CHAPTER XII.
But what right had Wharton to be thinking of such irrelevant matters as women and love-making at all? He had spoken of public worries to Lady Selina. In reality his public prospects in themselves were, if anything, improved. It was his private affairs that were rushing fast on catastrophe, and threatening to drag the rest with them.
He had never been so hard pressed for money in his life. In the first place his gambling debts had mounted up prodigiously of late. His friends were tolerant and easy-going. But the more tolerant they were the more he was bound to frequent them. And his luck for some time had been monotonously bad. Before long these debts must be paid, and some of them—to a figure he shrank from dwelling upon—were already urgent.
Then as to the Clarion, it became every week a heavier burden. The expenses of it were enormous; the returns totally inadequate. Advertisements were falling off steadily; and whether the working cost were cut down, or whether a new and good man like Louis Craven, whose letters from the strike district were being now universally read, were put on, the result financially seemed to be precisely the same. It was becoming even a desperate question how the weekly expenses were to be met; so that Wharton's usual good temper now deserted him entirely as soon as he had crossed the Clarion threshold; bitterness had become the portion of the staff, and even the office boys walked in gloom.
Yet, at the same time, withdrawing from the business, was almost as difficult as carrying it on. There were rumours in the air which had, already seriously damaged the paper as a saleable concern. Wharton, indeed, saw no prospect whatever of selling except at ruinous loss. Meanwhile, to bring the paper to an abrupt end would have not only precipitated a number of his financial obligations; it would have been politically, a dangerous confession of failure made at a very critical moment. For what made the whole thing the more annoying was that the Clarion had never been so important politically, never so much read by the persons on whom Wharton's parliamentary future depended, as it was at this moment. The advocacy of the Damesley strike had been so far a stroke of business for Wharton as a Labour Member.
It was now the seventh week of the strike, and Wharton's "leaders," Craven's letters from the seat of war, and the Clarion strike fund, which articles and letters had called into existence, were as vigorous as ever. The struggle itself had fallen into two chapters. In the first the metal-workers concerned, both men and women, had stood out for the old wages unconditionally and had stoutly rejected all idea of arbitration. At the end of three or four weeks, however, when grave suffering had declared itself among an already half-starved population, the workers had consented to take part in the appointment of a board of conciliation. This board, including the workmen's delegates, overawed by the facts of foreign competition as they were disclosed by the masters, recommended terms which would have amounted to a victory for the employers.
The award was no sooner known in the district than the passionate indignation of the great majority of the workers knew no bounds. Meetings were held everywhere; the men's delegates at the board were thrown over, and Craven, who with his new wife was travelling incessantly over the whole strike area, wrote a letter to the Clarion on the award which stated the men's case with extreme ability, was immediately backed up by Wharton in a tremendous "leader," and was received among the strikers with tears almost of gratitude and enthusiasm.
Since then all negotiations had been broken off. The Clarion had gone steadily against the masters, against the award, against further arbitration. The theory of the "living wage," of which more recent days have heard so much, was preached in other terms, but with equal vigour; and the columns of the Clarion bore witness day by day in the long lists of subscriptions to the strike fund, to the effects of its eloquence on the hearts and pockets of Englishmen.
Meanwhile there were strange rumours abroad. It was said that the trade was really on the eve of a complete and striking revolution in its whole conditions—could this labour war be only cleared out of the way. The smaller employers had been for long on the verge of ruin; and the larger men, so report had it, were scheming a syndicate on the American plan to embrace the whole industry, cut down the costs of production, and regulate the output.
But for this large capital would be wanted. Could capital be got? The state of things in the trade, according to the employers, had been deplorable for years; a large part of the market had been definitely forfeited, so they declared, for good, to Germany and Belgium. It would take years before even a powerful syndicate could work itself into a thoroughly sound condition. Let the men accept the award of the conciliation board; let there be some stable and reasonable prospect of peace between masters and men, say, for a couple of years; and a certain group of bankers would come forward; and all would be well. The men under the syndicate would in time get more than their old wage. But the award first; otherwise the plan dropped, and the industry must go its own way to perdition.
