Before he left the room he came back to her, put his arm round her shoulders and kissed her hair. She did not raise her head or say anything. But when he had gone she looked up with a sudden fierce sob, took the photograph from its place, and thrust it angrily into the drawer in front of her. Afterwards she sat for some minutes, motionless, with her handkerchief at her lips, trying to choke down the tears that had seized her. And last of all, with trembling fingers, she took out the picture again, wrapped it in some soft tissue paper that lay near, as though propitiating it, and once more put it out of sight.
What had made her first ask Marcella for it, and then place it on her table where George might, nay, must see it? Some vague wish, no doubt, to "make up"; to punish herself, while touching him. But the recollection of him, bending over the picture, tortured her, gripped her at the heart for many a day afterwards. She let it be seen no more. Yet that week she wrote more fully, more incoherently, more piteously to Marcella than ever before. She talked, not without bitterness and injustice, of her bringing up, asked what she should read, spread out her puzzles with the poor, or with her household--half angrily, as though she were accusing someone.
For the first time, as it were, she was seeking a teacher in the art of living. And though the tone was still querulous, she knew, and Marcella presently dared to guess, that the ugly house on the hill had in truth ceased to be in the least dull or burdensome to her. George went in and out of it. And for the woman that has come to hunger for her husband"s step, there is no more ennui.
Letty indeed hardly knew the strength of her own position. The reading of Lady Maxwell"s letters to his wife had cleared a number of relics and fragments from George"s mind. The day of pa.s.sion was done.
Yes!--but to see her frequently, to be brought back into any of the old social or political relations to her and Maxwell, from this his pride shrank no less than his conscience. Yet there was a large party in his const.i.tuency, and belonging to it some of the men whose probity and intelligence he had come to rate most highly, who were pressing him hard not to resign in February, and, indeed, not to resign at all. The few public meetings he had so far addressed had been stormy indeed, but on the whole decidedly friendly to him, and it was urged that he must at least present himself for re-election, in which case his expenses should be borne, and he should be left as unpledged as possible. Since the pa.s.sage of the Bill Fontenoy"s reactionary movement had lost ground largely in the const.i.tuency; and the position of independent member with a general leaning to the Government was no doubt easily open to George Tressady.
But his whole soul shrank from such a renewal of the effort of politics--probably because of that something in him, that enfeebling, paralysing something, which in all directions made him really prefer the half to the whole, and see barriers in the way of all enthusiasms.
Nevertheless, the arguments he had to meet, and the kind persuasions he had to rebut, made these weeks all the more trying to him.
The second week of December came, the beginning of the end so far as the strike was concerned. The men"s resources were exhausted; the masters stood unbroken. They had met the men in a joint committee; but they had steadily refused arbitration from outside. At the beginning of this week, rioting broke out in a district where the Union had least strength, caused, no doubt, by the rage of impending failure. By the middle of the following week, men were going in here and there, and the stampede of defeat had begun.
George, pa.s.sing through the pinched and lowering faces that lined the village, hated the triumph of his cla.s.s. On the 21st, he rode over to a neighbouring town, where local committees, both of masters and men, were sitting, to see if there was any final news as to the pits of his own valley.
About eight o"clock in the evening Letty heard his horse"s hoofs returning. She knew that he was accustomed to ride in the dark, but the rumours of violence and excitement that filled the air had unnerved her, and she had been listening to every sound for some time past.
When the door was open she ran out.
"Yes, I"m late," said George, in answer to her remonstrances; "but it is all right--it was worth waiting for. The thing"s over. Some of the men go down to-morrow week, and the rest as we can find room for them."
"On the masters" terms?"
"Of course--or all but."
She clapped her hands.
"Oh, for goodness" sake, don"t!" he said, as he hung up his hat, and she, supposing that he was irritable from over-fatigue, managed to overlook the sharpness of his tone.
Their Christmas pa.s.sed in solitude. George, more and more painfully alive to the disadvantages of Ferth as the home of a young woman with a natural love of gaiety, had tried, in spite of their mourning, to persuade Letty to ask some friends to spend Christmas week with them. She had refused, however, and they were still alone when the end of the strike arrived.
The day before the men were to go back to work, George returned late from a last meeting of the employers. Letty had begun dinner, and when he walked into the dining-room she saw at once that some unusual excitement or strain had befallen him.
"Let me have some food!" was all he would say in answer to her first questions, and she let him alone. When the servants were gone he looked up.
