Letty, a little fluttered, gave her hand and replied. Lady Maxwell glanced across her at the tall young man, with the fair, irregular face.
George bowed involuntarily, and she slightly responded. Then she was swept on by her own party.
"Have you sent for your carriage?" George heard someone say to her.
"No; I am going home in a hansom. I"ve tired out both the horses to-day. Aldous is going down to the club to see if he can hear anything about Devizes."
"Oh! the election?"
She nodded, then caught sight of her husband at the door beckoning, and hurried on.
"What a head!" said George, looking after her with admiration.
"Yes," said Letty, unwillingly. "It"s the hair that"s so splendid, the long black waves of it. How ridiculous to talk of tiring out her horses--that"s just like her! As though she mightn"t have fifty horses if she liked! Oh, George, there"s our man! Quick, Tully!"
They made their way out. In the press George put his arm half round Letty, shielding her. The touch of her light form, the nearness of her delicate face, enchanted him. When their carriage had rolled away, and he turned homewards along Piccadilly, he walked absently for a time, conscious only of pulsing pleasure.
It was a mild February night. After a long frost, and a grudging thaw, westerly winds were setting in, and Spring could be foreseen. It had been pouring with rain during the concert, but was now fair, the rushing clouds leaving behind them, as they pa.s.sed, great torn s.p.a.ces of blue, where the stars shone.
Gusts of warm moist air swept through the street. As George"s moment of intoxication gradually subsided, he felt the physical charm of the soft buffeting wind. How good seemed all living!--youth and capacity--this roaring mult.i.tudinous London--the future with its chances! This common pleasant chance of marriage amongst them--he was glad he had put out his hand to it. His wife that was to be was no saint and no philosopher. He thanked the fates! He at least asked for neither--on the hearth. "Praise, blame, love, kisses"--for all of those, life with Letty would give scope; yet for none of them in excess. There would be plenty of room left for other things, other pa.s.sions--the pa.s.sion of political power, for instance, the art of dealing with and commanding other men. He, the novice, the beginner, to talk of "commanding!" Yet already he felt his foot upon the ladder. Fontenoy consulted him, and confided in him more and more. In spite of his engagement, he was informing himself rapidly on a hundred questions, and the mental wrestle of every day was exhilarating. Their small group in the House, compact, tireless, audacious, was growing in importance and in the attention it extorted from the public. Never had the whole tribe of factory inspectors shown a more hawk-like, a more inquisitorial, a more intolerable vigilance than during the past twelve months. All the persons concerned with matches and white-lead, with certain chemical or metal-working industries, with "season" dressmaking or tailoring, were up in arms, rallying to Fontenoy"s support with loud wrath and lamentations, claiming to speak not only for themselves, but for their "hands," in the angry protest that things had gone and were going a great deal too far, that trade was simply being hara.s.sed out of the country. A Whiggish group of manufacturers on the Liberal side were all with Fontenoy; while the Socialists, on whom the Government should have been able in such a matter to count to the death, had a special grievance against the Cabinet at the moment, and were sulking in their tents. The attack and defence would probably take two nights; for the Government, admitting the gravity of the a.s.sault, had agreed, in case the debate should not be concluded on Friday, to give up Monday to it. Altogether the affair would make a noise. George would probably get in his maiden speech on the second night, and was, in truth, devoting a great deal of his mind to the prospect; though to Letty he had persistently laughed at it and belittled it, refusing altogether to let her come and hear him.
Then, after Easter would come Maxwell"s Bill, and the fat in the fire!
Poor little Letty!--she would get but few of the bridal observances due to her when _that_ struggle began. But first would come Easter and their wedding; that one short fortnight, when he would carry her off--soft, willing prey!--to the country, draw a "wind-warm s.p.a.ce" about himself and her, and minister to all her whims.
He turned down St. James"s Street, pa.s.sed Marlborough House, and entered the Mall, on the way to Warwick Square, where he was living with his mother.
Suddenly he became aware of a crowd, immediately in front of him, in the direction of Buckingham Palace. A hansom and horse were standing in the roadway; the driver, crimson and hatless, was bandying words with one of the policemen, who had his notebook open, and from the middle of the crowd came a sound of wailing.
He walked up to the edge of the circle.
"Anybody hurt?" he said to the policeman, as the man shut his notebook.
"Little girl run over, sir."
"Can I be of any a.s.sistance? Is there an ambulance coming?"
"No, sir. There was a lady in the hansom. She"s just now bandaging the child"s leg, and says she"ll take it to the hospital."
George mounted on one of the seats under the trees that stood handy, and looked over the heads of the crowd to the s.p.a.ce in the centre which the other policeman was keeping clear. A little girl lay on the ground, or rather on a heap of coats; another girl, apparently about sixteen, stood near her, crying bitterly, and a lady--
"Goodness!" said Tressady; and, jumping down, he touched the policeman on the shoulder.
"Can you get me through? I think I could be some help. That lady"--he spoke a word in the policeman"s ear.
The man touched his hat.
"Stand back, please!" he said, addressing the crowd, "and let this gentleman through."