"'Will you walk into my parlour?'" said Wharton, scornfully, to the young Conservative member who, with a purpose, was explaining these things to him in the library of the House of Commons, "the merest trap! and, of course, the men will see it so. Who is to guarantee them even the carrying through, much less the success, of your precious syndicate? And, in return for your misty millennium two years hence, the men are to join at once in putting the employers in a stronger position than ever? Thank you! The 'rent of ability' in the present state of things is, no doubt, large. But in this particular case the Clarion will go on doing its best—I promise you—to nibble some of it away!"
The Conservative member rose in indignation.
"I should be sorry to have as many starving people on my conscience as you'll have before long!" he said as he took up his papers.
At that moment Denny's rotund and square-headed figure passed along the corridor, to which the library door stood open.
"Well, if I thrive upon it as well as Denny does, I shall do!" returned
Wharton, with his usual caustic good-humour, as his companion departed.
And it delighted him to think as he walked home that Denny, who had again of late made himself particularly obnoxious in the House of Commons, on two or three occasions, to the owner of the Clarion, had probably instigated the quasi-overtures he had just rejected, and must be by now aware of their result.
Then he sent for Craven to come and confer with him.
Craven accordingly came up from the Midlands, pale, thin, and exhausted, with the exertions and emotions of seven weeks' incessant labour. Yet personally Wharton found him, as before, dry and unsympathetic; and disliked him, and his cool, ambiguous manner, more than ever. As to the strike, however, they came to a complete understanding. The Clarion, or rather the Clarion fund, which was doing better and better, held the key of the whole situation. If that fund could be maintained, the men could hold out. In view of the possible formation of the syndicate, Craven denounced the award with more fierceness than ever, maintaining the redoubled importance of securing the men's terms before the syndicate was launched. Wharton promised him with glee that he should be supported to the bitter end.
If, that is to say—a proviso he did not discuss with Craven—the Clarion itself could be kept going. In August a large sum, obtained two years before on the security of new "plant," would fall due. The time for repayment had already been extended; and Wharton had ascertained that no further extension was possible.
Well! bankruptcy would be a piquant interlude in his various social and political enterprises! How was it to be avoided? He had by now plenty of rich friends in the City or elsewhere, but none, as he finally decided, likely to be useful to him at the present moment. For the amount of money that he required was large—larger, indeed, than he cared to verify with any strictness, and the security that he could offer, almost nil.
As to friends in the City, indeed, the only excursion of a business kind that he had made into those regions since his election was now adding seriously to his anxieties—might very well turn out, unless the matter were skilfully managed, to be one of the blackest spots on his horizon.
In the early days of his parliamentary life, when, again, mostly for the Clarion's sake, money happened to be much wanted, he had become director of what promised to be an important company, through the interest and good nature of a new and rich acquaintance, who had taken a liking to the young member. The company had been largely "boomed," and there had been some very profitable dealing in the original shares. Wharton had made two or three thousand pounds, and contributed both point and finish to some of the early prospectuses.
Then, after six months, he had withdrawn from the Board, under apprehensions that had been gradually realised with alarming accuracy. Things, indeed, had been going very wrong indeed; there were a number of small investors; and the annual meeting of the company, to be held now in some ten days, promised a storm. Wharton discovered, partly to his own amazement, for he was a man who quickly forgot, that during his directorate he had devised or sanctioned matters that were not at all likely to commend themselves to the shareholders, supposing the past were really sifted. The ill-luck of it was truly stupendous; for on the whole he had kept himself financially very clean since he had become a member; having all through a jealous eye to his political success.
* * * * *
As to the political situation, nothing could be at once more promising or more anxious!
An important meeting of the whole Labour group had been fixed for August 10, by which time it was expected that a great measure concerning Labour would be returned from the House of Lords with highly disputable amendments. The last six weeks of the session would be in many ways more critical for Labour than its earlier months had been; and it would be proposed by Bennett, at the meeting on the 10th, to appoint a general chairman of the party, in view of a campaign which would fill the remainder of the session and strenuously occupy the recess.
That Bennett would propose the name of the member for West Brookshire was perfectly well known to Wharton and his friends. That the nomination would meet with the warmest hostility from Wilkins and a small group of followers was also accurately forecast.
To this day, then, Wharton looked forward as to the crisis of his parliamentary fortunes. All his chances, financial or social, must now be calculated with reference to it. Every power, whether of combat or finesse, that he commanded must be brought to bear upon the issue.
