CHAPTER VII.
Three days passed. On the fourth Marcella returned late in the afternoonfrom a round of parish visits with Mary Harden. As she opened the oakdoors which shut off the central hall of Mellor from the outervestibule, she saw something white lying on the old cut and disusedbilliard table, which still occupied the middle of the floor tillRichard Boyce, in the course of his economies and improvements, couldreplace it by a new one.
She ran forward and took up a sheaf of cards, turning them over in asmiling excitement. "Viscount Maxwell," "Mr. Raeburn," "Miss Raeburn,""Lady Winterbourne and the Misses Winterbourne," two cards of LordWinterbourne's--all perfectly in form.
Then a thought flashed upon her. "Of course it is his doing--and I askedhim!"
The cards dropped from her hand on the billiard table, and she stoodlooking at them, her pride fighting with her pleasure. There wassomething else in her feeling too--the exultation of proved power over aperson not, as she guessed, easily influenced, especially by women.
"Marcella, is that you?"
It was her mother's voice. Mrs. Boyce had come in from the gardenthrough the drawing-room, and was standing at the inner door of thehall, trying with shortsighted eyes to distinguish her daughter amongthe shadows of the great bare place. A dark day was drawing to itsclose, and there was little light left in the hall, except in one cornerwhere a rainy sunset gleam struck a grim contemporary portrait of MaryTudor, bringing out the obstinate mouth and the white hand holding ajewelled glove.
Marcella turned, and by the same gleam her mother saw her flushed andanimated look.
"Any letters?" she asked.
"No; but there are some cards. Oh yes, there is a note," and she pouncedupon an envelope she had overlooked. "It is for you, mother--from theCourt."
Mrs. Boyce came up and took note and cards from her daughter's hand.Marcella watched her with quick breath.
Her mother looked through the cards, slowly putting them down one by onewithout remark.
"Oh, mother! do read the note!" Marcella could not help entreating.
Mrs. Boyce drew herself together with a quick movement as though herdaughter jarred upon her, and opened the note. Marcella dared not lookover her. There was a dignity about her mother's lightest action, aboutevery movement of her slender fingers and fine fair head, which hadalways held the daughter in check, even while she rebelled.
Mrs. Boyce read it, and then handed it to Marcella.
"I must go and make the tea," she said, in a light, cold tone, andturning, she went back to the drawing-room, whither afternoon tea hadjust been carried.
Marcella followed, reading. The note was from Miss Raeburn, and itcontained an invitation to Mrs. Boyce and her daughter to take luncheonat the Court on the following Friday. The note was courteously andkindly worded. "We should be so glad," said the writer, "to show you andMiss Boyce our beautiful woods while they are still at their best, inthe way of autumn colour."
"How will mamma take it?" thought Marcella anxiously. "There is not aword of papa!"
When she entered the drawing-room, she caught her mother standingabsently at the tea-table. The little silver caddy was still in her handas though she had forgotten to put it down; and her eyes, whichevidently saw nothing, were turned to the window, the brows frowning.The look of suffering for an instant was unmistakable; then she startedat the sound of Marcella's step, and put down the caddy amid thedelicate china crowded on the tray, with all the quiet precision of herordinary manner.
"You will have to wait for your tea," she said, "the water doesn'tnearly boil."
Marcella went up to the fire and, kneeling before it, put the logs withwhich it was piled together. But she could not contain herself for long.
"Will you go to the Court, mamma?" she asked quickly, without turninground.
There was a pause. Then Mrs. Boyce said drily--
"Miss Raeburn's proceedings are a little unexpected. We have been herefour months, within two miles of her, and it has never occurred to herto call. Now she calls and asks us to luncheon in the same afternoon.Either she took too little notice of us before, or she takes too muchnow--don't you think so?"
Marcella was silent a moment. Should she confess? It began to occur toher for the first time that in her wild independence she had been takingliberties with her mother.
"Mamma!"
"Yes."
"I asked Mr. Aldous Raeburn the other day whether everybody here wasgoing to cut us! Papa told me that Lord Maxwell had written him anuncivil letter and--"
"You--asked--Mr. Raeburn--" said Mrs. Boyce, quickly. "What do youmean?"
Marcella turned round and met the flash of her mother's eyes.
"I couldn't help it," she said in a low hurried voice. "It seemed sohorrid to feel everybody standing aloof--we were walking together--hewas very kind and friendly--and I asked him to explain."
"I see!" said Mrs. Boyce. "And he went to his aunt--and she went to LadyWinterbourne--they were compassionate--and there are the cards. You havecertainly taken us all in hand, Marcella!"
