"I should not take the trouble," he said, with careless hauteur.
"Ah!"--Letty"s vanity winced under his involuntary accent of relief--"I see your husband and Lady Maxwell."
Marcella and George came towards them. They were strolling along a broad flowery border, which was at the moment a blaze of paeonies of all shades, interspersed with tall pyramidal growths of honeysuckle. Marcella was loitering here and there, burying her face in the fragrance of the honeysuckle, or drawing her companion"s attention in delight to the glowing clumps of paeonies Hallin hovered round them, now putting his hand confidingly into Tressady"s, now tugging at his mother"s dress, and now gravely wooing the friendship of a fine St. Bernard that made one of the party. George, with his hands in his pockets, walked or paused as the others chose; and it struck Letty at once that he was talking with unusual freedom and zest.
Yes, it was true, indeed, as Harding said--they had made friends. As she looked at them the first movement of a jealous temper stirred in Letty.
She was angry with Lady Maxwell"s beauty, and angry with George"s enjoyment. It was like the great lady all over to slight the wife and annex the husband. George certainly might have taken the trouble to come and look for her on their return from church!
So, while Ancoats talked stiffly with Marcella, the bride, a few paces off, let George understand through her bantering manner that she was out of humour.
"But, dear, I had no notion you would be let out so soon," pleaded George. "That good man really can"t earn his pay."
"Oh! but of course you knew it was High Church--all split up into little bits," said Letty, unappeased. "But naturally--"
She was about to add some jealous sarcasm when it was arrested by the arrival of Sir Philip Wentworth and Watton, whose figures appeared in a side-archway close to her.
"Ah! well guessed," said Sir Philip. "I thought we should find you among the paeonies. Lady Tressady, did you ever see such a show? Ancoats, is your head gardener visible on a Sunday? I ask with trembling, for there is no more magnificent member of creation. But if I _could_ get at him, to ask him about an orchid I saw in one of your houses yesterday, I should be grateful."
"Come into the next garden, then," said Ancoats, "where the orchid-houses are. If he isn"t there, we"ll send for him."
"Then, Lady Tressady, you must come and see me through," said Sir Philip, gallantly. "I want to quarrel with him about a label--and you remember Dizzy"s saying--"a head gardener is always opinionated"? Are you coming, Lady Maxwell?"
Marcella shook her head, smiling.
"I am afraid I hate hothouses," she said.
"My dear lady, don"t pine for the life according to nature at Castle Luton!" said Sir Philip, raising a finger. "The best of hothouses, like the best of anything, demands a thrill."
Marcella shrugged her shoulders.
"I get more thrill out of the paeonies."
Sir Philip laughed, and he and Watton carried off Letty, whose vanity was once more happy in their society; while Ancoats, glad of the pretext, hurried along in front to find the great Mr. Newmarch.
"I believe there are some wonderful irises out in the Friar"s Garden,"
said Marcella. "Mrs. Allison told me there was a show of them somewhere.
Let me see if I can find the way. And Hallin would like the goldfish in the fountain."
Her two companions followed her gladly, and she led them through devious paths till there was a shout from Hallin, and the most poetic corner of a famous garden revealed itself. Amid the ruins of a cloister that had once formed part of the dissolved Cistercian priory on whose confiscated lands Castle Luton had arisen, a rich medley of flowers was in full and perfect bloom. Irises in every ravishing shade of purple, lilac, and gold, carpets of daffodils and narcissus, covered the ground, and ran into each corner and cranny of the old wall. Yellow banksia and white clematis climbed the crumbling shafts, or made new tracery for the empty windows, and where the ruin ended, yew hedges, adorned at top with a whole procession of birds and beasts, began. The flowery s.p.a.ce thus enclosed was broken in the centre by an old fountain; and as one sat on a stone seat beside it, one looked through an archway, cut through the darkness of the yews, to the blue river and the hills.
The little place breathed perfume and delight. But Marcella did not, somehow, give it the attention it deserved. She sat down absently on the bench by the fountain, and presently, as George and Hallin were poking among the goldfish, she turned to her companion with the abrupt question:
"You didn"t know Ancoats, I think, before this visit, did you?"
"Only as one knows the merest acquaintance. Fontenoy introduced me to him at the club."