"I have had a shindy with Burrows, dear--rather a bad one. But that"s all. I walked down to the station with Ashton"--Ashton was a neighbouring magistrate and coal-owner--"and there we found Valentine Burrows. Two or three friends were in charge of him, and it has been given out lately that he has been suffering from nervous breakdown, owing to his exertions. All that I could see was that he was drunker than usual--no doubt to drown defeat. Anyway, directly he saw me he made a scene--foamed and shouted. According to him, I am at the bottom of the men"s defeat. It is all my wild-beast delight in the sight of suffering,--my love of "fattening on the misery of the collier,"--my charming villanies of all sorts--that are responsible for everything.
Altogether he reached a fine flight! Then he got violent--tried to get at me with his k.n.o.bbed stick. Ashton and I, and the men with him, succeeded in quelling him without bothering the police.--I don"t think anything more will come of it."
And he stretched out his hand to some salted almonds, helping himself with particular deliberation.
After dinner, however, he lay down on a sofa in Letty"s sitting-room, obliged to confess himself worn out. She made him comfortable, and after she had given him a cushion, she suddenly bent over him from behind and kissed him.
"Come here!" he said, with a smile, throwing up his hand to catch her.
But with an odd blush and conscious look, she eluded him.
When, a little later, she came to sit by him with some needle-work she found him restless and inclined to talk.
"I wonder if we are always to live in this state of war for one"s bread and b.u.t.ter!" he said, impatiently throwing down a newspaper he had been reading. "It doesn"t tend to make life agreeable--does it?
Yet what on earth--"
He threw back his head, with a stiff protesting air, staring across the room.
Letty had the sudden impression that he was not talking to her at all, but to some third person, unseen.
"_Either_ capital gets its fair remuneration"--he went on in an argumentative voice--"and ability its fair wages--_or_ the Marxian state, labour-notes, and the rest of it. There is no half-way house--absolutely none. As for me, I am not going to lend my capital for nothing--nor to give my superintendence for nothing. And I don"t ask exorbitant pay for either. It is quite simple. My conscience is quite clear."
"I should think so!" said Letty, resentfully. "I wonder whether Marcella--is all for the men? She has never mentioned the strike in her letters."
As the Christian name slipped out, she flushed, and he was conscious of a curious start. But the breaking through of a long reticence was deliberate on Letty"s part.
"Very likely she is all for the men," he said drily, after a pause. "She never could take a strike calmly. Her instinct always was to catch hold of any stick that could beat the employers--Watton and I used often to tease her about it."
He threw himself back against the sofa, with a little laugh that was musical in Letty"s ear. It was the first time that Lady Maxwell"s name had been mentioned between them in this trivial, ordinary way. The young wife sat alert and straight at her work, her cheek still pink, her eyes bright.
But after a silence, George suddenly sprang up to pace the little room, and she heard him say, under his breath, "_But who am I, that I should be coercing them and trampling on them!--men old enough to be my father--driving them down to-morrow--while I sleep--for a dog"s wage!_"
"George, what is the matter with you?" she cried, looking at him in real anxiety.
"Nothing! _nothing!_--Darling, who"s ill? I saw the old doctor on the road home, and he threw me a word as he pa.s.sed about having been here--looked quite jolly over it. What"s wrong--one of the servants?"
Letty put down her work upon her knee and her hands upon it. She grew red and pale; then she turned away from him, pressing her face into the back of her chair.
He flew to her, and she murmured in his ear.
What she said was by no means all sweetness. There was mingled with it much terror and some anger. Letty was not one of the women who take maternity as a matter of course.
But emotion and natural feeling had their way. George was dissolved in joy. He threw himself at her feet, resting his head against her knee.
"If he doesn"t have your eyes and hair I"ll disinherit him," he said, with a gaiety which seemed to have effaced all his fatigue.
"I don"t want him," was her pettish reply; "but if _she_ has your chin, I"ll put her out to nurse. Oh! how I hate the thought of it!" and she shuddered.
He caught her hand, comforting her. Then, putting up both his own, he drew her down to him.
"After all, little woman, it hasn"t turned out so badly?" he said in her ear, with sad appeal. Their lips met, trembling. Suddenly Letty broke into pa.s.sionate weeping. George sprang up, gathered her upon his knee, and they sat for long, in silence, clinging to each other.
At last Letty drew back from him, pushing a hand against his shoulder.
"You know--you didn"t care a bit for me--when you married me," she said, half bitter, half crying.
"Didn"t I? And you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.
"Oh! I don"t remember!" she said hurriedly, and dropped her face on his coat again.
"Well, we are going to care for each other," he said in a low voice, after a pause. "That"s what matters now, isn"t it?"