The footman opened the door for her. She went.
CHAPTER XIV.
"But this is unbearable!" said Aldous. "Do you mean to say that she is at home and that she will not see me?"
Mrs. Boyce"s self-possession was shaken for once by the flushed humiliation of the man before her.
"I am afraid it is so," she said hurriedly. "I remonstrated with Marcella, but I could do nothing. I think, if you are wise, you will not for the present attempt to see her."
Aldous sat down, with his hat in his hand, staring at the floor. After a few moments" silence he looked up again.
"And she gave you no message for me?"
"No," said Mrs. Boyce, reluctantly. "Only that she could not bear to see anybody from the Court, even you, while this matter was still undecided."
Aldous"s eye travelled round the Mellor drawing-room. It was arrested by a chair beside him. On it lay an envelope addressed to Miss Boyce, of which the handwriting seemed to him familiar. A needle with some black silk hanging from it had been thrust into the stuffed arm of the chair; the cushion at the back still bore the imprint of the sitter. She had been there, not three minutes ago, and had fled before him. The door into Mrs. Boyce"s sitting-room was still ajar.
He looked again at the envelope on the chair, and recognised the writing. Walking across to where Mrs. Boyce sat, he took a seat beside her.
"Will you tell me," he said steadily--"I think you will admit I have a right to know--is Marcella in constant correspondence now with Henry Wharton?"
Mrs. Boyce"s start was not perceptible.
"I believe so," she quickly replied. "So far as I can judge, he writes to her almost every other day."
"Does she show you his letters?"
"Very often. They are entirely concerned with his daily interviews and efforts on Hurd"s behalf."
"Would you not say," he asked, after another pause, raising his clear grey eyes to her, "that since his arrival here in December Marcella"s whole views and thoughts have been largely--perhaps vitally--influenced by this man?"
Mrs. Boyce had long expected questions of this kind--had, indeed, often marvelled and cavilled that Aldous had not asked them weeks before. Now that they were put to her she was, first of all, anxious to treat them with common sense, and as much plain truth as might be fair to both parties. The perpetual emotion in which Marcella lived tired and oppressed the mother. For herself she asked to see things in a dry light. Yet she knew well that the moment was critical. Her feeling was more mixed than it had been. On the whole it was indignantly on Aldous"s side--with qualifications and impatiences, however.
She took up her embroidery again before she answered him. In her opinion the needle is to the woman what the cigarette is to the diplomatist.
"Yes, certainly," she said at last. "He has done a great deal to form her opinions. He has made her both read and think on all those subjects she has so long been fond of talking about."
She saw Aldous wince; but she had her reasons for being plain with him.
"Has there been nothing else than that in it?" said Aldous, in an odd voice.
Mrs. Boyce tried no evasions. She looked at him straight, her slight, energetic head, with its pale gold hair lit up by the March sun behind her.
"I do not know," she said calmly; "that is the real truth. I _think_ there is nothing else. But let me tell you what more I think."
Aldous laid his hand on hers for an instant. In his pity and liking for her he had once or twice allowed himself this quasi-filial freedom.
"If you would," he entreated.
"Leave Marcella quite alone--for the present. She is not herself--not normal, in any way. Nor will she be till this dreadful thing is over.
But when it is over, and she has had time to recover a little, _then_"--her thin voice expressed all the emphasis it could--"_then_ a.s.sert yourself! Ask her that question you have asked me--and get your answer."
He understood. Her advice to him, and the tone of it, implied that she had not always thought highly of his powers of self-defence in the past.
But there was a proud and sensitive instinct in him which both told him that he could not have done differently and forbade him to explain.
"You have come from London to-day?" said Mrs. Boyce, changing the subject. All intimate and personal conversation was distasteful to her, and she admitted few responsibilities. Her daughter hardly counted among them.
"Yes; London is hard at work cabinet-making," he said, trying to smile.
"I must get back to-night."
"I don"t know how you could be spared," said Mrs. Boyce.
He paused; then he broke out: "When a man is in the doubt and trouble I am, he must be spared. Indeed, since the night of the trial, I feel as though I had been of very little use to any human being."
He spoke simply, but every word touched her. What an inconceivable entanglement the whole thing was! Yet she was no longer merely contemptuous of it.
"Look!" she said, lifting a bit of black stuff from the ground beside the chair which held the envelope; "she is already making the mourning for the children. I can see she despairs."
He made a sound of horror.
"Can you do nothing?" he cried reproachfully. "To think of her dwelling upon this--nothing but this, day and night--and I, banished and powerless!"
He buried his head in his hands.
"No, I can do nothing," said Mrs. Boyce, deliberately. Then, after a pause, "You do not imagine there is any chance of success for her?"
He looked up and shook his head.
"The Radical papers are full of it, as you know. Wharton is managing it with great ability, and has got some good supporters in the House. But I happened to see the judge the day before yesterday, and I certainly gathered from him that the Home Office was likely to stand firm. There may be some delay. The new ministry will not kiss hands till Sat.u.r.day.
But no doubt it will be the first business of the new Home Secretary.--By the way, I had rather Marcella did not hear of my seeing Judge Cartwright," he added hastily--almost imploringly. "I could not bear that she should suppose--"
Mrs. Boyce thought to herself indignantly that she never could have imagined such a man in such a plight.
"I must go," he said, rising. "Will you tell her from me," he added slowly, "that I could never have believed she would be so unkind as to let me come down from London to see her, and send me away empty--without a word?"
"Leave it to my discretion," said Mrs. Boyce, smiling and looking up.
"Oh, by the way, she told me to thank you. Mr. Wharton, in his letter this morning, mentioned that you had given him two introductions which were important to him. She specially wished you to be thanked for it."
His exclamation had a note of impatient contempt that Mrs. Boyce was genuinely glad to hear. In her opinion he was much too apt to forget that the world yields itself only to the "violent."
He walked away from the house without once looking back. Marcella, from, her window, watched him go.
"How _could_ she see him?" she asked herself pa.s.sionately, both then and on many other occasions during these rushing, ghastly days. His turn would come, and it should be amply given him. But _now_ the very thought of that half-hour in Lord Maxwell"s library threw her into wild tears.
The time for entreaty--for argument--was gone by, so far as he was concerned. He might have been her champion, and would not. She threw herself recklessly, madly into the encouragement and support of the man who had taken up the task which, in her eyes, should have been her lover"s. It had become to her a _fight_--with society, with the law, with Aldous--in which her whole nature was absorbed. In the course of the fight she had realised Aldous"s strength, and it was a bitter offence to her.