"I wouldn't give way, mother, if I were you," said George, quite unmoved by the show of tears. "I think, if you will reflect upon it, that it is Letty and I who have the most cause to give way. If you will allow me, I will go and have a talk with her. I believe she is sitting in the garden."

His mother turned sullenly away from him, and he left the room.

* * * * *

As he passed through the long oak-panelled hall that led to the garden, he was seized with an odd sense of pity for himself. This odious scene behind him, and now this wrestle with Letty that must be gone through—were these the joys of the honeymoon?

Letty was not in the garden. But as he passed into the wood on the farther side of the hill he saw her sitting under a tree halfway down the slope, with some embroidery in her hand. The April sun was shining into the wood. A larch beyond Letty was already green, and the twigs of the oak beneath which she sat made a reddish glow in the bright air. Patches of primroses and anemones starred the ground about her, and trails of periwinkle touched her dress. She was stooping, and her little hand went rapidly—impatiently—to and fro.

The contrast between this fresh youth amid the spring and that unlovely, reluctant age he had just left behind him in the smoking-room struck him sharply. His brow cleared.

As she heard his step she looked round eagerly. "Well?" she said, pushing aside her work.

He threw himself down beside her.

"Darling, I have had my talk. It is pretty bad—worse than we had even imagined!"

Then he told her his mother's story. She could hardly contain herself, as she listened, as he mentioned the total figure of the debts. It was evidently with difficulty that she prevented herself from interrupting him at every word. And when he had barely finished she broke out:

"And what did you say?"

George hesitated.

"I told her, of course, that it was monstrous and absurd to expect that we could pay such a sum."

Letty's breath came fast. His voice and manner did not satisfy her at all.

"Monstrous? I should think it was! Do you know how she has run up this debt?"

George looked at her in surprise. Her little face was quivering under the suppressed energy of what she was going to say.

"No!—do you?"

"Yes!—I know all about it. I said to my maid last night—I hope, George, you won't mind, but you know Grier has been an age with me, and knows all my secrets—I told her she must make friends with your mother's maid, and see what she could find out. I felt we must, in self-defence. And of course Grier got it all out of Justine. I knew she would! Justine is a little fool; and she doesn't mean to stay much longer with Lady Tressady, so she didn't mind speaking. It is exactly as I supposed! Lady Tressady didn't begin speculating for herself at all—but for—somebody—else! Do you remember that absurd-looking singer who gave a 'musical sketch' one day that your mother gave a party in Eccleston Square—in February?"

She looked at him with eagerness, an ugly, half-shrinking innuendo in her expression.

George had suddenly moved away, and was sitting now some little distance from his wife, his eyes bent on the ground. However, at her question he made a sign of assent.

"You do remember? Well," said Letty, triumphantly, "it is he who is at the bottom of it all. I knew there must be somebody. It appears that he has been getting money out of her for years—that he used to come and spend hours, when she had that little house in Bruton Street, when you were away—I don't believe you ever heard of it—flattering her, and toadying her, paying her compliments on her dress and her appearance, fetching and carrying for her—and of course living upon her! He used to arrange all her parties. Justine says that he used even to make her order all his favourite wines—such bills as there used to be for wine! He has a wife and children somewhere, and of course the whole family lived upon your mother. It was he made her begin speculating. Justine says he has lost all he ever had himself that way, and your mother couldn't, in fact, 'lend' him"—Letty laughed scornfully—"money fast enough. It was he brought her across that odious creature Shapetsky—isn't that his name? And that's the whole story. If there have been any gains, he has made off with them—leaving her, of course, to get out of the rest. Justine says that for months there was nothing but business, as she calls it, talked in the house—and she knew, for she used to help wait at dinner. And such a crew of people as used to be about the place!"

She looked at him, struck at last by his silence and his attitude, or pausing for some comment, some appreciation of her cleverness in ferreting it all out.

But he did not speak, and she was puzzled. The angry triumph in her eyes faltered. She put out her hand and touched him on the arm.

"What is it, George? I thought—it would be more satisfactory to us both to know the truth."

He looked up quickly.

"And all this your maid got out of Justine? You asked her?"

She was struck, offended, by his expression. It was so cool and strange—even, she could have imagined, contemptuous.

"Yes, I did," she said passionately. "I thought I was quite justified. We must protect ourselves."

He was silent again.

"I think," he said at last, drily, she watching him—"I think we will keep Justine and Grier out of it, if you please."

She took her work, and laid it down again, her mouth trembling.

"So you had rather be deceived?"

"I had rather be deceived than listen behind doors," he said, beginning in a light tone, which, however, passed immediately into one of bitterness. "Besides, there is nothing new. For people like my mother there is always some adventurer or adventuress in the background—there always used to be in old days. She never meant any serious harm; she was first plundered, then we. My father used to be for ever turning some impostor or other out of doors. Now I suppose it is my turn."

This time it was Letty who kept silence. Her needle passed rapidly to and fro. George glanced at her queerly. Then he rose and came to stand near her, leaning against the tree.

"You know, Letty, we shall have to pay that money," he said suddenly, pulling at his moustache.

Letty made an exclamation under her breath, but went on working faster than before.

He slipped down to the moss beside her, and caught her hand.

"Are you angry with me?"

