Volume I Part 20 (1/2)

Letty made no answer. She had turned back towards the house. Suddenly she said, with an energy that startled him,

”George, what _are_ we to do with that place? It gives me a nightmare.

The extraordinary thing is the way that everything in it has gone to ruin. Did your mother really live here while you were away?”

George's expression darkened.

”I always used to suppose she was here,” he said. ”That was our bargain.

But I begin to believe now that she was mostly in London. One can't wonder at it--she always hated the place.”

”Of course she was in London!” thought Letty to herself, ”spending piles of money, running shamefully into debt, and letting the house go to pieces. Why, the linen hasn't been darned for years!”

Aloud she said:

”Mrs. Matthews says a charwoman and a little girl from the village used to be left alone in the house for months, to play any sort of games, with n.o.body to look after them--_n.o.body_--while you were away!”

George looked at his wife--and then would only slip his arm round her for answer.

”Darling! you don't know how I've been worried all the morning--don't let's make worry at home. After all it _is_ rather nice to be here together, isn't it?--and we shall do--we sha'n't starve! Perhaps we shall pull through with the pits after all--it is difficult to believe the men will make such fools of themselves--and--well! you know my angel mother can't always be swooping upon us as she has done lately. Let's just be patient a little--very likely I can sell a few bits of land before long that will give us some money in hand--and then this small person shall bedizen herself and the house as much as she pleases. And meanwhile, _madame ma femme_, let me point out to you that your George never professed to be anything but a very bad match for you!”

Letty remembered all his facts and figures perfectly. Only somehow she had regarded them with the optimism natural to a girl who is determined to be married. She had promptly forgotten the adverse chances he had insisted upon, and she had converted all his averages into minima. No, she could not say she had not been warned; but nevertheless the result promised to be quite different from what she had expected.

However, with her husband's arm round her, it was not easy to maintain her ill-humour, and she yielded. They wandered on into the wood which fringed the hill on its further side, she coquetting, he courting and flattering her in a hundred ways. Her soft new dress, her dainty lightness and freshness, made harmony in his senses with the April day, the building rooks, the breaths of sudden perfume from field and wood, the delicate green that was creeping over the copses, softening all the edges of the black scars left by the pits. The bridal illusion returned.

George eagerly--hungrily--gave himself up to it. And Letty, though conscious all the while of a restless feeling at the back of her mind that they were losing time, must needs submit.

However, when the luncheon gong had sounded and they were strolling back to the house, he bethought himself, knit his brows again, and said to her:

”Do you know, darling, Dalling told me this morning”--Dalling was the Tressadys' princ.i.p.al agent--”that he thought it would be a good thing if we could make friends with some of the people here? The Union are not--or _were_ not--quite so strong in this valley as they are in some other parts. That's why that fellow Burrows--confound him!--has come to live here of late. It might be possible to make some of the more intelligent fellows hear reason. My uncles have always managed the thing with a very high hand--very natural!--the men _are_ a set of rough, ungrateful brutes, who talk impossible stuff, and never remember anything that's done for them--but after all, if one has to make a living out of them, one may as well learn how to drive them, and what they want to be at.

Suppose you come and show yourself in the village this afternoon?”

Letty looked extremely doubtful.

”I really don't get on very well with poor people, George. It's very dreadful, I know, but there!--I'm not Lady Maxwell--and I can't help it.

Of course, with the poor people at home in our own cottages it's different--they always curtsy and are very respectful--but Mrs. Matthews says the people here are so independent, and think nothing of being rude to you if they don't like you.”

George laughed.

”Go and call upon them in that dress and see! I'll eat my hat if anybody's rude. Beside, I shall be there to protect you. We won't go, of course, to any of the strong Union people. But there are two or three--an old nurse of mine I really used to be rather fond of--and a fireman that's a good sort--and one or two others. I believe it would amuse you.”

Letty was quite certain that it would not amuse her at all. However, she a.s.sented unwillingly, and they went in to lunch.

So in the afternoon the husband and wife sallied forth. Letty felt that she was being taken through an ordeal, and that George was rather foolish to wish it. However, she did her best to be cheerful, and to please George she still wore the pretty Paris frock of the morning, though it seemed to her absurd to be trailing it through a village street with only colliers and their wives to look at it.

”What ill luck,” said George, suddenly, as they descended their own hill, ”that that fellow Burrows should have settled down here, in one's very pocket, like this!”

”Yes, you had enough of him at Malford, didn't you?” said Letty. ”I don't yet understand how he comes to be here.”

George explained that about the preceding Christmas there had been, temporarily, strong signs of decline in the Union strength of the Perth district. A great many miners had quietly seceded; one of the periodical waves of suspicion as to funds and management to which all trade unions are liable had swept over the neighbourhood; and wholesale desertion from the Union standard seemed likely. In hot haste the Central Committee sent down Burrows as organising agent. The good fight he had made against Tressady at the Market Malford election had given him prestige; and he had both presence and speaking power. He had been four months at Perth, speaking all over the district, and now, instead of leaving the Union, the men had been crowding into it, and were just as hot--so it was said--for a trial of strength with the masters as their comrades in other parts of the county.

”And before Burrows has done with us, I should say he'll have cost the masters in this district hundreds of thousands. I call him dear at the money!” said George, finally, with a dismal cheerfulness.