Marcella

"Saved your life! Dear--What do you mean?"

She explained, giving the little incident all--perhaps more than--its dramatic due. He listened with evident annoyance, and stood pondering when she came to an end.

"So I shall be expected to take quite a different view of him henceforward?" he inquired at last, looking round at her, with a very forced smile.

"I am sure I don"t know that it matters to him what view anybody takes of him," she cried, flushing. "He certainly takes the frankest views of other people, and expresses them."

And while she played with the pearls in their box she gave a vivid account of her morning"s talk with the Radical candidate for West Brookshire, and of their village expedition.

There was a certain relief in describing the scorn with which her acts and ideals had been treated; and, underneath, a woman"s curiosity as to how Aldous would take it.

"I don"t know what business he had to express himself so frankly," said Aldous, turning to the fire and carefully putting it together. "He hardly knows you--it was, I think, an impertinence."

He stood upright, with his back to the hearth, a strong, capable, frowning Englishman, very much on his dignity. Such a moment must surely have become him in the eyes of a girl that loved him. Marcella proved restive under it.

"No; it"s very natural," she protested quickly. "When people are so much in earnest they don"t stop to think about impertinence! I never met any one who dug up one"s thoughts by the roots as he does."

Aldous was startled by her flush, her sudden att.i.tude of opposition. His intermittent lack of readiness overtook him, and there was an awkward silence. Then, pulling himself together with a strong hand, he left the subject and began to talk of her straw-plaiting scheme, of the Gairsley meeting, and of Hallin. But in the middle Marcella unexpectedly said:

"I wish you would tell me, seriously, what reasons you have for not liking Mr. Wharton?--other than politics, I mean?"

Her black eyes fixed him with a keen insistence.

He was silent a moment with surprise; then he said:

"I had rather not rake up old scores."

She shrugged her shoulders, and he was roused to come and put his arm round her again, she shrinking and turning her reddened face away.

"Dearest," he said, "you shall put me in charity with all the world. But the worst of it is," he added, half laughing, "that I don"t see how I am to help disliking him doubly henceforward for having had the luck to put that fire out instead of me!"

CHAPTER VI.

A few busy and eventful weeks, days never forgotten by Marcella in after years, pa.s.sed quickly by. Parliament met in the third week of January.

Ministers, according to universal expectation, found themselves confronted by a damaging amendment on the Address, and were defeated by a small majority. A dissolution and appeal to the country followed immediately, and the meetings and speech-makings, already active throughout the const.i.tuencies, were carried forward with redoubled energy. In the Tudley End division, Aldous Raeburn was fighting a somewhat younger opponent of the same country-gentleman stock--a former f.a.g indeed of his at Eton--whose zeal and fluency gave him plenty to do.

Under ordinary circ.u.mstances Aldous would have thrown himself with all his heart and mind into a contest which involved for him the most stimulating of possibilities, personal and public. But, as these days went over, he found his appet.i.te for the struggle flagging, and was hara.s.sed rather than spurred by his adversary"s activity. The real truth was that he could not see enough of Marcella! A curious uncertainty and unreality, moreover, seemed to have crept into some of their relations; and it had begun to gall and fever him that Wharton should be staying there, week after week, beside her, in her father"s house, able to spend all the free intervals of the fight in her society, strengthening an influence which Raeburn"s pride and delicacy had hardly allowed him as yet, in spite of his instinctive jealousy from the beginning, to take into his thoughts at all, but which was now apparent, not only to himself but to others.

In vain did he spend every possible hour at Mellor he could s.n.a.t.c.h from a conflict in which his party, his grandfather, and his own personal fortunes were all deeply interested. In vain--with a tardy instinct that it was to Mr. Boyce"s dislike of himself, and to the wilful fancy for Wharton"s society which this dislike had promoted, that Wharton"s long stay at Mellor was largely owing--did Aldous subdue himself to propitiations and amenities wholly foreign to a strong character long accustomed to rule without thinking about it. Mr. Boyce showed himself not a whit less partial to Wharton than before; pressed him at least twice in Raeburn"s hearing to make Mellor his head-quarters so long as it suited him, and behaved with an irritable malice with regard to some of the details of the wedding arrangements, which neither Mrs. Boyce"s indignation nor Marcella"s discomfort and annoyance could restrain.

Clearly there was in him a strong consciousness that by his attentions to the Radical candidate he was a.s.serting his independence of the Raeburns, and nothing for the moment seemed to be more of an object with him, even though his daughter was going to marry the Raeburns" heir.

Meanwhile, Wharton was always ready to walk or chat or play billiards with his host in the intervals of his own campaign; and his society had thus come to count considerably among the scanty daily pleasures of a sickly and disappointed man. Mrs. Boyce did not like her guest, and took no pains to disguise it, least of all from Wharton. But it seemed to be no longer possible for her to take the vigorous measures she would once have taken to get rid of him.

