Sir George Tressady Volume I Part 10

They were in the middle of the "interval," and almost everyone about them, including Miss Tulloch, was standing up, talking or examining their neighbours.

George craned his neck round Miss Tulloch, and saw Fontenoy sitting beside a lady, on the other side of the middle gangway.

"Who is the lady?" Letty inquired. "I saw her with him the other night at the Foreign Office."

George smiled.

"_That_--if you want to know--is Fontenoy's story!"

"Oh, but tell me at once!" said Letty, imperiously. "But he hasn't got a story, or a heart. He's only stuffed with blue-book."

"So I thought till a few weeks ago. But I know a good deal more now about Master Fontenoy than I did."

"But who is she?"

"She is a Mrs. Allison. Isn't that white hair beautiful? And her face--half saint, I always think--you might take her for a mother-abbess--and half princess. Did you ever see such diamonds?"

George pulled his moustaches, and grinned as he looked across at Fontenoy.

"Tell me quick!" said Letty, tapping him on the arm--"Is she a widow?--and is he going to marry her? Why didn't you tell me before?--why didn't you tell me at Malford?"

"Because I didn't know," said George, laughing. "Oh! it's a strange story--too long to tell now. She is a widow, but he is not going to marry her, apparently. She has a grown-up son, who hasn't yet found himself a wife, and thinks it isn't fair to him. If Fontenoy wants to introduce her, don't refuse. She is the mistress of Castle Luton, and has delightful parties. Yes!--if I'd known at Malford what I know now!"

And he laughed again, remembering Fontenoy's nocturnal incursion upon him, and its apparent object. Who would have imagined that the preacher of that occasion had ever given one serious thought to woman and woman's arts--least of all that he was the creation and slave of a woman!

Letty's curiosity was piqued, and she would have plied George with questions, but that she suddenly perceived that Fontenoy had risen, and was coming across to them.

"Gracious!" she said; "here he comes. I can't think why; he doesn't like me."

Fontenoy, however, when he had made his way to them, greeted Miss Sewell with as much apparent cordiality as he showed to anyone else. He had received George's news of the marriage with all decorum, and had since sent a handsome wedding-present to the bride-elect. Letty, however, was never at ease with him, which, indeed, was the case with most women.

He stood beside the _fiances_ for a minute or two, exchanging a few commonplaces with Letty on the performers and the audience; then he turned to George with a change of look.

"No need for us to go back to-night, I think?"

"What, to the House? Dear, no! Grooby and Havershon may be trusted to drone the evening out, I should hope, with no trouble to anybody but themselves. The Government are just keeping a house, that's all. Have you been grinding at your speech all day?"

Fontenoy shrugged his shoulders.

"I sha'n't get anything out that I want to say. Are you coming to the House on Friday, Miss Sewell?"

"Friday?" said Letty, looking puzzled.

George laughed.

"I told you. You must plead trousseau if you want to save yourself!"

Amus.e.m.e.nt shone in his blue eyes as they pa.s.sed from Letty to Fontenoy.

He had long ago discovered that Letty was incapable of any serious interest in his public life. It did not disturb him at all. But it tickled his sense of humour that Letty would have to talk politics all the same, and to talk them with people like Fontenoy.

"Oh! you mean your Resolution!" cried Letty. "Isn't it a Resolution? Yes, of course I'm coming. It's very absurd, for I don't know anything about it. But George says I must, and till I promise to obey, you see, I don't mind being obedient!"

Archness, however, was thrown away on Fontenoy. He stood beside her, awkward and irresponsive. Not being allowed to be womanish, she could only try once more to be political.

"It's to be a great attack on Mr. Dowson, isn't it?" she asked him. "You and George are mad about some things he has been doing? He's Home Secretary, isn't he? Yes, of _course_! And he's been driving trade away, and tyrannising over the manufacturers? I _wish_ you'd explain it to me!

I ask George, and he tells me not to talk shop."

