Sir George Tressady, vol 2 | Page 8

imagine, I
think, that if they carry the prohibition and the hours clauses we shall
be able to whip up a still fiercer attack on the 'landlords' clause. Now,
that isn't my view."
Fontenoy turned upon him, startled.

"Why isn't it your view?" he said abruptly.
"Because there are always waverers who will accept a fait accompli;
and you know how opposition has a trick of cooling towards the end of
a Bill. Maxwell has carried his main point, they will say; this is a
question of machinery. Besides, many of those Liberals who will be
with us on the main point don't love the landlords. No! don't flatter
yourself that, if we lose the main engagement, there will be any
Prussians to bring up. The thing will be done."
"Well, thank God!" grumbled Fontenoy, "we don't mean to lose the
main engagement. But if one of our men were to argue in that way, I
should know what to say to him."
George made no reply.
They walked on in silence, the summer twilight falling softly over the
river and the Hospital, over the Terrace with its groups, and the
towering pile of buildings beside them.
Presently Fontenoy said, in another voice:
"I have really never had the courage to talk to you of the matter,
Tressady, but didn't you see something of that lad Ancoats before he
went off abroad?"
"Yes, I saw him several times, first at the club; then he came and dined
with me here one night."
"And did he confide in you?"
"More or less," said George, smiling rather queerly at the recollection.
Fontenoy made a sound between a growl and a sigh.
"Really, it's rather too much to have to think out that young man's
affairs as well as one's own. And the situation is so
extraordinary!--Maxwell and I have to be in constant consultation. I
went to see him in his room in the House of Lords the other night, and

met a man coming out, who stopped, and stared as though he were shot.
Luckily I knew him, and could say a word to him, or there would have
been all sorts of cock-and-bull stories abroad."
"Well, and what are you and Maxwell doing?"
"Trying to get at the young woman. One can't buy her off, of course.
Ancoats is his own master, and could outbid us. But Maxwell has found
a brother--a decent sort of fellow--a country solicitor. And there is a
Ritualist curate, a Father somebody,"--Fontenoy raised his
shoulders,--"who seems to have an intermittent hold on the girl. When
she has fits of virtue she goes to confess to him. Maxwell has got hold
of him."
"And meanwhile Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim?"
"Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim, and behaving himself, as I hear from his
poor mother." Fontenoy sighed. "But the boy was frightened, of course,
when they went abroad. Now she is getting better, and one can't tell--"
"No, one can't tell," said George.
"I wish I knew what the thing really meant," said Fontenoy, presently,
in a tone of perplexed reverie. "What do you think? Is it a passion--?"
"Or a pose?"
George pondered.
"H'm," he said at last--"more of a pose, I think, than a passion. Ancoats
always seems to me the jeune premier in his own play. He sees his life
in scenes, and plays them according to all the rules."
"Intolerable!" said Fontenoy, in exasperation. "And at least he might
refrain from dragging a girl into it! We weren't saints in my day, but we
weren't in the habit of choosing well-brought-up maidens of twenty in
our own set for our confidantes. You know, I suppose, what broke up
the party at Castle Luton?"

"Ancoats told me nothing. I have heard some gossip from Harding
Watton," said George, unwillingly. It was one of his strongest
characteristics, this fastidious and even haughty dislike of chatter about
other people's private affairs, a dislike which, in the present case, had
been strengthened by his growing antipathy to Harding.
"How should he know?" said Fontenoy, angrily. He was glad enough to
use Watton as a political tool, but had never yet admitted him to the
smallest social intimacy.
Yet with Tressady he felt no difficulty in talking over these private
affairs; and he did, in fact, report the whole story--that same story with
which Marcella had startled Betty Leven on the night in question: how
Ancoats on this Sunday evening had decoyed this handsome,
impressionable girl, to whom throughout the winter he had been paying
decided and even ostentatious court, into a tête-à-tête--had poured out
to her frantic confessions of his attachment to the theatrical lady--a
woman he could never marry, whom his mother could never meet, but
with whom, nevertheless, come what might, he was determined to live
and