"If you insult me by accusing me of listening behind doors you can't wonder," said Letty, snatching her hand away, her breast heaving.

He felt a bitter inclination to laugh, but he restrained it, and did his best to make peace. In the midst of his propitiations Letty turned upon him.

"Of course, I know you think I did it all for selfishness," she said, half crying, "because I want new furniture and new dresses. I don't; I want to protect you from being—being—plundered like this. How can you do what you ought as a member of Parliament? how can we ever keep ourselves out of debt if—if—? How can you pay this money?" she wound up, her eyes flaming.

"Well, you know," he said, hesitating—"you know I suggested yesterday we should sell some land to do up the house. I am afraid we must sell the laud, and pay this scoundrel—a proportion, at all events. Of course, what I should like to do would be to put him—and the other—to instant death, with appropriate tortures! Short of that, I can only take the matter out of my mother's hands, get a sharp solicitor on my side to match his rascal, and make the best bargain I can."

Letty rolled up her work with energy, two tears of anger on her cheeks. "She ought to suffer!" she cried, her voice trembling—"she ought to suffer!"

"You mean that we ought to let her be made a bankrupt?" he said coolly. "Well, no doubt it would be salutary. Only, I am afraid it would be rather more disagreeable to us than to her. Suppose we consider the situation. Two young married people—charming house—charming wife—husband just beginning in politics—people inclined to be friends. Then you go to dine with them in Brook Street—excellent little French dinner—bride bewitching. Next morning you see the bankruptcy of the host's mamma in the 'Times.' 'And he's the only son, isn't he?—he must be well off. They say she's been dreadfully extravagant. But, hang it! you know, a man's mother!—and a widow—no, I can't stand that. Sha'n't dine with them again!' There! do you see, darling? Do you really want to rub all the bloom off the peach?"

He had hardly finished his little speech before the odiousness of it struck himself.

"Am I come to talking to her like this?" he asked himself in a kind of astonishment.

But Letty, apparently, was not astonished.

"Everybody would understand if you refused to ruin yourself by going on paying these frightful debts. I am sure something could be done," she said, half choked.

George shook his head.

"But everybody wouldn't want to understand. The dear world loves a scandal—doesn't really like being amiable to newcomers at all. You would make a bad start, dear—and all the world would pity mamma."

"Oh! if you are only thinking what people would say," cried Letty.

"No," said George, reflectively, but with a mild change of tone. "Damn people! I can pull myself to pieces so much better than they can. You see, darling, you're such an optimist. Now, if you'd only just believe, as I do, that the world is a radically bad place, you wouldn't be so surprised when things of this sort happen. Eh, little person, has it been a radically bad place this last fortnight?"

He laid his cheek against her shoulder, rubbing it gently up and down. But something hard and scornful lay behind his caress—something he did not mean to inquire into.

"Then you told your mother," said Letty, after a pause, still looking straight before her, "that you would clear her?"

"Not at all. I said we could do nothing. I laid it on about the house. And all the time I knew perfectly well in my protesting soul, that if this man's claim is sustainable we should have to pay up. And I imagine that mamma knew it too. You can get out of anybody's debts but your mother's—that's apparently what it comes to. Queer thing, civilisation! Well now"—he sprang to his feet—"let's go and get it over."

Letty also rose.

"I can't see her again," she said quickly. "I sha'n't come down to lunch. Will she go by the three-o'clock train?"

"I will arrange it," said George.

They walked through the wood together silently. As they came in sight of the house Letty's face quivered again with restrained passion—or tears. George, whose sangfroid was never disturbed outwardly for long, had by now resigned himself, and had, moreover, recovered that tolerance of woman's various weaknesses which was in him the fruit of a wide, and at bottom hostile, induction. He set himself to cheer her up. Perhaps, after all, if he could sell a particular piece of land which he owned near a neighbouring large town, and sell it well,—he had had offers for it before,—he might be able to clear his mother, and still let Letty work her will on the house. She mustn't take a gloomy view of things—he would do his best. So that by the time they got into the drawing-room she had let her hand slip doubtfully into his again for a moment.

But nothing would induce her to appear at lunch. Lady Tressady, having handed over all Shapetsky's papers and all her responsibilities to George, graciously told him that she could understand Letty's annoyance, and didn't wish for a moment to intrude upon her. She then called on Justine to curl her hair, put on a blue shot silk with marvellous pink fronts just arrived from Paris, and came down to lunch with her son in her most smiling mood. She took no notice of his monosyllables, and in the hall, while the butler discreetly retired, she kissed him with tears, saying that she had always known his generosity would come to the rescue of his poor darling mamma.

"You will oblige me, mother, by not trying it again too soon," was George's ironical reply as he put her into the carriage.

* * * * *

In the afternoon Letty was languid and depressed. She would not talk on general topics, and George shrank in nervous disgust from reopening the subjects of the morning. Finally, she chose to be tucked up on the sofa with a novel, and gave George free leave to go out.

It surprised him to find as he walked quickly down the hill, delighting in the April sun, that he was glad to be alone. But he did not in the least try to fling the thought away from him, as many a lover would have done. The events, the feelings of the day, had been alike jarring and hateful; he meant to escape from them.

