Volume Ii Part 17 (1/2)
”I have accepted,” said Letty, breathing hard.
”I cannot help that. You should have been frank with me. I am not going to do what would destroy my own self-respect.”
”No--you prefer making love to Lady Maxwell!”
He looked steadily a moment at her pallor and her furious eyes. Then he said, in another tone:
”Letty, does it ever occur to you that we have not been married yet five months? Are our relations to each other to go on for ever like this? I think we might make something better of them.”
”That's your lookout. But as to these invitations, I have accepted them, and I shall go.”
”I don't think you will. You would find it wouldn't do. Anyway, Cathedine must be written to.”
”I shall do nothing of the kind!” she cried.
”Then I shall write myself.”
She rose, quivering with pa.s.sion, supporting herself on the arm of her chair.
”If you do, I will find some way of punis.h.i.+ng you for it. Oh, if I had never made myself miserable by marrying you!”
Their eyes met. Then he said:
”I think I had better go and dine at the club. We are hardly fit to be together.”
”Go, for heaven's sake!” she said, with a disdainful gesture.
Outside the door he paused a moment, head bent, hands clenched. Then a wild, pa.s.sionate look overspread his young face. ”It is her evening,” he said to himself. ”Letty turns me out. I will go.”
Meanwhile Letty stood where he had left her till she had heard the street-door close. The typical, significant sound knelled to her heart.
She began to walk tempestuously up and down, crying with excitement.
Time pa.s.sed on. The August evening closed in; and in this deserted London n.o.body came to see her. She dined alone, and afterwards spent what seemed to her interminable hours pacing the drawing-room and meditating. At last there was a pause in the rush of selfish or jealous feeling which had been pulsing through her for weeks past, dictating all her actions, fevering all her thoughts. And there is nothing so desolate as such a pause, to such a nature. For it means reflection; it means putting one's life away from one, and looking at it as a whole. And to the Lettys of this world there is no process more abhorrent--none they will spend more energy in escaping.
It was inexplicable, intolerable that she should be so unhappy. What was it that tortured her so--hatred of Marcella Maxwell, or pain that she had lost her husband? But she had never imagined herself in love with him when she married him. He had never obtained from her before a tenth part of the thought she had bestowed upon him during the past six weeks.
During all the time that she had been flirting with Cathedine, and recklessly placing herself in his power by the favours she asked of him, she saw now, with a kind of amazement, that she had been thinking constantly of George, determined to impress him with her social success, to force him to admire her and think much of her.
Cathedine? Had he any real attraction for her? Why, she was afraid of him, she knew him to be coa.r.s.e and brutal, even while she played with him and sent him on her errands. When she compared him with George--even George as she had just seen him in this last odious scene--she felt the tears of anger and despair rising.
But to be forced to dismiss him at George's word, to submit in this matter of the invitations, to let herself be trampled on, while George gave all his homage, all his best mind, to Lady Maxwell--something scorching flew through her veins as she thought of it. Never! never!
She would find, she had already thought of, a startling way of avenging herself.
Late at night George came home. She had locked her door, and he turned into his dressing-room. When the house was quiet again, she pressed her face into the pillows, and wept till she was amazed at her own pain, and must needs turn her rage upon herself.
When Tressady arrived at the house in Mile End Road he found the pretty, bare room where Marcella held her gatherings full of guests. The East End had not ”gone out of town.” The two little workhouse girls, in the whitest of caps and ap.r.o.ns, were carrying round trays of coffee and cakes; and beyond the open window was a tiny garden, backed by a huge Board School and some tall warehouses, yet as pleasant within its own small s.p.a.ce as a fountain and flowers, constantly replenished from Maxwell Court, could make it.
Amid the medley of workmen, union officials, and members of Parliament that the room contained, George was set first of all to talk to a young schoolmaster or two, but he had never felt so little able to adjust his mind to strangers. The thought of his home miseries burnt within him.