A few busy and eventful weeks, days never forgotten by Marcella in after years, passed quickly by. Parliament met in the third week of January. Ministers, according to universal expectation, found themselves confronted by a damaging amendment on the Address, and were defeated by a small majority. A dissolution and appeal to the country followed immediately, and the meetings and speech-makings, already active throughout the constituencies, were carried forward with redoubled energy. In the Tudley End division, Aldous Raeburn was fighting a somewhat younger opponent of the same country-gentleman stock—a former fag indeed of his at Eton—whose zeal and fluency gave him plenty to do. Under ordinary circumstances Aldous would have thrown himself with all his heart and mind into a contest which involved for him the most stimulating of possibilities, personal and public. But, as these days went over, he found his appetite for the struggle flagging, and was harassed rather than spurred by his adversary's activity. The real truth was that he could not see enough of Marcella! A curious uncertainty and unreality, moreover, seemed to have crept into some of their relations; and it had begun to gall and fever him that Wharton should be staying there, week after week, beside her, in her father's house, able to spend all the free intervals of the fight in her society, strengthening an influence which Raeburn's pride and delicacy had hardly allowed him as yet, in spite of his instinctive jealousy from the beginning, to take into his thoughts at all, but which was now apparent, not only to himself but to others.
In vain did he spend every possible hour at Mellor he could snatch from a conflict in which his party, his grandfather, and his own personal fortunes were all deeply interested. In vain—with a tardy instinct that it was to Mr. Boyce's dislike of himself, and to the wilful fancy for Wharton's society which this dislike had promoted, that Wharton's long stay at Mellor was largely owing—did Aldous subdue himself to propitiations and amenities wholly foreign to a strong character long accustomed to rule without thinking about it. Mr. Boyce showed himself not a whit less partial to Wharton than before; pressed him at least twice in Raeburn's hearing to make Mellor his head-quarters so long as it suited him, and behaved with an irritable malice with regard to some of the details of the wedding arrangements, which neither Mrs. Boyce's indignation nor Marcella's discomfort and annoyance could restrain. Clearly there was in him a strong consciousness that by his attentions to the Radical candidate he was asserting his independence of the Raeburns, and nothing for the moment seemed to be more of an object with him, even though his daughter was going to marry the Raeburns' heir. Meanwhile, Wharton was always ready to walk or chat or play billiards with his host in the intervals of his own campaign; and his society had thus come to count considerably among the scanty daily pleasures of a sickly and disappointed man. Mrs. Boyce did not like her guest, and took no pains to disguise it, least of all from Wharton. But it seemed to be no longer possible for her to take the vigorous measures she would once have taken to get rid of him.
In vain, too, did Miss Raeburn do her best for the nephew to whom she was still devoted, in spite of his deplorable choice of a wife. She took in the situation as a whole probably sooner than anybody else, and she instantly made heroic efforts to see more of Marcella, to get her to come oftener to the Court, and in many various ways to procure the poor deluded Aldous more of his betrothed's society. She paid many chattering and fussy visits to Mellor—visits which chafed Marcella—and before long, indeed, roused a certain suspicion in the girl's wilful mind. Between Miss Raeburn and Mrs. Boyce there was a curious understanding. It was always tacit, and never amounted to friendship, still less to intimacy. But it often yielded a certain melancholy consolation to Aldous Raeburn's great-aunt. It was clear to her that this strange mother was just as much convinced as she was that Aldous was making a great mistake, and that Marcella was not worthy of him. But the engagement being there—a fact not apparently to be undone—both ladies showed themselves disposed to take pains with it, to protect it against aggression. Mrs. Boyce found herself becoming more of achaperonthan she had ever yet professed to be; and Miss Raeburn, as we have said, made repeated efforts to capture Marcella and hold her for Aldous, her lawful master.
But Marcella proved extremely difficult to manage. In the first place she was a young person of many engagements. Her village scheme absorbed a great deal of time. She was deep in a varied correspondence, in the engagement of teachers, the provision of work-rooms, the collecting and registering of workers, the organisation of local committees and so forth. New sides of the girl's character, new capacities and capabilities were coming out; new forms of her natural power over her fellows were developing every day; she was beginning, under the incessant stimulus of Wharton's talk, to read and think on social and economic subjects, with some system and coherence, and it was evident that she took a passionate mental pleasure in it all. And the more pleasure these activities gave her, the less she had to spare for those accompaniments of her engagement and her position that was to be, which once, as Mrs. Boyce's sharp eyes perceived, had been quite normally attractive to her.
"Why do you take up her time so, with all these things?" said Miss Raeburn impatiently to Lady Winterbourne, who was now Marcella's obedient helper in everything she chose to initiate. "She doesn't care for anything sheoughtto care about at this time, and Aldous sees nothing of her. As for her trousseau, Mrs. Boyce declares she has had to do it all. Marcella won't even go up to London to have her wedding-dress fitted!"
Lady Winterbourne looked up bewildered.
"But I can't make her go and have her wedding-dress fitted, Agneta! And I always feel you don't know what a fine creature she is. You don't really appreciate her. It's splendid the ideas she has about this work, and the way she throws herself into it."
"I dare say!" said Miss Raeburn, indignantly. "That's just what I object to. Why can't she throw herself into being in love with Aldous! That's her business, I imagine, just now—if she were a young woman like anybody else one had ever seen—instead of holding aloof from everything he does, and never being there when he wants her. Oh! I have no patience with her. But, of course, I must—" said Miss Raeburn, hastily correcting herself—"of course, I must have patience."
"It will all come right, I am sure, when they are married," said LadyWinterbourne, rather helplessly.
"That's just what my brother says," cried Miss Raeburn, exasperated. "He won't hear a word—declares she is odd and original, and that Aldous will soon know how to manage her. It's all very well; nowadays mendon'tmanage their wives; that's all gone with the rest. And I am sure, my dear, if she behaves after she is married as she is doing now, with that most objectionable person Mr. Wharton—walking, and talking, and taking up his ideas, and going to his meetings—she'll be a handful for any husband."
"Mr. Wharton!" said Lady Winterbourne, astonished. Her absent black eyes, the eyes of the dreamer, of the person who lives by a few intense affections, saw little or nothing of what was going on immediately under them. "Oh! but that is because he is staying in the house, and he is a Socialist; she calls herself one—"
"Mydear," said Miss Raeburn, interrupting emphatically; "if—you—had—now—an unmarried daughter at home—engaged or not—would you care to have Harry Wharton hanging about after her?"
"Harry Wharton?" said the other, pondering; "he is the Levens' cousin, isn't he? he used to stay with them. I don't think I have seen him since then. But yes, I do remember; there was something—something disagreeable?"
She stopped with a hesitating, interrogative air. No one talked less scandal, no one put the uglinesses of life away from her with a hastier hand than Lady Winterbourne. She was one of the most consistent of moral epicures.