But he could not escape from them all at once. A fresh and unexpected debt of somewhere about four thousand pounds does not sit lightly on a comparatively poor man. In spite of his philosophy for Letty's benefit, he must needs harass himself anew about his money affairs, planning and reckoning. How many more such surprises would his mother spring upon him—and how was he to control her? He realised now something of the life-long burden his dull old father had borne—a burden which the absences of school, college, and travel had hitherto spared himself. What was he to appeal to in her? There seemed to be nothing—neither will nor conscience. She was like the women without backs in the fairy-tale.

Then, with one breath he said to himself that he must kick out that singer-fellow, and with the next, that he would not touch any of his mother's crew with a barge-pole. Though he never pleaded ideals in public, he had been all his life something of a moral epicure, taking "moral" as relating rather to manners than to deeper things. He had done his best not to soil himself by contact with certain types—among men especially. Of women he was less critical and less observant.

As to this ugly feud opening between his mother and his wife, it had quite ceased to amuse him. Now that his marriage was a reality, the daily corrosion of such a thing was becoming plain. And who was there in the world to bear the brunt of it but he? He saw himself between the two—eternally trying to make peace—and his face lengthened.

And if Letty would only leave the thing to him!—would only keep her little white self out of it! He wished he could get her to send away that woman Grier—a forward second-rate creature, much too ready to meddle in what did not concern her.

Then, with a shake of his thin shoulders, he passionately drove it all out of his thoughts.

Let him go to the village, sound the feeling there if he could, and do his employer's business. His troubles as a pit-owner seemed likely to be bad enough, but they did not canker one like domestic miseries. They were a man's natural affairs; to think of them came as a relief to him.

* * * * *

He had but a disappointing round, however.

In the first place he went to look up some of the older "hewers," men who had been for years in the employ of the Tressadys. Two or three of them had just come back from the early shift, and their wives, at any rate, were pleased and flattered by George's call. But the men sat like stocks and stones while he talked. Scarcely a word could be got out of them, and George felt himself in an atmosphere of storm, guessing at dangers, everywhere present, though not yet let loose—like the foul gases in the pits under his feet.

He behaved with a good deal of dignity, stifling his pride here and there sufficiently to talk simply and well of the general state of trade, the conditions of the coal industry in the West Mercian district, the position of the masters, the published accounts of one or two large companies in the district, and so on. But in the end he only felt his own auger rising in answer to the sullenness of the men. Their sallow faces and eyes weakened by long years of the pit expressed little—but what there was spelt war.

Nor did his visits to what might be called his own side give him much more satisfaction.

One man, a brawny "fireman," whom George had been long taught to regard as one of the props of law and order in the district, was effusively and honestly glad to see his employer. His wife hurried the tea, and George drank and ate as heartily as his own luncheon would let him in company with Macgregor and his very neat and smiling family. Nothing could be more satisfactory than Macgregor's general denunciations of the Union and its agent. Burrows, in his opinion, was a "drunken, low-livin scoundrel," who got his bread by making mischief; the Union was entering upon a great mistake in resisting the masters' proposals; and if it weren't for the public-house and idleness there wasn't a man in Perth that couldn't live well, ten per cent. reduction and all considered. Nevertheless, he did not conceal his belief that battle was approaching, and would break out, if not now, at any rate in the late summer or autumn. Times, too, were going to be specially bad for the non-society men. The membership of the Union had been running up fast; there had been a row that very morning at the pit where he worked, the Union men refusing to go down in the same cage with the blacklegs. He and his mates would have to put their backs into it. Never fear but they would! Bullying might be trusted only to make them the more "orkard."

Nothing could have been more soothing than such talk to the average employer in search of congenial opinions. But George was not the average employer, and the fastidious element in him began soon to make him uncomfortable. Sobriety is, no doubt, admirable, but he had no sooner detected a teetotal cant in his companion than that particular axiom ceased to matter to him. And to think poorly of Burrows might be a salutary feature in a man's character, but it should be for some respectable reason. George fidgeted on his chair while Macgregor told the usual cock-and-bull stories of monstrous hotel-bills seen sticking out of Burrows's tail-pockets, and there deciphered by a gaping populace; and his mental discomfort reached its climax when Macgregor wound up with the remark:

"And that, Sir George, is where the money goes to!—not to the poor starving women and children, I can tell yer, whose husbands are keepin him in luxury. I've always said it. Where's the accounts? I've never seen no balance-sheet—never!" he repeated solemnly. They do say as there's one to be seen at the 'lodge'—"

"Why, of course there is, Macgregor," said George, with a nervous laugh, as he got up to depart; "all the big Unions publish their accounts."

The fireman's obstinate mouth and stubbly hair only expressed a more pronounced scepticism.

"Well, I shouldn't believe in em," he said, "if they did. I've niver seen a balance-sheet, and I don't suppose I ever shall. Well, good-bye to you, Sir George, and thank you kindly. Yo take my word, sir, if it weren't for the public-house the men could afford to lose a trifle now and again to let the masters make their fair profit!"

And he looked behind him complacently at his neat cottage and well-clothed children.

But George walked away, impatient.

"His wages won't go down, anyway," he said to himself—for the wages of the "firemen," whose work is of the nature of superintendence, hardly vary with the state of trade. "And what suspicious idiocy about the accounts!"

