CHAPTER X.
HOW "THAT GIRL" WAS "SEEN" BY THE DOWAGER LADY RYLTON; AND HOW TITA HELD HER SMALL HEAD VERY HIGH, AND FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT WITH THE ENEMY.
There is scarcely time for Lady Rylton to make arrangements for a private interview with her daughter-in-law, as Mrs. Bethune has scarcely left her room before that small person knocks at the door. And there is, perhaps, a slight touch of confusion on the older woman's face as Tita enters. She had not had time to prepare the little bitter barbs she had meant to fling against the girl's heart, and is now slightly taken aback.
However, Nature, the All-Mother, has been generous to Tessie in the way of venom, and after a moment or two she tells herself that she will be able to get through this interview with honour.
"My dear Tita. You! So glad! Pray come and sit down."
"I just came," says Tita smiling, but hesitating on the threshold, as if desirous of an excuse to run away again as quickly as possible, "to see if you were quite comfortable—quite happy."
"Ah, happy!" says Lady Rylton in a peculiar tone. "Do come in, Tita. It is a fad of mine—a silly one, no doubt—but I cannot bear to look at an open door. Besides, I wish to speak to you."
Tita closes the door and comes well into the room. She does not seat herself, however; she remains standing near the chimney-piece.
"About what?" asks she promptly.
"About many things." Perhaps the girl's bluntness has daunted her a little, because, as she says this, she moves uneasily, and finally changes her seat for a low lounge that brings the light on the back of her head. "I am sorry to say I have heard several unpleasant things about you of late."
Tita stares at her.
"I don't understand you," says she.
"Then it must be my unhappy task to have to explain myself," says Tessie, who has now recovered herself, and is beginning to revel in the situation. The merriest game of all, to some people, is that of hurting the feelings of others. "For one thing, I am grieved to hear that you have made my son far from happy in his married life."
A quick red dyes Tita's face. It lasts for a moment only. She controls herself admirably, and, going to a chair, pulls it a little forward in a perfectly self-possessed fashion, pausing a little over the exact position of it, after which she seats herself amongst the cushions.
"Has Maurice told you that?" asks she.
"Maurice? No!" haughtily. "In our set husbands do not complain of their wives."
"No?" says Tita. She looks amused. "Then who else could it be in 'our set' who has said nasty little things about me? Mrs. Bethune?"
"All this is beside the question," says the dowager, with a wave of her hand. "There is something else I must speak of—painful though it is to me!" She unfurls the everlasting fan, and wafts it delicately to and fro, as if to blow away from her the hideous aroma of the thing she is forced to say. "I hear you have established a—er—a far too friendly relationship with a—er—a cousin of your own."
If Tita had grown red before, she is very white now.
"I am sure you are not aware of it," says she, setting her small teeth, but speaking quite calmly, "but you are very impertinent."
"I—I?" says Lady Rylton. In all her long, tyrannical life she has met with so few people to show her defiance, that now this girl's contemptuous reply daunts her. "You forget yourself," says she, with ill-suppressed fury.
"No, indeed," says Tita, "it is because I remember myself that I spoke like that. And I think it will save time," says she quietly, "and perhaps a good deal of temper too—mine," smiling coldly, "is not good, you know—if you understand at once that I shall not allow you to say insolent things like that to me."
"You allow me!" Tessie gets up from her chair and stares at her opponent, who remains seated, looking back at her. "I see you have made up your mind to ruin my son," says she, changing her tone to one of tearful indignation. "You accepted him, you married him, but you have never made even an effort to love him."
Here Tessie sinks back in her chair and covers her eyes with her handkerchief. This is her way of telling people she is crying; it saves the rouge and the powder, and leaves the eye-lashes as black as before.
"It is not always easy to love someone who is in love with someone else," says Tita.
"Someone else! What do you mean?"
"There is one fault, at all events, that you cannot find with me," says Tita; "I have not got a bad memory. As if it were only yesterday, I remember how you enlightened me about Maurice's affection"—she would have said "love," but somehow she cannot—"for—for Mrs. Bethune."
"Pouf!" says the dowager. "That! I don't see how that can influence your conduct. You married my son, and you ought to do your duty by him. As for Marian, if you had been a good wife you should have taught him to forget all that long ago. It seems you have not." She darts this barbed arrow with much joy, and watches for the pain it ought to have caused, but watches in vain. "The fact of your remembering it all this time only shows," says Tessie vindictively, angry at the failure of her dart, "what a malicious spirit you have. You are not only malicious, but silly! People of the world never remember unpleasant things."
