Thus, with the end of the honeymoon, whatever hopes or illusions George Tressady had allowed himself in marrying, were already much bedimmed. His love-dream had been meagre and ordinary enough. But even so, it had not maintained itself.
Nevertheless, such impressions and emotions pass. The iron fact of marriage outstays them, tends always to modify, and, at first, to conquer them.
Upon the Tressadys' return to London, Letty, at any rate, endeavoured to forget her great defeat of the honeymoon in the excitement of furnishing the house in Brook Street. Certainly there could be no question, in spite of all her high speech to Miss Tulloch and others, that in her first encounter with Lady Tressady, Lady Tressady had won easily. Letty had forgotten to reckon on the hard realities of the filial relation, and could only think of them now, partly with exasperation, partly with despair.
Lady Tressady, however, was for the moment somewhat subdued, and on the return of the young people to town she did her best to propitiate Letty. In Letty's eyes, indeed, her offence was beyond reparation. But, for the moment, there was outward amity at least between them; which for Letty meant chiefly that she was conscious of making all her purchases for the house and planning all her housekeeping arrangements under a constant critical inspection; and, moreover, that she was liable to find all her afternoon-teas with particular friends, or those persons of whom she wished to make particular friends, broken up by the advent of the overdressed and be-rouged lady, who first put the guests to flight, and was then out of temper because they fled.
Meanwhile George found the Shapetsky matter extremely harassing. He put on a clever lawyer; but the Shapetsky would have scorned to be overmatched by anybody else's abilities, and very little abatement could be obtained. Moreover, the creditor's temper had been roughened by a somewhat unfortunate letter George had written in a hurry from Perth, and he showed every sign of carrying matters with as high a hand as possible.
Meanwhile, George was discovering, like any other landowner, how easy it is to talk of selling land, how difficult to sell it. The buyer who would once have bought was not now forthcoming; the few people who nibbled were, naturally, thinking more of their own purses than Tressady's; and George grew red with indignation over some of the offers submitted to him by his country solicitor. With the payment of a first large instalment to Shapetsky out of his ordinary account, he began to be really pressed for money, just as the expenses of the Brook Street settling-in were at their height. This pecuniary strain had a marked effect upon him. It brought out certain features of character which he no doubt inherited from his father. Old Sir William had always shown a scrupulous and petty temper in money matters. He could not increase his possessions: for that he had apparently neither brains nor judgment; nor could he even protect himself from the more serious losses of business, for George found heavy debts in existence—mortgages on the pits and so forth—when he succeeded. But as the head of a household Sir William showed extraordinary tenacity and spirit in the defence of his petty cash; and the exasperating extravagance of the wife whom, in a moment of infatuation, he had been cajoled into marrying, intensified and embittered a natural characteristic.
George so far resembled him that both at school and college he had been a rather careful and abstemious boy. Probably the spectacle of his mother's adventures had revealed to him very early the humiliations of the debtor. At any rate, during his four years abroad he had never exceeded the modest yearly sum he had reserved for himself on leaving England; and the frugality of his personal expenditure had counted for something in the estimates formed of him during his travels by competent persons.
Nevertheless, at this beginning of household life he was still young and callow in all that concerned the management of money; and it had never occurred to him that his somewhat uncertain income of about four thousand a year would not be amply sufficient for anything that he and Letty might need; for housekeeping, for children—if children came—for political expenses, and even for those supplementary presents to his mother which he had all along recognised as inevitable. Now, however, what with the difficulty he found in settling the Shapetsky affair, what with Letty's demands for the house, and his revived dread of what his mother might be doing, together with his overdrawn account and the position of his colliery property, a secret fear of embarrassment and disaster began to torment him, the offspring of a temperament which had never perhaps possessed any real buoyancy.
