She was plain, sickly, and rather silent. She seemed to have scientific tastes and to be a great reader. And, so far as he could judge, the two sisters were not intimate.
"Don"t hate me for taking her away!" he said, as he was bidding good-bye to Elsie, and glancing over her shoulder at Letty on the stairs.
The girl"s quiet eyes were crossed by a momentary look of amus.e.m.e.nt. Then she controlled herself, and said gently:
"We didn"t expect to keep her! Good-bye."
CHAPTER IV
"Oh, Tully, look at my cloak! You"ve let it fall! Hold my fan, please, and give me the opera-gla.s.ses."
The speaker was Miss Sewell. She and an elderly lady were sitting side by side in the stalls, about halfway down St. James"s Hall. The occasion was a popular concert, and, as Joachim was to play, every seat in the hall was rapidly filling up.
Letty rose as she asked for the opera-gla.s.ses, and scanned the crowds streaming in through the side-doors.
"No--no signs of him! He must have been kept at the House, after all,"
she said, with annoyance. "Really, Tully, I do think you might have got a programme all this time! Why do you leave everything to me?"
"My dear!" said her companion, protesting, "you didn"t tell me to."
"Well, I don"t see why I should _tell_ you everything. Of course I want a programme. Is that he? No! What a nuisance!"
"Sir George must have been detained," murmured her companion, timidly.
"What a very original thing to say, wasn"t it, Tully?" remarked Miss Sewell, with sarcasm, as she sat down again.
The lady addressed was silent, instinctively waiting till Letty"s nerves should have quieted down. She was a Miss Tulloch, a former governess of the Sewells, and now often employed by Letty, when she was in town, as a convenient chaperon. Letty was accustomed to stay with an aunt in Cavendish Square, an old lady who did not go out in the evenings. A chaperon therefore was indispensable, and Maria Tulloch could always be had. She existed somewhere in West Kensington, on an income of seventy pounds a year. Letty took her freely to the opera and the theatre, to concerts and galleries, and occasionally gave her a dress she did not want. Miss Tulloch clung to the connection as her only chance of relief from the boarding-house routine she detested, and was always abjectly ready to do as she was told. She saw nothing she was not meant to see, and she could be shaken off at a moment"s notice. For the rest, she came of a stock of gentlefolk; and her invariable black dress, her bits of carefully treasured lace, the weak refinement of her face, and her timid manner did no discredit to the brilliant creature beside her.
When the first number of the programme was over, Letty got up once more, opera-gla.s.s in hand, to search among the late-comers for her missing lover. She nodded to many acquaintances, but George Tressady was not to be seen; and she sat down finally in no mood either to listen or to enjoy, though the magician of the evening was already at work.
"There"s something very special, isn"t there, you want to see Sir George about to-night?" Tully inquired humbly when the next pause occurred.
"Of course there is!" said Letty, crossly. "You do ask such foolish questions, Tully. If I don"t see him to-night, he may let that house in Brook Street slip. There are several people after it--the agents told me."
"And he thinks it too expensive?"
"Only because of _her_. If she makes him pay her that preposterous allowance, of course it will be too expensive. But I don"t mean him to pay it."
"Lady Tressady is terribly extravagant," murmured Miss Tulloch.
"Well, so long as she isn"t extravagant with his money--_our_ money--I don"t care a rap," said Letty; "only she sha"n"t spend all her own and all ours too, which is what she has been doing. When George was away he let her live at Ferth, and spend almost all the income, except five hundred a year that he kept for himself. And _then_ she got so shamefully into debt that he doesn"t know when he shall ever clear her. He gave her money at Christmas, and again, I am _sure_, just lately. Well! all I know is that it must be _stopped_. I don"t know that I shall be able to do much till I"m married, but I mean to make him take this house."
"Is Lady Tressady nice to you? She is in town, isn"t she?"
"Oh yes! she"s in town. Nice?" said Letty, with a little laugh. "She can"t bear me, of course; but we"re quite civil."
"I thought she tried to bring it on?" said the confidante, anxious, above all things, to be sympathetic.
"Well, she brought him to the Corfields, and let me know she had. I don"t know why she did it. I suppose she wanted to get something out of him.
Ah! _there_ he is!"
And Letty stood up, smiling and beckoning, while Tressady"s tall thin figure made its way along the central pa.s.sage.
"Horrid House! What made you so late?" she said, as he sat down between her and Miss Tulloch.
George Tressady looked at her with delight. The shrewish contractions in the face, which had been very evident to Tully a few minutes before, had all disappeared, and the sharp slight lines of it seemed to George the height of delicacy. At sight of him colour and eyes had brightened. Yet at the same time there was not a trace of the raw girl about her. She knew very well that he had no taste for _ingenues_, and she was neither nervous nor sentimental in his company.
"Do you suppose I should have stayed a second longer than I was obliged?"
he asked her, smiling, pressing her little hand under pretence of taking her programme.
The first notes of a new Brahms quartette mounted, thin and sweet, into the air. The musical portion of the audience, having come for this particular morsel, prepared themselves eagerly for the tasting and trying of it. George and Letty tried to say a few things more to each other before yielding to the general silence, but an old gentleman in front turned upon them a face of such disdain and fury they must needs laugh and desist.
Not that George was unwilling. He was tired; and silence with Letty beside him was not only repose, but pleasure. Moreover, he derived a certain honest pleasure of a mixed sort from music. It suggested literary or pictorial ideas to him which stirred him, and gave him a sense of enjoyment. Now, as the playing flowed on, it called up delightful images in his brain: of woody places, of whirling forms, of quiet rivers, of thin trees Corot-like against the sky--scenes of pleading, of frolic, reproachful pain, dissolving joy. With it all mingled his own story, his own feeling; his pride of possession in this white creature touching him; his sense of youth, of opening life, of a crowded stage whereon his "cue"
had just been given, his "call" sounded. He listened with eagerness, welcoming each fancy as it floated past, conscious of a grain of self-abandonment even--a rare mood with him. He was not absorbed in love by any means; the music spoke to him of a hundred other kindling or enchanting things. Nevertheless it made it doubly pleasant to be there, with Letty beside him. He was quite satisfied with himself and her; quite certain that he had done everything for the best. All this the music in some way emphasised--made clear.
When it was over, and the applause was subsiding, Letty said in his ear: "Have you settled about the house?"
He smiled down upon her, not hearing what she said, but admiring her dress, its little complication and subtleties, the violets that perfumed every movement, the slim fingers holding the fan. Her mere ways of personal adornment were to him like pleasant talk. They surprised and amused him--stood between him and ennui.
She repeated her question.
A frown crossed his brow, and the face changed wholly.
"Ah!--it is so difficult to see one"s way," he said, with a little sigh of annoyance.
Letty played with her fan, and was silent.
"Do you so much prefer it to the others?" he asked her.
Letty looked up with astonishment.
"Why, it is a house!" she said, lifting her eyebrows; "and the others--"
"Hovels? Well, you are about right. The small London house is an abomination. Perhaps I can make them take less premium."
Letty shook her head.
"It is not at all a dear house," she said decidedly.
He still frowned, with the look of one recalled to an annoyance he had shaken off.
"Well, darling, if you wish it so much, that settles it. Promise to be still nice to me when we go through the Bankruptcy Court!"
"We will let lodgings, and I will do the waiting," said Letty, just laying her hand lightly against his for an instant. "Just think! That house would draw like anything. Of course, we will only take the eldest sons of peers. By the way, do you see Lord Fontenoy?"