"Well, I am not of them; I remember," says Tita. She pauses. "People of the world seem to me to do strange things."
"On the contrary," with a sneer, "it is people who are not in society who do strange things."
"Meaning me?" flushing and frowning. Tita's temper is beginning to give way. "What have I done now?" asks she.
"That is what I have been trying to explain," says Lady Rylton, "but your temper is so frightful that I am afraid to go into anything. Temper, my dear Tita, should always be one's slave; it should never be given liberty except in one's room, with one's own maid or one's own husband."
"Or one's own mother-in-law!"
"Well, yes! Quite so!" says Tessie with a fine shrug. "If you will make me one apart, so be it. I hate scenes; but when one has a son—a precious, only child—one must make sacrifices."
"I beg you will make none for me."
"I have made one already, however. I have permitted my son to marry you."
"Lady Rylton——"
"Be silent!" says Tessie, in a low but terrible voice. "How dare you interrupt me, or speak to me at all, until I ask for a reply? You, whom I have brought from the very depths, to a decent position in society! You—whom I have raised!"
"Raised!"
"Yes—you! I tell you you owe me a debt you never can repay."
"I do indeed," says Tita, in a low voice; her small firm hands are clasped in front of her—they are tightly clenched.
"You married him for ambition," goes on Tessie, with cold hatred in her voice and eye, "and——"
"And he?" The girl has risen now, and is clinging with both hands to the arms of her chair. She is very pale.
"Pshaw!" says the dowager, laughing cruelly. "He married you for your money. What else do you think he would marry you for? Are you to learn that now?"
"No." Tita throws up her head. "That pleasure is denied you. He told me he was marrying me for my money, long before our marriage."
Lady Rylton laughs.
"What! He had the audacity?"
"The honesty!" Somehow this answer, coming straight from Tita's heart, goes to her soul, and in some queer, indescribable way soothes her—comforts her—gives her deep compensation for all the agony she has been enduring. Later on she wonders why the agony was so great! Why had she cared or suffered? Maurice and she? What are they to each other? A mere name—no more! And yet—and yet!
"At all events," goes on Tessie, "when you made up your mind to marry my son, you——"
"It was your son who married me," says Tita, with a touch of hauteur that sits very prettily on her. She feels suddenly stronger—more equal to the fight.
"Was it? I quite forget"—Tessie shrugs her shoulders—"these little points," says she. "Well, I give you that! Oh! he was honest!" says she. "But, after all, not quite honest enough."
"I think he was honest," says Tita.
Her heart is beginning to beat to suffocation. There is a horror in her mind—the horror of hearing again that he—he had loved Marian. But how to stop it?
"You seem to admire honesty," says Lady Rylton, with a sneering laugh. "It is a pity you do not emulate his! If Maurice is as true to you as you"—with a slight laugh—"imagine him, why, you should, in common generosity, be true to him. And this flirtation, with this Mr. Hescott——"
"Don't go on!" says Tita passionately; "I cannot bear it. Whoever has told you that I ever—— Oh!" She covers her eyes suddenly with her pretty hands. "Oh! it is a lie!" cries she.
"No one has told me a lie," says Lady Rylton implacably.
The sight of the girl's distress is very pleasant to her. She gloats over it.
"Then you have invented the whole thing," cries Tita wildly, who is so angry, so agitated, that she forgets the commonest decencies of life. We all do occasionally!
"To be rude is not to be forcible," says Tessie, who is now a fury, "and I believe all that I have heard about you!" She makes a quick movement towards Tita, her colour showing even through the washes that try to make her skin look young. "How dare you insult me?" cries she furiously. Tessie in a rage is almost the vulgarest thing that anyone could see. "I wish my son had never seen you—or your money. I wish now he had married the woman he loved, instead of the woman whom——"
"He hated," puts in Tita very softly.
She smiles in a sort of last defiance, but every hope she has seems lying dead. In a second, as it were, she seems to care for nothing. What is there to care for? It is so odd. But it is true! How blank the whole thing is!
"Yes. Hated!" says Tessie in a cold fury. "I tell you he wanted to marry Marian, and her only. He would have given his soul for her, but she would not marry him! And then, when hope was at an end, he—destroyed self—he married you!"
"You are very plain! You leave nothing to be said." Tita has compelled herself to this answer, but her voice is faint. Her poor little face, beautiful even in its distress, is as white as death. "I am sorry——"
"For Maurice? So you ought to be," says Lady Rylton, unmoved even by that pathetic face before her.
Tita turns upon her. All at once the old spirit springs to life within the poor child's breast.
"No, for myself!" cries she, with a bitterness hardly to be described.