In vain, too, did Miss Raeburn do her best for the nephew to whom she was still devoted, in spite of his deplorable choice of a wife. She took in the situation as a whole probably sooner than anybody else, and she instantly made heroic efforts to see more of Marcella, to get her to come oftener to the Court, and in many various ways to procure the poor deluded Aldous more of his betrothed"s society. She paid many chattering and fussy visits to Mellor--visits which chafed Marcella--and before long, indeed, roused a certain suspicion in the girl"s wilful mind.

Between Miss Raeburn and Mrs. Boyce there was a curious understanding.

It was always tacit, and never amounted to friendship, still less to intimacy. But it often yielded a certain melancholy consolation to Aldous Raeburn"s great-aunt. It was clear to her that this strange mother was just as much convinced as she was that Aldous was making a great mistake, and that Marcella was not worthy of him. But the engagement being there--a fact not apparently to be undone--both ladies showed themselves disposed to take pains with it, to protect it against aggression. Mrs. Boyce found herself becoming more of a _chaperon_ than she had ever yet professed to be; and Miss Raeburn, as we have said, made repeated efforts to capture Marcella and hold her for Aldous, her lawful master.

But Marcella proved extremely difficult to manage. In the first place she was a young person of many engagements. Her village scheme absorbed a great deal of time. She was deep in a varied correspondence, in the engagement of teachers, the provision of work-rooms, the collecting and registering of workers, the organisation of local committees and so forth. New sides of the girl"s character, new capacities and capabilities were coming out; new forms of her natural power over her fellows were developing every day; she was beginning, under the incessant stimulus of Wharton"s talk, to read and think on social and economic subjects, with some system and coherence, and it was evident that she took a pa.s.sionate mental pleasure in it all. And the more pleasure these activities gave her, the less she had to spare for those accompaniments of her engagement and her position that was to be, which once, as Mrs. Boyce"s sharp eyes perceived, had been quite normally attractive to her.

"Why do you take up her time so, with all these things?" said Miss Raeburn impatiently to Lady Winterbourne, who was now Marcella"s obedient helper in everything she chose to initiate. "She doesn"t care for anything she _ought_ to care about at this time, and Aldous sees nothing of her. As for her trousseau, Mrs. Boyce declares she has had to do it all. Marcella won"t even go up to London to have her wedding-dress fitted!"

Lady Winterbourne looked up bewildered.

"But I can"t make her go and have her wedding-dress fitted, Agneta! And I always feel you don"t know what a fine creature she is. You don"t really appreciate her. It"s splendid the ideas she has about this work, and the way she throws herself into it."

"I dare say!" said Miss Raeburn, indignantly. "That"s just what I object to. Why can"t she throw herself into being in love with Aldous! That"s her business, I imagine, just now--if she were a young woman like anybody else one had ever seen--instead of holding aloof from everything he does, and never being there when he wants her. Oh! I have no patience with her. But, of course, I must--" said Miss Raeburn, hastily correcting herself--"of course, I must have patience."

"It will all come right, I am sure, when they are married," said Lady Winterbourne, rather helplessly.

"That"s just what my brother says," cried Miss Raeburn, exasperated. "He won"t hear a word--declares she is odd and original, and that Aldous will soon know how to manage her. It"s all very well; nowadays men _don"t_ manage their wives; that"s all gone with the rest. And I am sure, my dear, if she behaves after she is married as she is doing now, with that most objectionable person Mr. Wharton--walking, and talking, and taking up his ideas, and going to his meetings--she"ll be a handful for any husband."

"Mr. Wharton!" said Lady Winterbourne, astonished. Her absent black eyes, the eyes of the dreamer, of the person who lives by a few intense affections, saw little or nothing of what was going on immediately under them. "Oh! but that is because he is staying in the house, and he is a Socialist; she calls herself one--"

"My _dear_," said Miss Raeburn, interrupting emphatically; "if--you--had--now--an unmarried daughter at home--engaged or not--would you care to have Harry Wharton hanging about after her?"

"Harry Wharton?" said the other, pondering; "he is the Levens" cousin, isn"t he? he used to stay with them. I don"t think I have seen him since then. But yes, I do remember; there was something--something disagreeable?"

She stopped with a hesitating, interrogative air. No one talked less scandal, no one put the uglinesses of life away from her with a hastier hand than Lady Winterbourne. She was one of the most consistent of moral epicures.

"Yes, _extremely_ disagreeable," said Miss Raeburn, sitting bolt upright. "The man has no principles--never had any, since he was a child in petticoats. I know Aldous thinks him unscrupulous in politics and everything else. And then, just when you are worked to death, and have hardly a moment for your own affairs, to have a man of that type always at hand to spend odd times with your lady love--flattering her, engaging her in his ridiculous schemes, encouraging her in all the extravagances she has got her head twice too full of already, setting her against your own ideas and the life she will have to live--you will admit that it is not exactly soothing!"

"Poor Aldous!" said Lady Winterbourne, thoughtfully, looking far ahead with her odd look of absent rigidity, which had in reality so little to do with a character essentially soft; "but you see he _did_ know all about her opinions. And I don"t think--no, I really don"t think--I could speak to her."