Marcella felt an instant's fear--fear of the ironic power in thesparkling look so keenly fixed on her offending self; she shrank beforethe proud reserve expressed in every line of her mother's fragileimperious beauty. Then a cry of nature broke from the girl.
"You have got used to it, mamma! I feel as if it would kill me to livehere, shut off from everybody--joining with nobody--with no friendlyfeelings or society. It was bad enough in the old lodging-house days;but here--why _should_ we?"
Mrs. Boyce had certainly grown pale.
"I supposed you would ask sooner or later," she said in a low determinedvoice, with what to Marcella was a quite new note of reality in it."Probably Mr. Raeburn told you--but you must of course have guessed itlong ago--that society does not look kindly on us--and has its reasons.I do not deny in the least that it has its reasons. I do not accuseanybody, and resent nothing. But the question with me has always been,Shall I accept pity? I have always been able to meet it with a No! Youare very different from me--but for you also I believe it would be thehappiest answer."
The eyes of both met--the mother's full of an indomitable fire which hadfor once wholly swept away her satiric calm of every day; the daughter'stroubled and miserable.
"I want friends!" said Marcella, slowly. "There are so many things Iwant to do here, and one can do nothing if every one is against you.People would be friends with you and me--and with papa too,--through us.Some of them wish to be kind"--she added insistently, thinking of AldousRaeburn's words and expression as he bent to her at the gate--"I knowthey do. And if we can't hold our heads high because--because of thingsin the past--ought we to be so proud that we won't take their hands whenthey stretch them out--when they write so kindly and nicely as this?"
And she laid her fingers almost piteously on the note upon her knee.
Mrs. Boyce tilted the silver urn and replenished the tea-pot. Then witha delicate handkerchief she rubbed away a spot from the handle of aspoon near her.
"You shall go," she said presently--"you wish it--then go--go by allmeans. I will write to Miss Raeburn and send you over in the carriage.One can put a great deal on health--mine is quite serviceable in the wayof excuses. I will try and do you no harm, Marcella. If you have chosenyour line and wish to make friends here--very well--I will do what I canfor you so long as you do not expect me to change my life--for which, mydear, I am grown too crotchety and too old."
Marcella looked at her with dismay and a yearning she had never feltbefore.
"And you will never go out with me, mamma?"
There was something childlike and touching in the voice, something whichfor once suggested the normal filial relation. But Mrs. Boyce did notwaver. She had long learnt perhaps to regard Marcella as a girlsingularly well able to take care of herself; and had recognised thefact with relief.
"I will not go to the Court with you anyway," she said, daintily sippingher tea--"in your interests as well as mine. You will make
all thegreater impression, my dear, for I have really forgotten how to behave.Those cards shall be properly returned, of course. For the rest--let noone disturb themselves till they must. And if I were you, Marcella, Iwould hardly discuss the family affairs any more--with Mr. Raeburn oranybody else."
And again her keen glance disconcerted the tall handsome girl, whosepower over the world about her had never extended to her mother.Marcella flushed and played with the fire.
"You see, mamma," she said after a moment, still looking at the logs andthe shower of sparks they made as she moved them about, "you never letme discuss them with you."
"Heaven forbid!" said Mrs. Boyce, quickly; then, after a pause: "Youwill find your own line in a little while, Marcella, and you will see,if you so choose it, that there will be nothing unsurmountable in yourway. One piece of advice let me give you. Don't be too _grateful_ toMiss Raeburn, or anybody else! You take great interest in your Boycebelongings, I perceive. You may remember too, perhaps, that there isother blood in you--and that no Merritt has ever submitted quietly toeither patronage or pity."
Marcella started. Her mother had never named her own kindred to herbefore that she could remember. She had known for many years that therewas a breach between the Merritts and themselves. The newspapers hadtold her something at intervals of her Merritt relations, for they werefashionable and important folk, but no one of them had crossed theBoyces' threshold since the old London days, wherein Marcella couldstill dimly remember the tall forms of certain Merritt uncles, and evena stately lady in a white cap whom she knew to have been her mother'smother. The stately lady had died while she was still a child at herfirst school; she could recollect her own mourning frock; but that wasalmost the last personal remembrance she had, connected with theMerritts.
And now this note of intense personal and family pride, under which Mrs.Boyce's voice had for the first time quivered a little! Marcella hadnever heard it before, and it thrilled her. She sat on by the fire,drinking her tea and every now and then watching her companion with anew and painful curiosity. The tacit assumption of many years with herhad been that her mother was a dry limited person, clever and determinedin small ways, that affected her own family, but on the wholecharacterless as compared with other people of strong feelings andresponsive susceptibilities. But her own character had been rapidlymaturing of late, and her insight sharpening. During these recent weeksof close contact, her mother's singularity had risen in her mind to thedignity at least of a problem, an enigma.
