Marcella observed them with an eager interest she could not wholly explain to herself. It was clear that all thought of anything or anybody else had vanished for Frank Leven at the sight of Betty. Marcella guessed, indeed knew, that they had not met for some little time; and she was touched by the agitation and happiness on the boy"s handsome face. But Betty? what was the secret of her kittenish, teasing ways--or was there any secret? She held her little head very high and chattered very fast--but it was not the same chatter that she gave to Marcella, nor, so far as Marcella could judge, to Aldous Raeburn. New elements of character came out in it. It was self-confident, wilful, imperious.
Frank was never allowed to have an opinion; was laughed at before his words were out of his mouth; was generally heckled, played with, and shaken in a way which seemed alternately to enrage and enchant him. In the case of most girls, such a manner would have meant encouragement; but, as it was Betty, no one could be sure. The little thing was a great puzzle to Marcella, who had found unexpected reserves in her. She might talk of her love affairs to Aldous Raeburn; she had done nothing of the sort with her new friend. And in such matters Marcella herself was far more reserved than most modern women.
"Betty!" cried Lady Winterbourne, "I am going on into the next room."
Then in a lower tone she said helplessly to Marcella:
"Do make her come on!"
Marcella perceived that her old friend was in a fidget. Stooping her tall head, she said with a smile:
"But look how she is amusing herself!"
"My dear!--that"s just it! If you only knew how her mother--tiresome woman--has talked to me! And the young man has behaved so beautifully till now--has given neither Ermyntrude nor me any trouble."
Was that why Betty was leading him such a life? Marcella wondered,--then suddenly--was seized with a sick distaste for the whole scene--for Betty"s love affairs--for her own interest in them--for her own self and personality above all. Her great black eyes gazed straight before them, unseeing, over the crowd, the diamonds, the lights; her whole being gave itself to a quick, blind wrestle with some vague overmastering pain, some despair of life and joy to which she could give no name.
She was roused by Betty"s voice:
"Mr. Raeburn! will _you_ tell me who people are? Mr. Leven"s no more use than my fan. Just imagine--I asked him who that lady in the tiara is--and he vows he doesn"t know! Why, it just seems that when you go to Oxford, you leave the wits you had before, behind! And then--of course"--Betty affected a delicate hesitation--"there"s the difficulty of being quite sure that you"ll ever get any new ones!--But there--look!--I"m in despair!--she"s vanished--and I shall _never_ know!"
"One moment!" said Raeburn, smiling, "and I will take you in pursuit.
She has only gone into the tea-room."
His hand touched Marcella"s.
"Just a _little_ better," he said, with a sudden change of look, in answer to Lady Winterbourne"s question. "The account to-night is certainly brighter. They begged me not to come, or I should have been off some days ago. And next week, I am thankful to say, they will be home."
Why should she be standing there, so inhumanly still and silent?--Marcella asked herself. Why not take courage again--join in--talk--show sympathy? But the words died on her lips. After to-night--thank heaven!--she need hardly see him again.
He asked after herself as usual. Then, just as he was turning away with Betty, he came back to her, unexpectedly.
"I should like to tell you about Hallin," he said gently. "His sister writes to me that she is happier about him, and that she hopes to be able to keep him away another fortnight. They are at Keswick."
For an instant there was pleasure in the implication of common ground, a common interest--here if no-where else. Then the pleasure was lost in the smart of her own strange lack of self-government as she made a rather stupid and awkward reply.
Raeburn"s eyes rested on her for a moment. There was in them a flash of involuntary expression, which she did not notice--for she had turned away--which no one saw--except Betty. Then the child followed him to the tea-room, a little pale and pensive.
Marcella looked after them.
In the midst of the uproar about her, the babel of talk fighting against the Hungarian band, which was playing its wildest and loudest in the tea-room, she was overcome by a sudden rush of memory. Her eyes were tracing the pa.s.sage of those two figures through the crowd; the man in his black court suit, stooping his refined and grizzled head to the girl beside him, or turning every now and then to greet an acquaintance, with the manner--cordial and pleasant, yet never quite gay even when he smiled--that she, Marcella, had begun to notice of late as a new thing; the girl lifting her small face to him, the gold of her hair showing against his velvet sleeve. But the inward sense was busy with a number of other impressions, past, and, as it now seemed, incredible.
The little scene when Aldous had given her the pearls, returned so long ago--why! she could see the fire blazing in the Stone Parlour, feel his arm about her!--the drive home after the Gairsley meeting--that poignant moment in his sitting-room the night of the ball--his face, his anxious, tender face, as she came down the wide stairs of the Court towards him on that terrible evening when she pleaded with him and his grandfather in vain:--had these things, incidents, relations, been ever a real part of the living world? Impossible! Why, there he was--not ten yards from her--and yet more irrevocably separate from her than if the Sahara stretched between them. The note of cold distance in his courteous manner put her further from him than the merest stranger.
Marcella felt a sudden terror rush through her as she blindly followed Lady Winterbourne; her limbs trembled under her; she took advantage of a conversation between her companion and the master of the house to sink down for a moment on a settee, where she felt out of sight and notice.
