"Yes--" said Marcella, simply. Then, after a pause, she added, "It will be all the harder after this time in the North. Everything will have come too late."
There was a silence; then Betty said, not without sheepishness, "Frank"s all right."
Marcella smiled. She knew that little Betty had been much troubled by Frank"s tempers of late, and had been haunted by some quite serious qualms about his loyalty to Maxwell and the Bill. Marcella had never shared them. Frank Leven had not grit enough to make a scandal and desert a chief. But Betty"s ambition had forced the boy into a life that was not his; had divided him from the streams and fields, from the country gentleman"s duties and pleasures, that were his natural sphere. In this hot town game of politics, this contest of brains and ambitions, he was out of place--was, in fact, wasting both time and capacity. Betty would have to give way, or the comedy of a lovers" quarrel might grow to something ill-matched with the young grace and mirth of such a pair of handsome children.
Marcella meant to tell her friend all this in due time. Now she could only wait in silence, listening for every sound, Betty"s soft fingers clasping her own, the wind as it blew from the bridge cooling her hot brow.
"Here they are!" said Betty.
They turned to the open doorway of the House. A rush of feet and voices approached, and the various groups on the Terrace hurried to meet it.
"Just saved! By George, what a squeak!" said a man"s voice in the distance; and at the same moment Maxwell touched his wife on the shoulder.
"A majority of ten! n.o.body knew how it had gone till the last moment."
She put up her face to him, leaning against him.
"I suppose it means we can"t pull through?" He bent to her.
"I should think so. Darling, don"t take it to heart so much!"
In the darkness he felt the touch of her lips on his hand. Then she turned, with a white cheek and smiling mouth, to meet the greetings and rueful congratulations of the friends that were crowding about them.
The Terrace was soon a moving ma.s.s of people, eagerly discussing the details of the division. The lamps, blown a little by the wind, threw uncertain lights on faces and figures, as they pa.s.sed and re-pa.s.sed between the ma.s.s of building on the one hand and the wavering darkness of the river on the other. To Marcella, as she stood talking to person after person--talking she hardly knew what--the whole scene was a dim bewilderment, whence emerged from time to time faces or movements of special significance.
Now it was Dowson, the Home Secretary, advancing to greet her, with his grey shaven face, eyelids somewhat drooped, and the cool, ambiguous look of one not quite certain of his reception. He had been for long a close ally of Maxwell"s. Marcella had thought him a true friend. But certainly, in his conduct of the Bill of late there had been a good deal to suggest the att.i.tude of a man determined to secure himself a retreat, and uncertain how far to risk his personal fortunes on a doubtful issue. So that she found herself talking to him with a new formality, in the tone of those who have been friends, yet begin to foresee the time when they may be antagonists.
Or, again, it was Fontenoy--Fontenoy"s great head and overhanging brows, thrown suddenly into light against the windy dusk. He was walking with a young viscount whose curls, clothes, and shoulders were alike unapproachable by the ordinary man. This youth could not forbear an exultant twitching of the lip as he pa.s.sed the Maxwells. Fontenoy ceremoniously took off his hat. Marcella had a momentary impression of the pa.s.sionate, bull-like force of the man, before he disappeared into the crowd. His eye had wavered as it met hers. Out of courtesy to the woman he had tried not to _look_ his triumph.
And now it was quite another face--thin, delicately marked, a noticeable chin, an outstretched hand.
She was astonished by her own feeling of pleasure.
"Tell me," she said quickly, as she moved eagerly forward--"tell me! is it about what you expected?"
They turned towards the river. George Tressady hung over the wall beside her.
"Yes. I thought it might be anything from eight to twenty."
"I suppose Lord Fontenoy now thinks the end quite certain."
"He may. But the end is not certain!"
"But what can prevent it! The despairing thing for us is, that if the country had been roused earlier, everything might have been different.
But now the House--"
"Has got out of hand? It may be; but I find a great many people affected by Lord Maxwell"s speeches in the North, and his reception there.
To-day"s result was inevitable, but, if I"m not mistaken, we shall now see a number of new combinations."
The sensitive face became in a moment all intelligence. She played the politician, and cross-examined him. He hesitated. What he was doing was already a treachery. But he only hesitated to give way. They lingered by the wall together, discussing possibilities and persons; and when Maxwell at last turned from his own conversations to suggest to his wife that it was time to go home, she came forward with a mien of animation that surprised him. He greeted Tressady with friendliness, and then, as though a thought had struck him, suddenly drew the young man aside.
"Ancoats, of course," said George to himself; and Ancoats it was.
Maxwell, without preliminaries, and taking his companion"s knowledge of the story for granted--no doubt on Fontenoy"s information--said a few words about the renewal of the difficulty. Did he not think it had all begun again? Yes, George had some reason to think so. "If you can do anything for us--"
"Of course! but what can I do? As we all know, Ancoats does not sit still to be scolded."