Marcella sighed. She seemed to be arguing something with herself. At last, with a quick look towards the approaches of the garden, she said in a low voice:
"I think you must know that his friends are not happy about him?"
It so happened that Watton had found opportunity to show Tressady that morning a paragraph from one of the numerous papers that batten on the British peer, his dress, his morals, and his sport. The paragraph, without names, without even initials, contained an outline of Lord Ancoats"s affairs which Harding, who knew everything of a scandalous nature, declared to be well informed. It had made George whistle; and afterwards he had watched Mrs. Allison go to church with a new interest in her proceedings.
So that when Marcella threw out her hesitating question, he said at once:
"I know what the papers are beginning to say--that is, I have seen a paragraph--"
"Oh! those newspapers!" she said in distress. "We are all afraid of some madness, and any increase of talk may hasten it. There is no one who can control him, and of late he has not even tried to conceal things."
"It is a determined face," said George. "I am afraid he will take his way. How is it that he comes to be so unlike his mother?"
"How is it that adoration and sacrifice count for so little?" said Marcella, sadly. "She has given him all the best of her life."
And she drew a rapid sketch of the youth"s career and the mother"s devotion.
George listened in silence. What she said showed him that in his conversations with Ancoats that young man had been talking round and about his own case a good deal! and when she paused he said drily:
"Poor Mrs. Allison! But, you know, there must be some crumples in the rose-leaves of the great."
She looked at him with a momentary astonishment.
"Why should one think of her as "great"? Would not any mother suffer?
First of all he is so changed; it is so difficult to get at him--his friends are so unlike hers--he is so wrapped up in London, so apathetic about his estate. All the religious sympathy that meant so much to her is gone. And now he threatens her with this--what shall I call it?"--her lip curled--"this entanglement. If it goes on, how shall we keep her from breaking her heart over it? Poor thing! poor mothers!"
She raised her white hand, and let it fall upon her knee with one of the free, instinctive gestures that made her beauty so expressive.
But George would not yield himself to her feeling.
"Ancoats will get through it--somehow--as other men do," he said stubbornly, "and she must get through it too--and _not_ break her heart."
Marcella was silent. He turned towards her after a moment.
"You think that a brutal doctrine? But if you"ll let me say it, life and ease and good temper are really not the brittle things women make them!
Why do they put all their treasure into that one bag they call their affections? There is plenty else in life--there is indeed! It shows poverty of mind!"
He laughed, and taking up a pebble dropped it sharply among the goldfish.
"Alack!" said Marcella, caressing her child"s head as he stood playing beside her. "Hallin, I can"t have you kiss my hand like that. Sir George says it"s poverty of mind."
"It ain"t," said Hallin, promptly. But his remark had a deplorable lack of unction, for the goldfish, startled by George"s pebble, were at that moment performing evolutions of the greatest interest, and his black eyes were greedily bent upon them.
Both laughed, and George let her remark alone. But his few words left on Marcella a painful impression, which renewed her compa.s.sion of the night before. This young fellow, just married, protesting against an over-exaltation of the affections!--it struck her as half tragic, half grotesque. And, of course, it was explained by the idiosyncrasies of that little person in a Paris gown now walking about somewhere with Sir Philip!
Yet, just as she had again allowed herself to think of him as someone far younger and less mature than herself, he quietly renewed the conversation, so far as it concerned Ancoats, talking with a caustic good sense, a shrewd perception, and at bottom with a good feeling, that first astonished her, and then mastered her friendship more and more. She found herself yielding him a fuller and fuller confidence, appealing to him, taking pleasure in anything that woke the humour of the sharp, long face, or that rare blink of the blue eyes that meant a leap of some responsive sympathy he could not quite conceal.
And for him it was all pleasure, though he never stopped to think of it.
The lines of her slender form, as she sat with such careless dignity beside him, her lovely eyes, the turns of her head, the softening tones of her voice, the sense of an emerging bond that had in it nothing ign.o.ble, nothing to be ashamed of, together with the child"s simple liking for him, and the mere physical delight of this morning of late May--the rush and splendour of its white, thunderous clouds, its penetrating, scented air: each and all played their part in the rise of a new emotion he would not have a.n.a.lysed if he could.