His last visit was the least fortunate of any. The fireman in question, Mark Dowse, Macgregor's chief rival in the village, was a keen Radical, and George found him chuckling over his newspaper, and the defeat of the Tory candidate in a recently decided County Council election. He received his visitor with a surprise which George thought not untinged with insolence. Some political talk followed, in which Dowse's Yorkshire wit scored more than once at his employer's expense. Dowse, indeed, let himself go. He was on the point of taking the examination for an under-manager's certificate and leaving the valley. Hence there were no strong reasons for servility, and he might talk as he pleased to a young "swell" who had sold himself to reaction. George lost his temper somewhat, was furiously ashamed of himself, and could only think of getting out of the man's company with dignity.

He was by no means clear, however, as he walked away from the cottage, that he had succeeded in doing so. What was the good of trying to make friends with these fellows? Neither in agreement nor in opposition had he any common ground with them. Other people might have the gifts for managing them; it seemed to him that it would be better for him to take up the line at once that he had none. Fontenoy was right. Nothing but a state of enmity was possible—veiled enmity at some times, open at others.

What were those voices on the slope above him?

He was walking along a road which skirted his own group of pits. To his left rose a long slope of refuse, partly grown over, ending in the "bank" whereon stood the engine-house and winding-apparatus. A pathway climbed the slope and made the natural ascent to the pit for people dwelling in the scattered cottages on the farther side of it.

Two men, he saw, were standing high up on the pathway, violently disputing. One was Madan, his own manager, an excellent man of business and a bitter Tory. The other was Valentine Burrows.

As Tressady neared the road-entrance to the pathway the two men parted. Madan climbed on towards the pit. Burrows ran down the path.

As he approached the gate, and saw Tressady passing on the road, the agent called:

"Sir George Tressady!"

George stopped.

Burrows came quickly up to him, his face crimson.

"Is it by your orders, Sir George, that Mr. Madan insults and browbeats me when he meets me on a perfectly harmless errand to one of the men in your engine-house?"

"Perhaps Mr. Madan was not so sure as you were, Mr. Burrows, that the errand was a harmless one," said George, with a cool smile.

By this time, however, Burrows was biting his lip, and very conscious that he had made an impulsive mistake.

"Don't imagine for a moment," he said hotly, "that Madan's opinion of anything I may be doing matters one brass farthing to me! Only I give you and him fair warning that if he blackguards me again in the way he has done several times lately, I shall have him bound over."

"He might survive it," said George. "But how will you manage it? You have had ill-luck, rather, with the magistrates—haven't you?"

He stood drawn up to his full height, thin, venomous, alert, rather enjoying the encounter, which "let off the steam" of his previous irritations.

Burrows threw him a furious look.

"You think that a damaging thing to say, do you, Sir George? Perhaps the day will come—not so far off, neither—when the magistrates will be no longer your creatures, but ours. Then we shall see!"

"Well, prophecy is cheap," said George. "Console yourself with it, by all means."

The two men measured each other eye to eye.

Then, unexpectedly, after the relief of his outburst, the philosopher's instincts which were so oddly interwoven with the rest of Tressady's nature reasserted themselves.

"Look here," he said, in another manner, advancing a step. "I think this is all great nonsense. If Madan has exceeded his duty, I will see to it. And, meanwhile, don't you think it would be more worthy of us, as a couple of rational beings, if, now we have met, we had a few serious words on the state of things in this valley? You and I fought a square fight at Malford—you at least said as much. Why can't we fight a square fight here?"

Burrows eyed him doubtfully. He was leaning on his stick, recovering breath and composure. George noticed that since the Malford election, even he had lost youth and looks. He had the drunkard's skin and the drunkard's eyes. Yet there were still the make and proportions of the handsome athlete. He was now a man of about thirty-two; but in his first youth he had carried the miner's pick for some four or five years, and during the same period had been one of the most famous football-players of the county. As George knew, he was still the idol of the local clubs, and capable in his sober spells of amazing feats both of strength and endurance.

"Well, I have no objection to some conversation with you," said Burrows, at last, slowly.

"Let's walk on, then," said George.

And they walked past the gate of Ferth, towards the railway-station, which was some two miles off.

About an hour later the two men returned along the same road. Both had an air of tension; both were rather pale.

"Well, it comes to this," said George, as he stopped beside his own gate, "you believe our case—the badness of trade, the disappearance of profits, pressure of contracts, and all the rest of it—and you still refuse on your part to bear the smallest fraction of the burden? You will claim all you can get in good times—you will give back nothing in bad?"

"That is so," said Burrows, deliberately; "that is so, precisely. We will take no risks; we give our labour and in return the workman must live. Make the consumer pay, or pay yourselves out of your good years"—he turned imperceptibly towards the barrack-like house on the hill. "We don't care a ha'porth which it is!—only don't you come on the man who risks his life, and works like a galley-slave five days a week for a pittance of five-and-twenty shillings, or thereabouts, to pay—for he won't. He's tired of it. Not till you starve him into it, at any rate!"

George laughed.

"One of the best men in the village has been giving me his opinion this afternoon that there isn't a man in that place"—he pointed to it—"that couldn't live, and live well—aye, and take the masters' terms to-morrow—but for the drink!"

His keen look ran over Burrows from head to foot.

