Sir George Tressady Volume I Part 28

"I don't believe she ever said such things. Who told you so?" said George, stiffening, his arm dropping from her waist.

Letty tossed her head.

"Never mind! I _ought_ to know, and it doesn't really matter how I know.

She _did_ say them."

"Yes, it does matter," said George, quickly, walking away to the other side of the room. "Letty! if you would only send away that woman Grier, you can't think how much happier we should both be."

Letty stood still, opening her blue eyes wide.

"You want me--to get rid--of Grier," she said, "my own particular pet maid? And why--please?"

George had the courage to stick to his point, and the result was a heated and angry scene--their first real quarrel--which ended in Letty's rushing upstairs in tears, and declaring she would go _no_where. _He_ might go to Castle Luton, if he pleased; she was far too agitated and exhausted to face a houseful of strangers.

The inevitable reconciliation, with its usual accompaniments of headache and eau de cologne, took time, and they only just completed their preparations and caught their appointed train.

Meanwhile the storm of the day had taken all savour from Letty's expectations, and made George feel the whole business an effort and a weariness. Letty sat pale and silent in her corner, devoured with regrets that she had not put on a thicker veil to hide the ravages of the morning; while George turned over the pages of a political biography, and could not prevent his mind from falling back again and again into dark places of dread and depression.

"You are my earliest guests," said Mrs. Allison, as she placed a chair for Letty beside herself, on the lawn at Castle Luton. "Except, indeed, that Lady Maxwell and her little boy are here somewhere, roaming about.

But none of our other friends could get down till later. I am glad we shall have a little quiet time before they come."

"Lady Maxwell!" said Letty. "I had no idea they were coming. Oh, what a lovely day! and how beautiful it all is!" she cried, as she sat down and looked round her. The colour came back into her cheeks. She forgot her determination to keep her veil down, and raised it eagerly.

Mrs. Allison smiled.

"We never look so well as in May--the river is so full, and the swans are so white. Ah! I see Edgar has already taken Sir George to make friends with them."

And Letty, looking across the broad green lawn, saw the flash of a br.i.m.m.i.n.g river and a cl.u.s.ter of white swans, beside which stood her husband and a young man in a serge suit, who was feeding the swans with bread--Lord Ancoats, no doubt, the happy owner of all this splendour. To the left of their figures rose a stone bridge with a high, carved parapet, and beyond the river she saw green hills and woods against a radiant sky. Then, to her right was this wonderful yellowish pile of the old house. She began to admire and exclaim about it with a great energy and effusion, trying hard to say the correct and cultivated thing, and, in fact, repeating with a good deal of exactness what she had heard said of it by others.

Her hostess listened to her praises with a gentle smile. Gentleness, indeed, a rather sad gentleness, was the characteristic of Mrs. Allison.

It seemed to make an atmosphere about her--her delicate blanched head and soft face, her small figure, her plain black dress, her hands in their white ruffles. Her friends called it saintliness. At any rate, it set her apart, giving her a peculiar ethereal dignity which made her formidable in society to many persons who were not liable to shyness. Letty from the beginning had felt her formidable.

Yet nothing could be kinder or simpler than her manner. In response to Letty's enthusiasms she let herself be drawn at once into speaking of her own love for the house, and on to pointing out its features.

"I am always telling these things to newcomers," she said, smiling. "And I am not clever enough to make variations. But I don't mind, somehow, how often I go through it. You see, this front is Tudor, and the south front is a hundred years later, and both of them, they say, are the finest of their kind. Isn't it wonderful that two men, a hundred years apart, should each have left such a n.o.ble thing behind him. One inspired the other. And then we--we poor moderns come after, and must cherish what they left us as we best can. It's a great responsibility, don't you think? to live in a beautiful house."

"I'm afraid I don't know much about it," said Letty, laughing; "we live in such a very ugly one."

Mrs. Allison looked sympathetic.

"Oh! but then, ugly ones have character; or they are pretty inside, or the people one loves have lived in them. That would make any place a House Beautiful. Aren't you near Perth?"

"Yes; and I am afraid you'll think me _dreadfully_ discontented,"

said Letty, with one of her little laughing airs; "but there really isn't anything to make up in our barrack of a place. It's like a blackened brick set up on end at the top of a hill. And then the villages are so hideous."

"Ah! I know that coal-country," said Mrs. Allison, gravely--"and I know the people. Have you made friends with them yet?"

