"Who? Lady Maxwell?"
"Yes. You remember I have been four years out of England. She was in town, I suppose, the year before I left, but I never came across her."
"I prophesy you will like her enormously," said Letty, with decision. "At least, I know that"s what happens to me when Aunt Watton abuses anybody.
I couldn"t dislike them afterwards if I tried."
"That, allow me to impress upon you, is _not_ my disposition! I am a human being--I am influenced by my friends."
He turned round towards her so as to appropriate her again.
"Oh! you are not at all the poor creature you paint yourself!" said Letty, shaking her head. "In reality, you are the most obstinate person I know--you can never let a subject alone--you never know when you"re beaten."
"Beaten?" said George, reflectively; "by a headache? Well, there is no disgrace in that. One will probably "live to fight another day." Do you mean to say that you will take no notice--no notice--of all that array of facts I laid before you this morning on the subject of Captain Addison?"
"I shall be kind to you, and forget them. Now, do listen to Aunt Watton!
It is your duty. Aunt Watton is accustomed to be listened to, and you haven"t heard it all a hundred times before, as I have."
Mrs. Watton, indeed, was haranguing her end of the table on a subject that clearly excited her. Contempt and antagonism gave a fine energy to a head and face already sufficiently expressive. Both were on a large scale, but without commonness. The old-lace coif she wore suited her waved and grizzled hair, and was carried with conscious dignity; the hand, which lay beside her on the table, though long and bony, was full of nervous distinction. Mrs. Watton was, and looked, a tyrant--but a tyrant of ability.
"A neighbour of theirs in Brookshire," she was saying, "was giving me last week the most extraordinary account of the doings at Mellor. She was the heiress of that house at Mellor"--here she addressed young Bayle, who, as a comparative stranger in the house, might be supposed to be ignorant of facts which everybody else knew--"a tumbledown place with an income of about two thousand a year. Directly she married she put a Socialist of the most unscrupulous type--so they tell me--into possession. The man has established what they call a "standard rate" of wages for the estate--practically double the normal rate--coerced all the farmers, and made the neighbours furious. They say the whole district is in a ferment. It used to be the quietest part of the world imaginable, and now she has set it all by the ears. _She_, having married thirty thousand a year, can afford her little amus.e.m.e.nts; other people, who must live by their land, have their lives worried out of them."
"She tells me that the system works on the whole extremely well," said Edward Watton, whose heightened colour alone betrayed the irritation of his mother"s chronic aggression, "and that Maxwell is not at all unlikely to adopt it on his own estate."
Mrs. Watton threw up her hands again.
"The _idiocy_ of that man! Till he married her he was a man of sense. And now she leads him by the nose, and whatever tune he calls, the Government must dance to, because of his power in the House of Lords."
"And the worst of it is," said Harding Watton, with an unpleasant laugh, "that if she were not a handsome woman, her influence would not be half what it is. She uses her beauty in the most unscrupulous way."
"I believe that to be _entirely_ untrue," said Edward Watton, with emphasis, looking at his brother with hostility.
George Tressady interrupted. He had an affection for Edward Watton, and cordially disliked Harding. "Is she really so handsome?" he asked, bending forward and addressing his hostess.
Mrs. Watton scornfully took no notice.
"Well, an old diplomat told me the other day," said Lord Fontenoy--but with a cold unwillingness, as though he disliked the subject--"that she was the most beautiful woman, he thought, that had been seen in London since Lady Blessington"s time."
"Lady Blessington! dear, dear!--Lady Blessington!" said Lady Tressady with malicious emphasis--an unfortunate comparison, don"t you think? Not many people would like to be regarded as Lady Blessington"s successor."
"In any other respect than beauty," said Edward Watton, haughtily, with the same tension as before, "the comparison, of course, would be ridiculous."
Harding shrugged his shoulders, and, tilting his chair back, said in the ear of a shy young man who sat next him:
"In my opinion, the Count d"Orsay is only a question of time! However, one mustn"t say that to Edward."
Harding read memoirs, and considered himself a man of general cultivation. The young man addressed, who read no printed matter outside the sporting papers that he could help, and had no idea as to who Lady Blessington and Count d"Orsay might be, smiled vaguely, and said nothing.
"My dear," said the squire, plaintively, "isn"t this room extremely hot?"
There was a ripple of meaning laughter from all the young people, to many of whom this particular quarrel was already tiresomely familiar. Mr.
Watton, who never understood anything, looked round with an inquiring air. Mrs. Watton condescended to take the hint and retire.