The crowd divided unwillingly. But at the same moment it parted from the inside, and a little procession came through, both policemen joining their energies to make a free pa.s.sage for it. In front walked the policeman carrying the little girl, a child apparently of about twelve years old. Her right foot lay stiffly across his arm, held straight and still in an impromptu splint of umbrellas and handkerchiefs. Immediately behind came the lady whom George had caught sight of, holding the other girl"s hand in hers. She was bareheaded and in evening dress. Her opera-cloak, with its heavy sable collar, showed beneath it a dress of some light-coloured satin, which had already suffered deplorably from the puddles of the road, and, as she neared the lamp beneath which the cab had stopped, the diamonds on her wrists sparkled in the light. During her pa.s.sage through the crowd, George perceived that one or two people recognised her, and that a murmur ran from mouth to mouth.
Of anything of the sort she herself was totally unconscious. George saw at once that she, not the policeman, was in command. She gave him directions, as they approached the cab, in a quick, imperative voice which left no room for hesitation.
"The driver is drunk," he heard her say; "who will drive?"
"One of us will drive, ma"am."
"What--the other man? Ask him to take the reins at once, please, before I get in. The horse is fresh, and might start. That"s right. Now, when I say the word, give me the child."
She settled herself in the cab. George saw the policeman somewhat embarra.s.sed, for a moment, with his burden. He came forward to his help, and between them they handed in the child, placing her carefully on her protector"s knee.
Then, standing at the open door of the cab, George raised his hat. "Can I be of any further a.s.sistance to you, Lady Maxwell? I saw you just now at the concert."
She turned in some astonishment as she heard her name, and looked at the speaker. Then, very quickly, she seemed to understand.
"I don"t know," she said, pondering. "Yes! you could help me. I am going to take the child to hospital. But there is this other girl. Could you take her home--she is very much upset? No!--first, could you bring her after me to St. George"s? She wants to see where we put her sister."
"I will call another cab, and be there as soon as you."
"Thank you. Just let me speak to the sister a moment, please."
He put the weeping girl forward, and Lady Maxwell bent across the burden on her knee to say a few words to her--soft, quick words in another voice. The girl understood, her face cleared a little, and she let Tressady take charge of her.
One of the policemen mounted the box of the hansom, amid the "chaff" of the crowd, and the cab started. A few hats were raised in George"s neighbourhood, and there was something of a cheer.
"I tell yer," said a voice, "I knowed her fust sight--seed her picture lots o" times in the papers, and in the winders too. My word, ain"t she good-lookin! And did yer see all them diamonds?"
"Come along!" said George, impatiently, hurrying his charge into the four-wheeler the other policeman had just stopped for them.
In a few more seconds he, the girl, and the policeman were pursuing Lady Maxwell"s hansom at the best speed of an indifferent horse. George tried to say a few consoling things to his neighbour; and the girl, rea.s.sured by his kind manner, found her tongue, and began to chatter in a tearful voice about the how and when of the accident: about the elder sister in a lodging in Crawford Street, Tottenham Court Road, whom she and the little one had been visiting; the grandmother in Westminster with whom they lived; poor Lizzie"s place in a laundry, which now she must lose; how the lady had begged handkerchiefs and umbrellas from the crowd to tie up Lizzie"s leg with--and so on through a number of other details incoherent or plaintive.
George heard her absently. His mind all the time was absorbed in the dramatic or ironic aspects of what he had just seen. For dramatic they were--though perhaps a little cheap. Could he, could anyone, have made acquaintance with this particular woman in more characteristic fashion?
He laughed to think how he would tell the story to Fontenoy. The beautiful creature in her diamonds, kneeling on her satin dress in the mud, to bind up a little laundrymaid"s leg--it was so extravagantly in keeping with Marcella Maxwell that it amused one like an overdone coincidence in a clumsy play.
What made her so beautiful? The face had marked defects; but in colour, expression, subtlety of line incomparable! On the other hand, the manner--no!--he shrugged his shoulders. The remembrance of its mannish--or should it be, rather, boyish?--energy and a.s.surance somehow set him on edge.
In the end, they were not much behind the hansom; for the hospital porter was only just in the act of taking the injured child from Lady Maxwell as Tressady dismounted and went forward again to see what he could do.
But, somewhat to his chagrin, he was not wanted. Lady Maxwell and the porter did everything. As they went into the hospital, George caught a few of the things she was saying to the porter as she supported the child"s leg. She spoke in a rapid, professional way, and the man answered, as the policeman had done, with a deference and understanding which were clearly not due only to her "grand air" and her evening dress.
George was puzzled.
He and the elder sister followed her into the waiting-room. The house-surgeon and a nurse were summoned, and the injured leg was put into a splint there and then. The patient moaned and cried most of the time, and Tressady had hard work to keep the sister quiet. Then nurse and doctor lifted the child.
"They are going to put her to bed," said Lady Maxwell, turning to George.
"I am going up with them. Would you kindly wait? The sister"--she dropped her business tone, and, smiling, touched the elder girl on the arm--"can come up when the little one is undressed."
The little procession swept away, and George was left with his charge. As soon as the small sister was out of sight, the elder one began to chatter again out of sheer excitement, crying at intervals. George did not heed her much. He walked up and down, with his hands in his pockets, conscious of a curious irritability. He did not think a woman should take a strange man"s service quite so coolly.
At the end of another quarter of an hour a nurse appeared to summon the sister. Tressady was told he might come too if he would, and his charge threw him a quick, timid look, as though asking him not to desert her in this unknown and formidable place. So they followed the nurse up white stone stairs, and through half-lit corridors, where all was silent, save that once a sound of delirious shrieking and talking reached them through a closed door, and made the sister"s consumptive little face turn whiter still.