Occasionally, under the stimulus of this fear, he would leave the House of Commons on a Wednesday or Saturday afternoon, walk to Warwick Square, and appear precipitately in his mother's drawing-room, for the purpose of examining the guests—or possible harpies—who might be gathered there. He did his best once or twice to dislodge the "singer-fellow"—an elderly gentleman with a flabby face and long hair, who seemed to George to be equally boneless, physically and morally. Nevertheless, he was not to be dislodged. The singer, indeed, treated the young legislator with a mixture of deference and artistic; condescension, which was amusing or enraging as you chose to take it. And once, when George attempted very plain language with his mother, Lady Tressady went into hysterics, and vowed that she would not be parted from her friends, not even by the brutality of young married people who had everything they wanted, while she was a poor lone widow, whose life was not worth living. The whole affair was, so to speak, sordidly innocent. Mr. Fullerton—such was the gentleman's name—wanted creature-comforts and occasional loans; Lady Tressady wanted company, compliments, and "musical sketches'" for her little tea-parties. Mrs. Fullerton was as ready as her husband to supply the two former; and even the children, a fair-haired, lethargic crew, painfully like their boneless father in Tressady's opinion, took their share in the general exploitation of Tressady's mamma. Lady Tressady meanwhile posed as the benefactor of genius in distress; and vowed, moreover, that "poor dear Fullertori" was in no way responsible for her recent misfortunes. The "reptile," and the "reptile" only, was to blame.
After one of these skirmishes with his mother, George, ruffled and disgusted, took his way home, to find Letty eagerly engaged in choosing silk curtains for the drawing-room.
"Oh! how lucky!" she cried, when she saw him. "Now you can help me decide—such a business!"
And she led him into the drawing-room, where lengths of pink and green brocade were pinned against the wall in conspicuous places.
George admired, and gave his verdict in favour of a particular green. Then he stooped to read the ticket on the corner of the pattern, and his face fell.
"How much will you want of this stuff, Letty?" he asked her.
"Oh! for the two rooms, nearly fifty yards," said Letty, carelessly, opening another bundle of patterns as she spoke.
"It is twenty-six shillings a yard!" said George, rather gloomily, as he fell, tired, into an armchair.
"Well, yes, it is dear. But then, it is so good that it will last an age. I think I must have some of it for the sofa, too," said Letty, pondering.
George made no reply.
Presently Letty looked up.
"Why, George?—George, what is the matter? Don't you want anything pretty for this room? You never take any interest in it at all."
"I'm only thinking, darling, what fortunes the upholsterers must make," said George, his hands penthouse over his eyes.
Letty pouted and flushed. The next minute she came to sit on the edge of his chair. She was dressed—rather overdressed, perhaps—in a pale blue dress whereof the inventive ruffles and laces pleased her own critical mind extremely. George, well accustomed by now to the items in his mother's bills, felt uncomfortably, as he looked at the elegance beside him, that it was a question of guineas—many guineas. Then he hated himself for not simply admiring her—his pretty little bride—in her new finery. What was wrong with him? This beastly money had put everything awry!
Letty guessed shrewdly at what was the matter. She bit her lip, and looked ready to cry.
"Well, it is hard," she said, in a low, emphatic voice, "that we can't please ourselves in a few trifles of this sort—when one thinks why!"
George took her hand, and kissed it affectionately.
"Darling, only just for a little—till I get out of this brute's clutches. There are such pretty, cheap things nowadays—aren't there?"
"Oh! if you want to have a South Kensington drawing-room," said Letty, indignantly, "with four-penny muslin curtains and art pots, you can do that for nothing. But I'd rather go back to horsehair and a mahogany table in the middle at once!"
"You needn't wear 'greenery-yallery' gowns, you know." said George, laughing; "that's the one unpardonable thing. Though, if you did wear them, you'd become them."
And he held her at arm's length that he might properly admire her new dress.
Letty, however, was not to be flattered out of her lawful dues in the matter of curtains—that Lady Tressady's debts might be paid the sooner. She threw herself into a long wrestle with George, half angry, half plaintive, and in the end she wrung out of him much more considerable matters than the brocades originally in dispute. Then George went down to his study, pricked in his conscience, and vaguely sore with Letty. Why? Women in his eyes were made for silken gauds and trinkets: it was the price that men were bound to pay them for their society. He had watched the same sort of process that had now been applied to himself many times already in one or more of the Anglo-Indian households with which he had grown familiar, and had been philosophically amused by it. But the little comedy, transferred to his own hearth, seemed somehow to have lost humour and point.
