Sir George Tressady Volume I Part 27

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 s.h.i.+llings 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, p.r.i.c.ked 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 ma.s.s 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 G.o.ds 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 kings.h.i.+p, 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 a.s.sociations and recollections that cl.u.s.tered 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 a.s.sert 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 amus.e.m.e.nt.

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 pa.s.sionately, 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.