What was, however, most remarkable in the man and the situation at the moment was that, through all these gathering necessities, he was by no means continuously anxious or troubled in his mind. During these days of July he gave himself, indeed, whenever he could, to a fatalist oblivion of the annoyances of life, coupled with a passionate pursuit of all those interests where his chances were still good and the omens still with him.
Especially—during the intervals of ambition, intrigue, journalism, and unsuccessful attempts to raise money—had he meditated the beauty of Marcella Boyce and the chances and difficulties of his relation to her. As he saw her less, he thought of her more, instinctively looking to her for the pleasure and distraction that life was temporarily denying him elsewhere.
At the same time, curiously enough, the stress of his financial position was reflected even in what, to himself, at any rate, he was boldly beginning to call his "passion" for her. It had come to his knowledge that Mr. Boyce had during the past year succeeded beyond all expectation in clearing the Mellor estate. He had made skilful use of a railway lately opened on the edge of his property; had sold building land in the neighbourhood of a small country town on the line, within a convenient distance of London; had consolidated and improved several of his farms and relet them at higher rents; was, in fact, according to Wharton's local informant, in a fair way to be some day, if he lived, quite as prosperous as his grandfather, in spite of old scandals and invalidism. Wharton knew, or thought he knew, that he would not live, and that Marcella would be his heiress. The prospect was not perhaps brilliant, but it was something; it affected the outlook.
Although, however, this consideration counted, it was, to do him justice, Marcella, the creature herself, that he desired. But for her presence in his life he would probably have gone heiress-hunting with the least possible delay. As it was, his growing determination to win her, together with his advocacy of the Damesley workers—amply sufficed, during the days that followed his evening talk with Lady Selina, to maintain his own illusions about himself and so to keep up the zest of life.
Yes!—to master and breathe passion into Marcella Boyce, might safely be reckoned on, he thought, to hurry a man's blood. And after it had gone so far between them—after he had satisfied himself that her fancy, her temper, her heart, were all more or less occupied with him—was he to see her tamely recovered by Aldous Raeburn—by the man whose advancing parliamentary position was now adding fresh offence to the old grievance and dislike? No! not without a dash—a throw for it!
For a while, after Lady Selina's confidences, jealous annoyance, together with a certain reckless state of nerves, turned him almost into the pining lover. For he could not see Marcella. She came no more to Mrs. Lane; and the house in James Street was not open to him. He perfectly understood that the Winterbournes did not want to know him.
At last Mrs. Lane, a shrewd little woman with a half contemptuous liking for Wharton, let him know—on the strength of a chance meeting with Lady Ermyntrude—that the Winterbournes would be at the Masterton party on the 26th. They had persuaded Miss Boyce to stay for it, and she would go back to her work the Monday after. Wharton carelessly replied that he did not know whether he would be able to put in an appearance at the Mastertons'. He might be going out of town.
Mrs. Lane looked at him and said, "Oh, really!" with a little laugh.
* * * * *
Lady Masterton was the wife of the Colonial Secretary, and her grand mansion in Grosvenor Square was the principal rival to Alresford House in the hospitalities of the party. Her reception on July 25 was to be the last considerable event of a protracted but now dying season. Marcella, detained in James Street day after day against her will by the weakness of the injured arm and the counsels of her doctor, had at last extracted permission to go back to work on the 27th; and to please Betty Macdonald she had promised to go with the Winterbournes to the Masterton party on the Saturday. Betty's devotion, shyly as she had opened her proud heart to it, had begun to mean a good deal to her. There was balm in it for many a wounded feeling; and, besides, there was the constant, half eager, half painful interest of watching Betty's free and childish ways with Aldous Raeburn, and of speculating upon what would ultimately come out of them.
So, when Betty first demanded to know what she was going to wear, and then pouted over the dress shown her, Marcella submitted humbly to being "freshened up" at the hands of Lady Ermyntrude's maid, bought what Betty told her, and stood still while Betty, who had a genius for such things, chattered, and draped, and suggested.
"I wouldn't make you fashionable for the world!" cried Betty, with a mouthful of pins, laying down masterly folds of lace and chiffon the while over the white satin with which Marcella had provided her. "What was it Worth said to me the other day?—Ce qu'on porte, Mademoiselle? O pas grand'chose!—presque pas de corsage, et pas du tout de manches!'—No, that kind of thing wouldn't suit you. But distinguished you shall be, if I sit up all night to think it out!"