* * * * *
Still, with two young people, under thirty, just entering upon that fateful second act of the play of life which makes or mars us all, moments of dissatisfaction and depression—even with Shapetskys and Lady Tressadys in the background—were but rare specks in the general sum of pleasure. George had fallen once more under the Parliamentary illusion, as soon as he was again within reach of the House of Commons and in frequent contact with Fontenoy. The link between him and his strange leader grew daily stronger as they sat side by side, through some hard-fought weeks of Supply, throwing the force of their little group now on the side of the Government, now on that of the Opposition, always vigilant, and often successful. George became necessary to Fontenoy in a hundred ways; for the younger man had a mass of connaissances,—to use the irreplaceable French word,—the result of his more normal training and his four years of intelligent travel, which Fontenoy was almost wholly without. Many a blunder did George save his chief; and no one could have offered his brains for the picking with a heartier goodwill. On the other hand, the instinctive strength and acuteness of Fontenoy's judgment were unmatched, according to Tressady's belief, in the House of Commons. He was hardly ever deceived in a man, or in the significant points of a situation. His followers never dreamt of questioning his verdict on a point of tactics. They followed him blindly; and if the gods sent defeat, no one blamed Fontenoy. But in success his grunt of approval or congratulation rewarded the curled young aristocrats who made the nucleus of his party as nothing else did; while none of his band ever affronted or overrode him with impunity. He wielded a natural kingship, and, the more battered and gnarled became his physical presence, the more remarkable was his moral ascendency.
One discouragement, however, he and his group suffered during the weeks between Easter and Whitsuntide. They were hungry for battle, and the best of the battle was for the moment denied them; for, owing to a number of controverted votes in Supply and the slipping-in of two or three inevitable debates on pressing matters of current interest, the Second Reading of the Maxwell Bill was postponed till after Whitsuntide, when it was certainly to take precedence. There was a good deal of grumbling in the House, led by Fontenoy; but the Government could only vow that they had no choice, and that their adversaries could not possibly be more eager to fight than they were to be fought.
Life, then, on this public side, though not so keen as it would be presently, was still rich and stirring. And meanwhile society showed itself gracious to the bride and bridegroom. Letty's marriage had made her unusually popular for the time with her own acquaintance. For it might be called success; yet it was not of too dazzling a degree. What, therefore, with George's public and Parliamentary relations, the calls of officials, the attentions of personal friends, and the good offices of Mrs. Watton, who was loftily determined to "launch" her niece, Letty was always well pleased with the look of her hall-table and the cards upon it when she returned home in her new brougham from her afternoon round. She left them there for George to see, and it delighted her particularly if Lady Tressady came in during the interval.
Meanwhile they dined with many folk, and made preliminary acquaintance with the great ones of the land. Letty's vanity Dwelled within her as she read over the list of her engagements. Nevertheless, she often came home from her dinner-parties flat and disappointed. She did not feel that she made way; and she found herself constantly watching the triumphs of other women with annoyance or perplexity. What was wrong with her? Her dress was irreproachable, and, stirred by this great roaring world, she recalled for it the little airs and graces she had almost ceased to spend on George. But she constantly found herself, as she thought, neglected; while the slightest word or look of some happy person in a simple gown, near by, had power to bring about her that flattering crowd of talkers and of courtiers for which Letty pined.
The Maxwells called very early on the newly wedded pair, and left an invitation to dinner with their cards. But, to Letty's chagrin, she and George were already engaged for the evening named, and when they duly presented themselves at St. James's Square on a Sunday afternoon, it was to find that the Maxwells were in the country. Once or twice in some crowded room Letty or George had a few hurried words with Lady Maxwell, and Marcella would try to plan a meeting. But what with her engagements and theirs, nothing that she suggested could be done.
"Ah! well, after Whitsuntide," she said, smiling, to Letty one evening that they had interchanged a few words of polite regret on the stairs at some official party. "I will write to you in the country, if I may. Ferth Place, is it not?"
"No," said Letty, with easy dignity; "we shall not be at home,—not at first, at any rate. We are going for two or three days to Mrs. Allison, at Castle Luton."
"Are you? You will have a pleasant time. Such a glorious old house!"
And Lady Maxwell swept on; not so fast, however, but that she found time to have a few words of Parliamentary chat with Tressady on the landing.
