LITMIR.BIZ

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she not?” laughed Lettie. “She is very unwise. Train up a husband in the way he should go, and in after life — I never could quote a text from end to end. I am full of beginnings, but as for a finish ———! Leslie, my shoe-lace is untied — shall I wait till I can put my foot on the fence?”

      Leslie knelt down at her feet. She shook the hood back from her head, and her ornaments sparkled in the moonlight. Her face with its whiteness and its shadows was full of fascination, and in their dark recesses her eyes thrilled George with hidden magic. She smiled at him along her cheeks while her husband crouched before her. Then, as the three walked along towards the wood she flung her draperies into loose eloquence and there was a glimpse of her bosom white with the moon. She laughed and chattered, and shook her silken stuffs, sending out a perfume exquisite on the frosted air. When we reached the house Lettie dropped her draperies and rustled into the drawing-room. There the lamp was low-lit, shedding a yellow twilight from the window space. Lettie stood between the firelight and the dusky lamp-glow, tall and warm between the lights. As she turned laughing to the two men, she let her cloak slide over her white shoulder and fall with silk splendour of a peacock’s gorgeous blue over the arm of the large settee. There she stood, with her white hand upon the peacock of her cloak, where it tumbled against her dull orange dress. She knew her own splendour, and she drew up her throat laughing and brilliant with triumph. Then she raised both her arms to her head and remained for a moment delicately touching her hair into order, still fronting the two men. Then with a final little laugh she moved slowly and turned up the lamp, dispelling some of the witchcraft from the room. She had developed strangely in six months. She seemed to have discovered the wonderful charm of her womanhood. As she leaned forward with her arm outstretched to the lamp, as she delicately adjusted the wicks with mysterious fingers, she seemed to be moving in some alluring figure of a dance, her hair like a nimbus clouding the light, her bosom lit with wonder. The soft outstretching of her hand was like the whispering of strange words into the blood, and as she fingered a book the heart watched silently for the meaning.

      “Won’t you take off my shoes, darling?” she said, sinking among the cushions of the settee. Leslie kneeled again before her, and she bent her head and watched him.

      “My feet are a tiny bit cold,” she said plaintively, giving him her foot, that seemed like gold in the yellow silk stocking. He took it between his hands, stroking it.

      “It is quite cold,” he said, and he held both her feet in his hands.

      “Ah, you dear boy!” she cried with sudden gentleness, bending forward and touching his cheek.

      “Is it great fun being mine host of ‘Ye Ramme Inne’!” she said playfully to George. There seemed a long distance between them now as she sat, with the man in evening dress crouching before her putting golden shoes on her feet.

      “It is rather,” he replied, “the men in the smoke-room say such rum things. My word, you hear some tales there.”

      “Tell us, do!” she pleaded.

      “Oh! I couldn’t. I never could tell a tale, and even if I could — well —”

      “But I do long to hear,” she said, “what the men say in the smoke-room of ‘Ye Ramme Inne’. Is it quite untellable?”

      “Quite!” he laughed.

      “What a pity! See what a cruel thing it is to be a woman, Leslie: we never know what men say in smoke-rooms, while you read in your novels everything a woman ever uttered. It is a shame! George, you are a wretch, you should tell me. I do envy you —”

      “What do you envy me, exactly?” he asked, laughing always at her whimsical way.

      “Your smoke-room. The way you see life — or the way you hear it, rather.”

      “But I should have thought you saw life ten times more than me,” he replied.

      “I! I only see manners — good manners and bad manners. You know ‘manners maketh a man’. That’s when a woman’s there. But you wait a while, you’ll see.”

      “When shall I see?” asked George, flattered and interested.

      “When you have made the fortune you talked about,” she replied.

      He was uplifted by her remembering the things he had said.

      “But when I have made it — when!”— he said sceptically —“even then — well, I shall only be, or have been, landlord of ‘Ye Ramme Inne’.” He looked at her, waiting for her to lift up his hopes with her gay balloons.

      “Oh, that doesn’t matter! Leslie might be landlord of some ‘Ram Inn’ when he’s at home, for all anybody would know — mightn’t you, hubby, dear?”

      “Thanks!” replied Leslie, with good-humoured sarcasm.

      “You can’t tell a publican from a peer, if he’s a rich publican,” she continued. “Money maketh the man, you know.”

      “Plus manners,” added George, laughing.

      “Oh, they are always There — where I am. I give you ten years. At the end of that time you must invite us to your swell place — say the Hall at Eberwich — and we will come —‘with all our numerous array’.”

      She sat among her cushions smiling upon him. She was half ironical, half sincere. He smiled back at her, his dark eyes full of trembling hope, and pleasure, and pride.

      “How is Meg?” she asked. “Is she as charming as ever — or have you spoiled her?”

      “Oh, she is as charming as ever,” he replied. “And we are tremendously fond of one another.”

      “That is right! — I do think men are delightful,” she added, smiling.

      “I am glad you think so,” he laughed.

      They talked on brightly about a thousand things. She touched on Paris, and pictures, and new music, with her quick chatter, sounding to George wonderful in her culture and facility. And at last he said he must go.

      “Not until you have eaten a biscuit and drunk good luck with me,” she cried, catching her dress about her like a dim flame and running out of the room. We all drank to the New Year in the cold champagne.

      “To the Vita Nuova!” said Lettie, and we drank, smiling. “Hark!” said George, “the hooters.”

      We stood still and listened. There was a faint booing noise far away outside. It was midnight. Lettie caught up a wrap and we went to the door. The wood, the ice, the grey dim hills lay frozen in the light of the moon. But outside the valley, far away in Derbyshire, away towards Nottingham, on every hand the distant hooters and buzzers of mines and ironworks crowed small on the borders of the night, like so many strange, low voices of cockerels bursting forth at different pitch, with different tone, warning us of the dawn of the New Year.

      Chapter 3

       The First Pages of Several Romances

       Table of Contents

      I found a good deal of difference in Leslie since his marriage. He had lost his assertive self-confidence. He no longer pronounced emphatically and ultimately on every subject, nor did he seek to dominate, as he had always done, the company in which he found himself. I was surprised to see him so courteous and attentive to George. He moved unobtrusively about the room while Lettie was chattering, and in his demeanour there was a new reserve, a gentleness and grace. It was charming to see him offering the cigarettes to George, or, with beautiful tact, asking with his eyes only whether he should refill the glass of his guest, and afterward replacing it softly close to the other’s hand.

      To Lettie he was unfailingly attentive, courteous, and undemonstrative.

      Towards the end of my holiday he had to go to London on business, and we agreed to take the journey together. We

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