Sir George Tressady Volume Ii Part 7

"Let me go up to Annette," she said. "The little wound--oh! it is not much, I _know_ it is not much--ought to be properly seen to. We will do it between us in a moment. Then come--I will send her down for you. I want to tell you."

But in her heart of hearts she was just a little afraid of telling him.

What if an exaggerated version should get into the papers--if it should really do him harm--at this critical moment! She was always tormented by this dread, a dread born of long-past indiscretions and mistakes.

He acquiesced, but first he insisted on half leading, half carrying her upstairs; and she permitted it, delighting in his strong arm.

Half an hour later she sent for him. The maid found him pacing up and down the hall, waiting.

When he entered her room she was lying on her sofa in a white wrapper of some silky stuff. The black lace had been drawn again round her head, and he saw nothing but a very pale face and her eager, timid eyes--timid for no one in the world but him. As he caught sight of her, she produced in him that exquisite mingled impression of grace, pa.s.sion, self-yielding, which in all its infinite variations and repet.i.tions made up for him the constant poem of her beauty. But though she knew it, she glanced at him anxiously as he approached her. It had been to her a kind of luxury of feeling, in the few moments that she had been waiting for him, to cherish a little fear of him--of his displeasure.

"Now describe exactly what you have been doing," he said, sitting down by her with a troubled face and taking her hand, as soon as he had a.s.sured himself that the cut was slight and would leave no scar.

She told her tale, and was thrilled to see that he frowned. She laid her hand on his shoulder.

"It is the first public thing I have done without consulting you. I meant to have asked you yesterday, but we were both so busy. The meeting was got up rather hurriedly, and they pressed me to speak, after all the arrangements were made."

"We are both of us too busy," he said, rather sadly; "we glance, and nod, and bustle by--"

He did not finish the quotation, but she could. Her eyes scanned his face. "Do you think I ought to have avoided such a thing at such a time?

Will it do harm?"

His brow cleared. He considered the matter.

"I think you may expect some of the newspapers to make a good deal of it," he said, smiling.

And, in fact, his own inherited tastes and instincts were all chafed by her story. His wife--the wife of a Cabinet Minister--pleading for her husband's Bill, or, as the enemy might say, for his political existence, with an East End meeting, and incidentally with the whole public--exposing herself, in a time of agitation, to the rowdyism and the stone-throwing that wait on such things! The notion set the fastidious old-world temper of the man all on edge. But he would never have dreamed of arguing the matter so with her. A sort of high chivalry forbade it. In marrying her he had not made a single condition--would have suffered tortures rather than lay the smallest fetter upon her. In consequence, he had been often thought a weak, uxorious person. Maxwell knew that he was merely consistent. No sane man lays his heart at the feet of a Marcella without counting the cost.

She did not answer his last remark. But he saw that she was wistful and uneasy, and presently she laid her fingers lightly on his.

"Tell me if I am too much away from you--too much occupied with other people."

He sighed,--the slightest sigh,--but she winced. "I had just an hour before dinner," he said; "you were not here, and the house seemed very empty. I would have come down to fetch you, but there were some important papers to read before to-morrow." A Cabinet meeting was fixed, as she knew, for the following day. "Then, I have been making Saunders draw up a statement for the newspapers in answer to Watton's last attack, and it would have been a help to talk to you before we sent it off. Above all, if I had known of the meeting I should have begged you not to go. I ought to have warned you yesterday, for I knew that there was some ugly agitation developing down there. But I never thought of you as likely to face a mob. Will you please reflect"--he pressed her hand almost roughly against his lips--"that if that stone had been a little heavier, and flung a little straighter--"

He paused. A dew came to her eyes, a happy glow to her cheek. As for her, she was grateful to the stone that had raised such heart-beats.

Perhaps some instinct told him not to please her in this way too much, for he rose and walked away a moment.

"There! don't let's think of it, or I shall turn tyrant after all, and plunge into 'shalls' and 'sha'n'ts'! You _know_ you carry two lives, and all the plans that either of us care about, in your hand. You say that Tressady brought you home?"

He turned and looked at her.

"Yes. Edward Watton brought him to the meeting."

"But he has been down to see you there several times before, as well as coming here?"

"Oh yes! almost every week since we met at Castle Luton."

"It is curious," said Maxwell, thoughtfully; "for he will certainly vote steadily with Fontenoy all through. His election speeches pledged him head over ears."

"Oh! of course he will vote," said Marcella, moving a little uneasily; "but one cannot help trying to modify his way of looking at things. And his tone _is_ changed."

Maxwell stood at the foot of her sofa, considering, a host of perplexed and unwelcome notions flitting across his mind. In spite of his idealist absorption in his work, his political aims, and the one love of his life, he had the training of a man of the world, and could summon the shrewdness of one when he pleased. He had liked this young Tressady, for the first time, at Castle Luton, and had seen him fall under Marcella's charm with some amus.e.m.e.nt. But this haunting of their camp in the East End, at such a marked and critical moment, was strange, to say the least of it. It must point, one would think, to some sudden and remarkable strength of personal influence.