Presently Mrs. Boyce rose and put the scones down by the fire.
"Your father will be in, I suppose. Yes, I hear the front door."
As she spoke she took off her velvet cloak, put it carefully aside on asofa, and sat down again, still in her bonnet, at the tea-table. Herdress was very different from Marcella's, which, when they were not inmourning, was in general of the ample "aesthetic" type, and gave her agood deal of trouble out of doors. Marcella wore "art serges" andvelveteens; Mrs. Boyce attired herself in soft and costly silks,generally black, closely and fashionably made, and completed by variousfanciful and distinguished trifles--rings, an old chatelaine, a diamondbrooch--which Marcella remembered, the same, and worn in the same way,since her childhood. Mrs. Boyce, however, wore her clothes so daintily,and took such scrupulous and ingenious care of them, that her dresscost, in truth, extremely little--certainly less than Marcella's.
There were sounds first of footsteps in the hall, then of some scoldingof William, and finally Mr. Boyce entered, tired and splashed fromshooting, and evidently in a bad temper.
"Well, what are you going to do about those cards?" he asked his wifeabruptly when she had supplied him with tea, and he was beginning to dryby the fire. He was feeling ill and reckless; too tired anyway totrouble himself to keep up appearances with Marcella.
"Return them," said Mrs. Boyce, calmly, blowing out the flame of hersilver kettle.
"_I_ don't want any of their precious society," he said irritably. "Theyshould have done their calling long ago. There's no grace in it now; Idon't know that one isn't inclined to think it an intrusion."
But the women were silent. Marcella's attention was diverted from hermother to the father's small dark head and thin face. There was a greatrepulsion and impatience in her heart, an angry straining againstcircumstance and fate; yet at the same time a mounting voice of naturalaffection, an understanding at once sad and new, which paralysed andsilenced her. He stood in her way--terribly in her way--and yet itstrangely seemed to her, that never before till these last few weeks hadshe felt herself a daughter.
"You are very wet, papa," she said to him as she took his cup; "don'tyou think you had better go at once and change?"
"I'm all right," he said shortly--"as right as I'm likely to be, anyway.As for the shooting, it's nothing but waste of time and shoe leather. Ishan't go out any more. The place has been clean swept by some of thosebrutes in the village--your friends, Marcella. By the way, Evelyn, Icame across young Wharton in the road just now."
"Wharton?" said his wife, interrogatively. "I don't remember--ought I?"
"Why, the Liberal candidate for the division, of course," he saidtestily. "I wish you would inform yourself of what goes on. He isworking like a horse, he tells me. Dodgson, the Raeburns' candidate, hasgot a great start; this young man will want all his time to catch himup. I like him. I won't vote for him; but I'll see fair play. I've askedhim to come to tea here on Saturday, Evelyn. He'll be back again by theend of the week. He stays at Dell's farm when he comes--pretty badaccommodation, I should think. We must show him some civility."
He rose and stood with his back to the fire, his spare frame stiffeningunder his nervous determination to assert himself--to hold up his headphysically and morally against those who would repress him.
Richard Boyce took his social punishment badly. He had passed his firstweeks at Mellor in a tremble of desire that his father's old family andcountry friends should recognise him again and condone his"irregularities." All sorts of conciliatory ideas had passed throughhis head. He meant to let people see that he would be a good neighbourif they would give him the chance--not like that miserly fool, hisbrother Robert. The past was so much past; who now was more respectableor more well intentioned than he? He was an impressionable imaginativeman in delicate health; and the tears sometimes came into his eyes as hepictured himself restored to society--partly by his own efforts,partly, no doubt, by the charms and good looks of his wife anddaughter--forgiven for their sake, and for the sake also of that storeof virtue he had so laboriously accumulated since that long-pastcatastrophe. Would not most men have gone to the bad altogether, aftersuch a lapse? He, on the contrary, had recovered himself, had neitherdrunk nor squandered, nor deserted his wife and child. These things, ifthe truth were known, were indeed due rather to a certain lack ofphysical energy and vitality, which age had developed in him, than toself-conquest; but he was no doubt entitled to make the most of them.There were signs indeed that his forecast had been not at allunreasonable. His womenkind _were_ making their way. At the very momentwhen Lord Maxwell had written him a quelling letter, he had become awarethat Marcella was on good terms with Lord Maxwell's heir. Had he notalso been stopped that morning in a remote lane by Lord Winterbourne andLord Maxwell on their way back from the meet, and had not bothrecognised and shaken hands with him? And now there were these cards.