What was this intolerable sense of loss and folly, this smarting emptiness, this rage with herself and her life? She only knew that whereas the touch, the eye of Aldous Raeburn had neither compelled nor thrilled her, so long as she possessed his whole heart and life--_now_--that she had no right to either look or caress; now that he had ceased even to regard her as a friend, and was already perhaps making up that loyal and serious mind of his to ask from another woman the happiness she had denied him; now, when it was absurdly too late, she could--
Could what? Pa.s.sionate, wilful creature that she was!--with that breath of something wild and incalculable surging through the inmost places of the soul, she went through a moment of suffering as she sat pale and erect in her corner--brushed against by silks and satins, chattered across by this person and that--such as seemed to bruise all the remaining joy and ease out of life.
But only a moment! Flesh and blood rebelled. She sprang up from her seat; told herself that she was mad or ill; caught sight of Mr. Lane coming towards them, and did her best by smile and greeting to attract him to her.
"You look very white, my dear Miss Boyce," said that cheerful and fatherly person. "Is it that tiresome arm still? Now, don"t please go and be a heroine any more!"
CHAPTER XIII.
Meanwhile, in the tea-room, Betty was daintily sipping her claret-cup, while Aldous stood by her.
"No," said Betty, calmly, looking straight at the lady in the tiara who was standing by the buffet, "she"s not beautiful, and I"ve torn my dress running after her. There"s only one beautiful person here to-night!"
Aldous found her a seat, and took one himself beside her, in a corner out of the press. But he did not answer her remark.
"Don"t you think so, Mr. Aldous?" said Betty, persisting, but with a little flutter of the pulse.
"You mean Miss Boyce?" he said quietly, as he turned to her.
"Of course!" cried Betty, with a sparkle in her charming eyes; "what _is_ it in her face? It excites me to be near her. One feels that she will just have lived _twice_ as much as the rest of us by the time she comes to the end. You don"t mind my talking of her, Mr. Aldous?"
There was an instant"s silence on his part. Then he said in a constrained voice, looking away from his companion, "I don"t _mind_ it, but I am not going to pretend to you that I find it easy to talk of her."
"It would be a shame of you to pretend anything," said Betty, fervently, "after all I"ve told you! I confessed all my sc.r.a.pes to you, turned out all my rubbish bag of a heart--well, nearly all"--she checked herself with a sudden flush--"And you"ve been as kind to me as any big brother could be. But you"re dreadfully lofty, Mr. Aldous! You keep yourself to yourself. I don"t think it"s fair!"
Aldous laughed.
"My dear Miss Betty, haven"t you found out by now that I am a good listener and a bad talker? I don"t talk of myself or"--he hesitated--"the things that have mattered most to me--because, in the first place, it doesn"t come easy to me--and, in the next, I can"t, you see, discuss my own concerns without discussing other people"s."
"Oh, good gracious!" said Betty, "what you must have been thinking about me! I declare I"ll never tell you anything again!"--and, beating her tiny foot upon the ground, she sat, scarlet, looking down at it.
Aldous made all the smiling excuses he could muster. He had found Betty a most beguiling and attaching little companion, both at the Court in the Easter recess, and during the Italian journey. Her total lack of reserve, or what appeared so, had been first an amazement to him, and then a positive pleasure and entertainment. To make a friend of him--difficult and scrupulous as he was, and now more than ever--a woman must be at the cost of most of the advances. But, after the first evening with him, Betty had made them in profusion, without the smallest demur, though perfectly well aware of her mother"s ambitions. There was a tie of cousinship between them, and a considerable difference of age.
Betty had decided at once that a mother was a dear old goose, and that great friends she and Aldous Raeburn should be--and, in a sense, great friends they were.
Aldous was still propitiating her, when Lady Winterbourne came into the tea-room, followed by Marcella. The elder lady threw a hurried and not very happy glance at the pair in the corner. Marcella appeared to be in animated talk with a young journalist whom Raeburn knew, and did not look their way.
"Just _one_ thing!" said Betty, bending forward and speaking eagerly in Aldous"s ear. "It was all a mistake--wasn"t it? Now I know her I feel sure it was. You don"t--you don"t--really think badly of her?"
Aldous heard her unwillingly. He was looking away from her towards the buffet, when she saw a change in the eyes--a tightening of the lip--a something keen and hostile in the whole face.
"Perhaps Miss Boyce will be less of a riddle to all of us before long!"
he said hastily, as though the words escaped him. "Shall we get out of this very uncomfortable corner?"
Betty looked where he had looked, and saw a young man greeting Marcella with a manner so emphatic and intimate, that the journalist had instantly moved out of his way. The young man had a noticeable pile of fair curls above a very white and rounded forehead.
"Who is that talking to Miss Boyce?" she asked of Aldous; "I have seen him, but I can"t remember the name."
"That is Mr. Wharton, the member for one of our divisions," said Aldous, as he rose from his chair.