In truth, this woman of nearly seventy--old in years, but wholly young in temperament--was altogether under Marcella"s spell--more at ease with her already than with most of her own children, finding in her satisfaction for a hundred instincts, suppressed or starved by her own environment, fascinated by the girl"s friendship, and eagerly grateful for her visits. Miss Raeburn thought it all both incomprehensible and silly.

"Apparently no one can!" cried that lady in answer to her friend"s demurrer; "is all the world afraid of her?"

And she departed in wrath. But she knew, nevertheless, that she was just as much afraid of Marcella as anybody else. In her own sphere at the Court, or in points connected with what was due to the family, or to Lord Maxwell especially, as the head of it, this short, capable old lady could hold her own amply with Aldous"s betrothed, could maintain, indeed, a sharp and caustic dignity, which kept Marcella very much in order. Miss Raeburn, on the defensive, was strong; but when it came to attacking Marcella"s own ideas and proceedings, Lord Maxwell"s sister became shrewdly conscious of her own weaknesses. She had no wish to measure her wits on any general field with Marcella"s. She said to herself that the girl was too clever and would talk you down.

Meanwhile, things went untowardly in various ways. Marcella disciplined herself before the Gairsley meeting, and went thither resolved to give Aldous as much sympathy as she could. But the performance only repelled a mind over which Wharton was every day gaining more influence. There was a portly baronet in the chair; there were various Primrose Dames on the platform and among the audience; there was a considerable representation of clergy; and the labourers present seemed to Marcella the most obsequious of their kind. Aldous spoke well--or so the audience seemed to think; but she could feel no enthusiasm for anything that he said. She gathered that he advocated a Government inspection of cottages, more stringent precautions against cattle disease, better technical instruction, a more abundant provision of allotments and small freeholds, &c.; and he said many cordial and wise-sounding things in praise of a progress which should go safely and wisely from step to step, and run no risks of dangerous reaction. But the a.s.sumptions on which, as she told herself rebelliously, it all went--that the rich and the educated must rule, and the poor obey; that existing cla.s.ses and rights, the forces of individualism and compet.i.tion, must and would go on pretty much as they were; that great houses and great people, the English land and game system, and all the rest of our odious cla.s.s paraphernalia were in the order of the universe; these ideas, conceived as the furniture of Aldous"s mind, threw her again into a ferment of pa.s.sionate opposition. And when the n.o.ble baronet in the chair--to her eye, a pompous, frock-coated stick, sacrificing his after-dinner sleep for once, that he might the more effectually secure it in the future--proposed a vote of confidence in the Conservative candidate; when the vote was carried with much cheering and rattling of feet; when the Primrose Dames on the platform smiled graciously down upon the meeting as one smiles at good children in their moments of pretty behaviour; and when, finally, scores of toil-stained labourers, young and old, went up to have a word and a hand-shake with "Muster Raeburn,"

Marcella held herself aloof and cold, with a look that threatened sarcasm should she be spoken to. Miss Raeburn, glancing furtively round at her, was outraged anew by her expression.

"She will be a thorn in all our sides," thought that lady. "Aldous is a fool!--a poor dear n.o.ble misguided fool!"

Then on the way home, she and Aldous drove together. Marcella tried to argue, grew vehement, and said bitter things for the sake of victory, till at last Aldous, tired, worried, and deeply wounded, could bear it no longer.

"Let it be, dear, let it be!" he entreated, s.n.a.t.c.hing at her hand as they rolled along through a stormy night. "We grope in a dark world--you see some points of light in it, I see others--won"t you give me credit for doing what I can--seeing what I can? I am sure--_sure_--you will find it easier to bear with differences when we are quite together--when there are no longer all these hateful duties and engagements--and persons--between us."

"Persons! I don"t know what you mean!" said Marcella.

Aldous only just restrained himself in time. Out of sheer fatigue and slackness of nerve he had been all but betrayed into some angry speech on the subject of Wharton, the echoes of whose fantastic talk, as it seemed to him, were always hanging about Mellor when he went there. But he did refrain, and was thankful. That he was indeed jealous and disturbed, that he had been jealous and disturbed from the moment Harry Wharton had set foot in Mellor, he himself knew quite well. But to play the jealous part in public was more than the Raeburn pride could bear.

There was the dread, too, of defining the situation--of striking some vulgar irrevocable note.

So he parried Marcella"s exclamation by asking her whether she had any idea how many human hands a parliamentary candidate had to shake between breakfast and bed; and then, having so slipped into another tone, he tried to amuse himself and her by some of the daily humours of the contest. She lent herself to it and laughed, her look mostly turned away from him, as though she were following the light of the carriage lamps as it slipped along the snow-laden hedges, her hand lying limply in his.

But neither were really gay. His soreness of mind grew as in the pauses of talk he came to realise more exactly the failure of the evening--of his very successful and encouraging meeting--from his own private point of view.

"Didn"t you like that last speech?" he broke out suddenly--"that labourer"s speech? I thought you would. It was entirely his own idea--n.o.body asked him to do it."