Sir George Tressady Volume Ii Part 36

"I should like him to be let off."

He hesitated.

"That's very nice of you, but it wouldn't be very good for the district."

She did not press the matter, but as he moved away she said fretfully:

"I wish you'd read to me. The pain's horrid."

Thankful, in his remorse, to do anything for her, he tried to amuse and distract her as he best could. But in the middle of a magazine story she interrupted him:

"Isn't it the day after to-morrow your mother's coming?"

"According to her letter this morning." He put down the book. "But I don't think you'll be at all fit to look after her. Shall I write to-night and suggest that she stays in London a little?"

"No. I shall be all right, the doctor says. I want to tell Esther"--Esther was the housemaid--"_not_ to get the Blue Room ready for her. I looked in to-day, and it seemed damp. The back room over the dining-room is smaller, but it's much warmer."

She turned to look at him with a rather flushed face.

"You know best," he said, smiling. "I am sure it will be all right. But I sha'n't let her come unless you are better."

He went on reading till it grew late, and it seemed to him she was dropping off to sleep. He was stealing off by way of the large dressing-room near by, where he had been installed since their return, when, she said faintly, "Good-night!"

He returned, and felt the drawing of her hot hand. He stooped and kissed her. Then she turned away from him, and seemed to go instantly to sleep.

He went downstairs to his library, and gathered about him some doc.u.ments he had brought back from the last meeting of the masters' committee, which had to be read. But in reality he spent an hour of random thought.

When would she herself tell him anything of her relations to Lady Maxwell, of the nature and causes of that strange subjection which, as he saw quite plainly, had been brought about? She must know that he pined to know; yet she held her secret only the more jealously, no doubt to punish him.

He thought of her visits to the village, half humorously, half sadly; then of her speech about the Blue Room and his mother. They seemed to him signs of some influence at work.

But at last he turned back to his papers with a long impatient sigh. The clear pessimism with which he was wont to see facts that concerned himself maintained that all the surrounding circ.u.mstance of the case was as untoward as it could be--this dull house, a troubled district, his money affairs, the perpetual burden of his mother, Letty's own thirst for pleasure, and the dying down in himself of the feelings that might once--possibly--have made up to her for a good deal. The feelings might be simulated. Was the woman likely to be deceived? That she was capable of the fiercest jealousy had been made abundantly plain; and such a temper once roused would find a hundred new provocations, day by day, in the acts and doings of a husband who had ceased to be a lover.

Two days later Lady Tressady arrived, with Justine, and her dogs, and all her paraphernalia. She declared herself better, but she was a mere shadow of the woman who had tormented George with her debts and affectations at Malford House a twelvemonth before. She took Ferth discontentedly, as usual, and was particularly cross with Letty's a.s.signment to her of the back room, instead of the larger spare room to the front of the house.

"Damp?--nonsense!" she said to Justine, who was trying to soothe her on the night she arrived. "I suppose Lady Tressady has some friend of her own coming to stay--that's, of _course_, what it is. _C'est parfaitement clair, je te dis--parfaitement!_"

The French maid reminded her that her daughter-in-law had said, on showing her the room, she had only to express a wish to change, and the arrangements should be altered at once.

"I daresay," cried Lady Tressady. "But I shall ask _no_ favours of her--and that, of course, she knew."

"But, miladi, I need only speak to the housemaid."

"Thank you! Then afterwards, whenever I had a pain or a finger-ache, it would be, 'I told you so!' No! she has managed it very cleverly--very cleverly indeed!--and I shall let it alone."

Thenceforward, however, there were constant complaints of everything provided for her--room, food, the dulness of the place, the manners of her daughter-in-law. Whether it was that her illness had now reached a stage when the will could no longer fight against it, and its only effect was demoralising; or whether the strange flash of courage and natural affection struck from the volatile nature by the first threat of death could not in any case have maintained itself, it is hard to say. At any rate, George also found it hard to keep up his new and better ways with her. The fact was, he suffered through Letty. In a few days his sympathies were all with her, and to his amazement he perceived before long that, in spite of occasional sharp speeches and sulky moments that only an angel could have forborne, she was really more patient under his mother's idiosyncrasies than he was. Yet Lady Tressady, even now, was rarely unmanageable in his presence, and could still restrain herself if it was a question of his comfort and repose; whereas, it was clear that she felt a cat-like impulse to torment Letty whenever she saw her.

One recent habit, however, bore with special heaviness on himself. Oddly enough, it was a habit of religious discussion. Lady Tressady in health had never troubled herself in the least as to what the doctors of the soul might have to say, and had generally gaily professed herself a sceptic in religious matters, mostly, as George had often thought, for the sake of escaping all inconvenient restrictions--such as family prayers, or keeping Sunday, or observing Lent--which might have got in the way of her amus.e.m.e.nts.

