Sir George Tressady Volume Ii Part 26

"Will you sit by the window?" said Maxwell. "The day promises to be extraordinarily hot."

Tressady took the seat a.s.signed him. Maxwell's grey eye ran over the young man's figure and bearing. Then he bent forward from a chair on the other side of a small writing-table.

"You will probably have guessed the reason of my intrusion upon you--you and I have already discussed this troublesome affair--and the kind manner in which you treated our anxieties then--"

"Ancoats!" exclaimed Tressady, with a start he could not control. "You wish to consult me about Ancoats?"

A flash of wonder crossed the other's mind. "He imagined--" Instinctively Maxwell's opening mildness stiffened into a colder dignity.

"I fear we may be making an altogether improper claim upon you," he said quietly; "but this morning, about an hour ago, Ancoats's mother came to us with the news that he had left her two days ago, and was now discovered to be at Trouville, where he has a chalet, waiting for this girl, of whom we all know, to join him. You will imagine Mrs. Allison's despair. The entanglement is in itself bad enough. But she--I think you know it--is no ordinary woman, nor can she bring any of the common philosophy of life to bear upon this matter. It seems to be sapping her very springs of existence, and the impression she left upon myself--and upon Lady Maxwell"--he said the words slowly--"was one of the deepest pity and sorrow. As you also know, I believe, I have till now been able to bring some restraining influence to bear upon the girl, who is of course not a girl, but a very much married woman, with a husband always threatening to turn up and avenge himself upon her. There is a good man, one of those High Church clergymen who interest themselves specially in the stage, who has helped us many times already. I have telegraphed to him, and expect him here before long. We know that she has not yet left London, and it may be possible again, at the eleventh hour, to stop her.

But that--"

"Is not enough," said Tressady, quickly, raising his head. "You want someone to grapple with Ancoats?"

Face and voice were those of another man--attentive, normal, sympathetic.

Maxwell observed him keenly.

"We want someone to go to Ancoats; to represent to him his mother's determination to leave him for good if this disgraceful affair goes on; to break the shock of the girl's non-arrival to him, if, indeed, we succeed in stopping her; and to watch him for a day or two, in case there should be anything in the miserable talk of suicide with which he seems to have been threatening his mother."

"Oh! Suicide! Ancoats!" said Tressady, throwing back his head.

"We rate him, apparently, much the same," said Maxwell, drily. "But it is not to be wondered at that the mother should be differently affected.

She sent you"--the speaker paused a moment--"what seemed to me a touching message."

Tressady bent forward.

"'Tell him that I have no claim upon him--that I am ashamed to ask this of him. But he once said some kind words to me about my son, and I know that Ancoats desired his friendship. His help _might_ save us. I can say no more.'"

Tressady looked up quickly, reddening involuntarily.

"Was Fontenoy there--did he agree?"

"Fontenoy agreed," said Maxwell, in the same measured voice. "In fact, you grasp our pet.i.tion. To speak frankly, my wife suggested it, and I was deputed to bear it to you. But I need not say that we are quite prepared to find that you are not able to do what we have ventured to ask of you, or that your engagements will not permit it."

A strange gulp rose in Tressady's throat. He understood--oh! he understood her--perfectly.

He leant back in his chair, looking through the open window to the Thames. A breeze had risen and was breaking up the thunderous sky into gay s.p.a.ces of white and blue. The river was surging and boiling under the tide, and strings of barges were mounting with the mounting water, slipping fast along the terrace wall. The fronts of the various buildings opposite rose in shadow against the dazzling blue and silver of the water. Here over the river, even for this jaded London, summer was still fresh; every mast and spar, every track of boat or steamer in the burst of light, struck the eye with sharpness and delight.

Each line and hue printed itself on Tressady's brain. Then he turned slowly to his companion. Maxwell sat patiently waiting for his reply; and for the first time Tressady received, as it were, a full impression of a personality he had till now either ignored or disliked. In youth Maxwell had never pa.s.sed for a handsome man. But middle life and n.o.ble habit were every year giving increased accent and spiritual energy to the youth's pleasant features; and Nature as she silvered the brown hair, and drove deep the lines of thought and experience, was bringing more than she took away. A quiet, modest fellow Maxwell would be to the end; not witty; not brilliant; more and more content to bear the yoke of the great commonplaces of life as subtlety and knowledge grew; saying nothing of spiritual things, only living them--yet a man, it seemed, on whom England would more and more lay the burden of her fortunes.

Tressady gazed at him, shaken with new reverences, new compunctions.

Maxwell's eyes were drawn to his--mild, penetrating eyes, in which for an instant Tressady seemed to read what no words would ever say to him. Then he sprang up.

"There is an afternoon train put on this month. I can catch it. Tell me, if you can, a few more details."

Maxwell took out a half-sheet of notes from his pocket, and the two men standing together beside the table went with care into a few matters it was well for Tressady to know. Tressady threw a quick intelligence into his questions that inevitably recalled to Maxwell the cut-and-thrust of his speech on the preceding evening; nor behind his rapid discussion of a vulgar business did the constrained emotion of his manner escape his companion.

At last all was settled. At the last moment an uneasy question rose in Maxwell's mind. "Ought _we_, at such a crisis, to be sending him away from his wife?" But he could not bring himself to put it, even lightly, into words, and as it happened Tressady did not leave him in doubt.