"And I know who that is," said Burrows, with a sneer. "Well, I can tell you what the rest of the men in that place think, and it's this: that the man in that village who doesn't drink is a mean skunk, who's betraying his own flesh and blood to the capitalists! Oh! you may preach at us till you're black in the face, but drink we shall till we get the control of our own labour. For, look here! Directly we cease to drink—directly we become good boys on your precious terms—the standard of life falls, down come wages, and you sweep off our beer-money to spend on your champagne. Thank you, Sir George! but we're not such fools as we look—and that don't suit us! Good-day to you."

And he haughtily touched his hat in response to George's movement, and walked quickly away.

* * * * *

George slowly mounted his own hill. The chequered April day was declining, and the dipping sun was flooding the western plain with quiet light. Rooks were circling round the hill, filling the air with long-drawn sound. A cuckoo was calling on a tree near at hand, and the evening was charged with spring scents—scents of leaf and grass, of earth and rain. Below, in an oak copse across the road, a stream rushed; and from a distance came the familiar rattle and thud of the pits.

George stood still a moment under a ragged group of Scotch firs—one of the few things at Ferth that he loved—and gazed across the Cheshire border to the distant lines of Welsh hills. The excitement of his talk with Burrows was subsiding, leaving behind it the obstinate resolve of the natural man. He should tell his uncles there was nothing for it but to fight it out. Some blood must be let; somebody must be master.

What poor limited fools, after all, were the best of the working men—how incapable of working out any serious problem, of looking beyond their own noses and the next meal! Was he to spend his life in chronic battle with them—a set of semi-civilised barbarians—his countrymen in nothing but the name? And for what cause—to what cry? That he might defend against the toilers of this wide valley a certain elegant house in Brook Street, and find the means to go on paying his mother's debts?—such debts as he carried the evidence of, at that moment, in his pocket.

Suddenly there swept over his mind with pricking force the thought of Mary Batchelor at her door, blind with weeping and pain—of the poor boy, dead in his prime. Did those two figures stand for the realities at the base of things—the common labours, affections, agonies, which uphold the world?

His own life looked somehow poor and mean to him as he turned back to it. The Socialist of course—Burrows—would say that he and Letty and his mother were merely living, and dressing, and enjoying themselves, paying butlers, and starting carriages out of the labour and pain of others—that Jamie Batchelor and his like risked and brutalised their strong young lives that Lady Tressady and her like might "jig and amble" through theirs.

Pure ignorant fanaticism, no doubt! But he was not so ready as usual to shelter himself under the big words of controversy. Fontenoy's favourite arguments had momentarily no savour for a kind of moral nausea.

"I begin to see it was a 'cursed spite' that drove me into the business at all," he said to himself, as he stood under the trees.

What he was really suffering from was an impatience of new conditions—perhaps surprise that he was not more equal to them. Till his return home—till now, almost—he had been an employer and a coal-owner by proxy. Other people had worked for him, had solved his problems for him. Then a transient impulse had driven him home—made him accept Fontenoy's offer—worse luck!—at least, Letty apart! The hopefulness and elation about himself, his new activities, and his Parliamentary prospects, that had been his predominant mood in London seemed to him at this moment of depression mere folly. What he really felt, he declared to himself, was a sort of cowardly shrinking from life and its tests—the recognition that at bottom he was a weakling, without faiths, without true identity.

Then the quick thought-process, as it flowed on, told him that there are two things that protect men of his stamp from their own lack of moral stamina: perpetual change of scene, that turns the world into a spectacle—and love. He thought with hunger of his travel-years; holding away from him, as it were, for a moment the thought of his marriage.

But only for a moment. It was but a few weeks since a woman's life had given itself wholly into his hands. He was still thrilling under the emotion and astonishment of it. Tender, melting thoughts flowed upon him. His little Letty! Had he ever thought her perfect, free from natural covetousness and weaknesses? What folly! He to ask for the grand style in character!

He looked at his watch. How long he had left her! Let him hurry, and make his peace.

However, just as he was turning, his attention was caught by something that was passing on the opposite hillside. The light from the west was shining full on a white cottage with a sloping garden. The cottage belonged to the Wesleyan minister of the place, and had been rented by Burrows for the last six months. And just as George was turning away he saw Burrows come out of the door with a burden—a child, or a woman little larger than a child—in his arms. He carried her to an armchair which had been placed on the little grass-plat. The figure was almost lost in the chair, and sat motionless while Burrows brought cushions and a stool. Then a baby came to play on the grass, and Burrows hung over the back of the chair, bending so as to talk to the person in it.

"Dying?" said George to himself. "Poor devil! he must hate something."

* * * * *

He sped up the hill, and found Letty still on the sofa and in the last pages of her novel. She did not resent his absence apparently,—a freedom, so far, from small exaction for which he inwardly thanked her. Still, from the moment that she raised her eyes as he came in, he saw that if she was not angry with him for leaving her alone, her mind was still as sore as ever against him and fortune on other accounts—and his revived ardour drooped. He gave her an account of his adventures, but she was neither inquiring nor sympathetic; and her manner all the evening had a nervous dryness that took away the pleasure of their tete-a-tete. Any old friend of Letty's, indeed, could hardly have failed to ask what had become of that small tinkling charm of manner, that girlish flippancy and repartee, that had counted for so much in George's first impressions of her? They were no sooner engaged than it had begun to wane. Was it like the bird or the flower, that adorns itself only for the wooing time, and sinks into relative dinginess when the mating effort is over?

