The Patrician, by John Galsworthy
by
John Galsworthy
Part 1 out of 6
This etext was produced by David Widger
THE PATRICIAN
By John Galsworthy
CHAPTER I
Light, entering the vast room--a room so high that its carved ceiling
refused itself to exact scrutiny--travelled, with the wistful, cold
curiosity of the dawn, over a fantastic storehouse of Time. Light,
unaccompanied by the prejudice of human eyes, made strange revelation
of incongruities, as though illuminating the dispassionate march of
history.
For in this dining hall--one of the finest in England--the Caradoc
family had for centuries assembled the trophies and records of their
existence. Round about this dining hall they had built and pulled
down and restored, until the rest of Monkland Court presented some
aspect of homogeneity. Here alone they had left virgin the work of
the old quasi-monastic builders, and within it unconsciously
deposited their souls. For there were here, meeting the eyes of
light, all those rather touching evidences of man's desire to persist
for ever, those shells of his former bodies, the fetishes and queer
proofs of his faiths, together with the remorseless demonstration of
their treatment at the hands of Time.
The annalist might here have found all his needed confirmations; the
analyst from this material formed the due equation of high birth; the
philosopher traced the course of aristocracy, from its primeval rise
in crude strength or subtlety, through centuries of power, to
picturesque decadence, and the beginnings of its last stand. Even
the artist might here, perchance, have seized on the dry ineffable
pervading spirit, as one visiting an old cathedral seems to scent out
the constriction of its heart.
From the legendary sword of that Welsh chieftain who by an act of
high, rewarded treachery had passed into the favour of the conquering
William, and received, with the widow of a Norman, many lands in
Devonshire, to the Cup purchased for Geoffrey Caradoc; present Earl
of Valleys, by subscription of his Devonshire tenants on the occasion
of his marriage with the Lady Gertrude Semmering--no insignia were
absent, save the family portraits in the gallery of Valleys House in
London. There was even an ancient duplicate of that yellow tattered
scroll royally, reconfirming lands and title to John, the most
distinguished of all the Caradocs, who had unfortunately neglected to
be born in wedlock, by one of those humorous omissions to be found in
the genealogies of most old families. Yes, it was there, almost
cynically hung in a corner; for this incident, though no doubt a
burning question in the fifteenth century, was now but staple for an
ironical little tale, in view of the fact that descendants of John's
'own' brother Edmund were undoubtedly to be found among the cottagers
of a parish not far distant.
Light, glancing from the suits of armour to the tiger skins beneath
them, brought from India but a year ago by Bertie Caradoc, the
younger son, seemed recording, how those, who had once been foremost
by virtue of that simple law of Nature which crowns the adventuring
and strong, now being almost washed aside out of the main stream of
national life, were compelled to devise adventure, lest they should
lose belief in their own strength.
The unsparing light of that first half-hour of summer morning
recorded many other changes, wandering from austere tapestries to the
velvety carpets, and dragging from the contrast sure proof of a
common sense which denied to the present Earl and Countess the
asceticisms of the past. And then it seemed to lose interest in this
critical journey, as though longing to clothe all in witchery. For
the sun had risen, and through the Eastern windows came pouring its
level and mysterious joy. And with it, passing in at an open
lattice, came a wild bee to settle among the flowers on the table
athwart the Eastern end, used when there was only a small party in
the house. The hours fled on silent, till the sun was high, and the
first visitors came--three maids, rosy, not silent, bringing brushes.
They passed, and were followed by two footmen--scouts of the
breakfast brigade, who stood for a moment professionally doing
nothing, then soberly commenced to set the table. Then came a little
girl of six, to see if there were anything exciting--little Ann
Shropton, child of Sir William Shropton by his marriage with Lady
Agatha, and eldest daughter of the house, the only one of the four
young Caradocs as yet wedded. She came on tiptoe, thinking to
surprise whatever was there. She had a broad little face, and wide
frank hazel eyes over a little nose that came out straight and
sudden. Encircled by a loose belt placed far below the waist of her
holland frock, as if to symbolize freedom, she seemed to think
everything in life good fun. And soon she found the exciting thing.
