, his political aims, and the one love of his life, he had the training of a man of the world, and could summon the shrewdness of one when he pleased. He had liked this young Tressady, for the first time, at Castle Luton, and had seen him fall under Marcella's charm with some amusement. But this haunting of their camp in the East End, at such a marked and critical moment, was strange, to say the least of it. It must point, one would think, to some sudden and remarkable strength of personal influence.
Had she any real consciousness of the power she wielded? Once or twice, in the years since they had been married, Maxwell had watched this spell of his wife's at work, and had known a moment of trouble. "If I were the fellow she had talked and walked with so," he had once said to himself, "I must have fallen in love with her had she been twenty times another man's wife!" Yet no harm had happened; he had only reproached himself for a gross mind without daring to breathe a word to her.
And he dared not now. Besides, how absurd! The young man was just married, and, to Maxwell's absent, incurious eyes, the bride had seemed a lively, pretty little person enough. No doubt it was the nervous strain of his political life that made such fancies possible to him. Let him not cumber her ears with them!
Then gradually, as he stood at her feet, the sight of her, breathing weakness, submission, loveliness, her eyes raised to his, banished every other thought from his happy heart, and drew him like a magnet.
Meanwhile she began to smile. He knelt down beside her, and she put both hands on his shoulders.
"Dear!" she said, half laughing and half crying, "I did speak so badly; you would have been ashamed of me. I couldn't hold the meeting. I didn't persuade a soul. Lord Fontenoy's ladies had it all their own way. And first I was dreadfully sorry I couldn't do such a thing decently—sorry because of one's vanity, and sorry because I couldn't help you. And now I think I'm rather glad."
"Are you?" said Maxwell, drily; "as for me, I'm enchanted! There!—so much penalty you shall have."
She pressed his lips with her hand.
"Don't spoil my pretty speech. I am only glad because—because public life and public success make one stand separate—alone. I have gone far enough to know how it might be. A new passion would come in, and creep through one like a poison. I should win you votes—and our hearts would burn dry! There! take me—scold me—despise me. I am a poor thing—but yours!"
With such a humbleness might Diana have wooed her shepherd, stooping her goddess head to him on the Latmian steep.
CHAPTER XV
George went back to the House, and stayed for half an hour or so, listening to a fine speech from a member of a former Liberal Cabinet. The speech was one more sign of the new cleavage of parties that was being everywhere brought about by the pressure of the new Collectivism.
"We always knew," said the speaker, referring to a Ministry in which he had served seven years before, "that we should be fighting Socialism in good earnest before many years were over; and we knew, too, that we should be fighting it as put forward by a Conservative Government. The hands are the hands of the English Tory, the voice is the voice of Karl Marx."
The Socialists sent forth mocking cheers, while the Government benches sat silent. The rank-and-file of the Conservative party already hated the Bill. The second reading must go through. But if only some rearrangement were possible without rushing the country into the arms of revolutionists—if it were only conceivable that Fontenoy, or even the old Liberal gang, should form a Government, and win the country, the Committee stage would probably not trouble the House long.
Meanwhile in the smoking-rooms and lobbies the uncertainties of the coming division kept up an endless hum of gossip and conjecture. Tressady wandered about it all like a ghost, indifferent and preoccupied, careful above all to avoid any more talk with Fontenoy. While he was in the House itself he stood at the door or sat in the cross-benches, so as to keep a space between him and his leader.
A little before twelve he drove home, dressed hastily, and went off to a house in Berkeley Square, where he was to meet Letty. He found her waiting for him, a little inclined to be reproachful, and eager for her ball. As they drove towards Queen's Gate she chattered to him of her evening, and of the people and dresses she had seen.
"And, you foolish boy!" she broke out, laughing, and tapping him on the hand with her fan—"you looked so glum this morning when I couldn't go and see Lady Tressady—and—what do you think? Why, she has been at a party to-night—at a party, my dear!—and dressed! Mrs. Willy Smith told me she had seen her at the Webers'."
"I daresay," said George, rather shortly; "all the same, this morning she was very unwell."
