But Mr. Lane"s loud friendly voice broke in from behind.
"My dear Miss Boyce!--we can"t possibly allow it--no! no--just half an hour--while they bring us our coffee--to do your homage, you know, to the terrace--and the river--and the moon!--And then--if you don"t want to go back to the House for the division, we will see you safely into your cab. Look at the moon!--and the tide"--they had come to the wide door opening on the terrace--"aren"t they doing their very best for you?"
Marcella looked behind her in despair. _Where_ was Edith? Far in the rear!--and fully occupied apparently with two or three pleasant companions. She could not help herself. She was carried on, with Mr.
Lane chatting beside her--though the sight of the shining terrace, with its moonlit crowd of figures, breathed into her a terror and pain she could hardly control.
"Come and look at the water," she said to Mr. Lane; "I would rather not walk up and down if you don"t mind."
He thought she was tired, and politely led her through the sitting or promenading groups till once more she was leaning over the parapet, now trying to talk, now to absorb herself in the magic of bridge, river, and sky, but in reality listening all the time with a shrinking heart for the voices and the footfalls that she dreaded. Lady Winterbourne, above all! How unlucky! It was only that morning that she had received a forwarded letter from that old friend, asking urgently for news and her address.
"Well, how did you like the speech to-night--_the_ speech?" said Mr.
Lane, a genial Gladstonian member, more heavily weighted with estates than with ideas. "It was splendid, wasn"t it?--in the way of speaking.
Speeches like that are a safety-valve--that"s my view of it. Have "em out--all these ideas--get "em discussed!"--with a good-humoured shake of the head for emphasis. "Does n.o.body any harm and may do good. I can tell you, Miss Boyce, the House of Commons is a capital place for taming these clever young men!--you must give them their head--and they make excellent fellows after a bit. Why--who"s this?--My dear Lady Winterbourne!--this _is_ a sight for sair een!"
And the portly member with great effusion grasped the hand of a stately lady in black, whose abundant white hair caught the moonlight.
"_Marcella_!" cried a woman"s voice.
Yes--there he was!--close behind Lady Winterbourne. In the soft darkness he and his party had run upon the two persons talking over the wall without an idea--a suspicion.
She hurriedly withdrew herself from Lady Winterbourne, hesitated a second, then held out her hand to him. The light was behind him. She could not see his face in the darkness; but she was suddenly and strangely conscious of the whole scene--of the great dark building with its lines of fairy-lit gothic windows--the blue gulf of the river crossed by lines of wavering light--the swift pa.s.sage of a steamer with its illuminated saloon and crowded deck--of the wonderful mixture of moonlight and sunset in the air and sky--of this dark figure in front of her.
Their hands touched. Was there a murmured word from him? She did not know; she was too agitated, too unhappy to hear it if there was. She threw herself upon Lady Winterbourne, in whom she divined at once a tremor almost equal to her own.
"Oh! do come with me--come away!--I want to talk to you!" she said incoherently under her breath, drawing Lady Winterbourne with a strong hand.
Lady Winterbourne yielded, bewildered, and they moved along the terrace.
"Oh, my dear, my dear!" cried the elder lady--"to think of finding _you_ here! How astonishing--how--how dreadful! No!--I don"t mean that. Of course you and he must meet--but it was only yesterday he told me he had never seen you again--since--and it gave me a turn. I was very foolish just now. There now--stay here a moment--and tell me about yourself."
And again they paused by the river, the girl glancing nervously behind her as though she were in a company of ghosts. Lady Winterbourne recovered herself, and Marcella, looking at her, saw the old tragic severity of feature and mien blurred with the same softness, the same delicate tremor. Marcella clung to her with almost a daughter"s feeling.
She took up the white wrinkled hand as it lay on the parapet, and kissed it in the dark so that no one saw.
"I _am_ glad to see you again," she said pa.s.sionately, "so glad!"
Lady Winterbourne was surprised and moved.
"But you have never written all these months, you unkind child! And I have heard so little of you--your mother never seemed to know. When will you come and see me--or shall I come to you? I can"t stay now, for we were just going; my daughter, Ermyntrude Welwyn, has to take some one to a ball. How _strange_"--she broke off--"how very strange that you and he should have met to-night! He goes off to Italy to-morrow, you know, with Lord Maxwell."
"Yes, I had heard," said Marcella, more steadily. "Will you come to tea with me next week?--Oh, I will write.--And we must go too--where _can_ my friend be?"
She looked round in dismay, and up and down the terrace for Edith.
"I will take you back to the Lanes, anyway," said Lady Winterbourne; "or shall we look after you?"
"No! no! Take me back to the Lanes."
"Mamma, are you coming?" said a voice like a softened version of Lady Winterbourne"s. Then something small and thin ran forward, and a girl"s voice said piteously:
"_Dear_ Lady Winterbourne, my frock and my hair take so long to do! _I_ shall be cross with my maid, and look like a fiend. Ermyntrude will be sorry she ever knew me. _Do_ come!"
