Volume Ii Part 23 (1/2)

And now!--this visit--this incredible declaration--this eagerness for his reward! Maxwell's contempt and indignation were rising fast. Mere chivalry, mere decent manners even, he thought, might have deterred a man from such an act. Meanwhile, in rapid flashes of thought he began to debate with himself how he should use this letter in his pocket--this besmirching, degrading letter.

But Marcella had much more to say. Presently she roused herself from her trance and looked at her husband.

”Aldous!”--she touched him on the arm, and he turned to her gravely--”There was one moment at Mile End, when--when I did play upon his pity--his friends.h.i.+p. He came down to Mile End on Thursday night. I told you. I saw he was unhappy--unhappy at home. He wanted sympathy desperately. I gave it him. Then I urged him to throw himself into his public work--to think out this vote he was to give. Oh! I don't know!--I don't know--” she broke off, in a depressed voice, shaking her head slowly--”I believe I threw myself upon his feelings--I felt that he was very sympathetic, that I had a power over him--it was a kind of bribery.”

Her brow drooped under his eye.

”I believe you are quite unjust to yourself,” he said unwillingly. ”Of course, if any man chooses to misinterpret a confidence--”

”No,” she said steadily. ”I knew. It was quite different from any other time. I remember how uncomfortable I felt afterwards. I did try to influence him--just through, being a woman. There!--it is quite true.”

He could not withdraw his eyes from hers--from the mingling of pride, humility, pa.s.sion, under the dark lashes.

”And if you did, do you suppose that _I_ can blame you?” he said slowly.

He saw that she was holding an inquisition in her own heart, and looking to him as judge. How could he judge?--whatever there might be to judge.

He adored her.

For the moment she did not answer him. She clasped her hands round her knees, thinking aloud.

”From the beginning, I remember I thought of him as somebody quite new and fresh to what he was doing--somebody who would certainly be influenced--who ought to be influenced. And then”--she raised her eyes again, half shrinking--”there was the feeling, I suppose, of personal antagonism to Lord Fontenoy! One could not be sorry to detach one of his chief men. Besides, after Castle Luton, George Tressady was so attractive! You did not know him, Aldous; but to talk to him stirred all one's energies; it was a perpetual battle--one took it up again and again, enjoying it always. As we got deeper in the fight I tried never to think of him as a member of Parliament--often I stopped myself from saying things that might have persuaded him, as far as the House was concerned. And yet, of course”--her face, in its n.o.bility, took a curious look of hardness--”I _did_ know all the time that he was coming to think more and more of me--to depend on me. He disliked me at first--afterwards he seemed to avoid me--then I felt a change. Now I see I thought of him all along; just in one capacity--in relation to what I wanted--whether I tried to persuade him or no. And all the time--”

A cloud of pain effaced the frown. She leant her head against her husband's arm.

”Aldous!”--her voice was low and miserable,--”what can his wife have felt towards me? I never thought of her after Castle Luton--she seemed to me such a vulgar, common little being. Surely, surely!--if they are so unhappy, it can't be--_my_ doing; there was cause enough--”

Nothing could have been more piteous than the tone. It was laden with the remorse that only such a nature could feel for such a cause. Maxwell's hand touched her head tenderly. A variety of expressions crossed his face, then a sharp flash of decision.

”Dear! I think you ought to know--she has written to me.”

Marcella sprang up. Face and neck flushed crimson. She threw him an uncertain look, the nostrils quivering.

”Will you show me the letter?”

He hesitated. On his first reading of it he had vowed to himself that she should never see it. But since her confessions had begun to make the matter clearer to him a moral weight had pressed upon him. She must realise her power, her responsibility! Moreover, they two, with conscience and good sense to guide them, had got to find a way out of this matter. He did not feel that he could hide the letter from her if there was to be common action and common understanding.

So he gave it to her.

She read it pacing up and down, unconscious sounds of pain and protest forcing themselves to her lips from time to time, which made it very difficult for him to stand quietly where he was. On that effusion of gall and bitterness poor Letty had spent her sleepless night. Every charge that malice could bring, every distortion that jealousy could apply to the simplest incident, every insinuation that, judged by her own standard, had seemed to her most likely to work upon a husband--Letty had crowded them all into the mean, ill-written letter--the letter of a shopgirl trying to rescue her young man from the clutches of a rival.

But every sentence in it was a stab to Marcella. When she had finished it she stood with it in her hand beside her writing-table, looking absently through the window, pale, and deep in thought. Maxwell watched her.

When her moment of consideration broke her look swept round to him.

”I shall go to her,” she said simply. ”I must see her!”

Maxwell pondered.

”I think,” he said reluctantly, ”she would only repulse and insult you.”