"I have accepted," said Letty, breathing hard.
"I cannot help that. You should have been frank with me. I am not going to do what would destroy my own self-respect."
"No--you prefer making love to Lady Maxwell!"
He looked steadily a moment at her pallor and her furious eyes. Then he said, in another tone:
"Letty, does it ever occur to you that we have not been married yet five months? Are our relations to each other to go on for ever like this? I think we might make something better of them."
"That"s your lookout. But as to these invitations, I have accepted them, and I shall go."
"I don"t think you will. You would find it wouldn"t do. Anyway, Cathedine must be written to."
"I shall do nothing of the kind!" she cried.
"Then I shall write myself."
She rose, quivering with pa.s.sion, supporting herself on the arm of her chair.
"If you do, I will find some way of punishing you for it. Oh, if I had never made myself miserable by marrying you!"
Their eyes met. Then he said:
"I think I had better go and dine at the club. We are hardly fit to be together."
"Go, for heaven"s sake!" she said, with a disdainful gesture.
Outside the door he paused a moment, head bent, hands clenched. Then a wild, pa.s.sionate look overspread his young face. "It is her evening," he said to himself. "Letty turns me out. I will go."
Meanwhile Letty stood where he had left her till she had heard the street-door close. The typical, significant sound knelled to her heart.
She began to walk tempestuously up and down, crying with excitement.
Time pa.s.sed on. The August evening closed in; and in this deserted London n.o.body came to see her. She dined alone, and afterwards spent what seemed to her interminable hours pacing the drawing-room and meditating. At last there was a pause in the rush of selfish or jealous feeling which had been pulsing through her for weeks past, dictating all her actions, fevering all her thoughts. And there is nothing so desolate as such a pause, to such a nature. For it means reflection; it means putting one"s life away from one, and looking at it as a whole. And to the Lettys of this world there is no process more abhorrent--none they will spend more energy in escaping.
It was inexplicable, intolerable that she should be so unhappy. What was it that tortured her so--hatred of Marcella Maxwell, or pain that she had lost her husband? But she had never imagined herself in love with him when she married him. He had never obtained from her before a tenth part of the thought she had bestowed upon him during the past six weeks.
During all the time that she had been flirting with Cathedine, and recklessly placing herself in his power by the favours she asked of him, she saw now, with a kind of amazement, that she had been thinking constantly of George, determined to impress him with her social success, to force him to admire her and think much of her.
Cathedine? Had he any real attraction for her? Why, she was afraid of him, she knew him to be coa.r.s.e and brutal, even while she played with him and sent him on her errands. When she compared him with George--even George as she had just seen him in this last odious scene--she felt the tears of anger and despair rising.
But to be forced to dismiss him at George"s word, to submit in this matter of the invitations, to let herself be trampled on, while George gave all his homage, all his best mind, to Lady Maxwell--something scorching flew through her veins as she thought of it. Never! never!
She would find, she had already thought of, a startling way of avenging herself.
Late at night George came home. She had locked her door, and he turned into his dressing-room. When the house was quiet again, she pressed her face into the pillows, and wept till she was amazed at her own pain, and must needs turn her rage upon herself.
When Tressady arrived at the house in Mile End Road he found the pretty, bare room where Marcella held her gatherings full of guests. The East End had not "gone out of town." The two little workhouse girls, in the whitest of caps and ap.r.o.ns, were carrying round trays of coffee and cakes; and beyond the open window was a tiny garden, backed by a huge Board School and some tall warehouses, yet as pleasant within its own small s.p.a.ce as a fountain and flowers, constantly replenished from Maxwell Court, could make it.
Amid the medley of workmen, union officials, and members of Parliament that the room contained, George was set first of all to talk to a young schoolmaster or two, but he had never felt so little able to adjust his mind to strangers. The thought of his home miseries burnt within him.
When could he get his turn with her? He was thirsty for the sound of her voice, the kindness of her eyes.
She had received him with unusual warmth, and an eagerness of look that seemed to show she had at least as much to say to him as he to her. And at last his turn came. She took some of her guests into the garden.
George followed, and they found themselves side by side. He noticed that she was very pale. Yet how was it that fatigue and anxiety instead of marring her physical charm, only increased it? This thin black dress in which the tall figure moved so finely, the black lace folded in a fashion all her own about her neck and breast, the waving lines of hair above the delicate stateliness of the brow--those slight tragic hollows in cheek and temple with their tale of spirit and pa.s.sionate feeling, and all the ebb and flow of n.o.ble life--he had never felt her so rare, so adorable.
"Well! what do you think of it all to-day? Are you still inclined to prophesy?" she asked him, smiling.
"I might be--if I saw any chance of the man you want. But he doesn"t seem to be forthcoming, and--"
"And to-morrow is the end!"
"The Government has quite made up its mind not to take defeat--not to accept modifications?"
She shook her head.
They were standing at the end of the garden, looking into the brightly lit windows of the Board School, where evening-cla.s.ses were going on. She gave a long sigh.
"As for us personally, we can only be thankful to have it over. Neither of us could have borne it much longer. I suppose, when the crisis is all over, we shall go away for a long time."
By "the crisis" she meant, of course, the resignation of Ministers and a change of Government. So that a few days hence she would be no longer within his reach at all. Maxwell, once out of office, would, no doubt, for a long while to come prefer to spend the greater part of his time in Brookshire, away from politics. A sudden sharp perception woke in Tressady of what it would mean to him to find himself in a world where, on going out of a morning, it would be no longer possible to come across her.
At last she broke the silence.
"How little I really thought, in spite of all one"s anxiety, that Lord Fontenoy was going to win! He has played his cards amazingly well."
George took no notice. Thoughts were whirling in his brain.
"What would you say to me, I wonder," he said at last, "if _I_ were to try the part?"
He spoke in a bantering tone, poking at the black London earth with his stick.
"What part?"
"Well, it seems to me I might put the case. One wants to argue the thing in a common-sense way. I don"t feel towards this clause as I did towards the others. I know a good many men don"t."
He turned to her with a light composure.
She stared in bewilderment.
"I don"t understand."
"Well; why shouldn"t one put the case? We have always counted on the hostility of the country. But the country seems to be coming round. Some of us now feel the Bill should have its chance--we are inclined to let Ministers take the responsibility. But, gracious heavens!--to suppose the House would pay any attention to me!"
He took up a stone and jerked it over the wall. She did not speak for a moment. At last she said:
"It would be a grave thing for _you_ to do."
He turned, and their eyes met, hers full of emotion, and his hesitating and reflective. Then he laughed, his pride stung a little by her expression.