Sir George Tressady Volume Ii Part 24

"Do you propose, then, to go yourself?"

"I am of no use," said Fontenoy, decisively.

Maxwell had cause to know that the statement was true, and did not press him. They fell into a rapid consultation.

Meanwhile, Marcella had drawn Mrs. Allison to the sofa beside her, and was attempting a futile task of comfort. Mrs. Allison answered in monosyllables, glancing hither and thither. At last she said in a low, swift voice, as though addressing herself, rather than her companion, "If all fails, I have made up my mind. I shall leave his house. I can take nothing more from him."

Marcella started. "But that would deprive you of all chance, all hope of influencing him," she said, her eager, tender look searching the other woman's face.

"No; it would be my duty," said Mrs. Allison, simply, crossing her hands upon her lap. Her delicate blue eyes, swollen with weeping, the white hair, of which a lock had escaped from its usual quiet braids and hung over her blanched cheeks, her look at once saintly and indomitable--every detail of her changed aspect made a chill and penetrating impression.

Marcella began to understand what the Christian might do, though the mother should die of it.

Meanwhile she watched the two men at the other side of the room, with a manifest eagerness for their return. Presently, indeed, she half rose and called:

"Aldous!"

Lord Maxwell turned.

"Are you thinking of someone who might go to Trouville?" she asked him.

"Yes, but we can hit on no one," he replied, in perplexity.

She moved towards him, bearing herself with a peculiar erectness and dignity.

"Would it be possible to ask Sir George Tressady to go?" she said quietly.

Maxwell looked at her open-mouthed for an instant. Fontenoy, behind him, threw a sudden, searching glance at the beautiful figure in grey.

"We all know," she said, turning back to the mother, "that Ancoats likes Sir George."

Mrs. Allison shrunk a little from the clear look. Fontenoy's rage of defeat, however modified in her presence, had nevertheless expressed itself to her in phrases and allusions that had both perplexed and troubled her. _Had_ Marcella indeed made use of her beauty to decoy a weak youth from his allegiance? And now she spoke his name so simply.

But the momentary wonder died from the poor mother's mind.

"I remember," she said sadly, "I remember he once spoke to me very kindly about my son."

"And he thought kindly," said Marcella, rapidly; "he is kind at heart.

Aldous! if Cousin Charlotte consents, why not at least put the case to him? He knows everything. He might undertake what we want, for her sake,--for all our sakes,--and it might succeed."

The swift yet calm decision of her manner completed Maxwell's bewilderment.

His eyes sought hers, while the others waited, conscious, somehow, of a dramatic moment. Fontenoy's flash of malicious curiosity made him even forget, while it lasted, the little tragic figure on the sofa.

"What do you say, Cousin Charlotte?" said Maxwell at last.

His voice was dry and business-like. Only the wife who watched him perceived the silent dignity with which he had accepted her appeal.

He went to sit beside Mrs. Allison, stooping over her, while they talked in a low key. Very soon she had caught at Marcella's suggestion, with an energy of despair.

"But how can we find him?" she said at last, looking helplessly round the room, at the very chair, among others, where Tressady had just been sitting.

Maxwell felt the humour of the situation without relis.h.i.+ng it.

"Either at his own house," he said shortly, "or the House of Commons."

"He may have left town this morning. Lord Fontenoy thought"--she looked timidly at her companion--"that he would be sure to go and explain himself to his const.i.tuents at once."

"Well, we can find out. If you give me instructions,--if you are sure this is what you want,--we will find out at once. Are you sure?"

"I can think of nothing better," she said, with a piteous gesture.

"And if he goes, I have only one message to give him. Ancoats knows that I have exhausted every argument, every entreaty. Now let him tell my son"--her voice grew firm, in spite of her look of anguish--"that if he insists on surrendering himself to a life of sin I can bear him company no more. I shall leave his house, and go somewhere by myself, to pray for him."

