Volume Ii Part 29 (2/2)
”Do you think that very possible between two people who have gone through such a time as you and I have?” said Marcella, pale, but smiling. ”When may I come to see you to-morrow? I shall send to inquire, of course, very early.”
Some thought made Letty's breath come quickly. ”Will you come in the afternoon--about four?” she said hastily. ”I suppose I shall be here.”
They were just stopping at the door in Warwick Square. ”You said you would tell me--”
”I have a great deal to tell you.... I will come, then, and see if you can be spared.... Good-night. I trust she will be better! I will go on and send the telegram.”
Letty felt her hand gravely pressed, the footman helped her out, and in another minute she was mounting the stairs leading to Lady Tressady's room, having sent a servant on before her to warn the nurse of her arrival.
The nurse came out, finger on lip. She was very glad to see Lady Tressady, but the doctor had left word that nothing whatever was to be allowed to disturb or excite his patient. Of course, if the attack returned--But just now there was hope. Only it was so difficult to keep her quiet. Instead of trying to sleep, she was now asking for Justine, declaring that Justine must read French novels aloud to her, and bring out two of her evening dresses, that she might decide on some alteration in the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. ”I daren't fight with her,” said the nurse, evidently in much perplexity. ”But if she only raises herself in bed she may kill herself.”
She hurried back to her patient, promising to inform the daughter-in-law at once if there was a change for the worse, and Letty, infinitely relieved, made her way to the spare room of the house, where Grier was already unpacking for her.
After a hasty undressing she threw herself into bed, longing for sleep.
But from a short nightmare dream she woke up with a start. Where was she?
In her mother-in-law's house,--she could actually hear the shrill affected voice laughing and talking in the room next door,--and brought there by Marcella Maxwell! The strangeness of these two facts kept her tossing restlessly from side to side. And where was George? Just arrived at Paris, perhaps. She thought of the glare and noise of the Gare du Nord--she heard his cab rattling over the long stone-paved street outside. In the darkness she felt a miserable sinking of heart at the thought of his going with every minute farther, farther away from her.
Would he ever forgive her that letter to Lord Maxwell, when he knew of it? Did she want him to forgive her?
A mood that was at once soft and desolate stole upon her, and made her cry a little. It sprang, perhaps, from a sense of the many barriers she had heaped up between herself and happiness. The waves of feeling, half self-a.s.sertive, half repentant, ebbed and flowed. One moment she yearned for the hour when Marcella was to come to her; the next, she hated the notion of it. So between dream and misery, amid a maze of thought without a clue, Letty's night pa.s.sed away. By the time the morning dawned, the sharp conviction had shaped itself within her that she had grown older, that life had pa.s.sed into another stage, and could never again be as it had been the day before. Two emotions, at least, or excitements, had emerged from all the rest and filled her mind--the memory of the scene with Marcella, and the thought of George's return.
PART III
CHAPTER XXI
”My dear, you don't mean to say you have had her here for ten days?”
The speaker was Betty Leven, who had just arrived at Maxwell Court, and was sitting with her hostess under the cedars in front of the magnificent Caroline mansion, which it was the never-ending task of Marcella's life to bring somehow into a democratic scheme of things.
A still September afternoon, lightly charged with autumn mists, lay gently on the hollows of the park. Betty was in her liveliest mood and her gayest dress. Her hat, a marvel in poppies, was perched high upon no less ingenious waves and frettings of hair. Her straw-coloured gown, which was only simple for the untrained eye, gave added youth even to her childish figure; and her very feet, clothed in the smallest and most preposterous of shoes, had something merry and provocative about them, as they lay crossed upon the wooden footstool Marcella had pushed towards her.
The remark just quoted followed upon one made by her hostess, to the effect that Lady Tressady would be down to tea shortly.
”Now, Betty,” said Marcella, seriously, though she laughed, ”I meant to have a few words with you on this subject first thing--let's have them.
Do you want to be very kind to me, or do you ever want me to be very nice to you?”
Betty considered.
”You can't do half as much for me now as you once could, now that Frank's going to leave Parliament,” she remarked, with as much worldly wisdom as her face allowed. ”Nevertheless, the quality of my nature is such that, sometimes, I might even be nice to you for nothing. But information before benevolence--why have you got her here?”
”Because she was f.a.gged and unhappy in London, and her husband had gone to take his mother abroad, after first doing Maxwell a great kindness,”
said Marcella,--not, however, without embarra.s.sment, as Betty saw,--”and I want you to be kind to her.”
”Reasons one and two no reasons at all,” said Betty, meditating; ”and the third wants examining. You mean that George Tressady went after Ancoats?”
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