Volume Ii Part 8 (1/2)

And, stretching her slim neck, she turned and gave her husband a tiny flying kiss on the cheek. Mechanically grateful, George took her hand in his, but he did not make her the pretty speech she expected. Just before she spoke he was about to tell her of his evening--of the meeting, and of his drive home with Lady Maxwell. He had been far too proud hitherto, and far too confident in himself, to make any secret to Letty of what he did.

And, luckily, she had raised no difficulties. In truth, she had been too well provided with amus.e.m.e.nts and flatteries of her own since their return from the country to leave her time or opportunities for jealousy.

Perhaps, secretly, the young husband would have been more flattered if she had been more exacting.

But as she quoted Harding something stiffened in him. Later, after the ball, when they were alone, he would tell her--he would try and make her understand what sort of a woman Marcella Maxwell was. In his trouble of mind a confused plan crossed his thoughts of trying to induce Lady Maxwell to make friends with Letty. But a touch of that charm, that poetry!--he asked no more.

He glanced at his wife. She looked pretty and young as she sat beside him, lost in a pleasant pondering of social successes. But he wondered, uncomfortably, why she must use such a thickness of powder on her still unspoilt complexion; and her dress seemed to him fantastic, and not over-modest. He had begun to have the strangest feeling about their relation, as though he possessed a double personality, and were looking on at himself and her, wondering how it would end. It was characteristic, perhaps, of his half-developed moral life that his sense of ordinary husbandly responsibility towards her was not strong. He always thought of her as he thought of himself--as a perfectly free agent, dealing with him and their common life on equal terms.

The house to which they were going belonged to very wealthy people, and Letty was looking forward feverishly to the cotillon.

”They say, at the last dance they gave, the cotillon gifts cost eight hundred pounds,” she said gleefully, to George. ”They always do things extraordinarily well.”

No doubt it was the prospect of the cotillon that had brought such a throng together. The night was stifling; the stairs and the supper-room were filled with a struggling mob; and George spent an hour of purgatory wondering at the gaieties of his cla.s.s.

He had barely more than two glimpses of Letty after they had fought their way into the room. On the first occasion, by stretching himself to his full height so as to look over the intervening crowd, he saw her seated in a chair of state, a mirror in one hand and a lace handkerchief in the other. Young men were being brought up behind her to look into the gla.s.s over her shoulder, and she was merrily brus.h.i.+ng their images away.

Presently a tall, dark fellow advanced, with jet-black moustache and red cheeks. Letty kept her handkerchief suspended a moment over the reflection in the gla.s.s. George could see the corners of her lips twitching with amus.e.m.e.nt. Then she quietly handed the mirror to the leader of the cotillon, rose, gathered up her white skirt a little, the music struck up joyously, and she and Lord Cathedine spun round the room together, followed by the rest of the dancers.

George meanwhile found few people to talk to. He danced a few dances, mostly with young girls in the white frocks of their first season--a species of partner for which, as a rule, he had no affinity at all. But on the whole he pa.s.sed the time leaning against the wall in a corner, lost in a reverie which was a vague compound of this and that, there and here; of the Manx Road schoolroom, its odours and heats, its pale, uncleanly crowd absorbed in the things of daily bread, with these gay, scented rooms, and this extravagance of decoration, that made even flowers a vulgarity, with these costly cotillon gifts--pins, bracelets, rings--that were being handed round and wondered over by people who had already more of such things than they could wear; of these rustling women, in their silks and diamonds, with that gaunt stooping image of the loafer's wife, smiling her queer defiance at pain and fate, and letting meddling ”lidies” know that without sixteen hours' ”settin” she could not keep her husband and children alive. Stale commonplace, that all the world knows by heart!--the squalor of the _pauperum tabernae_ dimming the glory of the _regum turres_. Yet there are only a few men and women in each generation who really pa.s.s into the eclipsing shadow of it. Others talk--_they_ feel and struggle. There were many elements in Tressady's nature that might seem destined to force him into their company. Yet hitherto he had resolutely escaped his destiny--and enjoyed his life.

About supper-time he found himself near Lady Cathedine, a thin-faced, silent creature, whose eyes suddenly attracted him. He took her down to supper, and spent an exceedingly dull time. She had the air of one pining to talk, to confide herself. Yet in practice it was apparently impossible for her to do it. She fell back into monosyllables or gentle ba.n.a.lities; and George noticed that she was always restlessly conscious of the movements in the room--who came in, who went out--and throwing little frightened glances towards the door.

He was glad indeed when his task was over. On their way to the drawing-rooms they pa.s.sed a broad landing, which on one side led out to a balcony, and had been made into a decorated bower for sitting-out. At the farther end he saw Letty sitting beside Harding Watton. Letty was looking straight before her, with a flushed and rather frowning face.

Harding was talking to her, and, to judge from his laughing manner, was amusing himself, if not her.

George duly found Lady Cathedine a seat, and returned himself to ask Letty whether it was not time to go. He found, however, that she had been carried off by another partner, and could only resign himself to a fresh twenty minutes of boredom. He leant, yawning, against the wall, feeling the evening interminable.

Then a Harrow and Oxford acquaintance came up to him, and they chatted for a time behind a stand of flowers that stood between them and one of the doorways to the ballroom. At the end of the dance George saw Lady Cathedine hurrying up to this door with the quick, furtive step that was characteristic of her. She pa.s.sed on the other side of the flowers, and George heard her say to someone just inside the room:

”Robert, the carriage has come!”

A pause; then a thick voice said, in an emphatic undertone:

”d.a.m.n the carriage!--go away!”

”But, Robert, you know we _promised_ to look in at Lady Tuam's on the way home.”

The thick voice dropped a note lower.

”d.a.m.n Lady Tuam! I shall come when it suits me.”

Lady Cathedine fell back, and George saw her cross the landing, and drop into a chair beside an old general, who was snoozing in a peaceful corner till his daughters should see fit to take him home. The old general took no notice of her, and she sat there, playing with her fan, her rather prominent grey eyes staring out of her white face.

Both George and his friend, as it happened, had heard the conversation.

The friend raised his eyebrows in disgust.

”What a brute that fellow is! They have been married four months.

However, she was amply warned.”

”Who was she?”