"We were only there for our honeymoon. George says that next month the whole place will be out on strike. So just now they hate us--they will hardly look at us in the street. But, of course, we shall give away things at Christmas."

Mrs. Allison's lip twitched, and she shot a glance at the bride which betrayed, for all her gentleness, the woman of a large world and much converse with mankind. What a curious, hard little face was Lady Tressady's under the outer softness of line and hue, and what an amazing costume! Mrs. Allison had no quarrel with beautiful gowns, but the elaboration, or, as one might say, the research of Letty's dress struck her unpleasantly. The time that it must have taken to think out!

Aloud she said:

"Ah! the strike. Yes, I fear it is inevitable. Ancoats has some property not very far from you, and we get reports. Poor fellows! if it weren't for the wretched agitators who mislead them--but there, we mustn't talk of these things. I see Lady Maxwell coming."

And Mrs. Allison waved her hand to a tall figure in white with a child beside it that had just emerged on the far distance of the lawn.

"Is Lord Maxwell here, too?" asked Letty.

"He is coming later. It seems strange, perhaps, that you should find them here this Sunday, for Lord Fontenoy comes to-morrow, and the great fight will be on so soon. But when I found that they were free, and that Maxwell would like to come, I was only too glad. After all, rival politicians in England can still meet each other, even at a crisis.

Besides, Maxwell is a relation of ours, and he was my boy's guardian--the kindest possible guardian. Politics apart, I have the greatest respect for him. And her too. Why is it always the best people in the world that do the most mischief?"

At the mention of Lord Fontenoy it had been Letty's turn to throw a quick side look at Mrs. Allison. But the name was spoken in the quietest and most natural way; and yet, if one a.n.a.lysed the tone, in a way that did imply something exceptional, which, however, all the world knew, or might know.

"Is Lady Maxwell an old friend of yours, too?" asked Letty, longing to pursue the subject, and vexed to see how fast the mother and child were approaching.

"Only since her marriage. To see her and Maxwell together is really a poem. If only she wouldn't identify herself so hotly, dear woman! with everything he does and wishes in politics. There is no getting her to hear a word of reason. She is another Maxwell in petticoats. And it always seems to me so unfair. Maxwell without beauty and without petticoats is quite enough to fight! Look at that little fellow with his flowers!--such an oddity of a child!"

Then she raised her voice.

"My dear, what a ramble you must have made. Come and have a shady chair and some tea."

For answer Marcella, laughing, held up a glorious bunch of cuckoo-pint and marsh marigold, while little Hallin at her skirts waved another trophy of almost equal size. The mother's dark face was flushed with exercise and pleasure. As she moved over the gra.s.s, the long folds of a white dress falling about her, the flowers in her hand, the child beside her, she made a vision of beauty lovely in itself and lovely in all that it suggested. Frank joy and strength, happiness, purity of heart--these entered with her. One could almost see their dim heavenly shapes in the air about her.

Neither Letty nor Mrs. Allison could take their eyes from her. Perhaps she knew it. But if she did, it made no difference to her perfect ease of bearing. She greeted Letty kindly.

"You didn't expect to see me here, did you, Lady Tressady? But it is the unexpected that happens."

Then she put her hand on Mrs. Allison's shoulder, bending her height to her small hostess.

"What a day, and what a place! Hallin and I have been over hill and dale.

But he is getting such a botanist, the little monkey! He will hardly forgive me because I forgot one of the flowers we found out yesterday in his botany book."

"She said it was 'Robin-run-in-the-'edge,' and it isn't--it's 'edge mustard," said Hallin, severely, holding up a little feathery stalk.

Mrs. Allison shook her head, endeavouring to suit her look to the gravity of the offence.

"Mother must learn her lessons better, mustn't she? Go and shake hands, little man, with Lady Tressady."

Hallin went gravely to do as he was told. Then he stood on one foot, and looked Letty over with a considering eye.

"Are you going to a party?" he said suddenly, putting out a small and grimy finger, and pointing to her dress.

"Hallin! come here and have your tea," said his mother, hastily. Then she turned to Letty with the smile that had so often won Maxwell a friend.

"I am sorry to say that he has a rooted objection to anything that isn't rags in the way of clothes. He entirely declined to take me across the river till I had rolled up my lace cloak and put it in a bush. And he won't really be friends with me again till we have both got back to the scarecrow garments we wear at home."