Letty made her little speech about Castle Luton with a delightful sense of playing the rare and favoured part. Nothing in her London career, so far, had pleased her so much as Mrs. Allison's call and Mrs. Allison's invitation. For, although on the few occasions when she had seen this gentle, white-haired lady, Letty had never felt for one moment at ease with her, still, there could be no question that Mrs. Allison was, socially, distinction itself. She had a following among all parties. For although she was Fontenoy's friend and inspirer, a strong Church-woman, and a great aristocrat, she had that delicate, long-descended charm which shuts the lions' mouths, and makes it possible for certain women to rule in any company. Even those who were most convinced that the Mrs. Allisons of this world are the chief obstacles in the path of progress, deliberated when they were asked to Castle Luton, and fell—protesting. And for a certain world, high-born, cultivated, and virtuous, she was almost a figure of legend, so widespread was the feeling she inspired, and so many were the associations and recollections that clustered about her.
So that when her cards, those of her son Lord Ancoats, and a little accompanying note in thin French handwriting—Mrs. Allison had been brought up in Paris—arrived, Letty had a start of pleasure. "To meet a few friends of mine"—that meant, of course, one of the parties. She supposed it was Lord Fontenoy's doing. He was said to ask whom he would to Castle Luton. Under the influence of this idea, at any rate, she bore herself towards her husband's chief at their next meeting with an effusion which made Fontenoy supremely uncomfortable.
The week before Whitsuntide happened to be one of special annoyance for Tressady. His reports from Ferth were steadily more discouraging; his attempts to sell his land made no way; and he saw plainly that, if he was to keep their London life going, to provide for Shapetsky's claims, and to give Letty what she wanted for renovations at Ferth, he would have to sell some of the very small list of good securities left him by his father. Most young men in his place, perhaps, would have taken such a thing with indifference; he brooded over it. "I am beginning to spend my capital as income," he said to himself. "The strike will be on in July; next half-year I shall get almost nothing from the pits; rents won't come to much; Letty wants all kinds of things. How long will it be before I, too, am in debt, like my mother, borrowing from this person and that?"
Then he would make stern resolutions of economy, only to be baffled by Letty's determination to have everything that other people had; above all, not to allow her own life to be stinted because he had so foolishly adopted his mother's debts. She said little; or said it with smiles and a bridal standing on her rights not to be answered. But her persistence in a particular kind of claim, and her new refusal to be taken into his confidence and made the partner of his anxieties, raised a miserable feeling in his mind as the weeks went on.
"No!" she said to herself, all the time resenting bitterly what had happened at Ferth; "if I let him talk to me about it, I shall be giving in, and letting her trample on me! If George will be so weak, he must find the money somehow. Of course he can! I am not in the least extravagant. I am only doing what everybody expects me to do."
Meanwhile this state of things did not make Lady Tressady any more welcome in Brook Street, and there were symptoms of grievances and quarrels of another sort. Lady Tressady heard that the young couple had already given one or two tiny dinner-parties, and to none of them had she been invited. One day that George had been obliged to go to Warwick Square to consult her on business, he was suddenly overwhelmed with reproaches on this point.
"I suppose Letty thinks I should spoil her parties! She is ashamed of me, perhaps"—Lady Tressady gave an angry laugh. "Oh! very well; but I should like you and her to understand, George, that I have been a good deal more admired in my time than ever Letty need expect to be!"
And George's mother, in a surprising yellow tea-gown, threw herself back on her chair, bridling with wrath and emotion. George declared, with good temper, that he and Letty were well aware of his mother's triumphs; whereupon Lady Tressady, becoming tearful, said she knew it wasn't a pretty thing to say—of course it wasn't—but if one was treated unkindly by one's only son and his wife, what could one do but assert oneself?
George soothed her as best he could, and on his return home said tentatively to Letty, that he believed it would please his mother if they were to ask her to a small impromptu dinner of Parliamentary friends which they were planning for the following Friday.
"George!" exclaimed Letty, her eyes gleaming, "we can't ask her! I don't want to say anything disagreeable, but you must see that people don't like her—her dress is so extraordinary, and her manners—it sets people against the house. I do think it's too bad that—"
She turned aside with a sudden sob. George kissed her, and sympathised with her; for he himself was never at ease now for an instant while his mother was in the room. But the widening of the breach which Letty's refusal brought about only made his own position between the two women the more disagreeable to a man whose ideal of a home was that it should be a place of perpetual soothing and amusement.