Letty shrugged her shoulders, but she did not want to be disagreeable and argue the point. She was much pleased with her dress—with the last glance of herself that she had caught in the cloak-room looking-glass before leaving Berkeley Square—and, finally, with this well-set-up, well-dressed husband beside her. She glanced at him every now and then as she put on a fresh pair of gloves. He had been very much absorbed in this tiresome Parliament lately, and she thought herself a very good and forbearing wife not to make more fuss. Nor had she made any fuss about his going down to see Lady Maxwell at the East End. It did not seem to have made the smallest difference to his opinions.
The thought of Lady Maxwell brought a laugh to her lips.
"Oh! do you know, Harding was so amusing about the Maxwells to-day!" she said, turning to Tressady in her most good-humoured and confiding mood. "He says people are getting so tired of her,—of her meddling, and her preaching, and all the rest of it,—and that everybody thinks him so absurd not to put a stop to it. And Harding says that it doesn't succeed even—that Englishmen will never stand petticoat government. It's all very well—they have to stand it in some forms!"
And, stretching her slim neck, she turned and gave her husband a tiny flying kiss on the cheek. Mechanically grateful, George took her hand in his, but he did not make her the pretty speech she expected. Just before she spoke he was about to tell her of his evening—of the meeting, and of his drive home with Lady Maxwell. He had been far too proud hitherto, and far too confident in himself, to make any secret to Letty of what he did. And, luckily, she had raised no difficulties. In truth, she had been too well provided with amusements and flatteries of her own since their return from the country to leave her time or opportunities for jealousy. Perhaps, secretly, the young husband would have been more flattered if she had been more exacting.
But as she quoted Harding something stiffened in him. Later, after the ball, when they were alone, he would tell her—he would try and make her understand what sort of a woman Marcella Maxwell was. In his trouble of mind a confused plan crossed his thoughts of trying to induce Lady Maxwell to make friends with Letty. But a touch of that charm, that poetry!—he asked no more.
He glanced at his wife. She looked pretty and young as she sat beside him, lost in a pleasant pondering of social successes. But he wondered, uncomfortably, why she must use such a thickness of powder on her still unspoilt complexion; and her dress seemed to him fantastic, and not over-modest. He had begun to have the strangest feeling about their relation, as though he possessed a double personality, and were looking on at himself and her, wondering how it would end. It was characteristic, perhaps, of his half-developed moral life that his sense of ordinary husbandly responsibility towards her was not strong. He always thought of her as he thought of himself—as a perfectly free agent, dealing with him and their common life on equal terms.
The house to which they were going belonged to very wealthy people, and
Letty was looking forward feverishly to the cotillon.
"They say, at the last dance they gave, the cotillon gifts cost eight hundred pounds," she said gleefully, to George. "They always do things extraordinarily well."
No doubt it was the prospect of the cotillon that had brought such a throng together. The night was stifling; the stairs and the supper-room were filled with a struggling mob; and George spent an hour of purgatory wondering at the gaieties of his class.
He had barely more than two glimpses of Letty after they had fought their way into the room. On the first occasion, by stretching himself to his full height so as to look over the intervening crowd, he saw her seated in a chair of state, a mirror in one hand and a lace handkerchief in the other. Young men were being brought up behind her to look into the glass over her shoulder, and she was merrily brushing their images away. Presently a tall, dark fellow advanced, with jet-black moustache and red cheeks. Letty kept her handkerchief suspended a moment over the reflection in the glass. George could see the corners of her lips twitching with amusement. Then she quietly handed the mirror to the leader of the cotillon, rose, gathered up her white skirt a little, the music struck up joyously, and she and Lord Cathedine spun round the room together, followed by the rest of the dancers.
George meanwhile found few people to talk to. He danced a few dances, mostly with young girls in the white frocks of their first season—a species of partner for which, as a rule, he had no affinity at all. But on the whole he passed the time leaning against the wall in a corner, lost in a reverie which was a vague compound of this and that, there and here; of the Manx Road schoolroom, its odours and heats, its pale, uncleanly crowd absorbed in the things of daily bread, with these gay, scented rooms, and this extravagance of decoration, that made even flowers a vulgarity, with these costly cotillon gifts—pins, bracelets, rings—that were being handed round and wondered over by people who had already more of such things than they could wear; of these rustling women, in their silks and diamonds, with that gaunt stooping image of the loafer's wife, smiling her queer defiance at pain and fate, and letting meddling "lidies" know that without sixteen hours' "settin" she could not keep her husband and children alive. Stale commonplace, that all the world knows by heart!—the squalor of the pauperum tabernae dimming the glory of the regum turres. Yet there are only a few men and women in each generation who really pass into the eclipsing shadow of it. Others talk—they feel and struggle. There were many elements in Tressady's nature that might seem destined to force him into their company. Yet hitherto he had resolutely escaped his destiny—and enjoyed his life.
