Volume Ii Part 37 (1/2)
”Admirable!” he thought to himself, ”_admirable!_ We are all there--my mother and I--three parts of mankind.”
But on a page of the other book he had marked these lines--for the beauty of them:
”Beatus qui amat te, et amic.u.m in te, et inimic.u.m propter te. Solus enim nullum eorum amitt.i.t, cui omnes in illo cari sunt qui non amitt.i.tur.”
He hung over the fire, pondering the two utterances.
”A marvellous music,” he thought of the last. ”But I know no more what it means than I know what a symphony of Brahms' means. Yet some say they know. Perhaps of _her_ it might be true.”
The weeks ran on. Outside, the strike was at its worst, though George still believed the men would give in before Christmas. There was hideous distress, and some bad rioting in different parts of the country. Various attempts had been made by the employers to use and protect non-union labour, but the crop of outrage they had produced had been too threatening: in spite of the exasperation of the masters they had been perforce let drop. The Press and the public were now intervening in good earnest--”every fool thinks he can do our business for us,” as George would put it bitterly to Letty. Burrows was speaking up and down the district with a superhuman energy, varied only by the drinking-bouts to which he occasionally succ.u.mbed; and George carried a revolver with him when he went abroad.
The struggle wore him to death; the melancholy of his temperament had never been so marked. At the same time Letty saw a doggedness in him, a toughness like Fontenoy's own, which astonished her. Two men seemed to be fighting in him. He would talk with perfect philosophy of the miners'
point of view, and the physical-force sanction by which the lawless among them were determined to support it; but at the same time he belonged to the stiffest set among the masters.
Meanwhile, at home, friction and discomfort were constantly recurring.
In the course of three or four weeks Lady Tressady had several attacks of illness, and it was evident that her weakness increased rapidly. And with the weakness, alas! the ugly incessant irritability, that dried up the tenderness of nurses, and made a battleground of the sick-room.
Though, indeed, she could never be kept in her room; she resented being left a moment alone. She claimed, in spite of the anxieties of the moment, to be constantly amused; and though George could sometimes distract and quiet her, nothing that Letty did, or said, or wore was ever tolerable to a woman who merely saw in this youth beside her a bitter reminder of her own.
At last, one day early in November, came a worse turn than usual. The doctor was in the house most of the day, but George had gone off before the alarm to a place on the further side of the county, and could not be got at till the evening.
He came in to find Letty waiting for him in the hall. There had been a rally; the doctor had gone his way marvelling, and it was thought there was no immediate danger.
”But oh, the pain!” said Letty, under her breath, pressing her hands together, and s.h.i.+vering. Her eyes were red, her cheeks pale; he saw that she was on the point of exhaustion; and he guessed that she had never seen such a sight before.
He ran up to visit his mother, whom he found almost speechless from weakness, yet waiting, with evident signs of impatience and temper, for her evening food. And while he and Letty were at their melancholy dinner together, Justine came flying downstairs in tears. Miladi would not eat what had been taken to her. She was exciting herself; there would be another attack.
Husband and wife hurried from the room. In the hall they found the butler just receiving a parcel left by the railway delivery-cart.
George pa.s.sed the box with an exclamation and a shudder. It bore a large label, ”From Worth et Cie,” and was addressed to Lady Tressady. But Letty stopped short, with a sudden look of pleasure.
”You go to her. I will have this unpacked.”
He went up and coaxed his mother like a child to take her soup and champagne. And presently, just as she was revived enough to talk to him, Letty appeared. Her mother-in-law frowned, but Letty came gaily up to the bed.
”There is a parcel from Paris for you,” she said, smiling. ”I have had it opened. Would you like it brought in?”
Lady Tressady first whimpered, and said it should go back--what did a dying woman want with such things?--then demanded greedily to see it.
Letty brought it in herself. It was a new evening gown of the softest greens and sh.e.l.l-pinks, fit for a bride in her first season. To see the invalid, ashen-grey, stretching out her hand to finger it was almost more than George could stand. But Letty shook out the rustling thing, put on the skirt herself that Lady Tressady might see, and paraded up and down in it, praising every cut and turning with the most ingenious ardour.
”I sha'n't wear it, of course, till after Christmas,” said Lady Tressady at last, still looking at it with half-shut covetous eyes. ”Isn't it _darling_ the way the lace is put on! Put it away. George!--it's the _first_ I've had from him this year.”
She looked up at him appealingly. He stooped and kissed her.
”I am so glad you like it, mother dear. Can't you sleep now?”
”Yes, I think so. Good-night. And good-night, Letty.”
Letty came, and Lady Tressady held her hand, while the blue eyes, still bearing the awful impress of suffering, stared at her oddly.