But, now, poor lady, she was all curiosity and anxiety about this strange other side of things, and inclined, too, to be rather proud of the originality of her inquiries on the subject. So that night after night she would keep George up, after an exhausting day, till the small hours, while she declared her own views "on G.o.d, on Nature, and on Human Life,"

and endeavoured to extract his. This latter part of the exercise was indeed particularly attractive to her; no doubt because of its difficulty. George had been a singularly reserved person in these respect's all his life, and had no mind now to play the part of a coal-seam for his mother to "pike" at. But "pike" she would incessantly.

"Now, George, look here! what do you _really_ think about a future life?

Now don't try and get out of it! And don't just talk nonsense to me because you think I'm ill. I'm not a baby--I really am not. Tell me--seriously--what you think. Do you honestly expect there _is_ a future life?"

"I've told you before, mother, that I have no particular thoughts on that subject. It isn't in my line," George would say, smiling profanely, but uneasily, and wondering how long this bout of it might be going to last.

"Don't be shocking, George! You _must_ have some ideas about it. Now, don't hum and haw--just tell me what you think." And she would lean forward, all urgency and expectation.

A pause, during which George could think only of the ghastly figure on the sofa. She sat upright, generally, against a prop of cus.h.i.+ons, dressed in a white French tea-gown, slim enough to begin, with, but far too large now for the shrunk form--a bright spot of rouge on either pinched cheek, and the dyed "fringe" and "coils" covering all the once shapely head. Meanwhile her hand would play impatiently on her knee.

The hand was skin and bone; and the rings with which it was laden would often slip off from it to the floor--a diversion of which George was always prompt to avail himself.

"Why don't you talk to Mr. Fearon, mother?" he would say gently at last.

"It's his business to discuss these things."

"Talk to a clergyman! thank you! I hope I have more respect for my own intelligence. What can a priest do for you? What does he know more than anybody else? But I do want to know what my own son thinks. Now, George, just answer me. If there _is_ a future life"--she spread out her hand slowly on her lap--"what do you suppose your father's doing at this moment? That's a thing I often think of, George. I don't think I want a future life if it's to be just like the past. You know--you remember how he used to be--poking about the house, and going down to the pits, and--and--swearing at the servants, and having rows with me about the accounts--and all his dear dreadful little ways? Yet, what else in the world can you imagine him doing? As to singing hymns!"

She raised her hands expressively.

George laughed, and puffed away at his cigarette. But as he still said nothing Lady Tressady began to frown.

"That's the way you always get out of my questions," she said fretfully; "it's so provoking of you."

"I've recommended you to the professional," he said, patting her hand.

"What else could I do?"

Her thin cheek flamed.

"As if we couldn't be certain, anyway," she cried, "that the Christians don't know anything about it. As M. d'Estrelles used to say to me at Monte Carlo, if there's one thing clear, it is that we needn't bother ourselves with _their_ doctrines!"

"Needn't we?" said George. Then he looked at her, smiling. "And you think M. d'Estrelles was an authority?"

Odd recollections began to run through his mind of this elderly French admirer of his mother's, whom he had seen occasionally flitting about their London lodgings when, as a boy, he came up from Eton for his _exeat_.

"Oh! don't you scoff, George," said his mother, angrily. "M. d'Estrelles was a very clever man, though he did gamble like a fool. Everybody said his memory was marvellous. He used to quote me pages out of Voltaire and the rest of them on the nights when we walked up and down the gardens at Monte Carlo, after he'd cleared himself out. He always said he didn't see why these things should be kept from women--why men shouldn't tell women exactly what they think. And I know he'd been a Catholic in his youth, so he'd had experience of both. However, I don't care about M. d'Estrelles.

I want your opinions. Now, George!"--her voice would begin to break--"how can you be so unkind. You might really compose my mind a little, as the doctors say!"

And through her incorrigible levity he would see for a moment the terror which always possessed her raise its head. Then it would be time for him to go and put his arm round her, and try and coax her to bed.

One night, after he had taken her upstairs, he came down so wearied and irritable that he put all his letters aside, and tried to forget himself in some miscellaneous reading.

His knowledge of literature was no more complete than his character.

Certain modern English poets--Rossetti, Morris, Keats, and Sh.e.l.ley--he knew almost by heart. And in travels and biography--mostly of men of action--he had, at one time or another, read voraciously. But "the cla.s.sics he had not read," as with most of us, would have made a list of lamentable length.

Since his return to Ferth, however, he had browsed a good deal among the books collected by his grandfather, mostly by way of distracting himself at night from the troubles and worries of the day.

On this particular night there were two books lying on his table. One was a volume of Madame de Sevigne, the other St. Augustine's "Confessions."

He turned over first one, then the other.

"Au reste, ma fille, une de mes grandes envies, ce serait d'etre devote; je ne suis ni an Dieu, ni an Diable; cet etat m'ennuie, quoiqu' entre nous je le trouve le plus naturel du monde. On n'est point an Diable parce qu'on craint Dieu, et qu' an fond on a un principe de religion; on n'est point a Dieu aussi, parce que sa loi paroit dure, et qu' on n'aime point a se detruire soi-meme."