Sir George Tressady, vol 2 | Page 9

thousand times more abominable than before!"
"I daresay," said George, coolly. "But it also makes the future, perhaps, a little more hopeful--throws some light on the passion or pose alternative. My impression is, that if we can only find an effective exit for Ancoats,--a last act that he would consider worthy of him,--he will bow himself out of the business willingly enough."
Fontenoy smiled rather gloomily, and the two walked on in silence.
Once or twice, as they paced the Terrace, George glanced sidelong at his leader. A corner of Fontenoy's nightly letter to Mrs. Allison was, he saw, sticking out of the great man's coat-pocket. Every night he wrote a crowded sheet upon his knee, under the shelter of a Blue Book, and on one or two nights George's quick eyes had not been able to escape from the pencilled address on the envelope to which it was ultimately consigned. The sheet was written with the regularity and devotion of a Prime Minister reporting to the Sovereign.
Well! it was all very touching and very remarkable. But George had some sympathy with Ancoats. To be virtually saddled with a stepfather, with whom your minutest affairs are confidentially discussed, and yet to have it said by all the world that your poor mother is too unselfish and too devoted to her son to marry again--the situation is not without its pricks. And that Ancoats was acutely conscious of them George had good reason to know.
"I say, Tressady, will you pair till eleven?" cried a man, swinging bareheaded along the Terrace with his hat in his hand. "I want an hour or two off badly, and there will be no big guns on till eleven or so."
George exchanged a word or two with Fontenoy, then stood still, and thought a moment. A sudden animation flushed into his face. Why not?
"All right!" he said; "till eleven."
Then he and Fontenoy went back to dine. As they mounted the dark staircase leading from the Terrace another man caught Tressady by the arm.
"The strike notices are out," he said. "I have just had a wire. Everyone leaves work to-night."
George shrugged his shoulders. He had been expecting the news at any moment, and was glad that the long shilly-shallying on both sides was at last over.
"Good luck to them!" he said. "I'm glad. The fight had to come."
"Oh! we shall be in the middle of arbitration before a fortnight's up. The men won't stand."
George shook his head. He himself believed that the struggle would last on through the autumn.
"Well, to be sure, there's Burrows," said his informant, himself a large coal-owner in the Ferth district; "if Burrows keeps sober, and if somebody doesn't buy him, Burrows will do his worst."
"That we always knew," said George, laughing, and passed on. He had but just time to catch his train.
He walked across to the Underground station, and by the time he reached it he had clean forgotten his pits and the strike, though as he passed the post-office in the House a sheaf of letters and telegrams had been put into his hands. Rather, he was full of a boy's eagerness and exultation. He had never supposed he could be let off to-night, till the offer of Dudley's pair tempted him. And now, in half an hour he would be in that queer Mile End room, watching her--quarrelling with her.
A little later, however, as he was sitting quietly in the train, quick composite thoughts of Letty, of his miners, and his money difficulties began to clutch at him again. Perhaps, now that the strike was a reality, it might even be a help to him and a bridle to his wife. Preposterous, what she was doing and planning at Perth! His face flushed and hardened as he thought of their many wrangles during the past fortnight, her constant drag upon his purse, his own weakness, the annoyance and contempt that made him yield rather than argue.
What was that fellow, Harding Watton, doing in the house at all hours, and beguiling Letty, by his collector's airs, into a hundred foolish wants and whims? And that brute Cathedine! Was it decent, was it bearable, that a bride of three months should take no more notice of her husband's wishes and dislikes in such a matter than Letty had shown with regard to her growing friendship with that disreputable person? It seemed to George that he called most afternoons. Letty laughed, excused herself, or abused her visitor as soon as he had departed; but the rebuff which George's pride would not let him ask of her directly, while yet his whole manner demanded it, was never given.
He sat solitary in his brilliantly lit carriage, staring at the advertisements opposite, his long chin thrust forward, his head, with its fair curls, thrown moodily back. And all