"Yes,extremelydisagreeable," said Miss Raeburn, sitting bolt upright. "The man has no principles—never had any, since he was a child in petticoats. I know Aldous thinks him unscrupulous in politics and everything else. And then, just when you are worked to death, and have hardly a moment for your own affairs, to have a man of that type always at hand to spend odd times with your lady love—flattering her, engaging her in his ridiculous schemes, encouraging her in all the extravagances she has got her head twice too full of already, setting her against your own ideas and the life she will have to live—you will admit that it is not exactly soothing!"
"Poor Aldous!" said Lady Winterbourne, thoughtfully, looking far ahead with her odd look of absent rigidity, which had in reality so little to do with a character essentially soft; "but you see hedidknow all about her opinions. And I don't think—no, I really don't think—I could speak to her."
In truth, this woman of nearly seventy—old in years, but wholly young in temperament—was altogether under Marcella's spell—more at ease with her already than with most of her own children, finding in her satisfaction for a hundred instincts, suppressed or starved by her own environment, fascinated by the girl's friendship, and eagerly grateful for her visits. Miss Raeburn thought it all both incomprehensible and silly.
"Apparently no one can!" cried that lady in answer to her friend's demurrer; "is all the world afraid of her?"
And she departed in wrath. But she knew, nevertheless, that she was just as much afraid of Marcella as anybody else. In her own sphere at the Court, or in points connected with what was due to the family, or to Lord Maxwell especially, as the head of it, this short, capable old lady could hold her own amply with Aldous's betrothed, could maintain, indeed, a sharp and caustic dignity, which kept Marcella very much in order. Miss Raeburn, on the defensive, was strong; but when it came to attacking Marcella's own ideas and proceedings, Lord Maxwell's sister became shrewdly conscious of her own weaknesses. She had no wish to measure her wits on any general field with Marcella's. She said to herself that the girl was too clever and would talk you down.
Meanwhile, things went untowardly in various ways. Marcella disciplined herself before the Gairsley meeting, and went thither resolved to give Aldous as much sympathy as she could. But the performance only repelled a mind over which Wharton was every day gaining more influence. There was a portly baronet in the chair; there were various Primrose Dames on the platform and among the audience; there was a considerable representation of clergy; and the labourers present seemed to Marcella the most obsequious of their kind. Aldous spoke well—or so the audience seemed to think; but she could feel no enthusiasm for anything that he said. She gathered that he advocated a Government inspection of cottages, more stringent precautions against cattle disease, better technical instruction, a more abundant provision of allotments and small freeholds, &c.; and he said many cordial and wise-sounding things in praise of a progress which should go safely and wisely from step to step, and run no risks of dangerous reaction. But the assumptions on which, as she told herself rebelliously, it all went—that the rich and the educated must rule, and the poor obey; that existing classes and rights, the forces of individualism and competition, must and would go on pretty much as they were; that great houses and great people, the English land and game system, and all the rest of our odious class paraphernalia were in the order of the universe; these ideas, conceived as the furniture of Aldous's mind, threw her again into a ferment of passionate opposition. And when the noble baronet in the chair—to her eye, a pompous, frock-coated stick, sacrificing his after-dinner sleep for once, that he might the more effectually secure it in the future—proposed a vote of confidence in the Conservative candidate; when the vote was carried with much cheering and rattling of feet; when the Primrose Dames on the platform smiled graciously down upon the meeting as one smiles at good children in their moments of pretty behaviour; and when, finally, scores of toil-stained labourers, young and old, went up to have a word and a hand-shake with "Muster Raeburn," Marcella held herself aloof and cold, with a look that threatened sarcasm should she be spoken to. Miss Raeburn, glancing furtively round at her, was outraged anew by her expression.
"She will be a thorn in all our sides," thought that lady. "Aldous is a fool!—a poor dear noble misguided fool!"
Then on the way home, she and Aldous drove together. Marcella tried to argue, grew vehement, and said bitter things for the sake of victory, till at last Aldous, tired, worried, and deeply wounded, could bear it no longer.
"Let it be, dear, let it be!" he entreated, snatching at her hand as they rolled along through a stormy night. "We grope in a dark world—you see some points of light in it, I see others—won't you give me credit for doing what I can—seeing what I can? I am sure—sure—you will find it easier to bear with differences when we are quite together—when there are no longer all these hateful duties and engagements—and persons—between us."
"Persons! I don't know what you mean!" said Marcella.
Aldous only just restrained himself in time. Out of sheer fatigue and slackness of nerve he had been all but betrayed into some angry speech on the subject of Wharton, the echoes of whose fantastic talk, as it seemed to him, were always hanging about Mellor when he went there. But he did refrain, and was thankful. That he was indeed jealous and disturbed, that he had been jealous and disturbed from the moment Harry Wharton had set foot in Mellor, he himself knew quite well. But to play the jealous part in public was more than the Raeburn pride could bear. There was the dread, too, of defining the situation—of striking some vulgar irrevocable note.
So he parried Marcella's exclamation by asking her whether she had any idea how many human hands a parliamentary candidate had to shake between breakfast and bed; and then, having so slipped into another tone, he tried to amuse himself and her by some of the daily humours of the contest. She lent herself to it and laughed, her look mostly turned away from him, as though she were following the light of the carriage lamps as it slipped along the snow-laden hedges, her hand lying limply in his. But neither were really gay. His soreness of mind grew as in the pauses of talk he came to realise more exactly the failure of the evening—of his very successful and encouraging meeting—from his own private point of view.
"Didn't you like that last speech?" he broke out suddenly—"that labourer's speech? I thought you would. It was entirely his own idea—nobody asked him to do it."
In reality Gairsley represented a corner of the estate which Aldous had specially made his own. He had spent much labour and thought on the improvement of what had been a backward district, and in particular he had tried a small profit-sharing experiment upon a farm there which he had taken into his own hands for the purpose. The experiment had met with fair success, and the labourer in question, who was one of the workers in it, had volunteered some approving remarks upon it at the meeting.
"Oh! it was very proper and respectful!" said Marcella, hastily.
The carriage rolled on some yards before Aldous replied. Then he spoke in a drier tone than he had ever yet used to her.
"You do it injustice, I think. The man is perfectly independent, and an honest fellow. I was grateful to him for what he said."
"Of course, I am no judge!" cried Marcella, quickly—repentantly. "Why did you ask me? I saw everything crooked, I suppose—it was your Primrose Dames—they got upon my nerves. Why did you have them? I didn't mean to vex and hurt you—I didn't indeed—it was all the other way—and now I have."
She turned upon him laughing, but also half crying, as he could tell by the flutter of her breath.
He vowed he was not hurt, and once more changed both talk and tone. They reached the drive's end without a word of Wharton. But Marcella went to bed hating herself, and Aldous, after his solitary drive home, sat up long and late, feverishly pacing and thinking.
* * * * *
Then next evening how differently things fell!
Marcella, having spent the afternoon at the Court, hearing all the final arrangements for the ball, and bearing with Miss Raeburn in a way which astonished herself, came home full of a sense of duty done, and announced to her mother that she was going to Mr. Wharton's meeting in the Baptist chapel that evening.
"Unnecessary, don't you think?" said Mrs. Boyce, lifting her eyebrows."However, if you go, I shall go with you."