Unfortunately, in spite of Raeburn's opinion to the contrary, no man insuch a position and with such a temperament ever gets something withoutclaiming more--and more than he can conceivably or possibly get.Startled and pleased at first by the salutation which Lord Maxwell andhis companion had bestowed upon him, Richard Boyce had passed hisafternoon in resenting and brooding over the cold civility of it. Sothese were the terms he was to be on with them--the deuce take them andtheir pharisaical airs! If all the truth were known, most men would lookfoolish; and the men who thanked God that they were not as other men,soonest of all. He wished he had not been taken by surprise; he wi
shedhe had not answered them; he would show them in the future that he wouldeat no dirt for them or anybody else.
So on the way home there had been a particular zest in his chanceencounter with the young man who was likely to give the Raeburns andtheir candidate--so all the world said--a very great deal of trouble.The seat had been held to be an entirely safe one for the Maxwellnominee. Young Wharton, on the contrary, was making way every day, and,what with securing Aldous's own seat in the next division, and helpingold Dodgson in this, Lord Maxwell and his grandson had their hands full.Dick Boyce was glad of it. He was a Tory; but all the same he wishedevery success to this handsome, agreeable young man, whose deferentialmanners to him at the end of the day had come like ointment to a wound.
The three sat on together for a little while in silence. Marcella kepther seat by the fire on the old gilt fenderstool, conscious in adreamlike way of the room in front of her--the stately room with itsstucco ceiling, its tall windows, its Prussian-blue wall-paper behindthe old cabinets and faded pictures, and the chair covers in Turkey-redtwill against the blue, which still remained to bear witness at once tothe domestic economies and the decorative ideas of old RobertBoyce--conscious also of the figures on either side of her, and of herown quick-beating youth betwixt them. She was sore and unhappy; yet, onthe whole, what she was thinking most about was Aldous Raeburn. What hadhe said to Lord Maxwell?--and to the Winterbournes? She wished she couldknow. She wished with leaping pulse that she could see him againquickly. Yet it would be awkward too.
* * * * *
Presently she got up and went away to take off her things. As the doorclosed behind her, Mrs. Boyce held out Miss Raeburn's note, whichMarcella had returned to her, to her husband.
"They have asked Marcella and me to lunch," she said. "I am not going,but I shall send her."
He read the note by the firelight, and it produced the mostcontradictory effects upon him.
"Why don't you go?" he asked her aggressively, rousing himself for amoment to attack her, and so vent some of his ill-humour.
"I have lost the habit of going out," she said quietly, "and am too oldto begin again."
"What! you mean to say," he asked her angrily, raising his voice, "thatyou have never _meant_ to do your duties here--the duties of yourposition?"
"I did not foresee many, outside this house and land. Why should wechange our ways? We have done very well of late. I have no mind to riskwhat I have got."
He glanced round at her in a quick nervous way, and then looked backagain at the fire. The sight of her delicate blanched face had in somerespects a more and more poignant power with him as the years went on.His anger sank into moroseness.
"Then why do you let Marcella go? What good will it do her to go aboutwithout her parents? People will only despise her for a girl of nospirit--as they ought."
"It depends upon how it is done. I can arrange it, I think," said Mrs.Boyce. "A woman has always convenient limitations to plead in the way ofhealth. She need never give offence if she has decent wits. It will beunderstood that I do not go out, and then someone--Miss Raeburn or LadyWinterbourne--will take up Marcella and mother her."
She spoke with her usual light gentleness, but he was not appeased.
"If you were to talk of _my_ health, it would be more to the purpose,"he said, with grim inconsequence. And raising his heavy lids he lookedat her full.
She got up and went over to him.
"Do you feel worse again? Why will you not change your things directlyyou come in? Would you like Dr. Clarke sent for?"
She was standing close beside him; her beautiful hand, for which intheir young days it had pleased his pride to give her rings, almosttouched him. A passionate hunger leapt within him. She would stoop andkiss him if he asked her; he knew that. But he would not ask her; he didnot want it; he wanted something that never on this earth would she givehim again.
Then moral discomfort lost itself in physical.
"Clarke does me no good--not an atom," he said, rising. "There--don'tyou come. I Can look after myself."
He went, and Mrs. Boyce remained alone in the great fire-lit room. Sheput her hands on the mantelpiece, and dropped her head upon them, and sostood silent for long. There was no sound audible in the room, or fromthe house outside. And in the silence a proud and broken heart once morenerved itself to an endurance that brought it peace with neither man norGod.