"Oh, for goodness' sake," groaned George, "let it alone! I came to meet you and hear Joachim. However, I may as well warn you, Letty, that I sha'n't have time to be married once Fontenoy's anti-Maxwell campaign begins; and it will go on till the Day of Judgment."

"Why anti-Maxwell," said Letty, puzzled. "I thought it was Mr. Dowson you are going to attack?"

George, a little vexed that she should require it, began to explain that as Maxwell was "only a miserable peer," he could have nothing to do with the House of Commons, and that Dowson was the official mouthpiece of the Maxwell group and policy in the Lower House. "The hands were the hands of Esau," etc. Letty meanwhile, conscious that she was not showing to advantage, flushed, began to play nervously with her fan, and wished that George would leave off.

Fontenoy did nothing to a.s.sist George's political lesson. He stood impa.s.sive, till suddenly he tried to look across his immediate neighbours, and then said, turning to Letty:

"The Maxwells, I see, are here to-night." He nodded towards a group on the left, some two or three benches behind them. "Are you an admirer of Lady Maxwell's, Miss Sewell?--you've seen her, of course?"

"Oh yes, _often_!" said Letty, annoyed by the question, standing, however, eagerly on tiptoe. "I know her, too, a little; but she never remembers me. She was at the Foreign Office on Sat.u.r.day, with such a _hideous_ dress on--it spoilt her completely."

"Hideous!" said Fontenoy, with a puzzled look. "Some artist--I forget who--came and raved to me about it; said it was like some Florentine picture--I forget what--don't think I ever heard of it."

Letty looked contemptuous. Her expression said that in this matter, at any rate, she knew what she was talking about. Nevertheless her eyes followed the dark head Fontenoy had pointed out to her.

Lady Maxwell was at the moment the centre of a large group of people, mostly men, all of whom seemed to be eager to get a word with her, and she was talking with great animation, appealing from time to time to a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman, with greyish hair, who stood, smiling and silent, at the edge of the group. Letty noticed that many gla.s.ses from the balcony were directed to this particular knot of persons; that everybody near them, or rather every woman, was watching Lady Maxwell, or trying to get a better view of her. The girl felt a secret pang of envy and dislike.

The figure of a well-known accompanist appeared suddenly at the head of the staircase leading from the artists' room. The interval was over, and the audience began to subside into attention.

Fontenoy bowed and took his leave.

"You see, he _didn't_ introduce me," said Letty, not without chagrin, as she settled down. "And how plain he is! I think him uglier every time I see him."

George made a vague sound of a.s.sent, but did not really agree with her in the least. Fontenoy's air of overwork was more decided than ever; his eyes had almost sunk out of sight; the complexion of his broad strong face had reddened and coa.r.s.ened from lack of exercise and sleep; his brown hair was thinning and grizzling fast. Nevertheless a man saw much to admire in the ungainly head and long-limbed frame, and did not think any the better of a woman's intelligence for failing to perceive it.

After the concert, as George and Letty stood together in the crowded vestibule, he said to her, with a smile:

"So I take that house?"

"If you want to do anything disagreeable," she retorted, quickly, "don't _ask_ me. Do it, and then wait till I am good-tempered again!"

"What a tempting prospect! Do you know that when you put on that particular hood that I would take Buckingham Palace to please you? Do you know also that my mother will think us very extravagant?"

"Ah, we can't all be economical!" said Letty.

He saw the little toss of the head and sharpening of the lips. They only amused him. Though he had never, so far, discussed his mother and her affairs with Letty in any detail, he understood perfectly well that her feeling about this particular house in some way concerned his mother, and that Letty and Lady Tressady were rapidly coming to dislike each other.

Well, why should Letty pretend? He liked her the better for not pretending.

There was a movement in the crowd about them, and Letty, looking up, suddenly found herself close to a tall lady, whose dark eyes were bent upon her.

"How do you do, Miss Sewell?"