"When do you speak?"
The question fell out abruptly, and took George by surprise.
"I? On Monday, I believe, if I get my turn. But I fear the British Empire will go on if I don"t!"
She threw a glance of scrutiny at his thin, whimsical face, with its fair moustache and sunburnt skin.
"I hear you are a good speaker," she said simply. "And you are entirely with Lord Fontenoy?"
He bowed lightly, his hands on his sides.
"You"ll agree our case was well put? The worst of it--"
Then he stopped. He saw that Lady Maxwell had ceased to listen to him.
She turned her head towards the door, and, without even saying good-bye to him, she hurried away from him towards the further end of the room.
"Maxwell, I see!" said Tressady to himself, with a shrug, as he returned to his seat. "Not flattering--but rather pretty, all the same!"
He was thinking of the quick change that had remade the face while he was talking to her--a change as lovely as it was unconscious.
Lord Maxwell, indeed, had just entered the dining-room in search of his wife, and he and she now left it together, while the rest of the Leven party gradually dispersed. Letty also announced that she must go home.
"Let me just go back into the House and see what is going on," said George. "Ten to one I sha"n"t be wanted, and I could see you home."
He hurried off, only to return in a minute with the news that the debate was given up to a succession of superfluous people, and he was free, at any rate for an hour. Letty, Miss Tulloch, and he accordingly made their way to Palace Yard. A bright moon shone in their faces as they emerged into the open air, which was still mild and spring-like, as it had been all the week.
"I say--send Miss Tulloch home in a cab!" George pleaded in Letty"s ear, "and walk with me a bit. Come and look at the moon over the river. I will bring you back to the bridge and put you in a cab."
Letty looked astonished and demure. "Aunt Charlotte would be shocked," she said.
George grew impatient, and Letty, pleased with his impatience, at last yielded. Tully, the most complaisant of chaperons, was put into a hansom and despatched.
As the pair reached the entrance of Palace Yard they were overtaken by a brougham, which drew up an instant in the gateway itself, till it should find an opening in the traffic outside.
"Look!" said George, pressing Letty"s arm.
She looked round hurriedly, and, as the lamps of the gateway shone into the carriage, she caught a vivid glimpse of the people inside it. Their faces were turned towards each other as though in intimate conversation--that was all. The lady"s hands were crossed on her knee; the man held a despatch-box. In a minute they were gone; but both Letty and George were left with the same impression--the sense of something exquisite surprised. It had already visited George that evening, only a few minutes earlier, in connection with the same woman"s face.
Letty laughed, rather consciously.
George looked down upon her as he guided her through the gate.
"Some people seem to find it pleasant to be together!" he said, with a vibration in his voice. "But why did we look?" he added, discontentedly.
"How could we help it, you silly boy?"
They walked to wards the bridge and down the steps, happy in each other, and freshened by the night breeze. Over the river the moon, hung full and white, and beneath it everything--the silver tracks on the water, the blaze of light at Charing Cross Station, the lamps on Westminster Bridge and in the pa.s.sing steamers, a train of barges, even the darkness of the Surrey sh.o.r.e--had a gentle and poetic air. The vast city had, as it were, veiled her greatness and her tragedy; she offered herself kindly and protectingly to these two--to their happiness and their youth.
George made his companion wait beside the parapet and look, while he himself drew in the air with a sort of hunger.
"To think of the hours we spend in this climate," he said, "caged up in abominable places like the House of Commons!"
The traveller"s distaste for the monotony of town and indoor life spoke in his vehemence. Letty raised her eyebrows.
"I am very glad of my furs, thank you! You seem to forget that it is February."
"Never mind!--since Monday it has had the feel of April. Did you see my mother to-day?"
"Yes. She caught me just after luncheon, and we talked for an hour."
"Poor darling! I ought to have been there to protect you. But she vowed she would have her say about that house."
He looked down upon her, trying to see her expression in the shifting light. He had gone through a disagreeable little scene with his mother at breakfast. She had actually lectured him on the rashness of taking the Brook Street house!--he understanding the whole time that what the odd performance really meant was, that if he took it he would have a smaller margin of income wherefrom to supplement her allowance.
"Oh, it was all right!" said Letty, composedly. "She declared we should get into difficulties at once, that I could have no idea of the value of money, that you always _had_ been extravagant, that everybody would be astonished at our doing such a thing, etcetera, etcetera. I _think_--you don"t mind?--I think she cried a little. But she wasn"t really very unhappy."
"What did you say?"
"Well, I suggested that when we were married, we and she should both set up account-books; and I promised faithfully that if she would let us see hers, we would let her see ours."
George threw back his head with a gurgle of laughter.
"Well?"
"She was afraid," said Letty, demurely, "that I didn"t take things seriously enough. Then I asked her to come and see my gowns."
"And that, I suppose, appeased her?"
"Not at all. She turned up her nose at everything, by way of punishing me. You see, she had on a new-Worth--the third since Christmas. My poor little trousseau rags had no chance."
"H"m!" said George, meditatively. "I wonder how my mamma is going to manage when we are married," he added, after a pause.
Letty made no reply. She was walking firmly and briskly; her eyes, full of a sparkling decision, looked straight before her; her little mouth was close set. Meanwhile through George"s mind there pa.s.sed a number of fragmentary answers to his own question. His feeling towards his mother was wholly abnormal; he had no sense of any unseemliness in the conversation about her which was gradually growing common between himself and Letty; and he meant to draw strict lines in the future. At the same time, there was the tie of old habit, and of that uneasy and unwelcome responsibility with regard to her which had descended upon him at the time of his father"s death. He could not honestly regard himself as an affectionate son; but the filial relationship, even in its most imperfect aspect, has a way of imposing itself.
"Ah, well! I daresay we shall pull through," he said, dismissing the familiar worry with a long breath. "Why, how far we have come!" he added, looking back at Charing Cross and the Westminster towers. "And how extraordinarily mild it is! We can"t turn back yet, and you"ll be tired if I race you on in this way. Look, Letty, there"s a seat! Would you be afraid--just five minutes?"
Letty looked doubtful.
"It"s so absurdly late. George, you _are_ funny! Suppose somebody came by who knew us?"
He opened his eyes.
"And why not? But see! there isn"t a carriage, and hardly a person, in sight. Just a minute!"
Most unwillingly Letty let herself be persuaded. It seemed to her a foolish and extravagant thing to do; and there was now no need for either folly or extravagance. Since her engagement she had dropped a good many of the small audacities of the social sort she had so freely allowed herself before it. It was as though, indeed, now that these audacities had served their purpose, some stronger and perhaps inherited instincts emerged in her, obscuring the earlier self. George was sometimes astonished by an ultra-conventional note, of which certainly he had heard nothing in their first days of intimacy at Malford.
However, she sat down beside him, protesting. But he had no sooner stolen her hand, than the moonlight showed her a dark, absent look creeping over his face. And to her amazement he began to talk about the House of Commons, about the Home Secretary"s speech, of all things in the world!
He seemed to be harking back to Mr. Dowson"s arguments, to some of the stories the Home Secretary had told of those wretched people who apparently enjoy dying of overwork and phosphorus, and white-lead, who positively will die of them, unless the inspectors are always harrying them. He still held her hand, but she saw he was not thinking of her; and a sudden pique rose in her small mind. Generally, she accepted his love-making very coolly--just as it came, or did not come. But to-night she asked herself with irritation--for what had he led her into his silly escapade, but to make love to her? And now here were her fingers slipping out of his, while he harangued her on things she knew and cared nothing about, in a voice and manner he might have addressed to anybody!