On the very morning of their departure for Castle Luton matters reached a small crisis. Letty, tired with some festivity of the night before, took her breakfast in bed; and George, going upstairs toward the middle of the morning to make some arrangement with her for the journey, found her just come down, and walking up and down the drawing-room, her pale pink dress sweeping the floor, her hands clasped behind her. She was very pale, and her small lips were tightly drawn.
He looked at her with astonishment.
"What is the matter, darling?"
"Oh! nothing," said Letty, trying to speak with sarcasm. "Nothing at all. I have only just been listening to an account of the way in which your mother speaks of me to her friends. I ought to be flattered, of course, that she notices me at all! But I think I shall have to ask you to request her to put off her visit to Ferth a little. It could hardly give either of us much enjoyment."
George first pulled his moustaches, then tried, as usual, to banter or kiss her into composure. Above all, he desired not to know what Lady Tressady had said. But Letty was determined he should know. "She was heard "—she began passionately, holding him at arm's length—"she was heard saying to a whole roomful of people yesterday, that I was 'pretty, of course—rather pretty—but so second rate—and so provincial! It was such a pity dear George had not waited till he had been a few months in London. Still, of course, one could only make the best of it!'"
Letty mimicked her mother-in-law's drawling voice, two red spots burning on either cheek the while, and her little fingers gripping George's arm.
"I don't believe she ever said such things. Who told you so?" said George, stiffening, his arm dropping from her waist.
Letty tossed her head.
"Never mind! I ought to know, and it doesn't really matter how I know. She did say them."
"Yes, it does matter," said George, quickly, walking away to the other side of the room. "Letty! if you would only send away that woman Grier, you can't think how much happier we should both be."
Letty stood still, opening her blue eyes wide.
"You want me—to get rid—of Grier," she said, "my own particular pet maid? And why—please?"
George had the courage to stick to his point, and the result was a heated and angry scene—their first real quarrel—which ended in Letty's rushing upstairs in tears, and declaring she would go _no_where. He might go to Castle Luton, if he pleased; she was far too agitated and exhausted to face a houseful of strangers.
The inevitable reconciliation, with its usual accompaniments of headache and eau de cologne, took time, and they only just completed their preparations and caught their appointed train.
Meanwhile the storm of the day had taken all savour from Letty's expectations, and made George feel the whole business an effort and a weariness. Letty sat pale and silent in her corner, devoured with regrets that she had not put on a thicker veil to hide the ravages of the morning; while George turned over the pages of a political biography, and could not prevent his mind from falling back again and again into dark places of dread and depression.
* * * * *
"You are my earliest guests," said Mrs. Allison, as she placed a chair for Letty beside herself, on the lawn at Castle Luton. "Except, indeed, that Lady Maxwell and her little boy are here somewhere, roaming about. But none of our other friends could get down till later. I am glad we shall have a little quiet time before they come."
"Lady Maxwell!" said Letty. "I had no idea they were coming. Oh, what a lovely day! and how beautiful it all is!" she cried, as she sat down and looked round her. The colour came back into her cheeks. She forgot her determination to keep her veil down, and raised it eagerly.
Mrs. Allison smiled.
"We never look so well as in May—the river is so full, and the swans are so white. Ah! I see Edgar has already taken Sir George to make friends with them."
And Letty, looking across the broad green lawn, saw the flash of a brimming river and a cluster of white swans, beside which stood her husband and a young man in a serge suit, who was feeding the swans with bread—Lord Ancoats, no doubt, the happy owner of all this splendour. To the left of their figures rose a stone bridge with a high, carved parapet, and beyond the river she saw green hills and woods against a radiant sky. Then, to her right was this wonderful yellowish pile of the old house. She began to admire and exclaim about it with a great energy and effusion, trying hard to say the correct and cultivated thing, and, in fact, repeating with a good deal of exactness what she had heard said of it by others.
Her hostess listened to her praises with a gentle smile. Gentleness, indeed, a rather sad gentleness, was the characteristic of Mrs. Allison. It seemed to make an atmosphere about her—her delicate blanched head and soft face, her small figure, her plain black dress, her hands in their white ruffles. Her friends called it saintliness. At any rate, it set her apart, giving her a peculiar ethereal dignity which made her formidable in society to many persons who were not liable to shyness. Letty from the beginning had felt her formidable.
Yet nothing could be kinder or simpler than her manner. In response to Letty's enthusiasms she let herself be drawn at once into speaking of her own love for the house, and on to pointing out its features.
