Volume Ii Part 10 (1/2)

”Letty! I wasn't to tell you, but I choose to break my promise. Don't be too cruel, my dear, or too angry. My mother is dying!”

She scanned him deliberately, the flushed face--the signs of strongly felt yet strongly suppressed emotion. The momentary consciousness flew through her that he was at bottom a very human, impressionable creature--that if she could but have broken down and thrown herself on his neck, this miserable evening might open for both of them a new way.

But her white-heat of pa.s.sion was too strong. She pushed him away.

”She made you believe that this morning? Then I'd better hurry up at Ferth; for of course it only means that there will be a fresh list of debts directly!”

He let her go, and she heard him walk quickly back to his study and shut the door. She stared after him triumphantly for a moment, then rushed upstairs.

In her room her maid was waiting for her. Grier's sallow face and gloomy eyes showed considerable annoyance at being kept up so late. But she said nothing, and Letty, who in general was only too ready to admit the woman to a vulgar familiarity, for once held her tongue. Her state of excitement and exhaustion, however, was evident, and Grier bestowed many furtive, examining glances upon her mistress in the course of the undressing. She thought she had heard ”them” quarrelling on the stairs.

What a pity she had been too tired and cross to listen!

Of course they must come to quarrelling! Grier's sympathies were tolerably impartial. She had no affection for her mistress, and she cordially disliked Sir George, knowing perfectly well that he thought ill of her. But she had a good place, and meant to keep it if she could. To which end she had done her best to strengthen a mean hold on Letty. Now, as she was brus.h.i.+ng out Letty's brown hair, and silently putting two and two together the while, an idea occurred to her which pleased her.

After Grier had left her, Letty could not make up her mind to go to bed.

She was still pacing up and down the room in her dressing-gown, when she heard a knock--Grier's knock.

”Come in!”

”Please, my lady,” said Grier, appearing with something in her hand, ”doesn't this belong to your photograph box? I found it on the floor in Sir George's dressing-room this morning.”

Letty hastily took it from her, and, in spite of an instant effort to control herself, the red flushed again into a cheek that had been very pale when Grier came in.

”Where did you find it?”

”It had tumbled off Sir George's table, I think,” said Grier, with elaborate innocence; ”someone must have took it out of your photo-box.”

”Thank you,” said Letty, shortly. ”You may go, Grier.”

The maid went, and Letty was left standing with the photograph in her hands.

Two days before Tressady had been in Edward Watton's room in St.

James's Street, and had seen this amateur photograph of Marcella Maxwell and her boy on Watton's table. The poetic charm of it had struck him so forcibly that he had calmly put it in his pocket, telling the protesting owner that he in his _role_ of great friend could easily procure another, and must beware of a grudging spirit. Watton had laughed and submitted, and Tressady had carried off the picture, honestly meaning to present it to Letty for a collection of contemporary ”beauties” she had just begun to make.

Later in the day, as he was taking off his coat in the evening to dress for dinner, Tressady drew out the photograph. A sudden instinct, which he himself could hardly have explained, made him delay handing it over to Letty. He thrust it into the top tray of his collar-and-s.h.i.+rt wardrobe.

Two days later the butler, coming in a hurry before breakfast to put out his master's clothes, shook the photograph out of the folds of the s.h.i.+rt, where it had hidden itself, without noticing what he had done. The picture slipped between the wardrobe and the wall of the recess in which it stood, was discovered later in the day by the housemaid, and given to Lady Tressady's maid.

Letty laid the photograph down on the dressing-table, and stood leaning upon her hands, looking at it. Marcella was sitting under one of the cedars of Maxwell Court with her boy beside her. A fine corner of the old house made a background, and the photographer had so dealt with his picture as to make it a whole, full of significance, and culminating in the two faces--the sensitive, speaking beauty of the mother, the st.u.r.dy strength of the child. Marcella had never looked more wistful, more attaching. It was the expression of a woman at rest, in the golden moment of her life, yet conscious--as all happiness is conscious--of the common human doom that nothing escapes. Meanwhile the fine, lightly furrowed brow above the eyes spoke action and power; so did the strong waves of black hair blown back by the breeze. A n.o.ble, strenuous creature, yet quivering through and through with the simplest, most human instincts. So one must needs read her, as one looked from the eyes to the eager clasp of the arm about the boy.

Letty studied it, as though she would pierce and stab it with looking.

Then, with a sudden wild movement, she took up the picture, and tore it into twenty pieces. The pieces she left strewn on the floor, so that they must necessarily strike the eye of anyone coming into the room. And in a few more minutes she was in bed, lying still and wakeful, with her face turned away from the door.

About an hour afterwards there was a gentle knock at her door. She made no answer, and Tressady came in. He stepped softly, thinking she was asleep, and presently she heard him stop, with a stifled exclamation. She made no sound, but from his movement she guessed that he was picking up the litter on the floor. Then she heard it thrown into the basket under her writing-table, and she waited, holding her breath.

Tressady walked to a far window, drew a curtain back softly, and stood looking out at the starlight over the deserted street. Once, finding him so still, she ventured a hasty glance at him over the edge of the sheet.

But she could see nothing. And after a time he turned and came to his accustomed place beside her. In twenty minutes at latest, she knew, much to her chagrin, that he was asleep.