Most mothers, dealing with a girl of twenty-one, under the circumstances, would have said, "I had rather you stayed at home." Mrs. Boyce never employed locutions of this kind. She recognised with perfect calmness that Marcella's bringing up, and especially her independent years in London, had made it impossible.
Marcella fidgeted.
"I don't know why you should, mamma. Papa will be sure to want you. Of course, I shall take Deacon."
"Please order dinner a quarter of an hour earlier, and tell Deacon to bring down my walking things to the hall," was all Mrs. Boyce said in answer.
Marcella walked upstairs with her head very stiff. So her mother, and Miss Raeburn too, thought it necessary to keep watch on her. How preposterous! She thought of her free and easy relations with her Kensington student-friends, and wondered when a more reasonable idea of the relations between men and women would begin to penetrate English country society.
Mr. Boyce talked recklessly of going too.
"Of course, I know he will spout seditious nonsense," he said irritably to his wife, "but it's the fellow's power of talk that is so astonishing.Heisn't troubled with your Raeburn heaviness."
Marcella came into the room as the discussion was going on.
"If papa goes," she said in an undertone to her mother as she passed her, "it will spoil the meeting. The labourers will turn sulky. I shouldn't wonder if they did or said something unpleasant. As it is,youhad much better not come, mamma. They are sure to attack the cottages—and other things."
Mrs. Boyce took no notice as far as she herself was concerned, but her quiet decision at last succeeded in leaving Mr. Boyce safely settled by the fire, provided as usual with a cigarette and a French novel.
The meeting was held in a little iron Baptist chapel, erected some few years before on the outskirts of the village, to the grief and scandal of Mr. Harden. There were about a hundred and twenty labourers present, and at the back some boys and girls, come to giggle and make a noise—nobody else. The Baptist minister, a smooth-faced young man, possessed, as it turned out, of opinions little short of Wharton's own in point of vigour and rigour, was already in command. A few late comers, as they slouched in, stole side looks at Marcella and the veiled lady in black beside her, sitting in the corner of the last bench; and Marcella nodded to one or two of the audience, Jim Hurd amongst them. Otherwise no one took any notice of them. It was the first time that Mrs. Boyce had been inside any building belonging to the village.
Wharton arrived late. He had been canvassing at a distance, and neither of the Mellor ladies had seen him all day. He slipped up the bench with a bow and a smile to greet them. "I am done!" he said to Marcella, as he took off his hat. "My voice is gone, my mind ditto. I shall drivel for half an hour and let them go. Did you ever see such a stolid set?"
"You will rouse them," said Marcella.
Her eyes were animated, her colour high, and she took no account at all of his plea of weariness.
"You challenge me? I must rouse them—that was what you came to see? Is that it?"
She laughed and made no answer. He left her and went up to the minister's desk, the men shuffling their feet a little, and rattling a stick here and there as he did so.
The young minister took the chair and introduced the speaker. He had a strong Yorkshire accent, and his speech was divided between the most vehement attacks, couched in the most Scriptural language, upon capital and privilege—that is to say, on landlords and the land system, on State churches and the "idle rich," interspersed with quavering returns upon himself, as though he were scared by his own invective. "My brothers, let us becalm!" he would say after every burst of passion, with a long deep-voiced emphasis on the last word; "let us, above all things, becalm!"—and then bit by bit voice and denunciation would begin to mount again towards a fresh climax of loud-voiced attack, only to sink again to the same lamb-like refrain. Mrs. Boyce's thin lip twitched, and Marcella bore the good gentleman a grudge for providing her mother with so much unnecessary amusement.
As for Wharton, at the opening of his speech he spoke both awkwardly and flatly; and Marcella had a momentary shock. He was, as he said, tired, and his wits were not at command. He began with the general political programme of the party to which—on its extreme left wing—he proclaimed himself to belong. This programme was, of course, by now a newspaper commonplace of the stalest sort. He himself recited it without enthusiasm, and it was received without a spark, so far as appeared, of interest or agreement. The minister gave an "hear, hear," of a loud official sort; the men made no sign.
"They might be a set of Dutch cheeses!" thought Marcella, indignantly, after a while. "But, after all, why should they care for all this? I shall have to get up in a minute and stop those children romping."
But through all this, as it were, Wharton was only waiting for his second wind. There came a moment when, dropping his quasi-official and high political tone, he said suddenly with another voice and emphasis:
"Well now, my men, I'll be bound you're thinking, 'That's all pretty enough!—we haven't got anything against it—we dare say it's all right; but we don't care a brass ha'porth about any of it! If that's all you'd got to say to us, you might have let us bide at home. We don't have none too much time to rest our bones a bit by the fire, and talk to the missus and the kids. Why didn't you let us alone, instead of bringing us out in the cold?'
"Well, but itisn'tall I've got to say—and you know it—because I've spoken to you before. What I've been talking about is all true, and all important, and you'll see it some day when you're fit. But what can men in your position know about it, or care about it? What do any of you want, butbread—"
—He thundered on the desk—
"—a bit of decentcomfort—a bit offreedom—freedom from tyrants who call themselves your betters!—a bit of rest in your old age, a home that's something better than a dog-hole, a wage that's something better than starvation, an honest share in the wealth you are making every day and every hour for other people to gorge and plunder!"
He stopped a moment to see howthattook. A knot of young men in a corner rattled their sticks vigorously. The older men had begun at any rate to look at the speaker. The boys on the back benches instinctively stopped scuffling.
Then he threw himself into a sort of rapid question-and-answer. What were their wages?—eleven shillings a week?
"Not they!" cried a man from the middle of the chapel. "Yer mus' reckon it wet an' dry. I wor turned back two days las' week, an' two days this,fowershillin' lost each week—that's what I call skinnin' ov yer."
Wharton nodded at him approvingly. By now he knew the majority of the men in each village by name, and never forgot a face or a biography. "You're right there, Watkins. Eleven shillings, then, when it isn't less, never more, and precious often less; and harvest money—the people that are kind enough to come round and ask you to vote Tory for them make a deal of that, don't they?—and a few odds and ends here and there—precious few of them! There! that's about it for wages, isn't it? Thirty pounds a year, somewhere about, to keep a wife and children on—and for ten hours a day work, not counting meal times—that's it, I think. Oh, youarewell off!—aren't you?"
He dropped his arms, folded, on the desk in front of him, and paused to look at them, his bright kindling eye running over rank after rank. A chuckle of rough laughter, bitter and jeering, ran through the benches. Then they broke out and applauded him.
Well, and about their cottages?
His glance caught Marcella, passed to her mother sitting stiffly motionless under her veil. He drew himself up, thought a moment, then threw himself far forward again over the desk as though the better to launch what he had to say, his voice taking a grinding determined note.
He had been in all parts of the division, he said; seen everything, inquired into everything. No doubt, on the great properties there had been a good deal done of late years—public opinion had effected something, the landlords had been forced to disgorge some of the gains wrested from labour, to pay for the decent housing of the labourer. But did anybody suppose thatenoughhad been done? Why, he had seendens—aye, on the best properties—not fit for the pigs that the farmers wouldn't let the labourers keep, lest they should steal their straw for the littering of them!—where a man was bound to live the life of a beast, and his children after him—
A tall thin man of about sixty rose in his place, and pointed a long quavering finger at the speaker.