"I am always telling these things to newcomers," she said, smiling. "And I am not clever enough to make variations. But I don't mind, somehow, how often I go through it. You see, this front is Tudor, and the south front is a hundred years later, and both of them, they say, are the finest of their kind. Isn't it wonderful that two men, a hundred years apart, should each have left such a noble thing behind him. One inspired the other. And then we—we poor moderns come after, and must cherish what they left us as we best can. It's a great responsibility, don't you think? to live in a beautiful house."
"I'm afraid I don't know much about it," said Letty, laughing; "we live in such a very ugly one."
Mrs. Allison looked sympathetic.
"Oh! but then, ugly ones have character; or they are pretty inside, or the people one loves have lived in them. That would make any place a House Beautiful. Aren't you near Perth?"
"Yes; and I am afraid you'll think me dreadfully discontented," said Letty, with one of her little laughing airs; "but there really isn't anything to make up in our barrack of a place. It's like a blackened brick set up on end at the top of a hill. And then the villages are so hideous."
"Ah! I know that coal-country," said Mrs. Allison, gravely—"and I know the people. Have you made friends with them yet?"
"We were only there for our honeymoon. George says that next month the whole place will be out on strike. So just now they hate us—they will hardly look at us in the street. But, of course, we shall give away things at Christmas."
Mrs. Allison's lip twitched, and she shot a glance at the bride which betrayed, for all her gentleness, the woman of a large world and much converse with mankind. What a curious, hard little face was Lady Tressady's under the outer softness of line and hue, and what an amazing costume! Mrs. Allison had no quarrel with beautiful gowns, but the elaboration, or, as one might say, the research of Letty's dress struck her unpleasantly. The time that it must have taken to think out!
Aloud she said:
"Ah! the strike. Yes, I fear it is inevitable. Ancoats has some property not very far from you, and we get reports. Poor fellows! if it weren't for the wretched agitators who mislead them—but there, we mustn't talk of these things. I see Lady Maxwell coming."
And Mrs. Allison waved her hand to a tall figure in white with a child beside it that had just emerged on the far distance of the lawn.
"Is Lord Maxwell here, too?" asked Letty.
"He is coming later. It seems strange, perhaps, that you should find them here this Sunday, for Lord Fontenoy comes to-morrow, and the great fight will be on so soon. But when I found that they were free, and that Maxwell would like to come, I was only too glad. After all, rival politicians in England can still meet each other, even at a crisis. Besides, Maxwell is a relation of ours, and he was my boy's guardian—the kindest possible guardian. Politics apart, I have the greatest respect for him. And her too. Why is it always the best people in the world that do the most mischief?"
At the mention of Lord Fontenoy it had been Letty's turn to throw a quick side look at Mrs. Allison. But the name was spoken in the quietest and most natural way; and yet, if one analysed the tone, in a way that did imply something exceptional, which, however, all the world knew, or might know.
"Is Lady Maxwell an old friend of yours, too?" asked Letty, longing to pursue the subject, and vexed to see how fast the mother and child were approaching.
"Only since her marriage. To see her and Maxwell together is really a poem. If only she wouldn't identify herself so hotly, dear woman! with everything he does and wishes in politics. There is no getting her to hear a word of reason. She is another Maxwell in petticoats. And it always seems to me so unfair. Maxwell without beauty and without petticoats is quite enough to fight! Look at that little fellow with his flowers!—such an oddity of a child!"
Then she raised her voice.
"My dear, what a ramble you must have made. Come and have a shady chair and some tea."
For answer Marcella, laughing, held up a glorious bunch of cuckoo-pint and marsh marigold, while little Hallin at her skirts waved another trophy of almost equal size. The mother's dark face was flushed with exercise and pleasure. As she moved over the grass, the long folds of a white dress falling about her, the flowers in her hand, the child beside her, she made a vision of beauty lovely in itself and lovely in all that it suggested. Frank joy and strength, happiness, purity of heart—these entered with her. One could almost see their dim heavenly shapes in the air about her.
Neither Letty nor Mrs. Allison could take their eyes from her. Perhaps she knew it. But if she did, it made no difference to her perfect ease of bearing. She greeted Letty kindly.
"You didn't expect to see me here, did you, Lady Tressady? But it is the unexpected that happens."