"I am glad you caught me," he said nervously, in what seemed an awkward pause, while he looked for his hat, forgetting where he had put it. "I was intending to leave London to-night. But my business can very well wait till next week. Now I think I have everything."

He gathered up a new Guide-Chaix that Maxwell had put into his hand, saw that the half-sheet of notes was safely stowed into his pocket-book, and took up his hat and stick. As he spoke, Maxwell had remembered the situation and Mrs. Allison's remark. No doubt Tressady had proposed to go north that night on a mission of explanation to his Market Malford const.i.tuents, and it struck one of the most scrupulous of men with an additional pang, that he should be thus helping to put private motives in the way of public duty. But what was done was done. And it seemed impossible that either should speak a word of politics.

"I ought to say," said Tressady, pausing once more as they moved together towards the door, "that I have not ultimately much hope for Mrs. Allison. If this entanglement is put aside, there will be something else. Trouville itself, in August, I should imagine, is a place of _bonnes fortunes_ for the man who wants them, and Ancoats's mind runs to such things."

He spoke with a curious eagerness, like one who pleads that his good-will shall not be judged by mere failure or success.

Maxwell raised his shoulders.

"Nothing that can happen will in the least affect our grat.i.tude to _you_," he said gravely.

"Grat.i.tude!" muttered the young man under his breath. His lip trembled.

He looked uncertainly at his companion. Maxwell did not offer his hand, yet as he opened the door for his visitor there was a quiet cordiality and kindness in his manner that made his renewed words of thanks sound like a strange music in Tressady's ears.

When the minister was once more alone he walked back to the window, and stood looking down thoughtfully on the gay pageant of the river. She was right--she was always right. There was nothing vile in that young fellow, and his face had a look of suffering it pained Maxwell to remember. Why had he personally not come to know him better? "I think too little of men, too much of machinery," he said to himself, despondently; "unconsciously I leave the dealing with human beings far too often to her, and then I wonder that a man sees and feels her as she is!"

Yet as he stood there in the sunshine a feeling of moral relief stole upon him, the feeling that rewards a man who has tried to deal greatly with some common and personal strait. Some day, not yet, he would make Tressady his friend. He calmly felt it to be within his power.

Unless the wife!--He threw up his hand, and turned back to his writing-table. What was to be done with that letter? Had Tressady any knowledge of it? Maxwell could not conceive it possible that he had. But, no doubt, it would come to his knowledge, as well as Maxwell's reply.

For he meant to reply, and as he glanced at the clock on his table he saw that he had just half an hour before his clergyman-visitor arrived.

Instantly, in his methodical way, he sat down to his task, labouring it, however, with toil and difficulty, when it was once begun.

The few words he ultimately wrote ran as follows:

"Dear Lady Tressady,--Your letter was a great surprise and a great pain to me. I believe you will recognise before long that you wrote it under a delusion, and that you have said in it both unkind and unjust things of one who is totally incapable of wronging you or anyone else. My wife read your letter, for she and I have no secrets. She will try and see you at once, and I trust you will not refuse to see her. She will prove to you, I think, that you have been giving yourself quite needless torture, for which she has no responsibility, but for which she is none the less sorrowful and distressed.

"I have treated your letter in this way because it is impossible to ignore the pain and trouble which drove you to write. I need not say that if it became necessary for me to write or act in another way, I should think only of my wife. But I will trust to the effect upon you of her own words and character; and I cannot believe that you will misconstrue the generosity that prompts her to go to you.

"Is it not possible, also, that your misunderstanding of your husband may be in its own way as grave as your misunderstanding of Lady Maxwell?

Forgive an intrusive question, and believe me,

"Yours faithfully,

"MAXWELL."

He read it anxiously over and over, then took a hasty copy of it, and finally sealed and sent it. He was but half satisfied with it. How was one to write such a letter without argument or recrimination? The poor thing had a vulgar, spiteful, little soul; that was clear from her outpouring. It was also clear that she was miserable; nor could Maxwell disguise from himself that in a sense she had ample cause. From that hard fact, with all its repellent and unpalatable consequences, a weaker man would by now have let his mind escape, would at any rate have begun to minimise and make light of George Tressady's act of the morning. In Maxwell, on the contrary, after a first movement of pa.s.sionate resentment which had nothing whatever in common with ordinary jealousy, that act was now generating a compelling and beneficent force, that made for healing and reparation. Marcella had foreseen it, and in her pain and penitence had given the impulse. For all things are possible to a perfect affection, working through a nature at once healthy and strong.

Yet when Maxwell was once more established in his room at the Privy Council, overwhelmed with letters, interviews, and all the routine of official business, those who had to do with him noticed an unusual restlessness in their even-tempered chief. In truth, whenever his work left him free for a moment, all sorts of questions would start up in his mind: "Is she there? Is that woman hurting and insulting her? Can I do nothing? My love! my poor love!"

But Marcella's plans so far had not prospered.

When George Tressady, after hastily despatching his most urgent business at the House, drove up to his own door in the afternoon just in time to put his things together and catch a newly-put-on dining-train to Paris, he found the house deserted. The butler reminded him that Letty accompanied by Miss Tulloch had gone to Hampton Court to join a river party for the day. George remembered; he hated the people she was to be with, and instinct told him that Cathedine would be there.