"What is it, Darwin? speak up!" said Wharton, dropping at once into the colloquial tone, and stooping forward to listen.
"My sleepin' room's six foot nine by seven foot six. We have to shift our bed for the rain's comin' in, an' yer may see for yoursels ther ain't much room to shift it in. An' beyont us ther's a room for the chillen, same size as ourn, an' no window, nothin' but the door into us. Ov a summer night the chillen, three on 'em, is all of a sweat afore they're asleep. An' no garden, an' no chance o' decent ways nohow. An' if yer ask for a bit o' repairs yer get sworn at. An' that's all that most on us can get out of Squire Boyce!"
There was a hasty whisper among some of the men round him, as they glanced over their shoulders at the two ladies on the back bench. One or two of them half rose, and tried to pull him down. Wharton looked at Marcella; it seemed to him he saw a sort of passionate satisfaction on her pale face, and in the erect carriage of her head. Then she stooped to the side and whispered to her mother. Mrs. Boyce shook her head and sat on, immovable. All this took but a second or two.
"Ah, well," said Wharton, "we won't have names; that'll do us no good. It's not themenyou've got to go for so much—though we shall go for them too before long when we've got the law more on our side. It's the system. It's the whole way of dividing the wealth thatyoumade, you and your children—by your work, your hard, slavish, incessant work—between you and those whodon'twork, who live on your labour and grow fat on your poverty! What we want isa fair division. Thereoughtto be wealth enough—thereiswealth enough for all in this blessed country. The earth gives it; the sun gives it: labour extracts and piles it up. Why should one class take three-fourths of it and leave you and your fellow-workers in the cities the miserable pittance which is all you have to starve and breed on? Why?—why? I say. Why!—because you are a set of dull, jealous, poor-spiritedcowards, unable to pull together, to trust each other, to give up so much as a pot of beer a week for the sake of your children and your liberties and your class—there,that'swhy it is, and I tell it you straight out!"
He drew himself up, folded his arms across his chest, and looked at them—scorn and denunciation in every line of his young frame, and the blaze of his blue eye. A murmur ran through the room. Some of the men laughed excitedly. Darwin sprang up again.
"You keep the perlice off us, an' gie us the cuttin' up o' their bloomin' parks an' we'll do it fast enough," he cried.
"Much good that'll do you, just at present," said Wharton, contemptuously. "Now, you just listen to me."
And, leaning forward over the desk again, his finger pointed at the room, he went through the regular Socialist programme as it affects the country districts—the transference of authority within the villages from the few to the many, the landlords taxed more and more heavily during the transition time for the provision of house room, water, light, education and amusement for the labourer; and ultimately land and capital at the free disposal of the State, to be supplied to the worker on demand at the most moderate terms, while the annexed rent and interest of the capitalist class relieves him of taxes, and the disappearance of squire, State parson, and plutocrat leaves him master in his own house, the slave of no man, the equal of all. And, as a first step to this new Jerusalem—organisation!—self-sacrifice enough to form and maintain a union, to vote for Radical and Socialist candidates in the teeth of the people who have coals and blankets to give away.
"Then I suppose you think you'd be turned out of your cottages, dismissed your work, made to smart for it somehow. Just you try! There are people all over the country ready to back you, if you'd only back yourselves. But youwon't. You won't fight—that's the worst of you; that's what makes all of ussickwhen we come down to talk to you. You won't spare twopence halfpenny a week from boozing—not you!—to subscribe to a union, and take the first little step towards filling your stomachs and holding your heads up as free men. What's the good of your grumbling? I suppose you'll go on like that—grumbling and starving and cringing—and talking big of the things you could do if you would:—and all the time not one honest effort—not one!—to better yourselves, to pull the yoke off your necks! By the Lord! I tell you it's adamnedsort of business talking to fellows like you!"
Marcella started as he flung the words out with a bitter, nay, a brutal, emphasis. The smooth-faced minister coughed loudly with a sudden movement, half got up to remonstrate, and then thought better of it. Mrs. Boyce for the first time showed some animation under her veil. Her eyes followed the speaker with a quick attention.
As for the men, as they turned clumsily to stare at, to laugh, or talk to each other, Marcella could hardly make out whether they were angered or fascinated. Whichever it was, Wharton cared for none of them. His blood was up; his fatigue thrown off. Standing there in front of them, his hands in his pockets, pale with the excitement of speaking, his curly head thrown out against the whitened wall of the chapel, he lashed into the men before him, talking their language, their dialect even; laying bare their weaknesses, sensualities, indecisions; painting in the sombrest colours the grim truths of their melancholy lives.
Marcella could hardly breathe. It seemed to her that, among these cottagers, she had never lived till now—under the blaze of these eyes—within the vibration of this voice. Never had she so realised the power of this singular being. He was scourging, dissecting, the weather-beaten men before him, as, with a difference, he had scourged, dissected her. She found herself exulting in his powers of tyranny, in the naked thrust of his words, so nervous, so pitiless. And then by a sudden flash she thought of him by Mrs. Hurd's fire, the dying child on his knee, against his breast. "Here," she thought, while her pulses leapt, "is the leader for me—for these. Let him call, I will follow."
It was as though he followed the ranging of her thought, for suddenly, when she and his hearers least expected it, his tone changed, his storm of speech sank. He fell into a strain of quiet sympathy, encouragement, hope; dwelt with a good deal of homely iteration on the immediate practical steps which each man before him could, if he would, take towards the common end; spoke of the help and support lying ready for the country labourers throughout democratic England if they would but put forward their own energies and quit themselves like men; pointed forward to a time of plenty, education, social peace; and so—with some good-tempered banter of his opponent, old Dodgson, and some precise instructions as to how and where they were to record their votes on the day of election—came to an end. Two or three other speeches followed, and among them a few stumbling words from Hurd. Marcella approved herself and applauded him, as she recognised a sentence or two taken bodily from theLabour Clarionof the preceding week. Then a resolution pledging the meeting to support the Liberal candidate was passed unanimously amid evident excitement. It was the first time that such a thing had ever happened in Mellor.
* * * * *
Mrs. Boyce treated her visitor on their way home with a new respect, mixed, however, as usual, with her prevailing irony. For one who knew her, her manner implied, not that she liked him any more, but that a man so well trained to his own profession must always hold his own.
As for Marcella, she said little or nothing. But Wharton, in the dark of the carriage, had a strange sense that her eye was often on him, that her mood marched with his, and that if he could have spoken her response would have been electric.
When he had helped her out of the carriage, and they stood in the vestibule—Mrs. Boyce having walked on into the hall—he said to her, his voice hoarse with fatigue:
"Did I do your bidding, did I rouse them?"
Marcella was seized with sudden shyness.
"You rated them enough."
"Well, did you disapprove?"