About supper-time he found himself near Lady Cathedine, a thin-faced, silent creature, whose eyes suddenly attracted him. He took her down to supper, and spent an exceedingly dull time. She had the air of one pining to talk, to confide herself. Yet in practice it was apparently impossible for her to do it. She fell back into monosyllables or gentle banalities; and George noticed that she was always restlessly conscious of the movements in the room—who came in, who went out—and throwing little frightened glances towards the door.
He was glad indeed when his task was over. On their way to the drawing-rooms they passed a broad landing, which on one side led out to a balcony, and had been made into a decorated bower for sitting-out. At the farther end he saw Letty sitting beside Harding Watton. Letty was looking straight before her, with a flushed and rather frowning face. Harding was talking to her, and, to judge from his laughing manner, was amusing himself, if not her.
George duly found Lady Cathedine a seat, and returned himself to ask Letty whether it was not time to go. He found, however, that she had been carried off by another partner, and could only resign himself to a fresh twenty minutes of boredom. He leant, yawning, against the wall, feeling the evening interminable.
Then a Harrow and Oxford acquaintance came up to him, and they chatted for a time behind a stand of flowers that stood between them and one of the doorways to the ballroom. At the end of the dance George saw Lady Cathedine hurrying up to this door with the quick, furtive step that was characteristic of her. She passed on the other side of the flowers, and George heard her say to someone just inside the room:
"Robert, the carriage has come!"
A pause; then a thick voice said, in an emphatic undertone:
"Damn the carriage!—go away!"
"But, Robert, you know we promised to look in at Lady Tuam's on the way home."
The thick voice dropped a note lower.
"Damn Lady Tuam! I shall come when it suits me."
Lady Cathedine fell back, and George saw her cross the landing, and drop into a chair beside an old general, who was snoozing in a peaceful corner till his daughters should see fit to take him home. The old general took no notice of her, and she sat there, playing with her fan, her rather prominent grey eyes staring out of her white face.
Both George and his friend, as it happened, had heard the conversation.
The friend raised his eyebrows in disgust.
"What a brute that fellow is! They have been married four months.
However, she was amply warned."
"Who was she?"
"The daughter of old Wickens, the banker. He married her for her money, and lives upon it religiously. By now, I should think, he has dragged her through every torture that marriage admits of."
"So soon?" said George, drily.
"Well," said the friend, laughing, "no doubt it admits of a great many."
"I am ready to go home," said a voice at Tressady's elbow.
Something in the intonation surprised him, and he turned quickly.
"By all means," he said, throwing an astonished look at his wife, who had come up to him on Lord Cathedine's arm. "I will go and look for the carriage."
What was the matter, he asked himself as he ran downstairs—what was the meaning of Letty's manner and expression?
But by the time he had sent for the carriage the answer had suggested itself. No doubt Harding Watton had given Letty news of that hansom in Pall Mall, and no doubt, also—He shrugged his shoulders in annoyance. The notion of having to explain and excuse himself was particularly unpalatable. What a fool he had been not to tell Letty of his East End adventure on their way to Queen's Gate.
He was standing in a little crowd at the foot of the stairs when Letty swept past him in search of her wraps. He smiled at her, but she held her head erect as though she did not see him.
So there was to be a scene. George felt the rise of a certain inner excitement. Perhaps it was as well. There were a good many things he wanted to say.
At the same time, the Cathedine episode had filled him with a new disgust for the violences and brutalities to which the very intimacy of the marriage relation may lead. If a scene there was to be, he meant to be more or less frank, and at the same time to keep both himself and her within bounds.
* * * * *
"You can't deny that you made a secret of it from me," cried Letty, angrily. "I asked you what had been doing in the House, and you never let me suspect that you had been anywhere else the whole evening."
"I daresay," said George, quietly. "But I never meant to make any mystery. Something you said about Lady Maxwell put me off telling you—then. I thought I would wait till we got home."