Their colloquy lasted only a minute or two; yet when it was over, and the Maxwells had gone, George was left with a vivid impression of the great man"s quiet strength and magnanimity. No one could have guessed from his anxious and well-considered talk on this private matter that he was in the very heat of a political struggle that must affect all his own fortunes. Tressady had been accustomed to spend his wit on the heavier sides of Maxwell"s character. To-night, he said to himself, half in a pa.s.sion, grudging the confession, that it was not wonderful she loved him!
She! The remembrance of how her whole nature had brightened from its cloud as he drew out for her his own forecast of what might still happen; the sweet confidence and charm that she had shown him; the intimacy of the tone she had allowed between them; the mingling all through of a delicate abstinence from anything touching on his own personal position, with an unspoken recognition of it--the impulse of a generosity that could not help rewarding what seemed to it the yielding of an adversary; these things filled him with a delicious pleasure as he walked home. In a hundred directions--political, social, spiritual--the old horizons of the mind seemed to be lightening and expanding. The cynical, indifferent temper of his youth was breaking down; the whole man was more intelligent, capable, tender. Yet what sadness and restlessness of soul as soon as the brief moment of joy had come and gone!
A few afternoons of Supply encroached upon the eight days that still remained before the last clause of the Bill came to a division. But the whole eight days, nevertheless, were filled with the new permutations and combinations which Tressady had foreseen. The Government carried the Stepney election, and in other quarters the effects of the speechmaking in the North began to be visible. Rumours of the syndicate already formed to take over large numbers of workshops in both the Jewish and Gentile quarters of the East End, and of the hours and wages that were likely to obtain in the new factories, were driving a considerable ma.s.s of working-cla.s.s opinion, which had hitherto held aloof, straight for the Government, and splitting up much of that which had been purely hostile.
Nevertheless, the situation in the House itself was hardly changing with the change in the country. The Socialist members very soon developed the proposal to make the landlords responsible for the carrying-out of the new Act into a furious general attack on the landlords of London. Their diatribes kept up the terrors which had already cost the Government so many men. It was not possible, not seemly, to yield, as Maxwell was yielding, all along the line to these fellows!
But the Old Liberals, or the New Whigs, as George had expected, were restless. They felt the country, and they had no affection for landlords as such. Did a man arise who could give them a lead, there was no saying how soon they might not break away from the Fontenoy combination.
Fontenoy felt it, and prowled among them like a Satan, urging them to complete their deed, to give the _coup de grace_.
On the Wednesday afternoon before the Friday on which he thought the final vote would be taken, George let himself into his own house about six o"clock, thankful to feel that he had a quiet evening before him. He had been wandering about the House of Commons and its appurtenances all day, holding colloquies with this person and that, unable to see his way--to come to any decision. And, as was now usual, he and Fontenoy had been engaged in steering out of each other"s way as much as possible.
As he went upstairs he noticed a letter lying on the step. He took it up, and found an open note, which he read, at first without thinking of it:
"My dear Lady,--Chatsworth can"t be done. I have thrown my flies with great skill, but--no go! I don"t seem to have influence enough in that quarter. But I have various other plans on hand. You shall have a jolly autumn, if I can manage it. There are some Scotch invitations I can certainly get you--and I should like to show you the ways of those parts. By the way, I hope your husband shoots decently. People are very particular. And you really must consult me about your gowns--I"m deuced clever at that sort of thing! I shall come to-morrow, when I have packed off my family to the country. Don"t know why G.o.d made families!
"Yours always,
"CATHEDINE."
"George! is that you?" cried Letty from above him, in a voice half angry, half hesitating; "and--and--that"s my note. Please give it me at once."
He finished it under her eyes, then handed it to her with formal courtesy. They walked into the drawing-room, and George shut the door. He was very pale, and Letty quailed a little.
"So Cathedine has been introducing us into society," he said, "and advising you as to your gowns. Was that--quite necessary--do you think?"
"It"s very simple what he has been doing," was her angry reply. "You never take any pains to make life amusing to me, so I must look elsewhere, if I want society--that"s all."
"And it never occurs to you that you are thereby incurring an unseemly obligation to a man whom I dislike, whom I have warned you against, who bears everywhere an evil name? You think I am likely to enjoy--to put up with, even--the position of being asked on sufferance--as your appendage--provided I "shoot decently"?"
His tone of scorn, his slight figure, imperiously drawn up, sent her a challenge, which she answered with sullen haste.
"That"s all nonsense, of course! And he wouldn"t be rude to you if you weren"t always rude to him."
"Rude to him!" He smiled. "But now, let us get to the bottom of this thing. Did Cathedine get us the cards for Clarence House--and that Goodwood invitation?"
Letty made no answer. She stared at him defiantly, twisting and untwisting the ribbons of her blue dress.
George reddened hotly. His personal pride in matters of social manners was one of his strongest characteristics.
"Let me beg you, at any rate, to write and tell Lord Cathedine that we will not trouble him for any more of these kind offices. And, moreover, I shall not go to any of these houses in the autumn unless I am quite certain he has had nothing to do with it."