Sir George Tressady Volume I Part 29

"Oh! children are so much happier when they are dirty," said Letty, graciously, pleased to feel herself on these easy terms with her two companions. "What beautiful flowers he has! and what an astonishing little botanist he seems to be!"

And she seated herself beside Hallin, using all her blandishments to make friends with him, which, however, did not prove to be an easy matter. For when she praised his flowers, Hallin only said, with his mouth full: "Oh!

but mammy's bunch is _hever_ so much bigger;" and when she offered him cake, the child would st.u.r.dily put the cake away, and hold it and her at arm's length till his mute look across the table had won his mother's nod of permission.

Letty at last thought him an odd, ill-mannered child, and gave up courting him, greatly to Hallin's satisfaction. He edged closer and closer to his mother, established himself finally in her pocket, and browsed on all the good things with which Mrs. Allison provided him, undisturbed.

"How late they are!" said Marcella, looking at her watch. "Tell me the names again, dear lady"--she bent forward, and laid her hand affectionately on Mrs. Allison's knee. "Your parties are always a work of art."

Mrs. Allison flushed a little, as though she liked the compliment, and ran laughingly through the names.

"Lord and Lady Maxwell."

"Ah!" said Marcella, "the least said about them the soonest mended. Go on."

"Lord and Lady Cathedine."

Marcella made a face.

"Poor little thing! I always think of the remark about the Queen in 'Alice in Wonderland.' 'A little kindness, and putting her hair in curl-papers, would do wonders for her.' She is so limp and thin and melancholy. As for him--isn't there a race or a prize-fight we can send him to?"

Mrs. Allison tapped her lightly on the lips.

"I won't go on unless my guests are taken prettily."

Marcella kissed the delicate wrinkled hand.

"I'll be good. What do you keep such an air here for? It gets into one's head."

Letty Tressady, indeed, was looking on with a feeling of astonishment.

These merry, childlike airs had absolutely no place in her conception of Lady Maxwell. Nor could she know that Mrs. Allison was one of the very few people in the world to whom Marcella was ever drawn to show them.

"Sir Philip Wentworth," pursued Mrs. Allison, smiling. "Say anything malicious about him, if you can!"

"Don't provoke me. What a mercy I brought a volume of 'Indian Studies' in my bag! I will go up early, before dinner, and finish them."

"Then there is Madeleine Penley, and Elizabeth Kent."

A quick involuntary expression crossed Marcella's face. Then she drew herself up with dignity, and crossed her hands primly on her lap.

"Let me understand. Are you going to protect me from Lady Kent this time?

Because, last time you threw me to the wolves in the most dastardly way."

Mrs. Allison laughed out.

"On the contrary, we all enjoyed your skirmish with her in November so much, we shall do our best to provoke another in May."

Marcella shook her head.

"I haven't the energy to quarrel with a fly. And as for Aldous--please warn his lady at dinner that he may go to sleep upon her shoulder!"

"You poor thing!"--Mrs. Allison put out a sympathetic hand. "Are you so tired? Why will you turn the world upside down?"

Marcella took the hand lightly in both hers.

"Why will you fight reform?"

And the eyes of the two women met, not without a sudden grave pa.s.sion.

Then Marcella dropped the hand, and said, smiling:

"Castle Luton isn't full yet. Who else?"

"Oh! some young folk--Charlie Naseby."

"A nice boy--a very nice boy--not half such a c.o.xcomb as he looks. Then the Levens--I know the Levens are coming, for Betty told me that she got out of two other engagements as soon as you asked her."

"Oh! and, by the way, Mr. Watton--Harding Watton," said Mrs. Allison, turning slightly towards Lady Tressady.

The exclamation on Lady Maxwell's lips was checked by something she saw on her hostess's face, and Letty eagerly struck in:

"Harding coming?--my cousin? I am so glad. I suppose I oughtn't to say it, but he is such a _clever_, such an _agreeable_, creature. But you know the Wattons, don't you, Lady Maxwell?"

Marcella was busying herself with Hallin's tea.

"I know Edward Watton," she said, turning her beautiful clear look on Letty. "He is a real friend of mine."

"Oh! but Harding is _much_ the cleverer," said Letty. And pleased both to find the ball of talk in her hands, and to have the chance of glorifying a relation in this world of people so much bigger than herself, she plunged into an extravagant account--all adjectives and superlatives--of Harding Watton's charms and abilities, to which Lady Maxwell listened in silence.

"Tactless!" thought Mrs. Allison, with vexation, but she did not know how to stop the stream. In truth, since she had given Lord Fontenoy leave to invite Harding Watton she had had time to forget the invitation, and she was sorry now to think of his housing with the Maxwells. For Watton had been recently Lord Fontenoy's henchman and agent in a newspaper attack upon the Bill, and upon Maxwell personally, that even Mrs. Allison had thought violent and unfair. Well, it was not her fault. But Lady Tressady ought to have better information and better sense than to be chattering like this. She was just about to interpose, when Marcella held up her hand.

"I hear the carriages!"

The hostess hastened towards the house, and Marcella followed her, with Hallin at her skirts. Letty looked after Lady Maxwell with the same mixture of admiration and jealous envy she had felt several times before. "I don't feel that I shall get on with her," she said to herself, impatiently. "But I don't think I want to. George took her measure at once."

Part of this reflection, however, was not true. Letty's ambition would have been very glad to "get on" with Marcella Maxwell.

Just as his wife was ready for dinner, and Grier had disappeared, George entered Letty's room. She was standing before a tall gla.s.s, putting the last touches to her dress--smoothing here, pinning there, turning to this side and to that. George, unseen himself, stood and watched her--her alternate looks of anxiety and satisfaction, her grace, the shimmering folds of the magnificent wedding-dress in which she had adorned herself.

He, however, was neither happy nor gay. But he had come in feeling that he must make an effort--many efforts, if their young married life was to be brought back to that level of ease and pleasure which he had once taken for granted, and which now seemed so hard to maintain. If that ease and pleasure were ultimately to fail him, what should he do? He shrank impatiently from the idea. Then he would scoff at himself. How often had he read and heard that the first year of marriage is the most difficult.

Of course it must be so. Two individualities cannot fuse without turmoil, without heat. Let him only make his effort.

So he walked up to her and caught her in his arms.

"Oh, George!--my hair!--and my flowers!"

"Never mind," he said, almost with roughness. "Put your head there. Say you hate the thought of our day, as I do! Say there shall never be one like it again! Promise me!"

She felt the beating of his heart beneath her cheek. But she stood silent. His appeal, his unwonted agitation, revived in her all the anger and irritation that had begun to prey upon her thoughts. It was all very well, but why were they so pinched and uncomfortable? Why must everybody--Mrs. Allison, Lady Maxwell, a hundred others--have more wealth, more scope, more consideration than she? It was partly his fault.