They were in George's study—the usual back-room on the ground-floor, which George could not find time to make comfortable, while Letty had never turned her attention to it. Tressady was leaning against the mantelpiece. He had turned up a solitary electric light, and in the cold glare of it Letty was sitting opposite to him, angrily upright. The ugly light had effaced the half-tones of the face and deepened the lines of it, while it had taken all the grace from her extravagant dress and tumbled flowers. She seemed to have lost her prettiness.
"Something I said about Lady Maxwell?" she repeated scornfully. "Why shouldn't I say what I like about Lady Maxwell? What does she matter either to you or to me that I should not laugh at her if I please? Everybody laughs at her."
"I don't think so," said Tressady, quietly. "I have seen her to-night in a curious and touching scene—in a meeting of very poor people. She tried to make a speech, by the way, and spoke badly. She did not carry the meeting with her, and towards the end it got noisy. As we came out she was struck with a stone, and I got a hansom for her, and drove her home to St. James's Square. We were just turning into the Square when Harding saw us. I happened to be with her in the crowd when the stone hit her. What do you suppose I could do but bring her home?"
"Why did you go? and why didn't you tell me at once?"
"Why did I go?" Tressady hesitated, then looked down upon his wife. "Well!—I suppose I went because Lady Maxwell is very interesting to watch—because she is sympathetic and generous, and it stirs one's mind to talk to her."
"Not at all!" cried Letty, passionately. "You went because she is handsome—because she is just a superior kind of flirt. She is always making women anxious about their husbands under this pretence of politics. Heaps of women hate her, and are afraid of her."
She was very white, and could hardly save herself from the tears of excitement. Yet what was working in her was not so much Harding Watton's story as this new and strange manner of her husband's. She had sat haughtily silent in the carriage on their way home, fully expecting him to question her—to explain, entreat, excuse himself, as he had generally been ready to do whenever she chose to make a quarrel. But he, too, said nothing, and she could not make up her mind how to begin. Then, as soon as they were shut into his room her anger had broken out, and he had not yet begun to caress and appease her. Her surprise had brought with it a kind of shock. What was the matter? Why was she not mistress as usual?
As she made her remark about Marcella, Tressady smiled a little, and played with a cigarette he had taken up.
"Whom do you mean?" he asked her. "One often hears these things said of her in the vague, and never with any details. I myself don't believe it. Harding, of course, believes anything to her disadvantage."
Letty hesitated; then, remembering all she could of Harding's ill-natured gossip, she flung out some names, exaggerating and inventing freely. The emphasis with which she spoke reddened all the small face again—made it hot and common.
Tressady raised his shoulders as she came to the end of her tirade.
"Well, you know I don't believe all that—and I don't think Harding believes it. Lady Maxwell, as you once said yourself, is not, I suppose, a woman's woman. She gets on better, no doubt, with men than with women. These men you speak of are all personal and party friends. They support Maxwell, and they like her. But if anybody is jealous, I should think they might remember that there is safety in numbers."
"Oh, that's all very well! But she wants power, and she doesn't care a rap how she gets it. She is a dangerous, intriguing woman—and she just trades upon her beauty!"
Tressady, who had been leaning with his face averted from her, turned round with sparkling eyes.
"You foolish child!" he said slowly—"you foolish child!"
Her lips twitched. She put out a shaking hand to her cloak, that had fallen from her arms.
"Oh! very well. I sha'n't stay here to be talked to like that, so good-night."
He took no notice. He walked up to her and put his hands on her shoulders.
"Don't you know what it is"—he spoke with a curious imperiousness—"that protects any woman—or any man either for the matter of that—from Marcella Maxwell's beauty? Don't you know that she adores her husband?"
"That's a pose, of course, like everything else," cried Letty, trying to move herself away; "you once said it was."
"Before I knew her. It's not a pose—it's the secret of her whole life."
He walked back to the mantelpiece, conscious of a sudden rise of inward bitterness.
"Well, I shall go to bed," said Letty, again half rising. "You might, I think, have had the kindness and the good taste to say you were sorry I should have the humiliation of finding out where my husband spends his evenings, from Harding Watton!"
Tressady was stung.
"When have I ever concealed what I did from you?" he asked her hotly.
Letty, who was standing stiff and scornful, tossed her head without speaking.
