Sir George Tressady, vol 2 | Page 6

its iron conditions? And yet this long succession of hot and
smelling dens, this series of pale, stooping figures, toiling hour after
hour, at fever pace, in these stifling backyards, while the June sun
shone outside, reminding one of English meadows and the ripple of
English grass; these panting, dishevelled women, slaving beside their
husbands and brothers, amid the rattle of the machines and the steam of
the pressers' irons, with the sick or the dying, perhaps, in the bed beside
them, and their blanched children at their feet--sights of this sort, thus
translated from the commonplace of reports and newspapers into a
poignant, unsavoury truth, had at least this effect--they vastly
quickened the personal melancholy of the spectator, they raised and
drove home a number of piercing questions which, probably, George
Tressady would never have raised, and would have lived happily
without raising, if it had not been for a woman, and a woman's charm.

For that woman's solutions remained as doubtful to him as ever. He
would go back to that strange little house where she kept her strange
court, meet her eager eyes, and be roused at once to battle. How they
had argued! He knew that she had less hope than ever of persuading
him even to modify his view of the points at issue between the
Government and his own group. She could not hope for a moment that
any act of his would be likely to stand between Maxwell and defeat. He
had not talked of his adventures to Fontenoy--would rather, indeed, that
Fontenoy knew nothing of them. But he and she knew that Fontenoy,
so far, had little to fear from them.
And yet she had not turned from him. To her personal mood, to her
wifely affection even, he must appear more plainly than ever as the
callous and selfish citizen, ready and glad to take his own ease while
his brethren perished. He had been sceptical and sarcastic; he had
declined to accept her evidence; he had shown a persistent preference
for the drier and more brutal estimate of things. Yet she had never
parted from him without gentleness, without a look in her beautiful
eyes that had often tormented his curiosity. What did it mean? Pity? Or
some unspoken comment of a personal kind she could not persuade her
womanly reticence to put into words?
Or, rather: had she some distant inkling of the real truth--that he was
beginning to hate his own convictions--to feel that to be right with
Fontenoy was nothing, but to be wrong with her would be delight?
What absurdity! With a strong effort, he pulled himself
together--steadied his rushing pulse. It was like someone waking at
night in a nervous terror, and feeling the pressure of some iron dilemma,
from which he cannot free himself--cold vacancy and want on the one
side, calamity on the other.
For that cool power of judgment in his own case which he had always
possessed did not fail him now. He saw everything nakedly and coldly.
His marriage was not three months old, but no spectator could have
discussed its results more frankly than he was now prepared to discuss
them with himself. It was monstrous, no doubt. He felt his whole
position to be as ugly as it was abnormal. Who could feel any sympathy

with it or him? He himself had been throughout the architect of his own
misfortune. Had he not rushed upon his marriage with less
care--relatively to the weight of the human interest in such a
matter--than an animal shows when it mates?
Letty's personal idiosyncrasies even--her way of entering a room, her
mean little devices for attracting social notice, the stubborn
extravagance of her dress and personal habits, her manner to her
servants, her sharp voice as she retailed some scrap of slanderous
gossip--her husband had by now ceased to be blind or deaf to any of
them. Indeed, his senses in relation to many things she said and did
were far more irritable at this moment--possibly far less just--than a
stranger's would have been. Often and often he would try to recall to
himself the old sense of charm, of piquancy. In vain. It was all gone--he
could only miserably wonder at the past. Was it that he knew now what
charm might mean, and what divinity may breathe around a woman!
* * * * *
"I say, where are you off to?"
Tressady looked up with a start as Fontenoy rose beside him.
"Good opportunity for dinner, I think," said Fontenoy, with a motion of
the head towards the man who had just caught the Speaker's eye. "Are
you coming? I should like a word with you."
George followed him into the Lobby. As the swing-door closed behind
him, they plunged into