Volume Ii Part 12 (1/2)
”Oh no! That boy was not an expert, luckily. How absurd the papers have been!”
George shook his head.
”I don't know what else one could expect,” he said, laughing.
”Not at all!”--the flush mounted in the delicate hollow of the cheek.
”Why should there be any more fuss about a woman's being struck than a man? We don't want any of this extra pity and talk.”
”Human nature, I am afraid,” said George, raising his shoulders. Did she really suppose that women could mix in the political fight on the same terms as men--could excite no more emotion there than men? Folly!
Then Maxwell, who was standing behind her, came forward, greeted Tressady kindly, and they talked for a few minutes about the evening's debate. The keen look of the elder scanned the younger's face and manner the while with some minuteness. As for George, his dialogue with the Minister, at which more than one pa.s.ser-by threw looks of interest and amus.e.m.e.nt, gave him no particular pleasure. Maxwell's qualities were not of the kind that specially appealed to him; nor was he likely to attract Maxwell.
Nevertheless, he could have wished their ten minutes' talk to last interminably, merely because of the excuse it gave him to be near her!--played upon by her movements and her tones. He talked to Maxwell of speeches, and votes, and little incidents of the day. And all the time he knew how she was surrounded; how the crowd that was always gathering about her came and went; with whom she talked; above all, how that eager, sensitive charm which she had shown in its fulness to him--perhaps to him only, beside her husband, of all this throng--played through her look, her voice, her congratulations, and her dismays. For had he not seen her in distress and confusion--seen her in tears, wrestling with herself? His heart caressed the thought like a sacred thing, all the time that he was conscious of her as the centre of this political throng--the adored, detested, famous woman, typical in so many ways of changing custom and of an expanding world.
Then, in a flash, as it were, the crowd had thinned, the Maxwells had gone, and George was running down the steps of the members' entrance, into the rain outside. He seemed to carry with him the scent of a rose,--the rose she had worn on her breast,--and his mind was tormented with the question he had already asked himself: ”How is it going to end?”
He pushed on through the wet streets, lost in a hundred miseries and exaltations. The sensation was that of a man struggling with a rising tide, carried helplessly in the rush and swirl of it. Yet conscience had very little to say, and, when it did speak, got little but contempt for its pains. What had any clumsy code, social or moral, to do with it? When would Marcella Maxwell, by word or look or thought, betray the man she loved? Not till
A' the seas gang dry, my dear, An the rocks melt wi' the sun!
How he found his way home he hardly knew; for it was a moment of blind crisis with him. All that crowded, dramatic scene of the House--its lights, its faces, its combinations--had vanished from his mind. What remained was a group of three people, contemplated in a kind of terror--terror of what this thing might grow to! Once, in St. James's Street, the late hour, the soft, gusty night, suddenly reminded him of that other gusty night in February when he had walked home after his parting with Letty, so well content with himself and the future, and had spoken to Marcella Maxwell for the first time amid that little crowd in the Mall. Nothing had been irreparable then. He had his life in his hands.
As for this pa.s.sion, that was creeping into all his veins, poisoning and crippling all his vitalities, he was still independent enough of it to be able to handle it with the irony it deserved. For it was almost as ludicrous as it was pitiable. He did not want any man of the world, any Harding Watton, to tell him that.
What amazed him was the revelation of his own nature that was coming out of it. He had always been rather proud to think of himself as an easygoing fellow with no particular depths. Other men were proud of a ”storm period”--of feasting and drinking deep--made a pose of it.
Tressady's pose had been the very opposite. Out of a kind of good taste, he had wished to take life lightly, with no great emotion. And marriage with Letty had seemed to satisfy this particular canon.
Now, for the first time, certain veils were drawn aside, and he knew what this hunger for love, and love's response, can do with a man--could do with _him_, were it allowed its scope!
Had Marcella Maxwell been another woman, less innocent, less secure!
As it was, Tressady no sooner dared to give a sensuous thought to her beauty than his own pa.s.sion smote him back--bade him beware lest he should be no longer fit to speak and talk with her, actually or spiritually. For in this hopeless dearth of all the ordinary rewards and encouragements of love he had begun to cultivate a sort of second, or spiritual, life, in which she reigned. Whenever he was alone he walked with her, consulted her, watched her dear eyes, and the soul playing through them. And so long as he could maintain this dream he was conscious of a sort of dignity, of reconciliation with himself; for the pa.s.sions and tragedies of the soul always carry with them this dignity, as Dante, of all mortals, knew first and best.
But with the turn into Upper Brook Street, the dream suddenly and painfully gave way. He saw his own house, and could forget Letty and the problem of his married life no more. What was he going to do with her and it? What relation was he going to establish with his wife, through all these years that stretched so interminably before them? Remorse mingled with the question. But perhaps impatience, still more--impatience of his own misery, of this maze of emotion in which he felt himself entangled, as it were against his will.
During the three days which had pa.s.sed since his quarrel with Letty, their common life had been such a mere confusion of jars and discomforts that George's hedonist temper was almost at the end of its patience; yet so far, he thought, he had not done badly in the way of forbearance.
After the first moment of angry disgust, he had said to himself that the tearing up of the photograph was a jealous freak, which Letty had a right to if it pleased her. At any rate, he had made no comment whatever upon it, and had done his best to resume his normal manner with her the next day. She had been, apparently, only the more enraged; and, although there had been no open quarrelling since, her cutting, contemptuous little airs had been very hard to bear. Nor was it possible for George to ignore her exasperated determination to have her own way in the matter both of friends and expenses.
As he took his latch-key out of the lock, and turned up the electric light, he saw two handsome marqueterie chairs standing in the hall. He went to look at them in some perplexity. Ah! no doubt they had been sent as specimens. Letty had grown dissatisfied with the chairs originally bought for the dining-room. He remembered to have heard her say something about a costly set at a certain Asher's, that Harding had found.
He studied them for a few moments, his mouth tightening. Then, instead of going upstairs, he went into his study, and sat down to his table to write a letter.
Yes--he had better go off to Staffords.h.i.+re by the early train; and this letter, which he would put upon her writing-desk in the drawing-room, should explain him to Letty.
The letter was long and candid, yet by no means without tenderness. ”I have written to Asher,” it said, ”to direct him to send in the morning for the chairs I found in the hall. They are too expensive for us, and I have told him that I will not buy them, I need not say that in writing to him I have avoided every word that could be annoying to you. If you would only trust me, and consult me a little about such things,--trifles as they be,--life just now would be easier than it is.”
Then he pa.s.sed to a very frank statement of their financial position, and of his own steady resolve not to allow himself to drift into hopeless debt. The words were clear and sharp, but not more so than the course of the preceding six weeks made absolutely necessary. And their very sharpness led him to much repentant kindness at the end. No doubt she was disappointed both in him and in his circ.u.mstances; and, certainly, differences had developed between them that they had never foreseen at the time of their engagement. But to ”make a good thing” of living together was never easy. He asked her not to despair, not to judge him hardly. He would do his best--let her only give him back her confidence and affection.