"That means," said Tressady after a pause, "that you don't take my word for it—that you suspect me of deceiving you before to-night?"
Letty still said nothing. His eyes flashed. Then a pang of conscience smote him. He took up his cigarette again with a laugh.
"I think we are both a pair of babies," he said, as he pretended to look for matches. "You know very well that you don't really think I tell you mean lies. And let me assure you, my dear child, that fate did not mean Lady Maxwell to have lovers—and that she never will have them. But when that's said there's something else to say."
He went up to her again, and touched her arm.
"You and I couldn't have this kind of scene, Letty, could we, if everything was all right?"
Her breast rose and fell hurriedly.
"Oh! I supposed you would want to retaliate—to complain on your side!"
"Yes," he said deliberately, "I think I do want to complain. Why is it that—I began to like going down to see Lady Maxwell—why did I like talking to her at Castle Luton? Well! of course it's pleasant to be with a beautiful person—I don't deny that in the least. But she might have been as beautiful as an angel, and I mightn't have cared twopence about her. She has something much less common than beauty. It's very simple, too—I suppose it's only sympathy—just that. Everybody feels the same. When you talk to her she seems to care about it; she throws her mind into yours. And there's a charm about it—there's no doubt of that."
He had begun his little speech meaning to be perfectly frank and honest—to appeal to her better nature and his own. But something stopped him abruptly, perhaps the sudden perception that he was after playing the hypocrite—perhaps the consciousness that he was only making matters worse.
"It's a pity you didn't say all these things before," she said, with a hard laugh, "instead of denouncing the political woman, as you used to do."
He sat down on the arm of the chair beside her, balancing lightly, with his hands in his pockets.
"Did I denounce the political woman? Well, the Lord knows I'm not in love with her now! It isn't politics, my dear, that are attaching—it's the kind of human being. Ah! well, don't let's talk of it. Let's go back to that point of sympathy. There's more in it than I used to think. Suppose, for instance, you were to try and take a little more interest in my political work than you do? Suppose you were to try and see money matters from my point of view, instead of driving us"—he paused a moment, then went on coolly, lifting his thin, long-chinned face to her as she stood quivering beside him—"driving us into expenses that will, sooner or later, be the ruin of us—that rob us, too, of self-respect. Suppose you were to take a little more account, also, of my taste in people? I am afraid I don't like Harding, though he is your cousin, and I don't certainly see why he should furnish our drawing-rooms and empty our purse for us as he has been doing. Then, as to Lord Cathedine, I'm really not over-particular, but when I hear that fellow's in the house, my impulse is to catch the nearest hansom and drive away from it. I heard him speak to his wife to-night in a way for which he ought to be kicked down Oxford Street—and, in general, I should say that it takes the shine off a person to be much seen with Cathedine."
The calm attitude—the voice, just a shade interrogative, exasperated
Letty still more. She, too, sat down, her cheeks flaming.
"I am extremely obliged to you! You really couldn't have been more frank. I am sorry that nothing I do pleases you. You must be quite sorry by now you married me—but really I didn't force you! Why should I give up my friends? You know very well you won't give up Lady Maxwell."
She looked at him keenly, her little foot beating the ground.
George started.
"But what is there to give up?" he cried. "Come and see her yourself—come with me, and make friends with her. You would be quite welcome."
But as he spoke he knew that he was talking absurdly, and that Letty had reason for her laugh.
"Thank you! Lady Maxwell made it quite plain to me at Castle Luton that she didn't want my acquaintance. I certainly sha'n't force myself upon her any more. But if you'll give up going to see her—well, perhaps I'll see what can be done to meet your wishes; though, of course, I think all you say about Harding and Lord Cathedine is just unreasonable prejudice!"
George was silent. His mind was torn between the pricks of a conscience that told him Letty had in truth, as far as he was concerned, a far more real grievance than she imagined, and a passionate intellectual contempt for the person who could even distantly imagine that Marcella Maxwell belonged to the same category as other women, and was to be won by the same arts as they. At last he broke out impatiently:
"I cannot possibly show discourtesy to one who has been nothing but kindness to me, as she is to scores of others—to old friends like Edward Watton, or new ones like—"
"She wants your vote, of course!" threw in Letty, with an excited laugh. "Either she is a flirt—or she wants your vote. Why should she take so much notice of you? She isn't your side—she wants to get hold of you—and it makes you ridiculous. People just laugh at you and her!" She turned upon him passionately. A little more, and the wish to say the wounding, venomous thing would have grown like a madness upon her. But George kept his self-possession.