In the end Betty was satisfied, and could hardly be prevented from hugging Marcella there and then, out of sheer delight in her own handiwork, when at last the party emerged from the cloak-room into the Mastertons' crowded hall. Marcella too felt pleasure in the reflections of herself as they passed up the lavishly bemirrored staircase. The chatter about dress in which she had been living for some days had amused and distracted her; for there were great feminine potentialities in her; though for eighteen months she had scarcely given what she wore a thought, and in her pre-nursing days had been wont to waver between a kind of proud neglect, which implied the secret consciousness of beauty, and an occasional passionate desire to look well. So that she played her part to-night very fairly; pinched Betty's arm to silence the elf's tongue; and held herself up as she was told, that Betty's handiwork might look its best. But inwardly the girl's mood was very tired and flat. She was pining for her work; pining even for Minta Hurd's peevish look, and the children to whom she was so easily an earthly providence.
In spite of the gradual emptying of London, Lady Masterton's rooms were very full. Marcella found acquaintances. Many of the people whom she had met at Mrs. Lane's, the two Cabinet Ministers of the House of Commons dinner, Mr. Lane himself—all were glad or eager to recall themselves to her as she stood by Lady Winterbourne, or made her way half absently through the press. She talked, without shyness—she had never been shy, and was perhaps nearer now to knowing what it might mean than she had been as a schoolgirl—but without heart; her black eye wandering meanwhile, as though in quest. There was a gay sprinkling of uniforms in the crowd, for the Speaker was holding a levée, and as it grew late his guests began to set towards Lady Masterton. Betty, who had been turning up her nose at the men she had so far smiled upon, all of whom she declared were either bald or seventy, was a little propitiated by the uniforms; otherwise, she pronounced the party very dull.
"Well, upon my word!" she cried suddenly, in a tone that made Marcella turn upon her. The child was looking very red and very upright—was using her fan with great vehemence, and Frank Leven was humbly holding out his hand to her.
"I don't like being startled," said Betty, pettishly. "Yes, you did startle me—you did—you did! And then you begin to contradict before I've said a word! I'm sure you've been contradicting all the way upstairs—and why don't you say 'How do you do?' to Miss Boyce?"
Frank, looking very happy, but very nervous, paid his respects rather bashfully to Marcella—she laughed to see how Betty's presence subdued him—and then gave himself up wholly to Betty's tender mercies.
Marcella observed them with an eager interest she could not wholly explain to herself. It was clear that all thought of anything or anybody else had vanished for Frank Leven at the sight of Betty. Marcella guessed, indeed knew, that they had not met for some little time; and she was touched by the agitation and happiness on the boy's handsome face. But Betty? what was the secret of her kittenish, teasing ways—or was there any secret? She held her little head very high and chattered very fast—but it was not the same chatter that she gave to Marcella, nor, so far as Marcella could judge, to Aldous Raeburn. New elements of character came out in it. It was self-confident, wilful, imperious. Frank was never allowed to have an opinion; was laughed at before his words were out of his mouth; was generally heckled, played with, and shaken in a way which seemed alternately to enrage and enchant him. In the case of most girls, such a manner would have meant encouragement; but, as it was Betty, no one could be sure. The little thing was a great puzzle to Marcella, who had found unexpected reserves in her. She might talk of her love affairs to Aldous Raeburn; she had done nothing of the sort with her new friend. And in such matters Marcella herself was far more reserved than most modern women.
"Betty!" cried Lady Winterbourne, "I am going on into the next room."
Then in a lower tone she said helplessly to Marcella:
"Do make her come on!"
Marcella perceived that her old friend was in a fidget. Stooping her tall head, she said with a smile:
"But look how she is amusing herself!"
"My dear!—that's just it! If you only knew how her mother—tiresome woman—has talked to me! And the young man has behaved so beautifully till now—has given neither Ermyntrude nor me any trouble."
Was that why Betty was leading him such a life? Marcella wondered,—then suddenly—was seized with a sick distaste for the whole scene—for Betty's love affairs—for her own interest in them—for her own self and personality above all. Her great black eyes gazed straight before them, unseeing, over the crowd, the diamonds, the lights; her whole being gave itself to a quick, blind wrestle with some vague overmastering pain, some despair of life and joy to which she could give no name.