On this particular evening, indeed, she was really absorbed half the time in gloomy thoughts of Lady Tressady's behaviour and the poorness of her own prospects. She lay on the sofa again after dinner—her white slimness and bright hair showing delicately against the cushions—playing still with her novel, while George read the newspapers. Sometimes she glanced at him unsteadily, with a pinching of the lips. But it was not her way to invite a scene.

Late at night he went up to his dressing-room.

As he entered it Letty was talking to her maid. He stopped involuntarily in the darkness of his own room, and listened. What a contrast between this Letty and the Letty of the drawing-room! They were chattering fast, discussing Lady Tressady, and Lady Tressady's gowns, and Lady Tressady's affairs. What eagerness, what malice, what feminine subtlety and acuteuess! After listening for a few seconds, it seemed to him as though a score of new and ugly lights had been thrown alike upon his mother and on human nature. He stole away again without revealing himself.

When he returned the room was nearly dark, and Letty was lying high against her pillows, waiting for him. Suddenly, after she had sent her maid away, she had felt depressed and miserable, and had begun to cry. And for some reason hardly clear to herself she had lain pining for George's footstep. When he came in she looked at him with eyes still wet, reproaching him gently for being late.

In the dim light, surrounded with lace and whiteness, she was a pretty vision; and George stood beside her, responding and caressing.

But that black depth in his nature, of which he had spoken to her—which he had married to forget—was, none the less, all ruffled and vocal. For the first time since Letty had consented to marry him he did not think or say to himself, as he looked at her, that he was a lucky man, and had done everything for the best.



CHAPTER X

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 nowhere. 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 gene for everybody!



CHAPTER XI

"That lady sitting by Sir George? What! Lady Maxwell? No—the other side? Oh! that's Lady Leven. Don't you know her? She's tremendous fun!"

And the dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked young man who was sitting beside Letty nodded and smiled across the table to Betty Leven, merely by way of reminding her of his existence. They had greeted before dinner—a greeting of comrades.

Then he turned back, with sudden decorum, to this Lady Tressady, whom he had been commissioned to take in to dinner. "Quite pretty, but rather—well, ordinary!" he said to himself, with a critical coolness bred of much familiarity with the best things of Vanity Fair. He had been Ancoats's friend at Cambridge, and was now disporting himself in the Guards, but still more—as Letty of course assumed—in the heart of the English well-born world. She knew that he was Lord Naseby, and that some day he would be a marquis. A halo, therefore, shone about him. At the same time, she had a long experience of young men, and, if she flattered him, it was only indirectly, by a sort of teasing aggression that did not allow him to take his attention from her.

"I declare you are better than any peerage!" she said to him presently, when he had given her a short biography, first of Lord Cathedine, who was sitting opposite, then of various other members of the company. "I should like to tie you to my fan when I go out to dinner."

"Would you?" said the young man, drily. "Oh! you will soon know all you want to know."

"How are poor little people from Yorkshire to find their way about in this big world? You are all so dreadfully absorbed in each other. In the first place, you all marry each other."

"Do we?—though I don't quite understand who 'we' means. Well, one must marry somebody, I suppose, and cousins are less trouble than other people."

Involuntarily, the young man's eyes travelled along the table to a fair girl on the opposite side, dazzlingly dressed in black. She was wielding a large fan of black feathers, which threw both hair and complexion into amazing relief; and she seemed to be amusing herself in a nervous, spasmodic way with Sir Frank Leven. Letty noticed his glance.

"Oh! you have not earned your testimonial yet, not by any manner of means," she said. "That is Lady Madeleine Penley, isn't it? Is she a relation of Mrs. Allison's?"

"She is a cousin. That is her mother, Lady Kent, sitting beside poor Ancoats. Such an old character! By the end of dinner she will have got to the bottom of Ancoats, or know the reason why."

"Is Lord Ancoats such a mystery?" said Letty, running an inquisitive eye over the black front, sharp nose, and gorgeously bejewelled neck of a somewhat noisy and forbidding old lady sitting on the right hand of the host.

Young Naseby's expression in answer rather piqued her. There was a quick flash of something that was instantly suppressed, and the youth said composedly,

"Oh! we are all mysteries for Lady Kent."

But Letty noticed that his eyes strayed back to Lord Ancoats, and then again to Lady Madeleine. He seemed to be observing them, and Letty's sharpness at once took the hint. No doubt the handsome, large-featured girl was here to be "looked at." Probably a good many maidens would be passed in review before this young Sultan made his choice! By the way he must be a good deal older than George had imagined. Clearly he left college some time ago. What a curious face he had—a small, crumpled face, with very prominent blue eyes; curly hair of a reddish colour, piled high, as though for effect, above his white brow; together with a sharp chin and pointed moustache, which gave him the air of an old French portrait. He was short in stature, but at the same time agile and strongly built. He wore one or two fine old rings, which drew attention to the delicacy of his hands; and his manner struck her as at once morose and excitable. Letty regarded him with involuntary respect as the son of Mrs. Allison—much more as the master of Castle Luton and fifty thousand a year. But if he had not been the master of Castle Luton she would have probably thought, and said, that he had a disagreeable Bohemian air.