Had she any real consciousness of the power she wielded? Once or twice, in the years since they had been married, Maxwell had watched this spell of his wife's at work, and had known a moment of trouble. "If I were the fellow she had talked and walked with so," he had once said to himself, "I must have fallen in love with her had she been twenty times another man's wife!" Yet no harm had happened; he had only reproached himself for a gross mind without daring to breathe a word to her.

And he dared not now. Besides, how absurd! The young man was just married, and, to Maxwell's absent, incurious eyes, the bride had seemed a lively, pretty little person enough. No doubt it was the nervous strain of his political life that made such fancies possible to him. Let him not c.u.mber her ears with them!

Then gradually, as he stood at her feet, the sight of her, breathing weakness, submission, loveliness, her eyes raised to his, banished every other thought from his happy heart, and drew him like a magnet.

Meanwhile she began to smile. He knelt down beside her, and she put both hands on his shoulders.

"Dear!" she said, half laughing and half crying, "I did speak so badly; you would have been ashamed of me. I couldn't hold the meeting. I didn't persuade a soul. Lord Fontenoy's ladies had it all their own way. And first I was dreadfully sorry I couldn't do such a thing decently--sorry because of one's vanity, and sorry because I couldn't help you. And now I think I'm rather glad."

"Are you?" said Maxwell, drily; "as for me, I'm enchanted! There!--so much penalty you _shall_ have."

She pressed his lips with her hand.

"Don't spoil my pretty speech. I am only glad because--because public life and public success make one stand separate--alone. I have gone far enough to know how it might be. A new pa.s.sion would come in, and creep through one like a poison. I should win you votes--and our hearts would burn dry! There! take me--scold me--despise me. I am a poor thing--but yours!"

With such a humbleness might Diana have wooed her shepherd, stooping her G.o.ddess head to him on the Latmian steep.

CHAPTER XV

George went back to the House, and stayed for half an hour or so, listening to a fine speech from a member of a former Liberal Cabinet. The speech was one more sign of the new cleavage of parties that was being everywhere brought about by the pressure of the new Collectivism.

"We always knew," said the speaker, referring to a Ministry in which he had served seven years before, "that we should be fighting Socialism in good earnest before many years were over; and we knew, too, that we should be fighting it as put forward by a Conservative Government. The hands are the hands of the English Tory, the voice is the voice of Karl Marx."

The Socialists sent forth mocking cheers, while the Government benches sat silent. The rank-and-file of the Conservative party already hated the Bill. The second reading must go through. But if only some rearrangement were possible without rus.h.i.+ng the country into the arms of revolutionists--if it were only conceivable that Fontenoy, or even the old Liberal gang, should form a Government, and win the country, the Committee stage would probably not trouble the House long.

Meanwhile in the smoking-rooms and lobbies the uncertainties of the coming division kept up an endless hum of gossip and conjecture. Tressady wandered about it all like a ghost, indifferent and preoccupied, careful above all to avoid any more talk with Fontenoy. While he was in the House itself he stood at the door or sat in the cross-benches, so as to keep a s.p.a.ce between him and his leader.

A little before twelve he drove home, dressed hastily, and went off to a house in Berkeley Square, where he was to meet Letty. He found her waiting for him, a little inclined to be reproachful, and eager for her ball. As they drove towards Queen's Gate she chattered to him of her evening, and of the people and dresses she had seen.

"And, you foolish boy!" she broke out, laughing, and tapping him on the hand with her fan--"you looked so glum this morning when I couldn't go and see Lady Tressady--and--what do you think? Why, she has been at a party to-night--at a party, my dear!--and _dressed_! Mrs. w.i.l.l.y Smith told me she had seen her at the Webers'."

"I daresay," said George, rather shortly; "all the same, this morning she was very unwell."

Letty shrugged her shoulders, but she did not want to be disagreeable and argue the point. She was much pleased with her dress--with the last glance of herself that she had caught in the cloak-room looking-gla.s.s before leaving Berkeley Square--and, finally, with this well-set-up, well-dressed husband beside her. She glanced at him every now and then as she put on a fresh pair of gloves. He had been very much absorbed in this tiresome Parliament lately, and she thought herself a very good and forbearing wife not to make more fuss. Nor had she made any fuss about his going down to see Lady Maxwell at the East End. It did not seem to have made the smallest difference to his opinions.

The thought of Lady Maxwell brought a laugh to her lips.

"Oh! do you know, Harding was so amusing about the Maxwells to-day!" she said, turning to Tressady in her most good-humoured and confiding mood.

"He says people are getting so tired of her,--of her meddling, and her preaching, and all the rest of it,--and that everybody thinks him so absurd not to put a stop to it. And Harding says that it doesn't succeed even--that Englishmen will never stand petticoat government. It's all very well--they have to stand it in some forms!"