And not even Tressady"s prejudice--which, indeed, was already vanishing--could fail to see in the beautiful woman beside him the fitting voice and spirit of such a scene.
To-night he said to himself that one must needs believe her simple, in spite of report. During their companionship this evening she had shown him more and more plainly that she liked his society; her manner towards him, indeed, had by now a soft surrender and friendliness that no man could possibly have met with roughness, least of all a man young and ambitious. But at the same time he noticed again, as he had once noticed with anger, that she was curiously free from the usual feminine arts and wiles. After their long talk at dinner, indeed, he began, in spite of himself, to feel her not merely an intellectual comrade,--that he had been conscious of from the first,--but rather a most winning and attaching companion. It was a sentiment of friendly ease, that seemed to bring with it a great relief from tension. The sordid cares and frictions of the last few weeks, and the degrading memories of the day itself, alike ceased to wear him.
Yet all the time he said to himself, with inward amus.e.m.e.nt, that he must take care! They had not talked directly of the Bill at dinner, but they had talked round and about it incessantly. It was clear that the Maxwells were personally very anxious; and George knew well that the public position of the Ministry was daily becoming more difficult. There had been a marked cooling on the subject of the Bill among their own supporters; one or two London members originally pledged to it were even believed to be wavering; and this campaign lately started by Fontenoy and Watton against two of the leading clauses of the measure, in a London "daily," bought for the purpose, had been so far extremely damaging. The situation was threatening indeed, and Maxwell might well look hara.s.sed.
Yet Tressady had detected no bitterness in Lady Maxwell"s mood. Her temper rather seemed to him very strenuous, very eager, and a little sad.
Altogether, he had been touched, he knew not exactly why, by his conversation with her. "We are going to win," he said to himself, "and she knows it." Yet to think thus gave him, for the first time, no particular pleasure.
As they strolled along they talked a little of some of the topics that had been started at dinner, topics semi-political and semi-social, till suddenly Lady Maxwell said, with a change of voice:
"I heard some of your conversation with Sir Philip just now. How differently you talk when you talk of India!"
"I wonder what that means," said George, smiling. "It means, at any rate, that when I am not talking of India, but of English labour, or the poor, you think I talk like a brute."
"I shouldn"t put it like that," she said quietly. "But when you talk of India, and people like the Lawrences or Lord Dalhousie, then it is that one sees what you really admire--what stirs you--what makes you feel."
"Well, ought I not to feel? Is there to be no grat.i.tude towards the people that have made one"s country?"
He looked down, upon her gaily, perfectly conscious of his own tickled vanity. To be observed and a.n.a.lysed by such a critic was in itself flattery.
"That have made one"s country?" she repeated, not without a touch of irony. Then suddenly she became silent.
George thrust his hands into his pockets and waited a little.
"Well?" he said presently. "Well? I am waiting to hear you prove that the Dalhousies and the Lawrences have done nothing for the country, compared to--what shall we say?--some trade-union secretary whom you particularly admire."
She laughed, but he did not immediately draw his answer. They had reached the river-bank and the steps of the little bridge. Marcella mounted the bridge and paused midway across it, hanging over the parapet. He followed her, and both stood gazing at the house. It rose from the gra.s.s like some fabric of yellowish ivory cut and scrolled and fretted by its Tudor architect, who had been also a goldsmith. There were lights like jewels in its latticed windows; the dark fulness of the trees, disposed by an artist-hand, enwrapped or fell away from it as the eye required; and on the dazzling lawns, crossed by soft bands of shadow, scattered forms moved up and down--women in trailing dresses, and black-coated men.
There were occasional sallies of talk and laughter, and from the open window of the drawing-room came the notes of a violin.
"Brahms!" said Marcella, with delight. "Nothing but music and he could express this night--or the river--or the rising glow and bloom of everything."
As she spoke George felt a quick gust of pleasure and romance sweep across him. It was as though senses that had been for long on the defensive, tired, or teased merely by the world, gave way in a moment to joy and poetry. He looked from the face beside him to the pictured scene in which they stood--the soft air filled his lungs--what ailed him?--he only knew that after many weeks he was, somehow, happy and buoyant again!
Lady Maxwell, however, soon forgot the music and the moonlight.
"That have made one"s country?" she repeated, pausing on the words.
"And of course that house appeals to you in the same way? Famous people have lived in it--people who belong to history. But for _me_, the real making of one"s country is done out of sight, in garrets and workshops and coalpits, by people who die every minute--forgotten--swept into heaps like autumn leaves, their lives mere soil and foothold for the generation that comes after them. All yesterday morning, for instance, I spent trying to feed a woman I know. She is a shirtmaker; she has four children, and her husband is a docker out of work. She had sewed herself sick and blind. She couldn"t eat, and she couldn"t sleep. But she had kept the children alive--and the man. Her life will flicker out in a month or two; but the children"s lives will have taken root, and the man will be eating and earning again. What use would your Dalhousies and Lawrences be to England without her and the hundreds of thousands like her?"