In the drawing-room afterwards Mrs. Watton first allotted a duty-conversation of some ten minutes in length, and dealing strictly with the affairs of the parish, to Mrs. Hawkins, who, as clergyman"s wife, had a definite official place in the Malford House circle, quite irrespective of any individuality she might happen to possess. Mrs.
Hawkins was plain, self-conscious, and in no way interesting to Mrs.
Watton, who never took the smallest trouble to approach her in any other capacity than that upon which she had entered by marrying the inc.u.mbent of the squire"s home living. But the civilities and respects that were recognised as belonging to her station she received.
This however, alas! was not enough for Mrs. Hawkins, who was full of ambitions, which had a bad manner, a plague of shyness, and a narrow income, were perpetually thwarting. As soon as the ten minutes were over, and Mrs. Watton, who was nothing if not political, and saw no occasion to make a stranger of the vicar"s wife, had plunged into the evening papers brought her by the footman, Mrs. Hawkins threw herself on Letty Sewell.
She was effusively grateful--too grateful--for the patterns lent her by Miss Sewell"s maid.
"Did she lend you some patterns?" said Letty, raising her brows. "Dear me; I didn"t know."
And her eyes ran cooly over Mrs. Hawkins"s attire, which did, indeed, present a village imitation of the delicate gown in which Miss Sewell had robed herself for the evening.
Mrs. Hawkins coloured.
"I specially told my nurse," she said hastily, "that of course your leave must be asked. But my nurse and your maid seem to have made friends. Of course my nurse has plenty of time for dressmaking with only one child of four to look after, and--and--one really gets no new ideas in a poky place like this. But I would not have taken a liberty for the world."
Her pride and _mauvaise honte_ together made both voice and manner particularly unattractive. Letty was seized with the same temper that little boys show towards flies.
"Of course I am delighted!" she said indifferently. "It"s so nice and good to have one"s things made at home. Your nurse must be a treasure."
All the time her gaze was diligently inspecting every ill-cut seam and tortured tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of the homemade triumph before her. The ear of the vicar"s wife, always morbidly sensitive in that particular drawing-room, caught a tone of insult in every light word. A pa.s.sionate resentment flamed up in her, and she determined to hold her own.
"Are you going in for more visits when you leave here?" she inquired.
"Yes, two or three," said Letty, turning her delicate head unwittingly.
She had been throwing blandishments to Mrs. Watton"s dog, a grey Aberdeen terrier, who stood on the rug quietly regarding her.
"You spend most of the year in visits, don"t you?"
"Well, a good deal of it," said Letty.
"Don"t you find it dreadfully time-wasting? Does it leave you leisure for _any_ serious occupations at all? I am afraid it would make _me_ terribly idle!"
Mrs. Hawkins laughed, attempting a tone of banter.
Letty put up a small hand to hide a sudden yawn, which, however, was visible enough.
"Would it?" she said, with an impertinence which hardly tried to conceal itself. "Evelyn, do look at that dog. Doesn"t he remind you of Mr. Bayley?"
She beckoned to the handsome child of sixteen who had sat on George Tressady"s left hand at dinner, and, taking up a pinch of rose-leaves that had dropped from a vase beside her, she flung them at the dog, calling him to her. Instead of going to her, however, the dog slowly curled himself up on the rug, and, laying his nose along his front paws, stared at her steadily with the expression of one mounting guard.
"He never will make friends with you, Letty. Isn"t it odd?" said Evelyn, laughing, and stooping to stroke the creature.
"Never mind; other dogs will. Did you see that adorable black Spitz of Lady Arthur"s? She has promised to give me one."
The two cousins fell into a chatter about their county neighbours, mostly rich and aristocratic people, of whom Mrs. Hawkins knew little or nothing. Evelyn Watton, whose instincts were quick and generous, tried again and again to draw the vicar"s wife into the conversation. Letty was determined to exclude her. She lay back against the sofa, chatting her liveliest, the whiteness of her neck and cheek shining against the red of the damask behind, one foot lightly crossed over the other, showing her costly little slippers with their paste buckles. She sparkled with jewels as much as a girl may--more, indeed, in Mrs. Hawkins"s opinion, than a girl should. From head to foot she breathed affluence, seduction, success--only the seduction was not for Mrs. Hawkins and her like.
The vicar"s wife sat flushed and erect on her chair, disdaining after a time to make any further effort, but inwardly intolerably sore. She could not despise Letty Sewell, unfortunately, since Letty"s advantages were just those that she herself most desired. But there was something else in her mind than small jealousy. When Letty had been a brilliant child in short frocks, the vicar"s wife, who was scarcely six years older, had opened her heart, had tried to make herself loved by Mrs. Watton"s niece.