She was roused by Betty's voice:
"Mr. Raeburn! will you tell me who people are? Mr. Leven's no more use than my fan. Just imagine—I asked him who that lady in the tiara is—and he vows he doesn't know! Why, it just seems that when you go to Oxford, you leave the wits you had before, behind! And then—of course"—Betty affected a delicate hesitation—"there's the difficulty of being quite sure that you'll ever get any new ones!—But there—look!—I'm in despair!—she's vanished—and I shall never know!"
"One moment!" said Raeburn, smiling, "and I will take you in pursuit.
She has only gone into the tea-room."
His hand touched Marcella's.
"Just a little better," he said, with a sudden change of look, in answer to Lady Winterbourne's question. "The account to-night is certainly brighter. They begged me not to come, or I should have been off some days ago. And next week, I am thankful to say, they will be home."
Why should she be standing there, so inhumanly still and silent?—Marcella asked herself. Why not take courage again—join in—talk—show sympathy? But the words died on her lips. After to-night—thank heaven!—she need hardly see him again.
He asked after herself as usual. Then, just as he was turning away with
Betty, he came back to her, unexpectedly.
"I should like to tell you about Hallin," he said gently. "His sister writes to me that she is happier about him, and that she hopes to be able to keep him away another fortnight. They are at Keswick."
For an instant there was pleasure in the implication of common ground, a common interest—here if no-where else. Then the pleasure was lost in the smart of her own strange lack of self-government as she made a rather stupid and awkward reply.
Raeburn's eyes rested on her for a moment. There was in them a flash of involuntary expression, which she did not notice—for she had turned away—which no one saw—except Betty. Then the child followed him to the tea-room, a little pale and pensive.
Marcella looked after them.
In the midst of the uproar about her, the babel of talk fighting against the Hungarian band, which was playing its wildest and loudest in the tea-room, she was overcome by a sudden rush of memory. Her eyes were tracing the passage of those two figures through the crowd; the man in his black court suit, stooping his refined and grizzled head to the girl beside him, or turning every now and then to greet an acquaintance, with the manner—cordial and pleasant, yet never quite gay even when he smiled—that she, Marcella, had begun to notice of late as a new thing; the girl lifting her small face to him, the gold of her hair showing against his velvet sleeve. But the inward sense was busy with a number of other impressions, past, and, as it now seemed, incredible.
The little scene when Aldous had given her the pearls, returned so long ago—why! she could see the fire blazing in the Stone Parlour, feel his arm about her!—the drive home after the Gairsley meeting—that poignant moment in his sitting-room the night of the ball—his face, his anxious, tender face, as she came down the wide stairs of the Court towards him on that terrible evening when she pleaded with him and his grandfather in vain:—had these things, incidents, relations, been ever a real part of the living world? Impossible! Why, there he was—not ten yards from her—and yet more irrevocably separate from her than if the Sahara stretched between them. The note of cold distance in his courteous manner put her further from him than the merest stranger.
Marcella felt a sudden terror rush through her as she blindly followed Lady Winterbourne; her limbs trembled under her; she took advantage of a conversation between her companion and the master of the house to sink down for a moment on a settee, where she felt out of sight and notice.
What was this intolerable sense of loss and folly, this smarting emptiness, this rage with herself and her life? She only knew that whereas the touch, the eye of Aldous Raeburn had neither compelled nor thrilled her, so long as she possessed his whole heart and life—now—that she had no right to either look or caress; now that he had ceased even to regard her as a friend, and was already perhaps making up that loyal and serious mind of his to ask from another woman the happiness she had denied him; now, when it was absurdly too late, she could—
Could what? Passionate, wilful creature that she was!—with that breath of something wild and incalculable surging through the inmost places of the soul, she went through a moment of suffering as she sat pale and erect in her corner—brushed against by silks and satins, chattered across by this person and that—such as seemed to bruise all the remaining joy and ease out of life.
But only a moment! Flesh and blood rebelled. She sprang up from her seat; told herself that she was mad or ill; caught sight of Mr. Lane coming towards them, and did her best by smile and greeting to attract him to her.
"You look very white, my dear Miss Boyce," said that cheerful and fatherly person. "Is it that tiresome arm still? Now, don't please go and be a heroine any more!"