Volume I Part 27 (1/2)
And she led him into the drawing-room, where lengths of pink and green brocade were pinned against the wall in conspicuous places.
George admired, and gave his verdict in favour of a particular green.
Then he stooped to read the ticket on the corner of the pattern, and his face fell.
”How much will you want of this stuff, Letty?” he asked her.
”Oh! for the two rooms, nearly fifty yards,” said Letty, carelessly, opening another bundle of patterns as she spoke.
”It is twenty-six s.h.i.+llings a yard!” said George, rather gloomily, as he fell, tired, into an armchair.
”Well, yes, it _is_ dear. But then, it is so good that it will last an age. I think I must have some of it for the sofa, too,” said Letty, pondering.
George made no reply.
Presently Letty looked up.
”Why, George?--George, what _is_ the matter? Don't you want anything pretty for this room? You never take any interest in it at all.”
”I'm only thinking, darling, what fortunes the upholsterers must make,”
said George, his hands penthouse over his eyes.
Letty pouted and flushed. The next minute she came to sit on the edge of his chair. She was dressed--rather overdressed, perhaps--in a pale blue dress whereof the inventive ruffles and laces pleased her own critical mind extremely. George, well accustomed by now to the items in his mother's bills, felt uncomfortably, as he looked at the elegance beside him, that it was a question of guineas--many guineas. Then he hated himself for not simply admiring her--his pretty little bride--in her new finery. What was wrong with him? This beastly money had put everything awry!
Letty guessed shrewdly at what was the matter. She bit her lip, and looked ready to cry.
”Well, it is hard,” she said, in a low, emphatic voice, ”that we can't please ourselves in a few trifles of this sort--when one thinks _why_!”
George took her hand, and kissed it affectionately.
”Darling, only just for a little--till I get out of this brute's clutches. There are such pretty, cheap things nowadays--aren't there?”
”Oh! if you want to have a South Kensington drawing-room,” said Letty, indignantly, ”with four-penny muslin curtains and art pots, you can do _that_ for nothing. But I'd rather go back to horsehair and a mahogany table in the middle at once!”
”You needn't wear 'greenery-yallery' gowns, you know.” said George, laughing; ”that's the one unpardonable thing. Though, if you did wear them, you'd become them.”
And he held her at arm's length that he might properly admire her new dress.
Letty, however, was not to be flattered out of her lawful dues in the matter of curtains--that Lady Tressady's debts might be paid the sooner.
She threw herself into a long wrestle with George, half angry, half plaintive, and in the end she wrung out of him much more considerable matters than the brocades originally in dispute. Then George went down to his study, p.r.i.c.ked in his conscience, and vaguely sore with Letty. Why?
Women in his eyes were made for silken gauds and trinkets: it was the price that men were bound to pay them for their society. He had watched the same sort of process that had now been applied to himself many times already in one or more of the Anglo-Indian households with which he had grown familiar, and had been philosophically amused by it. But the little comedy, transferred to his own hearth, seemed somehow to have lost humour and point.
Still, with two young people, under thirty, just entering upon that fateful second act of the play of life which makes or mars us all, moments of dissatisfaction and depression--even with Shapetskys and Lady Tressadys in the background--were but rare specks in the general sum of pleasure. George had fallen once more under the Parliamentary illusion, as soon as he was again within reach of the House of Commons and in frequent contact with Fontenoy. The link between him and his strange leader grew daily stronger as they sat side by side, through some hard-fought weeks of Supply, throwing the force of their little group now on the side of the Government, now on that of the Opposition, always vigilant, and often successful. George became necessary to Fontenoy in a hundred ways; for the younger man had a ma.s.s of _connaissances_,--to use the irreplaceable French word,--the result of his more normal training and his four years of intelligent travel, which Fontenoy was almost wholly without. Many a blunder did George save his chief; and no one could have offered his brains for the picking with a heartier goodwill.
On the other hand, the instinctive strength and acuteness of Fontenoy's judgment were unmatched, according to Tressady's belief, in the House of Commons. He was hardly ever deceived in a man, or in the significant points of a situation. His followers never dreamt of questioning his verdict on a point of tactics. They followed him blindly; and if the G.o.ds sent defeat, no one blamed Fontenoy. But in success his grunt of approval or congratulation rewarded the curled young aristocrats who made the nucleus of his party as nothing else did; while none of his band ever affronted or overrode him with impunity. He wielded a natural kings.h.i.+p, and, the more battered and gnarled became his physical presence, the more remarkable was his moral ascendency.
One discouragement, however, he and his group suffered during the weeks between Easter and Whitsuntide. They were hungry for battle, and the best of the battle was for the moment denied them; for, owing to a number of controverted votes in Supply and the slipping-in of two or three inevitable debates on pressing matters of current interest, the Second Reading of the Maxwell Bill was postponed till after Whitsuntide, when it was certainly to take precedence. There was a good deal of grumbling in the House, led by Fontenoy; but the Government could only vow that they had no choice, and that their adversaries could not possibly be more eager to fight than they were to be fought.
Life, then, on this public side, though not so keen as it would be presently, was still rich and stirring. And meanwhile society showed itself gracious to the bride and bridegroom. Letty's marriage had made her unusually popular for the time with her own acquaintance. For it might be called success; yet it was not of too dazzling a degree. What, therefore, with George's public and Parliamentary relations, the calls of officials, the attentions of personal friends, and the good offices of Mrs. Watton, who was loftily determined to ”launch” her niece, Letty was always well pleased with the look of her hall-table and the cards upon it when she returned home in her new brougham from her afternoon round. She left them there for George to see, and it delighted her particularly if Lady Tressady came in during the interval.