* * * * *
"I shall go, for all our sakes," thought Marcella, as she stood latethat night brushing her hair before her dimly-lighted and ricketydressing-table. "We have, it seems, no right to be proud."
A rush of pain and bitterness filled her heart--pain, new-born andinsistent, for her mother, her father, and herself. Ever since AldousRaeburn's hesitating revelations, she had been liable to this suddeninvasion of a hot and shamed misery. And to-night, after her talk withher mother, it could not but overtake her afresh.
But her strong personality, her passionate sense of a moral independencenot to be undone by the acts of another, even a father, made her soonimpatient of her own distress, and she flung it from her with decision.
"No, we have no right to be proud," she repeated to herself. "It must beall true what Mr. Raeburn said--probably a great deal more. Poor, poormamma! But, all the same, there is nothing to be got out of emptyquarrelling and standing alone. And it was so long ago."
Her hand fell, and she stood absently looking at her own black and whitereflection in the old flawed glass.
She was thinking, of course, of Mr. Raeburn. He had been very prompt inher service. There could be no question but that he was speciallyinterested in her.
And he was not a man to be lightly played upon--nay, rather a singularlyreserved and scrupulous person. So, at least, it had been always heldconcerning him. Marcella was triumphantly conscious that he had not fromthe beginning given _her_ much trouble. But the common report of himmade his recent manner towards her, this last action of his, the moresignificant. Even the Hardens--so Marcella gathered from her friend andadmirer Mary--unworldly dreamy folk, wrapt up in good works, and in thehastening of Christ's kingdom, were on the alert and beginning to takenote.
It was not as though he were in the dark as to her antecedents. He knewall--at any rate, more than she did--and yet it might end in his askingher to marry him. What then?
Scarcely a quiver in the young form before the glass! _Love_, at such athought, must have sunk upon its knees and hid its face for tenderhumbleness and requital. Marcella only looked quietly at the beautywhich might easily prove to be so important an arrow in her quiver.
What was stirring in her was really a passionate ambition--ambition tobe the queen and arbitress of human lives--to be believed in by herfriends, to make a mark for herself among women, and to make it in themost romantic and yet natural way, without what had always seemed to herthe sordid and unpleasant drudgeries of the platform, of a tiresomeco-operation with, or subordination to others who could not understandyour ideas.
Of course, if it happened, people would say that she had tried tocapture Aldous Raeburn for his money and position's sake. Let them sayit. People with base minds must think basely; there was no help for it.Those whom she would make her friends would know very well for whatpurpose she wanted money, power, and the support of such a man, and sucha marriage. Her modern realism played with the thought quite freely; hermaidenliness, proud and pure as it was, being nowise ashamed. Oh! forsomething to carry her _deep_ into life; into the heart of its widestand most splendid opportunities!
She threw up her hands, clasping them above her head amid her clouds ofcurly hair--a girlish excited gesture.
"I could revive the straw-plaiting; give them better teaching and bettermodels. The cottages should be rebuilt. Papa would willingly hand thevillage over to me if I found the money! We would have a parishcommittee to deal with the charities--oh! the Hardens would come in. Theold people should have their pensions as of right. No ho
peless old age,no cringing dependence! We would try co-operation on the land, and pullit through. And not in Mellor only. One might be the ruler, theregenerator of half a county!"
Memory brought to mind in vivid sequence the figures and incidents ofthe afternoon, of her village round with Mary Harden.
"_As the eyes of servants towards the hand of their mistress_"--the oldwords occurred to her as she thought of herself stepping in and out ofthe cottages. Then she was ashamed of herself and rejected the imagewith vehemence. Dependence was the curse of the poor. Her whole aim, ofcourse, should be to teach them to stand on their own feet, to knowthemselves as men. But naturally they would be grateful, they would letthemselves be led. Intelligence and enthusiasm give power, and ought togive it--power for good. No doubt, under Socialism, there will be lessscope for either, because there will be less need. But Socialism, as asystem, will not come in our generation. What we have to think for isthe transition period. The Cravens had never seen that, but Marcella sawit. She began to feel herself a person of larger experience than they.
As she undressed, it seemed to her as though she still felt the clinginghands of the Hurd children round her knees, and through them, symbolisedby them, the suppliant touch of hundreds of other helpless creatures.
She was just dropping to sleep when her own words to Aldous Raeburnflashed across her,--
"Everybody is so ready to take charge of other people's lives, and lookat the result!"
She must needs laugh at herself, but it made little matter. She fellasleep cradled in dreams. Aldous Raeburn's final part in them was notgreat!