"And yet it is you," cried George, unable to forbear the chance she gave him, "who would take away from this very woman the power of feeding her children and saving her husband--who would spoil all the lives in the clumsy attempt to mend one of them. How can you quote me such an instance! It amazes me."
"Not at all. I have only to use my instance for another purpose, in another way. You are thinking of the Bill, of course? But all we do is to say to some of these victims, "Your sacrifice, as it stands, is _too_ costly; the State in its own interest cannot go on exacting or allowing it. We will help you to serve the community in ways that shall exhaust and wound it less.""
"And as a first step, drive you all comfortably into the workhouse!" said George. "Don"t omit that."
"Many individuals must suffer," she said steadily. "But there will be friends to help--friends that will strain every nerve to help."
All her heart showed itself in voice and emphasis. Almost for the first time in their evening"s talk her natural pa.s.sionateness came to sight--the Southern, impulsive temper, that so often made people laugh at or dislike her. Under the lace shawl she had thrown round her on coming out he saw the quick rise and fall of the breast, the nervous clasp of the hands lying on the stonework of the bridge. These were her prophetess airs again. To-night they still amused him, but in a gentler and more friendly way.
"And so, according to your own account, you will protect your tailoress and unmake your country. I am sorry for your dilemma," he said, laughing.
"Ah! well,"--she shrugged her shoulders with a sigh,--"don"t let"s talk of it. It"s all too pressing--and sore--and hot. And to think of the weeks that are just coming on!"
George, hanging over the parapet beside her, felt reply a little awkward, and said nothing. For a minute or two the night made itself heard, the gentle slipping of the river, the fitful breathings from the trees. A swan pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed below them, and an owl called from the distant woods.
Presently Marcella lifted a white finger and pointed to the house.
"One wouldn"t want a better parable," she said. "It"s like the State as you see it--magnificent, inspiring, a thing of pomp and dignity. But we women, who have to drive and keep going a house like that--_we_ know what it all rests upon. It rests upon a few tired kitchen-maids and boot-boys and scullery-girls, hurrying, panting creatures, whom a guest never sees, who really run it all. I know, for I have tried to unearth them, to organise them, to make sure that no one was fainting while we were feasting. But it is incredibly hard; half the human race believes itself born to make things easy for the other half. It comes natural to them to ache and toil while we sit in easy chairs. What they resent is that we should try to change it."
"Goodness!" said George, pulling at his moustaches. "I don"t recognise my own experience of the ordinary domestic polity in that summary."
"I daresay. You have to do with the upper servant, who is always a greater tyrant than his master," she retorted, her voice expressing a curious medley of laughter and feeling. "I am speaking of the people that are not seen, like the tailoress and shirtmaker, in your drum-and-trumpet State."
"Well, you may be right," said George, drily. "But I confess--if I may be quite frank--that I don"t altogether trust you to judge. I want at least, before I strike the balance between my Dalhousie and your tailoress, to hear what those people have to say who have not crippled their minds--by pity!"
"Pity!" she said, her lip trembling in spite of herself. "Pity!--you count pity a disease?"
"As you--and others--practise it," he replied coolly, turning round upon her. "It is no good; the world can"t be run by pity. At least, living always seems to me a great brutal, rushing, rough-and-tumble business, which has to be carried on whether we like it or no. To be too careful, too gingerly over the separate life, brings it all to a standstill.
Meddle too much, and the Demiurge who set the machine going turns sulky and stops working. Then the nation goes to pieces--till some strong ruffian without a scruple puts it together again."
"What do you mean by the Demiurge?"
He laughed.
"Why do you make me explain my flights? Well, I suppose, the natural daimonic power in things, which keeps them going and set them off; which is not us, or like us, and cares nothing for us."
His light voice developed a sudden energy during his little speech.
"Ah!" said Marcella, wistfully. "Yes, if one thought that, I could understand. But, even so, if the power behind things cares nothing for us, I should only regard it as challenging us to care more for each other. Do you mind my asking you a few plain questions? Do you know anything personally of the London poor? I mean, have you any real friends among them, whose lives you know?"
"Well, I sit with Fontenoy while he receives deputations from all those tailoresses and shirtmakers and fur-sewers that _you_ want to put in order. The hara.s.sed widow streams through his room perpetually--wailing to be let alone!"
Marcella made a sound of amused scorn.
"Oh! you think that nothing," said George, indignant. "I vow I could draw every type of widow that London contains--I know them intimately."
She shook her head.
"I give up London. Then, in the North, aren"t you a coal-owner? Do you know your miners?"
"Yes, and I detest them!" said George, shortly; "pig-headed brutes! They will be on strike next month, and I shall be defrauded of my lawful income till their lordships choose to go back. Pity _me_, if you please--not them!"
"So I do," she said with spirit--"if you hate the men by whom you live!"
There was silence. Then suddenly George said, in another tone:
"But sometimes, I don"t deny, the beggars wring it out of one--your pity.
I saw a mother last week--Suppose we stroll on a little. I want to see how the river gets out of the wood."