"Well, they may laugh," he said, with a strong effort to speak good-humouredly. "But politics aren't managed like that, as you and they will find out. Votes are not so simple as they sound."
He got up and walked away from her as he spoke. As usual, his mood was beginning to cool. He saw no way out. They must both accept the status quo. No radical change was possible. It is character that makes circumstance, and character is inexorable.
"Well, of course I didn't altogether believe that you would really be such a fool, and wreck all your prospects!" said Letty, violently, her feverish eyes intent the while on her husband and on the thin fingers once more busied with the cigarette. "There now! I think we have had enough of this! It doesn't seem to have led to much, does it?"
"No," said George, coolly; "but perhaps we shall come to see more alike in time. I don't want to tyrannise—only to show you what I think. Shall I carry up your cloak for you?"
He approached her punctiliously. Letty gathered her wraps upon her arm in a disdainful silence, warding him off with a gesture. As he opened the door for her she turned upon him:
"You talk of my extravagance, but you never seem to consider what you might do to make up to me for the burden of being your mother's relation! You expect me to put up with the annoyance and ridicule of belonging to her—and to let her spend all your money besides. I give you fair warning that I sha'n't do it! I shall try and spend it on my side, that she sha'n't get it."
She was perfectly conscious that she was behaving like a vixenish child, but she could not restrain herself. This strange new sense that she could neither bend nor conquer him was becoming more than she could bear.
George looked at her, half inclined to shake her first, and then insist on making friends. He was conscious that he could probably assert himself with success if he tried. But the impulse failed him. He merely said, without any apparent temper, "Then I shall have to see if I can invent some way of protecting both myself and you."
She flung through the door, and almost ran through the long passage to the stairs, in a sobbing excitement. A sudden thought struck George as he stood looking after her. He pursued her, caught her at the foot of the stairs, and held her arm strongly.
"Letty! I wasn't to tell you, but I choose to break my promise. Don't be too cruel, my dear, or too angry. My mother is dying!"
She scanned him deliberately, the flushed face—the signs of strongly felt yet strongly suppressed emotion. The momentary consciousness flew through her that he was at bottom a very human, impressionable creature—that if she could but have broken down and thrown herself on his neck, this miserable evening might open for both of them a new way. But her white-heat of passion was too strong. She pushed him away.
"She made you believe that this morning? Then I'd better hurry up at Ferth; for of course it only means that there will be a fresh list of debts directly!"
He let her go, and she heard him walk quickly back to his study and shut the door. She stared after him triumphantly for a moment, then rushed upstairs.
In her room her maid was waiting for her. Grier's sallow face and gloomy eyes showed considerable annoyance at being kept up so late. But she said nothing, and Letty, who in general was only too ready to admit the woman to a vulgar familiarity, for once held her tongue. Her state of excitement and exhaustion, however, was evident, and Grier bestowed many furtive, examining glances upon her mistress in the course of the undressing. She thought she had heard "them" quarrelling on the stairs. What a pity she had been too tired and cross to listen!
Of course they must come to quarrelling! Grier's sympathies were tolerably impartial. She had no affection for her mistress, and she cordially disliked Sir George, knowing perfectly well that he thought ill of her. But she had a good place, and meant to keep it if she could. To which end she had done her best to strengthen a mean hold on Letty. Now, as she was brushing out Letty's brown hair, and silently putting two and two together the while, an idea occurred to her which pleased her.
After Grier had left her, Letty could not make up her mind to go to bed. She was still pacing up and down the room in her dressing-gown, when she heard a knock—Grier's knock.
"Come in!"
"Please, my lady," said Grier, appearing with something in her hand, "doesn't this belong to your photograph box? I found it on the floor in Sir George's dressing-room this morning."
Letty hastily took it from her, and, in spite of an instant effort to control herself, the red flushed again into a cheek that had been very pale when Grier came in.
"Where did you find it?"
"It had tumbled off Sir George's table, I think," said Grier, with elaborate innocence; "someone must have took it out of your photo-box."
"Thank you," said Letty, shortly. "You may go, Grier."