"Haven't you really made acquaintance with Lady Kent?" said Lord Naseby, returning to the charge his laziness was somewhat at a loss for conversation. "I should have thought she was the person one could least escape knowing in the three kingdoms."

"I have seen her, of course," said Letty, lightly, though, alas! untruly. "But I am afraid you can hardly realise that I have only been three short seasons in London—two with an old aunt, who never goes out, in Cavendish Square, poor dull old dear! and another with Mrs. Watton, of Malford."

"Oh! with Mrs. Watton, of Malford," said Lord Naseby, vaguely. Then he became suddenly aware that Lady Leven, on the other side of the table, was beckoning to him. He leant across, and they exchanged a merry war of words about something of which Letty knew nothing.

Letty, rather incensed, thought him a puppy, drew herself up, and looked round at the ex-Governor beside her. She saw a fine head, the worn yellow face and whitened hair of a man who has suffered under a hot climate, and an agreeable, though somewhat courtly, smile. Sir Philip Wentworth was not troubled with the boyish fastidiousness of Lord Naseby. He perceived merely that a pretty young woman wished to make friends with him, and met her wish at once. Moreover, he identified her as the wife of that "promising and well-informed fellow, Tressady," with whom he had first made friends in India, and had now—just before dinner—renewed acquaintance in the most cordial fashion.

He talked graciously to the wife, then, of Tressady's abilities and Tressady's career. Letty at first liked it. Then she was seized with a curious sense of discomfort.

Her eyes wandered towards the head of the table, where George was talking—why! actually talking earnestly, and as though he were enjoying himself, to Lady Maxwell, whose noble head and neck, rising from a silver white dress, challenged a great Genoese Vandyck of a Marehesa Balbi which was hanging just behind her, and challenged it victoriously.

So other people thought and said these things of George? Letty was for a moment sharply conscious that they had not occupied much place in her mind since her marriage, or, for the matter of that, since her engagement. She had taken it for granted that he was "distinguished"—that was part of the bargain. Only, she never seemed as yet to have had either time or thought to give to those parts and elements in his life which led people to talk of him as this old Indian was doing.

Curtains, carpets, gowns, cabinets; additions to Ferth; her own effect in society; how to keep Lady Tressady in her place—of all these things she had thought, and thought much. But George's honourable ambitions, the esteem in which he was held, the place he was to make for himself in the world of men—in thinking of these her mind was all stiff and unpractised. She was conscious first of a moral prick, then of a certain irritation with other people.

Yet she could not help watching George wistfully. He looked tired and pale, in spite of the animation of his talk. Well! no doubt she looked pale too. Some of the words and phrases of their quarrel flashed across her. In this beautiful room, with its famous pictures and its historical associations, amid this accumulated art and wealth, the whole thing was peculiarly odious to remember. Under the eyes of Vandyck's Marchesa one would have liked to think of oneself as always dignified and refined, always elegant and calm.

Then Letty had a revulsion, and laughed at herself.

"As if these people didn't have tempers, and quarrel about money! Of course they do! And if they don't—well, we all know how easy it is to be amiable on fifty thousand a year."

* * * * *

After dinner Mrs. Allison led the way to the "Green Drawing-room." This room, hung with Gainsborough portraits, was one of the sights of the house, and tonight Marcella Maxwell especially looked round her on entering it, with enchantment.

"You happy people!" she said to Mrs. Allison. "I never come into this room without anxiously asking myself whether I am fit to make one of the company. I look at my dress, or I am doubtful about my manners, or I wish someone had taught me to dance the minuet!"

"Yes," said Betty Leven, running up to a vast picture, a life-size family group, which covered the greater part of the farther wall of the room. "What a vulgar, insignificant chit one feels oneself without cap or powder!—without those ruffles, or those tippets, or those quilted petticoats! Mrs. Allison, may my maid come down to-morrow while we are at dinner and take the pattern of those ruffles? No—no! she sha'n't! Sacrilege! You pretty thing!" she said, addressing a figure—the figure of a girl in white with thin virginal arms and bust, who seemed to be coming out of the picture, almost to be already out of it and in the room. "Come and talk to me. Don't think any more of your father and mother there. You have been curtsying to them for a hundred years; and they are rather dull, stupid people, after all. Come and tell us secrets. Tell us what you have seen in this room—all the foolish people making love, and the sad people saying good-bye."

Betty was kneeling on a carved chair, her pretty arms leaning on the back of it, her eyes fixed half-in laughter, half in sentiment, on the figure in the picture.

Lady Maxwell suddenly moved closer to her, and Letty heard her say in a low voice, as she put her hand on Lady Leven's arm:

"Don't, Betty! don't! It was in this room he proposed to her, and it was in this room he said goodbye. Maxwell has often told me. I believe she never comes in here alone—only for ceremony and when there is a crowd."

A look of consternation crossed Lady Leven's lively little face. She glanced shyly towards Mrs. Allison. That lady had moved hastily away from the group in front of the picture. She was sitting by herself, looking straight before her, with a certain stiffness, her thin hands crossed on her knee. Betty impetuously went towards her, and was soon sitting on a stool beside her, chattering to her and amusing her.

Meanwhile Marcella invited Lady Tressady to come and sit with her on a sofa beneath the great picture.