"Oh, no! it seems to be your way."
"My proof of friendship? Well, can there be a greater? Will you show me some to-morrow?"
"How can I?"
"Will you criticise?—tell me where you thought I was a fool to-night, or a hypocrite? Your mother would."
"I dare say!" said Marcella, her breath quickening; "but don't expect it from me."
"Why?"
"Because—because I don't pretend. I don't know whether you roused them, but you rousedme."
She swept on before him into the dark hall, without giving him a moment for reply, took her candle, and disappeared.
Wharton found his own staircase, and went up to bed. The light he carried showed his smiling eyes bent on the ground, his mouth still moving as though with some pleasant desire of speech.
Wharton was sitting alone in the big Mellor drawing-room, after dinner. He had drawn one of the few easy chairs the room possessed to the fire, and with his feet on the fender, and one of Mr. Boyce's French novels on his knee, he was intensely enjoying a moment of physical ease. The work of these weeks of canvassing and speaking had been arduous, and he was naturally indolent. Now, beside this fire and at a distance, it amazed him that any motive whatever, public or private, should ever have been strong enough to take him out through the mire on these winter nights to spout himself hoarse to a parcel of rustics. "What did I do it for?" he asked himself; "what am I going to do it for again to-morrow?"
Ten o'clock. Mr. Boyce was gone to bed. No more entertaining ofhimto be done; one might be thankful for that mercy. Miss Boyce and her mother would, he supposed, be down directly. They had gone up to dress at nine. It was the night of the Maxwell Court ball, and the carriage had been ordered for half-past ten. In a few minutes he would see Miss Boyce in her new dress, wearing Raeburn's pearls. He was extraordinarily observant, and a number of little incidents and domestic arrangements bearing on the feminine side of Marcella's life had been apparent to him from the beginning. He knew, for instance, that the trousseau was being made at home, and that during the last few weeks the lady for whom it was destined had shown an indifference to the progress of it which seemed to excite a dumb annoyance in her mother. Curious woman, Mrs. Boyce!
He found himself listening to every opening door, and already, as it were, gazing at Marcella in her white array. He was not asked to this ball. As he had early explained to Miss Boyce, he and Miss Raeburn had been "cuts" for years, for what reason he had of course left Marcella to guess. As if Marcella found any difficulty in guessing—as if the preposterous bigotries and intolerances of the Ladies' League were not enough to account for any similar behaviour on the part of any similar high-bred spinster! As for this occasion, she was far too proud both on her own behalf and Wharton's to say anything either to Lord Maxwell or his sister on the subject of an invitation for her father's guest.
It so happened, however, that Wharton was aware of certain other reasons for his social exclusion from Maxwell Court. There was no necessity, of course, for enlightening Miss Boyce on the point. But as he sat waiting for her, Wharton's mind went back to the past connected with those reasons. In that past Raeburn had had the whip-hand of him; Raeburn had been the moral superior dictating indignant terms to a young fellow detected in flagrant misconduct. Wharton did not know that he bore him any particular grudge. But he had never liked Aldous, as a boy, that he could remember; naturally he had liked him less since that old affair. The remembrance of it had made his position at Mellor particularly sweet to him from the beginning; he was not sure that it had not determined his original acceptance of the offer made to him by the Liberal Committee to contest old Dodgson's seat. And during the past few weeks the exhilaration and interest of the general position—considering all things—had been very great. Not only was he on the point of ousting the Maxwell candidate from a seat which he had held securely for years—Wharton was perfectly well aware by now that he was trespassing on Aldous Raeburn's preserves in ways far more important, and infinitely more irritating! He and Raeburn had not met often at Mellor during these weeks of fight. Each had been too busy. But whenever they had come across each other Wharton had clearly perceived that his presence in the house, his growing intimacy with Marcella Boyce, the free-masonry of opinion between them, the interest she took in his contest, the village friendships they had in common, were all intensely galling to Aldous Raeburn.
The course of events, indeed, had lately produced in Wharton a certain excitement—recklessness even. He had come down into these parts to court "the joy of eventful living"—politically and personally. But the situation had proved to be actually far more poignant and personal than he had expected. This proud, crude, handsome girl—to her certainly it was largely due that the days had flown as they had. He was perfectly, one might almost say gleefully, aware that at the present moment it was he and not Aldous Raeburn who was intellectually her master. His mind flew back at first with amusement, then with a thrill of something else, over their talks and quarrels. He smiled gaily as he recalled her fits of anger with him, her remonstrances, appeals—and then her awkward inevitable submissions when he had crushed her with sarcasm or with facts. Ah! she would go to this ball to-night; Aldous Raeburn would parade her as his possession; but she would go with thoughts, ambitions, ideals, which, as they developed, would make her more and more difficult for a Raeburn to deal with. And in those thoughts and ambitions the man who had been her tormentor, teacher, and companion during six rushing weeks knew well that he already counted for much. He had cherished in her all those "divine discontents" which were already there when he first knew her; taught her to formulate them, given her better reasons for them; so that by now she was a person with a far more defined and stormy will than she had been to begin with. Wharton did not particularly know why he should exult; but he did exult. At any rate, he was prodigiously tickled—by the whole position.
A step, a rustle outside—he hastily shut his book and listened.
The door opened, and Marcella came in—a white vision against the heavy blue of the walls. With her came, too, a sudden strong scent of flowers, for she carried a marvellous bunch of hot-house roses, Aldous's gift, which had just arrived by special messenger.
Wharton sprang up and placed a chair for her.
"I had begun to believe the ball only existed in my own imagination!" he said gaily. "Surely you are very late."
Then he saw that she looked disturbed.
"It was papa," she said, coming to the fire, and looking down into it. "It has been another attack of pain—not serious, mamma says; she is coming down directly. But I wonder why they come, and why he thinks himself so ill—do you know?" she added abruptly, turning to her companion.
Wharton hesitated, taken by surprise. During the past weeks, what with Mr. Boyce's confidence and his own acuteness, he had arrived at a very shrewd notion of what was wrong with his host. But he was not going to enlighten the daughter.
"I should say your father wants a great deal of care—and is nervous about himself," he said quietly. "But he will get the care—and your mother knows the whole state of the case."
"Yes, she knows," said Marcella. "I wish I did."
And a sudden painful expression—of moral worry, remorse—passed across the girl's face. Wharton knew that she had often been impatient of late with her father, and incredulous of his complaints. He thought he understood.
"One can often be of more use to a sick person if one is not too well acquainted with what ails them," he said. "Hope and cheerfulness are everything in a case like your father's. He will do well."
"If he does he won't owe any of it—"
She stopped as impulsively as she had begun. "To me," she meant to have said; then had retreated hastily, before her own sense of something unduly intimate and personal. Wharton stood quietly beside her, saying nothing, but receiving and soothing her self-reproach just as surely as though she had put it into words.
"You are crushing your flowers, I think," he said suddenly.
And indeed her roses were dangling against her dress, as if she had forgotten all about them.
She raised them carelessly, but he bent to smell them, and she held them out.