Maxwell tried to soothe her, and there was some half-whispered talk between them, she quietly wiping away her tears from time to time.

Meanwhile, Marcella and Fontenoy sat together a little way off, he at first watching Mrs. Allison, she silent, and making no attempt to play the hostess. Gradually, however, the sense of her presence beside him, the memory of Tressady's speech, of the scene in the House of the night before, began to work in his veins with a p.r.i.c.king, exciting power. His family was famous for a certain drastic way with women; his father, the now old and half-insane Marquis, had parted from his mother while Fontenoy was still a child, after scenes that would have disgraced an inn parlour. Fontenoy himself, in his reckless youth, had simply avoided the whole s.e.x, so far as its reputable members were concerned; till one woman by sympathy, by flattery perhaps, by the strange mingling in herself of iron and gentleness, had tamed him. But there were brutal instincts in his blood, and he became conscious of them as he sat beside Marcella Maxwell.

Suddenly he broke out, bending forward, one hand on his knee, the other nervously adjusting the eyegla.s.s without which he was practically blind.

"I imagine your side had foreseen last night better than we had?"

She drew herself together instantly.

"One can hardly say. It was evident, wasn't it, that the House as a whole was surprised? Certainly, no one could have foreseen the numbers."

She met his look straight, her white hand playing with Mrs.

Allison's card.

"Oh! a slide of that kind once begun goes like the wind," said Fontenoy.

"Well, and are you pleased with your Bill--not afraid of your promises--of all the Edens you have held out?"

The smile that he attempted roused such ogerish a.s.sociations in Marcella, she must needs say something to give colour to the half-desperate laugh that caught her.

"Did you suppose we should be already _en penitence?_" she asked him.

The man's wrath overcame him. So England--all the serious forces of the country--were to be more and more henceforward at the mercy of this kind of thing! He had begun the struggle with a scornful disbelief in current gossip. He--politically and morally the creation of a woman--had yet not been able to bring himself to fear a woman. And now he sat there, fiercely saying to himself that this woman, playing the old game under new names, had undone him.

"Ah! I see," he said. "You are of the mind of the Oxford don--never regret, never retract, never apologise?"

The small, reddish eyes, like needle-points, fixed the face before him.

She looked up, her beautiful lips parting. She felt the insult--marvelled at it! On such an errand, in her own house! Scorn was almost lost in astonishment.

"A quotation which n.o.body gets right--isn't it so?" she said calmly. "If a wise man said it, I suppose he meant, 'Don't explain yourself to the wrong people,' which is good advice, don't you think?"

She rose as she spoke, and moved away from him, that she might listen to what her husband was saying. Fontenoy was left to reflect on the folly of a man who, being driven to ask a kindness of his enemy, cannot keep his temper in the enemy's house. Yet his temper had been freshly tried since he entered it. The whole suggestion of Tressady's emba.s.sy was to himself galling in the extreme. "There is a meaning in it," he thought; "of course she thinks it will save appearances!" There was no extravagance, no calumny, that this cold critic of other men's fervours was not for the moment ready to believe.

Nevertheless, as he threw himself back in his chair, and his eye caught Mrs. Allison's bent figure on the other side of the room, he knew that he must needs submit--he did submit--to anything that could give that torn heart ease. Of his two pa.s.sions, one, the pa.s.sion for politics, seemed for the moment to have lost itself in disgust and disappointment; to the other he clung but the more strongly. Once or twice in her talk with Maxwell, Mrs. Allison raised her gentle eyes and looked across to Fontenoy. "Are you there, my friend?" the glance seemed to say, and a thrill spread itself through the man's rugged being. Ah, well! the follies of this young scapegrace must wear themselves out in time, and either he would marry and so free his mother, or he would so outrage her conscience that she would separate herself from him. Then would come other people's rewards.

Presently, indeed, Mrs. Allison rose from her seat and advanced to him with hurried steps.