Letty followed her, settled her satin skirts in their most graceful folds, put one little foot on a Louis Quinze footstool which seemed to invite it, and then began to inform herself about the house and the family.

At the beginning of their talk it was clear that Lady Maxwell wished to ingratiate herself. A friendly observer would have thought that she was trying to make a stranger feel more at ease in this house and circle, where she herself was a familiar guest. Betty Leven, catching sight of the pair from the other side of the room, said to herself, with inward amusement, that Marcella was "realising the wife."

At any rate, for some time Lady Maxwell talked with sympathy, with effusion even, to her companion. In the first place she told her the story of their hostess.

Thirty years before, Mrs. Allison, the daughter and heiress of a Leicestershire squire, had married Henry Allison, old Lord Ancoats's second son, a young captain in the Guards. They enjoyed three years of life together; then the chances of a soldier's career, as interpreted by two high-minded people, took Henry Allison out to an obscure African coast, to fight one of the innumerable "little wars" of his country. He fell, struck by a spear, in a single-file march through some nameless swamp; and a few days afterwards the words of a Foreign Office telegram broke a pining woman's heart.

Old Lord Ancoats's death, which followed within a month or two, was hastened by the shock of his son's loss; and before the year was out the eldest son, who was sickly and unmarried, also died, and Mrs. Allison's boy, a child of two, became the owner of Castle Luton. The mother saw herself called upon to fight down her grief, to relinquish the quasi-religious life she had entered upon, and instead to take her boy to the kingdom he was to rule, and bring him up there.

"And for twenty-two years she has lived a wonderful life here," said Marcella; "she has been practically the queen of a whole countryside, doing whatever she pleased, the mother and friend and saint of everybody. It has been all very paternal and beautiful, and—abominably Tory and tyrannous! Many people, I suppose, think it perfect. Perhaps I don't. But then, I know very well I can't possibly disagree with her a tenth part as strongly as she disagrees with me."

"Oh! but she admires you so much," cried Letty, with effusion; "she thinks you mean so nobly!"

Marcella opened her eyes, involuntarily wondering a little what Lady Tressady might know about it.

"Oh! we don't hate each other," she said, rather drily, "in spite of politics. And my husband was Ancoats's guardian."

"Dear me!" said Letty. "I should think it wasn't easy to be guardian to fifty thousand a year."

Marcella did not answer—did not, indeed, hear. Her look had stolen across to Mrs. Allison—a sad, affectionate look, in no way meant for Lady Tressady. But Letty noticed it.

"I suppose she adores him," she said.

Marcella sighed.

"There was never anything like it. It frightens one to see."

"And that, of course, is why she won't marry Lord Fontenoy?"

Marcella started, and drew away from her companion.

"I don't know," she said stiffly; "and I am sure that no one ever dared to ask her."

"Oh! but of course it's what everyone says," said Letty, gay and unabashed. "That's what makes it so exciting to come here, when one knows Lord Fontenoy so very well."

Marcella met this remark with a discouraging silence.

Letty, however, was determined this time to make her impression. She plunged into a lively and often audacious gossip about every person in the room in turn, asking a number of intimate or impertinent questions, and yet very seldom waiting for Marcella's reply, so anxious was she to show off her own information and make her own comments. She let Marcella understand that she suspected a great deal, in the matter of that handsome Lady Madeleine. It was immensely interesting, of course; but wasn't Lord Ancoats a trifle wild?—she bent over and whispered in Marcella's ears; was it likely that he would settle himself so soon?—didn't one hear sad tales of his theatrical friends and the rest? And what could one expect! As if a young man in such a position was not certain to have his fling! And his mother would have to put up with it. After all, men quieted down at last. Look at Lord Cathedine!

And with an air of boundless knowledge she touched upon the incidents of Lord Cathedine's career, hashing up, with skilful deductions of her own, all that Lord Naseby had said or hinted to her at dinner. Poor Lady Cathedine! didn't she look a walking skeleton, with her strange, melancholy face, and every bone showing? Well, who could wonder! And when one thought of their money difficulties, too!

Lady Tressady lifted her white shoulders in compassion.

By this time Marcella's black eyes were wandering insistently round the room, searching for means of escape. Betty, far away, noticed her air, and concluded that the "realisation" was making rapid, too rapid, progress. Presently, with a smiling shake of her little head, she left her own seat and went to her friend's assistance.

At the same moment Mrs. Allison, driven by her conscience as a hostess, got up for the purpose of introducing Lady Tressady to a lady in grey who had been sitting quiet, and, as Mrs. Allison feared, lonely, in a corner, looking over some photographs. Marcella, who had also risen, put out a hand to Betty, and the two moved away together.

* * * * *

They stopped on the threshold of a large window at the side of the room, which stood wide open to the night. Outside, beyond a broad flight of steps, stretched a formal Dutch garden. Its numberless small beds, forming stiff scrolls and circles on a ground of white gravel, lay in bright moonlight. Even the colours of the hyacinths and tulips with which they were planted could be seen, and the strong scent from them filled the still air. At the far end of this flat-patterned place a group of tall cypress and ilex, black against the sky, struck a note of Italy and the South; while, through the yew hedges which closed in the little garden, broad archways pierced at intervals revealed far breadths of silvery English lawn and the distant gleam of the river.