"Summer!" he said, plunging his face into them with a long breath of sensuous enjoyment. "How the year sweeps round in an instant! And all the effect of a little heat and a little money. Will you allow me a philosopher's remark?"
He drew back from her. His quick inquisitive but still respectful eye took in every delightful detail.
"If I don't give you leave, my experience is that you will take it!" she said, half laughing, half resentful, as though she had old aggressions in mind.
"You admit the strength of the temptation? It is very simple, no one could help making it. To be spectator of theheightof anything—the best, the climax—makes any mortal's pulses run. Beauty, success, happiness, for instance?"
He paused smiling. She leant a thin hand on the mantelpiece and looked away; Aldous's pearls slipped backwards along her white arm.
"Do you suppose to-night will be the height of happiness?" she said at last with a little scorn. "These functions don't present themselves tomein such a light."
Wharton could have laughed out—her pedantry was so young and unconscious. But he restrained himself.
"I shall be with the majority to-night," he said demurely. "I may as well warn you."
Her colour rose. No other man had ever dared to speak to her with this assurance, this cool scrutinising air. She told herself to be indignant; the next moment shewasindignant, but with herself for remembering conventionalities.
"Tell me one thing," said Wharton, changing his tone wholly. "I know you went down hurriedly to the village before dinner. Was anything wrong?"
"Old Patton is very ill," she said, sighing. "I went to ask after him; he may die any moment. And the Hurds' boy too."
He leant against the mantelpiece, talking to her about both cases with a quick incisive common-sense—not unkind, but without a touch of unnecessary sentiment, still less of the superior person—which represented one of the moods she liked best in him. In speaking of the poor he always took the tone of comradeship, of a plain equality, and the tone was, in fact, genuine.
"Do you know," he said presently, "I did not tell you before, but I am certain that Hurd's wife is afraid of you, that she has a secret from you?"
"From me! how could she? I know every detail of their affairs."
"No matter. I listened to what she said that day in the cottage when I had the boy on my knee. I noticed her face, and I am quite certain. She has a secret, and above all a secret from you."
Marcella looked disturbed for a moment, then she laughed.
"Oh, no!" she said, with a little superior air. "I assure you I know her better than you."
Wharton said no more.
"Marcella!" called a distant voice from the hall.
The girl gathered up her white skirts and her flowers in haste.
"Good-night!"
"Good-night! I shall hear you come home and wonder how you have sped. One word, if I may! Take yourrôleand play it. There is nothing subjects dislike so much as to see royalty decline its part."
She laughed, blushed, a little proudly and uncertainly, and went without reply. As she shut the door behind her, a sudden flatness fell upon her. She walked through the dark Stone Parlour outside, seeing still the firmly-knit lightly-made figure—boyish, middle-sized, yet never insignificant—the tumbled waves of fair hair, the eyes so keenly blue, the face with its sharp mocking lines, its powers of sudden charm. Then self-reproach leapt, and possessed her. She quickened her pace, hurrying into the hall, as though from something she was ashamed or afraid of.
In the hall a new sensation awaited her. Her mother, fully dressed, stood waiting by the old billiard-table for her maid, who had gone to fetch her a cloak.
Marcella stopped an instant in surprise and delight, then ran up to her. "Mamma, howlovelyyou look! I haven't seen you like that, not since I was a child. I remember you then once, in a low dress, a white dress, with flowers, coming into the nursery. But that black becomes you so well, and Deacon has done your hair beautifully!"
She took her mother's hand and kissed her cheek, touched by an emotion which had many roots. There was infinite relief in this tender natural outlet; she seemed to recover possession of herself.
Mrs. Boyce bore the kiss quietly. Her face was a little pinched and white. But the unusual display Deacon had been allowed to make of her pale golden hair, still long and abundant; the unveiling of the shapely shoulders and neck, little less beautiful than her daughter's; the elegant lines of the velvet dress, all these things, had very nobly transformed her. Marcella could not restrain her admiration and delight. Mrs. Boyce winced, and, looking upward to the gallery, which ran round the hall, called Deacon impatiently.
"Only, mamma," said Marcella, discontentedly, "I don't like that little chain round your neck. It is not equal to the rest, not worthy of it."
"I have nothing else, my dear," said Mrs. Boyce, drily. "Now, Deacon, don't be all night!"
Nothing else? Yet, if she shut her eyes, Marcella could perfectly recall the diamonds on the neck and arms of that white figure of her childhood—could see herself as a baby playing with the treasures of her mother's jewel-box.
Nowadays, Mrs. Boyce was very secretive and reserved about her personal possessions. Marcella never went into her room unless she was asked, and would never have thought of treating it or its contents with any freedom.
The mean chain which went so ill with the costly hoarded dress—it recalled to Marcella all the inexorable silent miseries of her mother's past life, and all the sordid disadvantages and troubles of her own youth. She followed Mrs. Boyce out to the carriage in silence—once more in a tumult of sore pride and doubtful feeling.
* * * * *
Four weeks to her wedding-day! The words dinned in her ears as they drove along. Yet they sounded strange to her, incredible almost. How much did she know of Aldous, of her life that was to be—above all, how much of herself? She was not happy—had not been happy or at ease for many days. Yet in her restlessness she could think nothing out. Moreover, the chain that galled and curbed her was a chain of character. In spite of her modernness, and the complexity of many of her motives, there was certain inherited simplicities of nature at the bottom of her. In her wild demonic childhood you could always trust Marcie Boyce, if she had given you her word—her schoolfellows knew that. If her passions were half-civilised and southern, her way of understanding the point of honour was curiously English, sober, tenacious. So now. Her sense of bond to Aldous had never been in the least touched by any of her dissatisfactions and revolts. Yet it rushed upon her to-night with amazement, and that in four weeks she was going to marry him! Why? how?—what would it reallymeanfor him and for her? It was as though in mid-stream, she were trying to pit herself for an instant against the current which had so far carried them all on, to see what it might be like to retrace a step, and could only realise with dismay the force and rapidity of the water.
Yet all the time another side of her was well aware that she was at that moment the envy of half a county, that in another ten minutes hundreds of eager and critical eyes would be upon her; and her pride was rising to her part. The little incident of the chain had somehow for the moment made the ball and her place in it more attractive to her.
* * * * *
They had no sooner stepped from their carriage than Aldous, who was waiting in the outer hall, joyously discovered them. Till then he had been walking aimlessly amid the crowd of his own guests, wondering when she would come, how she would like it. This splendid function had been his grandfather's idea; it would never have entered his own head for a moment. Yet he understood his grandfather's wish to present his heir's promised bride in this public ceremonious way to the society of which she would some day be the natural leader. He understood, too, that there was more in the wish than met the ear; that the occasion meant to Lord Maxwell, whether Dick Boyce were there or no, the final condoning of things past and done with, a final throwing of the Maxwell shield over the Boyce weakness, and full adoption of Marcella into her new family.
All this he understood and was grateful for. But how wouldsherespond? How would she like it—this parade that was to be made of her—these people that must be introduced to her? He was full of anxieties.