The maid went, and Letty was left standing with the photograph in her hands.
Two days before Tressady had been in Edward Watton's room in St. James's Street, and had seen this amateur photograph of Marcella Maxwell and her boy on Watton's table. The poetic charm of it had struck him so forcibly that he had calmly put it in his pocket, telling the protesting owner that he in his rôle of great friend could easily procure another, and must beware of a grudging spirit. Watton had laughed and submitted, and Tressady had carried off the picture, honestly meaning to present it to Letty for a collection of contemporary "beauties" she had just begun to make.
Later in the day, as he was taking off his coat in the evening to dress for dinner, Tressady drew out the photograph. A sudden instinct, which he himself could hardly have explained, made him delay handing it over to Letty. He thrust it into the top tray of his collar-and-shirt wardrobe. Two days later the butler, coming in a hurry before breakfast to put out his master's clothes, shook the photograph out of the folds of the shirt, where it had hidden itself, without noticing what he had done. The picture slipped between the wardrobe and the wall of the recess in which it stood, was discovered later in the day by the housemaid, and given to Lady Tressady's maid.
Letty laid the photograph down on the dressing-table, and stood leaning upon her hands, looking at it. Marcella was sitting under one of the cedars of Maxwell Court with her boy beside her. A fine corner of the old house made a background, and the photographer had so dealt with his picture as to make it a whole, full of significance, and culminating in the two faces—the sensitive, speaking beauty of the mother, the sturdy strength of the child. Marcella had never looked more wistful, more attaching. It was the expression of a woman at rest, in the golden moment of her life, yet conscious—as all happiness is conscious—of the common human doom that nothing escapes. Meanwhile the fine, lightly furrowed brow above the eyes spoke action and power; so did the strong waves of black hair blown back by the breeze. A noble, strenuous creature, yet quivering through and through with the simplest, most human instincts. So one must needs read her, as one looked from the eyes to the eager clasp of the arm about the boy.
Letty studied it, as though she would pierce and stab it with looking. Then, with a sudden wild movement, she took up the picture, and tore it into twenty pieces. The pieces she left strewn on the floor, so that they must necessarily strike the eye of anyone coming into the room. And in a few more minutes she was in bed, lying still and wakeful, with her face turned away from the door.
About an hour afterwards there was a gentle knock at her door. She made no answer, and Tressady came in. He stepped softly, thinking she was asleep, and presently she heard him stop, with a stifled exclamation. She made no sound, but from his movement she guessed that he was picking up the litter on the floor. Then she heard it thrown into the basket under her writing-table, and she waited, holding her breath.
Tressady walked to a far window, drew a curtain back softly, and stood looking out at the starlight over the deserted street. Once, finding him so still, she ventured a hasty glance at him over the edge of the sheet. But she could see nothing. And after a time he turned and came to his accustomed place beside her. In twenty minutes at latest, she knew, much to her chagrin, that he was asleep.
She herself had no sleep. She was stung to wakefulness by that recurrent sense of the irrevocable which makes us say to ourselves in wonder, "How can it have happened? Two hours ago—such a little while—it had not happened!" And the mind clutches at the bygone hour, so near, so eternally distant—clutches at its ghost, in vain.
Yet it seemed to her now that she had been jealous from the first moment when she and George had come into contact with Marcella Maxwell. During the long hours of this night her jealousy burnt through her like a hot pain—jealousy, mixed with reluctant memory. Half consciously she had always assumed that it had been a piece of kindness on her part to marry George Tressady at all. She had almost condescended to him. After all, she had played with ambitions so much higher! At any rate, she had taken for granted that he would always admire and be grateful to her—that in return for her pretty self she might at least dispose of him and his as she pleased.
And now, what galled her intolerably was this discernment of the way in which—at least since their honeymoon—he must have been criticising and judging her—judging her by comparison with another woman. She seemed to see at a glance, the whole process of his mind, and her vanity writhed under it.
How much else than vanity? As she turned restlessly from side to side, possessed by plans for punishing George, for humiliating Lady Maxwell, and avenging herself, she said to herself that she did not care,—that it was not worth caring about,—that she would either bring George to his senses, or manage to amuse herself without him.
But in reality she was held tortured and struggling all the time in the first grip of that masterful hold wherewith the potter lifts his clay when he lays it on the eternal whirring of the wheel.