Then she put her hand on Mrs. Allison's shoulder, bending her height to her small hostess.
"What a day, and what a place! Hallin and I have been over hill and dale. But he is getting such a botanist, the little monkey! He will hardly forgive me because I forgot one of the flowers we found out yesterday in his botany book."
"She said it was 'Robin-run-in-the-'edge,' and it isn't—it's 'edge mustard," said Hallin, severely, holding up a little feathery stalk.
Mrs. Allison shook her head, endeavouring to suit her look to the gravity of the offence.
"Mother must learn her lessons better, mustn't she? Go and shake hands, little man, with Lady Tressady."
Hallin went gravely to do as he was told. Then he stood on one foot, and looked Letty over with a considering eye.
"Are you going to a party?" he said suddenly, putting out a small and grimy finger, and pointing to her dress.
"Hallin! come here and have your tea," said his mother, hastily. Then she turned to Letty with the smile that had so often won Maxwell a friend.
"I am sorry to say that he has a rooted objection to anything that isn't rags in the way of clothes. He entirely declined to take me across the river till I had rolled up my lace cloak and put it in a bush. And he won't really be friends with me again till we have both got back to the scarecrow garments we wear at home."
"Oh! children are so much happier when they are dirty," said Letty, graciously, pleased to feel herself on these easy terms with her two companions. "What beautiful flowers he has! and what an astonishing little botanist he seems to be!"
And she seated herself beside Hallin, using all her blandishments to make friends with him, which, however, did not prove to be an easy matter. For when she praised his flowers, Hallin only said, with his mouth full: "Oh! but mammy's bunch is hever so much bigger;" and when she offered him cake, the child would sturdily put the cake away, and hold it and her at arm's length till his mute look across the table had won his mother's nod of permission.
Letty at last thought him an odd, ill-mannered child, and gave up courting him, greatly to Hallin's satisfaction. He edged closer and closer to his mother, established himself finally in her pocket, and browsed on all the good things with which Mrs. Allison provided him, undisturbed.
"How late they are!" said Marcella, looking at her watch. "Tell me the names again, dear lady"—she bent forward, and laid her hand affectionately on Mrs. Allison's knee. "Your parties are always a work of art."
Mrs. Allison flushed a little, as though she liked the compliment, and ran laughingly through the names.
"Lord and Lady Maxwell."
"Ah!" said Marcella, "the least said about them the soonest mended. Go on."
"Lord and Lady Cathedine."
Marcella made a face.
"Poor little thing! I always think of the remark about the Queen in 'Alice in Wonderland.' 'A little kindness, and putting her hair in curl-papers, would do wonders for her.' She is so limp and thin and melancholy. As for him—isn't there a race or a prize-fight we can send him to?"
Mrs. Allison tapped her lightly on the lips.
"I won't go on unless my guests are taken prettily."
Marcella kissed the delicate wrinkled hand.
"I'll be good. What do you keep such an air here for? It gets into one's head."
Letty Tressady, indeed, was looking on with a feeling of astonishment. These merry, childlike airs had absolutely no place in her conception of Lady Maxwell. Nor could she know that Mrs. Allison was one of the very few people in the world to whom Marcella was ever drawn to show them.
"Sir Philip Wentworth," pursued Mrs. Allison, smiling. "Say anything malicious about him, if you can!"
"Don't provoke me. What a mercy I brought a volume of 'Indian Studies' in my bag! I will go up early, before dinner, and finish them."
"Then there is Madeleine Penley, and Elizabeth Kent."
A quick involuntary expression crossed Marcella's face. Then she drew herself up with dignity, and crossed her hands primly on her lap.
"Let me understand. Are you going to protect me from Lady Kent this time? Because, last time you threw me to the wolves in the most dastardly way."
Mrs. Allison laughed out.
"On the contrary, we all enjoyed your skirmish with her in November so much, we shall do our best to provoke another in May."
Marcella shook her head.
"I haven't the energy to quarrel with a fly. And as for Aldous—please warn his lady at dinner that he may go to sleep upon her shoulder!"
"You poor thing!"—Mrs. Allison put out a sympathetic hand. "Are you so tired? Why will you turn the world upside down?"
Marcella took the hand lightly in both hers.
"Why will you fight reform?"