Yet in many ways his mind had been easier of late. During the last week she had been very gentle and good to him—even Miss Raeburn had been pleased with her. There had been no quoting of Wharton when they met; and he had done his philosopher's best to forget him. He trusted her proudly, intensely; and in four weeks she would be his wife.
"Can you bear it?" he said to her in a laughing whisper as she and her mother emerged from the cloak-room.
"Tell me what to do," she said, flushing. "I will do my best. What a crowd! Must we stay very long?"
"Ah, my dear Mrs. Boyce," cried Lord Maxwell, meeting them on the steps of the inner quadrangular corridor—"Welcome indeed! Let me take you in. Marcella! with Aldous's permission!" he stooped his white head gallantly and kissed her on the cheek—"Remember I am an old man; if I choose to pay you compliments, you will have to put up with them!"
Then he offered Mrs. Boyce his arm, a stately figure in his ribbon and cross of the Bath. A delicate red had risen to that lady's thin cheek in spite of her self-possession. "Poor thing," said Lord Maxwell to himself as he led her along—"poor thing!—how distinguished and charming still! One sees to-night what she was like as a girl."
Aldous and Marcella followed. They had to pass along the great corridor which ran round the quadrangle of the house. The antique marbles which lined it were to-night masked in flowers, and seats covered in red had been fitted in wherever it was possible, and were now crowded with dancers "sitting out." From the ball-room ahead came waves of waltz-music; the ancient house was alive with colour and perfume, with the sounds of laughter and talk, lightly fretting, and breaking the swaying rhythms of the band. Beyond the windows of the corridor, which had been left uncurtained because of the beauty of the night, the stiff Tudor garden with its fountains, which filled up the quadrangle, was gaily illuminated under a bright moon; and amid all the varied colour of lamps, drapery, dresses, faces, the antique heads ranged along the walls of the corridor—here Marcus Aurelius, there Trajan, there Seneca—and the marble sarcophagi which broke the line at intervals, stood in cold, whitish relief.
Marcella passed along on Aldous's arm, conscious that people were streaming into the corridor from all the rooms opening upon it, and that every eye was fixed upon her and her mother. "Look, there she is," she heard in an excited girl's voice as they passed Lord Maxwell's library, now abandoned to the crowd like all the rest. "Come, quick! There—I told you she was lovely!"
Every now and then some old friend, man or woman, rose smiling from the seats along the side, and Aldous introduced his bride.
"On her dignity!" said an old hunting squire to his daughter when they had passed. "Shy, no doubt—very natural! But nowadays girls, when they're shy, don't giggle and blush as they used to inmyyoung days; they look as if you meant to insult them, and they weren't going to allow it! Oh, very handsome—very handsome—of course. But you can see she's advanced—peculiar—or what d'ye call it?—woman's rights, I suppose, and all that kind of thing? Like to see you go in for it, Nettie, eh!"
"She'sawfullyhandsome," sighed his pink-cheeked, insignificant little daughter, still craning her neck to look—"very simply dressed too, except for those lovely pearls. She does her hair very oddly, so low down—in those plaits. Nobody does it like that nowadays."
"That's because nobody has such a head," said her brother, a youngHussar lieutenant, beside her, in the tone of connoisseurship. "ByGeorge, she's ripping—she's the best-looking girl I've seen for a goodlong time. But she's a Tartar, I'll swear—looks it, anyway."
"Every one says she has the most extraordinary opinions," said the girl, eagerly. "She'll manage him, don't you think? I'm sure he's very meek and mild."
"Don't know that," said the young man, twisting his moustache with the air of exhaustive information. "Raeburn's a very good fellow—excellent fellow—see him shooting, you know—that kind of thing. I expect he's got a will when he wants it. The mother's handsome, too, and looks a lady. The father's kept out of the way, I see. Rather a blessing for the Raeburns. Can't be pleasant, you know, to get a man like that in the family. Look after your spoons—that kind of thing."
Meanwhile Marcella was standing beside Miss Raeburn, at the head of the long ball-room, and doing her best to behave prettily. One after another she bowed to, or shook hands with, half the magnates of the county—the men in pink, the women in the new London dresses, for which this brilliant and long-expected ball had given so welcome an excuse. They knew little or nothing of her, except that she was clearly good-looking, that she was that fellow Dick Boyce's daughter and was reported to be "odd." Some, mostly men, who said their conventional few words to her, felt an amused admiration for the skill and rapidity with which she had captured thepartiof the county; some, mostly women, were already jealous of her. A few of the older people here and there, both men and women—but after all they shook hands like the rest!—knew perfectly well that the girl must be going through an ordeal, were touched by the signs of thought and storm in the face, and looked back at her with kind eyes.
But of these last Marcella realised nothing. What she was saying to herself was that, if they knew little of her, she knew a great deal of many of them. In their talks over the Stone Parlour fire she and Wharton had gone through most of the properties, large and small, of his division, and indeed of the divisions round, by the help of the knowledge he had gained in his canvass, together with a blue-book—one of the numberless!—recently issued, on the state of the midland labourer. He had abounded in anecdote, sarcasm, reflection, based partly on his own experiences, partly on his endless talks with the working-folk, now in the public-house, now at their own chimney-corner. Marcella, indeed, had a large unsuspected acquaintance with the county before she met it in the flesh. She knew that a great many of these men who came and spoke to her were doing their best according to their lights, that improvements were going on, that times were mending. But there were abuses enough still, and the abuses were far more vividly present to her than the improvements. In general, the people who thronged these splendid rooms were to her merely the incompetent members of a useless class. The nation would do away with them in time! Meanwhile it might at least be asked of them that they should practise their profession of landowning, such as it was, with greater conscience and intelligence—that they should not shirk its opportunities or idle them away. And she could point out those who did both—scandalously, intolerably. Once or twice she thought passionately of Minta Hurd, washing and mending all day, in her damp cottage; or of the Pattons in "the parish house," thankful after sixty years of toil for a hovel where the rain came through the thatch, and where the smoke choked you, unless, with the thermometer below freezing-point, you opened the door to the blast. Why shouldthesepeople have all the gay clothes, the flowers, the jewels, the delicate food—all the delight and all the leisure? And those, nothing! Her soul rose against what she saw as she stood there, going through her part. Wharton's very words, every inflection of his voice was in her ears, playing chorus to the scene.
But when these first introductions, these little empty talks of three or four phrases apiece, and all of them alike, were nearly done with, Marcella looked eagerly round for Mary Harden. There she was, sitting quietly against the wall in a remote corner, her plain face all smiles, her little feet dancing under the white muslin frock which she had fashioned for herself with so much pain under Marcella's directions. Miss Raeburn was called away to find an arm-chair for some dowager of importance; Marcella took advantage of the break and of the end of a dance to hurry down the room to Mary. Aldous, who was talking to old Sir Charles Leven, Frank's father, a few steps off, nodded and smiled to her as he saw her move.
"Have you been dancing, Mary?" she said severely.