"Don"t cry, Betty. I certainly shan"t take you if you do!" said Lady Ermyntrude, laughing. "Mamma, is this Miss Boyce--_your_ Miss Boyce?"
She and Marcella shook hands, and they talked a little, Lady Ermyntrude under cover of the darkness looking hard and curiously at the tall stranger whom, as it happened, she had never seen before. Marcella had little notion of what she was saying. She was far more conscious of the girlish form hanging on Lady Winterbourne"s arm than she was of her own words, of "Betty"s" beautiful soft eyes--also shyly and gravely fixed upon herself--under that marvellous cloud of fair hair; the long, pointed chin; the whimsical little face.
"Well, none of _you_ are any good!" said Betty at last, in a tragic voice. "I shall have to walk home my own poor little self, and "ask a p"leeceman." Mr. Raeburn!"
He disengaged himself from a group behind and came--with no alacrity.
Betty ran up to him.
"Mr. Raeburn! Ermyntrude and Lady Winterbourne are going to sleep here, if you don"t mind making arrangements. But _I_ want a hansom."
At that very moment Marcella caught sight of Edith strolling along towards her with a couple of members, and chatting as though the world had never rolled more evenly.
"Oh! there she is--there is my friend!" cried Marcella to Lady Winterbourne. "Good-night--good-night!"
She was hurrying off when she saw Aldous Raeburn was standing alone a moment. The exasperated Betty had made a dart from his side to "collect"
another straying member of the party.
An impulse she could not master scattered her wretched discomfort--even her chafing sense of being the observed of many eyes. She walked up to him.
"Will you tell me about Lord Maxwell?" she said in a tremulous hurry. "I am so sorry he is ill--I hadn"t heard--I--"
She dared not look up. Was that _his_ voice answering?
"Thank you. We have been very anxious about him; but the doctors to-day give a rather better report. We take him abroad to-morrow."
"Marcella! at last!" cried Edith Craven, catching hold of her friend; "you lost me? Oh, nonsense; it was all the other way. But look, there is Mr. Wharton coming out. I must go--come and say good-night--everybody is departing."
Aldous Raeburn lifted his hat. Marcella felt a sudden rush of humiliation--pain--sore resentment. That cold, strange tone--those unwilling words!--She had gone up to him--as undisciplined in her repentance as she had been in aggression--full of a pa.s.sionate yearning to make friends--somehow to convey to him that she "was sorry," in the old child"s phrase which her self-willed childhood had used so little.
There could be no misunderstanding possible! He of all men knew best how irrevocable it all was. But why, when life has brought reflection, and you realise at last that you have vitally hurt, perhaps maimed, another human being, should it not be possible to fling conventions aside, and go to that human being with the frank confession which by all the promises of ethics and religion _ought_ to bring peace--peace and a soothed conscience?
But she had been repulsed--put aside, so she took it--and by one of the kindest and most generous of men! She moved along the terrace in a maze, seeing nothing, biting her lip to keep back the angry tears. All that obscure need, that new stirring of moral life within her--which had found issue in this little futile advance towards a man who had once loved her and could now, it seemed, only despise and dislike, her--was beating and swelling stormlike within her. She had taken being loved so easily, so much as a matter of course! How was it that it hurt her now so much to have lost love, and power, and consideration? She had never felt any pa.s.sion for Aldous Raeburn--had taken him lightly and shaken him off with a minimum of remorse. Yet to-night a few cold words from him--the proud manner of a moment--had inflicted a smart upon her she could hardly bear. They had made her feel herself so alone, unhappy, uncared for!
But, on the contrary, she _must_ be happy!--_must_ be loved! To this, and this only, had she been brought by the hard experience of this strenuous year.
"Oh, Mrs. Lane, _be_ an angel!" exclaimed Wharton"s voice. "Just one turn--five minutes! The division will be called directly, and then we will all thank our stars and go to bed!"
In another instant he was at Marcella"s side, bare-headed, radiant, reckless even, as he was wont to be in moments of excitement. He had seen her speak to Raeburn as he came out on the terrace, but his mind was too full for any perception of other people"s situations--even hers.
He was absorbed with himself, and with her, as she fitted his present need. The smile of satisfied vanity, of stimulated ambition, was on his lips; and his good-humour inclined him more than ever to Marcella, and the pleasure of a woman"s company. He pa.s.sed with ease from triumph to homage; his talk now audacious, now confiding, offered her a deference, a flattery, to which, as he was fully conscious, the events of the evening had lent a new prestige.
She, too, in his eyes, had triumphed--had made her mark. His ears were full of the comments made upon her to-night by the little world on the terrace. If it were not for money--_hateful_ money!--what more brilliant wife could be desired for any rising man?
So the five minutes lengthened into ten, and by the time the division was called, and Wharton hurried off, Marcella, soothed, taken out of herself, rescued from the emptiness and forlornness of a tragic moment, had given him more conscious cause than she had ever given him yet to think her kind and fair.