And the eyes of the two women met, not without a sudden grave passion. Then Marcella dropped the hand, and said, smiling:
"Castle Luton isn't full yet. Who else?"
"Oh! some young folk—Charlie Naseby."
"A nice boy—a very nice boy—not half such a coxcomb as he looks. Then the Levens—I know the Levens are coming, for Betty told me that she got out of two other engagements as soon as you asked her."
"Oh! and, by the way, Mr. Watton—Harding Watton," said Mrs. Allison, turning slightly towards Lady Tressady.
The exclamation on Lady Maxwell's lips was checked by something she saw on her hostess's face, and Letty eagerly struck in:
"Harding coming?—my cousin? I am so glad. I suppose I oughtn't to say it, but he is such a clever, such an agreeable, creature. But you know the Wattons, don't you, Lady Maxwell?"
Marcella was busying herself with Hallin's tea.
"I know Edward Watton," she said, turning her beautiful clear look on Letty. "He is a real friend of mine."
"Oh! but Harding is much the cleverer," said Letty. And pleased both to find the ball of talk in her hands, and to have the chance of glorifying a relation in this world of people so much bigger than herself, she plunged into an extravagant account—all adjectives and superlatives—of Harding Watton's charms and abilities, to which Lady Maxwell listened in silence.
"Tactless!" thought Mrs. Allison, with vexation, but she did not know how to stop the stream. In truth, since she had given Lord Fontenoy leave to invite Harding Watton she had had time to forget the invitation, and she was sorry now to think of his housing with the Maxwells. For Watton had been recently Lord Fontenoy's henchman and agent in a newspaper attack upon the Bill, and upon Maxwell personally, that even Mrs. Allison had thought violent and unfair. Well, it was not her fault. But Lady Tressady ought to have better information and better sense than to be chattering like this. She was just about to interpose, when Marcella held up her hand.
"I hear the carriages!"
The hostess hastened towards the house, and Marcella followed her, with Hallin at her skirts. Letty looked after Lady Maxwell with the same mixture of admiration and jealous envy she had felt several times before. "I don't feel that I shall get on with her," she said to herself, impatiently. "But I don't think I want to. George took her measure at once."
Part of this reflection, however, was not true. Letty's ambition would have been very glad to "get on" with Marcella Maxwell.
* * * * *
Just as his wife was ready for dinner, and Grier had disappeared, George entered Letty's room. She was standing before a tall glass, putting the last touches to her dress—smoothing here, pinning there, turning to this side and to that. George, unseen himself, stood and watched her—her alternate looks of anxiety and satisfaction, her grace, the shimmering folds of the magnificent wedding-dress in which she had adorned herself.
He, however, was neither happy nor gay. But he had come in feeling that he must make an effort—many efforts, if their young married life was to be brought back to that level of ease and pleasure which he had once taken for granted, and which now seemed so hard to maintain. If that ease and pleasure were ultimately to fail him, what should he do? He shrank impatiently from the idea. Then he would scoff at himself. How often had he read and heard that the first year of marriage is the most difficult. Of course it must be so. Two individualities cannot fuse without turmoil, without heat. Let him only make his effort.
So he walked up to her and caught her in his arms.
"Oh, George!—my hair!—and my flowers!"
"Never mind," he said, almost with roughness. "Put your head there. Say you hate the thought of our day, as I do! Say there shall never be one like it again! Promise me!"
She felt the beating of his heart beneath her cheek. But she stood silent. His appeal, his unwonted agitation, revived in her all the anger and irritation that had begun to prey upon her thoughts. It was all very well, but why were they so pinched and uncomfortable? Why must everybody—Mrs. Allison, Lady Maxwell, a hundred others—have more wealth, more scope, more consideration than she? It was partly his fault.
So she gradually drew herself away, pushing him softly with her small gloved hand.
"I am sure I hate quarrelling," she said. "But there! Oh, George! don't let's talk of it any more! And look what you have done to my poor hair. You dear, naughty boy!"
But though she called him "Dear," she frowned as she took off her gloves that she might mend what he had done.
George thrust his hands into his pockets, walked to the window, and waited. As he descended the great stairs in her wake he wished Castle Luton and its guests at the deuce. What pleasure was to be got out of grimacing and posing at these country-house parties? And now, according to Letty, the Maxwells were here. A great gÊne for everybody!