"I wouldn't for worlds! I never was so much amused in my life. Look at those girls—those sisters—in the huge velvet sleeves, like coloured balloons!—and that old lady in the pink tulle and diamonds.—I do so want to get her her cloak!Andthose Lancers!—I never could have imagined people danced like that. They didn't dance them—they romped them! It wasn't beautiful—was it?"
"Why do you expect an English crowd to do anything beautiful? If we could do it, we should be too ashamed."
"But itisbeautiful, all the same, you scornful person!" cried Mary, dragging her friend down beside her. "How pretty the girls are! And as for the diamonds, I never saw anything so wonderful. I wish I could have made Charles come!"
"Wouldn't he?"
"No"—she looked a little troubled—"he couldn't think it would be quite right. But I don't know—a sight like this takes me off my feet, shakes me up, and doesmea world of good!"
"You dear, simple thing!" said Marcella, slipping her hand into Mary's as it lay on the bench.
"Oh, you needn't be so superior!" cried Mary,—"not for another year at least. I don't believe you are much more used to it than I am!"
"If you mean," said Marcella, "that I was never at anything so big and splendid as this before, you are quite right."
And she looked round the room with that curious, cold air of personal detachment from all she saw, which had often struck Mary, and to-night made her indignant.
"Then enjoy it!" she said, laughing and frowning at the same time. "That's a much more plain duty foryouthan it was for Charles to stay at home—there! Haven't you been dancing?"
"No, Mr. Raeburn doesn't dance. But he thinks he can get through the next Lancers if I will steer him."
"Then I shall find a seat where I can look at you," said Mary, decidedly. "Ah, there is Mr. Raeburn coming to introduce somebody to you. I knew they wouldn't let you sit here long."
Aldous brought up a young Guardsman, who boldly asked Miss Boyce for the pleasure of a dance. Marcella consented; and off they swept into a room which was only just beginning to fill for the new dance, and where, therefore, for the moment the young grace of both had free play. Marcella had been an indefatigable dancer in the old London days at those students' parties, with their dyed gloves and lemonade suppers, which were running in her head now, as she swayed to the rhythm of this perfect band. The mere delight in movement came back to her; and while they danced, she danced with all her heart. Then in the pauses she would lean against the wall beside her partner, and rack her brain to find a word to say to him. As for anything thathesaid, every word—whether of Ascot, or the last Academy, or the new plays, or the hunting and the elections—sounded to her more vapid than the last.
Meanwhile Aldous stood near Mary Harden and watched the dancing figure. He had never seen her dance before. Mary shyly stole a look at him from time to time.
"Well," he said at last, stooping to his neighbour, "what are you thinking of?"
"I think she is a dream!" said Mary, flushing with the pleasure of being able to say it. They were great friends, he and she, and to-night somehow she was not a bit afraid of him.
Aldous's eye sparkled a moment; then he looked down at her with a kind smile.
"If you suppose I am going to let you sit here all night, you are very much mistaken. Marcella gave me precise instructions. I am going off this moment to find somebody."
"Mr. Raeburn—don't!" cried Mary, catching at him. But he was gone, and she was left in trepidation, imagining the sort of formidable young man who was soon to be presented to her, and shaking at the thought of him.
When the dance was over Marcella returned to Miss Raeburn, who was standing at the door into the corridor and had beckoned to her. She went through a number of new introductions, and declared to herself that she was doing all she could. Miss Raeburn was not so well satisfied.
"Why can't she smile and chatter like other girls?" thought Aunt Neta, impatiently. "It's her 'ideas,' I suppose. What rubbish! There, now—just see the difference!"
For at the moment Lady Winterbourne came up, and instantly Marcella was all smiles and talk, holding her friend by both hands, clinging to her almost.
"Oh, do come here!" she said, leading her into a corner. "There's such a crowd, and I say all the wrong things. There!" with a sigh of relief. "Now I feel myself protected."
"I mustn't keep you," said Lady Winterbourne, a little taken aback by her effusion. "Everybody is wanting to talk to you."
"Oh, I know! There is Miss Raeburn looking at me severely already. But I must do as I like a little."
"You ought to do as Aldous likes," said Lady Winterbourne, suddenly, in her deepest and most tragic voice. It seemed to her a moment had come for admonition, and she seized it hastily.
Marcella stared at her in surprise. She knew by now that when Lady Winterbourne looked most forbidding she was in reality most shy. But still she was taken aback.
"Why do you say that, I wonder?" she asked, half reproachfully. "I have been behaving myself quite nicely—I have indeed; at least, as nicely as I knew how."
Lady Winterbourne's tragic air yielded to a slow smile.
"You look very well, my dear. That white becomes you charmingly; so do the pearls. I don't wonder that Aldous always knows where you are."
Marcella raised her eyes and caught those of Aldous fixed upon her from the other side of the room. She blushed, smiled slightly, and looked away.
"Who is that tall man just gone up to speak to him?" she asked of her companion.
"That is Lord Wandle," said Lady Winterbourne, "and his plain second wife behind him. Edward always scolds me for not admiring him. He says women know nothing at all about men's looks, and that Lard Wandle was the most splendid man of his time. But I always think it an unpleasant face."
"Lord Wandle!" exclaimed Marcella, frowning. "Oh,pleasecome with me, dear Lady Winterbourne! I know he is asking Aldous to introduce him, and I won't—no I willnot—be introduced to him."
And laying hold of her astonished companion, she drew her hastily through a doorway near, walked quickly, still gripping her, through two connected rooms beyond, and finally landed her and herself on a sofa in Lord Maxwell's library, pursued meanwhile through all her hurried course by the curious looks of an observant throng.
"That man!—no, that would really have beentoomuch!" said Marcella, using her large feather fan with stormy energy.
"Whatisthe matter with you, my dear?" said Lady Winterbourne in her amazement; "and what is the matter with Lord Wandle?"
"You must know!" said Marcella, indignantly. "Oh, youmusthave seen that case in the paper last week—thatshockingcase! A woman and two children died in one of his cottages of blood-poisoning—nothing in the world but his neglect—hisbrutalneglect!" Her breast heaved; she seemed almost on the point of weeping. "The agent was appealed to—did nothing. Then the clergyman wrote to him direct, and got an answer. The answer was published. For cruel insolence I never saw anything like it! He ought to be in prison for manslaughter—and he comeshere! And people laugh and talk with him!"
She stopped, almost choked by her own passion. But the incident, after all, was only the spark to the mine.
Lady Winterbourne stared at her helplessly.
"Perhaps it isn't true," she suggested. "The newspapers put in so many lies, especially aboutus—the landlords. Edward says one ought never to believe them. Ah, here comes Aldous."
Aldous, indeed, with some perplexity on his brow, was to be seen approaching, looking for his betrothed. Marcella dropped her fan and sat erect, her angry colour fading into whiteness.
"My darling! I couldn't think what had become of you. May I bring Lord Wandle and introduce him to you? He is an old friend here, and my godfather. Not that I am particularly proud of the relationship," he said, dropping his voice as he stooped over her. "He is a soured, disagreeable fellow, and I hate many of the things he does. But it is an old tie, and my grandfather is tender of such things. Only a word or two; then I will get rid of him."