"Here's a bumble bee, William. Do you think I could tame it in my
little glass bog?"
"No, I don't, Miss Ann; and look out, you'll be stung!"
"It wouldn't sting me."
"Why not?"
"Because it wouldn't."
"Of course--if you say so----"
"What time is the motor ordered?"
"Nine o'clock."
"I'm going with Grandpapa as far as the gate."
"Suppose he says you're not?"
"Well, then I shall go all the same."
"I see."
"I might go all the way with him to London! Is Auntie Babs going?"
"No, I don't think anybody is going with his lordship."
"I would, if she were. William!"
"Yes."
"Is Uncle Eustace sure to be elected ?"
"Of course he is."
"Do you think he'll be a good Member of Parliament?"
"Lord Miltoun is very clever, Miss Ann."
"Is he?"
"Well, don't you think so?"
"Does Charles think so?"
"Ask him."
"William!"
"Yes."
"I don't like London. I like here, and I like Cotton, and I like
home pretty well, and I love Pendridny--and--I like Ravensham."
"His lordship is going to Ravensham to-day on his way up, I heard
say."
"Oh! then he'll see great-granny. William----"
"Here's Miss Wallace."
>From the doorway a lady with a broad pale patient face said:
"Come, Ann."
"All right! Hallo, Simmons!"
The entering butler replied:
"Hallo, Miss Ann!"
"I've got to go."
"I'm sure we're very sorry."
"Yes."
The door banged faintly, and in the great room rose the busy silence
of those minutes which precede repasts. Suddenly the four men by the
breakfast fable stood back. Lord Valleys had come in.
He approached slowly, reading a blue paper, with his level grey eyes
divided by a little uncharacteristic frown. He had a tanned yet
ruddy, decisively shaped face, with crisp hair and moustache
beginning to go iron-grey--the face of a man who knows his own mind
and is contented with that knowledge. His figure too, well-braced
and upright, with the back of the head carried like a soldier's,
confirmed the impression, not so much of self-sufficiency, as of the
sufficiency of his habits of life and thought. And there was
apparent about all his movements that peculiar unconsciousness of his
surroundings which comes to those who live a great deal in the public
eye, have the material machinery of existence placed exactly to their
hands, and never need to consider what others think of them. Taking
his seat, and still perusing the paper, he at once began to eat what
was put before him; then noticing that his eldest daughter had come
in and was sitting down beside him, he said:
"Bore having to go up in such weather!"
"Is it a Cabinet meeting?"
"Yes. This confounded business of the balloons." But the rather
anxious dark eyes of Agatha's delicate narrow face were taking in the
details of a tray for keeping dishes warm on a sideboard, and she was
thinking: "I believe that would be better than the ones I've got,
after all. If William would only say whether he really likes these
large trays better than single hot-water dishes!" She contrived how-
ever to ask in her gentle voice--for all her words and movements were
gentle, even a little timid, till anything appeared to threaten the
welfare of her husband or children:
"Do you think this war scare good for Eustace's prospects, Father?"
But her father did not answer; he was greeting a new-comer, a tall,
fine-looking young man, with dark hair and a fair moustache, between
whom and himself there was no relationship, yet a certain negative
resemblance. Claud Fresnay, Viscount Harbinger, was indeed also a
little of what is called the 'Norman' type--having a certain firm
regularity of feature, and a slight aquilinity of nose high up on the
bridge--but that which in the elder man seemed to indicate only an
unconscious acceptance of self as a standard, in the younger man gave
an impression at once more assertive and more uneasy, as though he
were a little afraid of not chaffing something all the time.
Behind him had come in a tall woman, of full figure and fine
presence, with hair still brown--Lady Valleys herself. Though her
eldest son was thirty, she was, herself, still little more than
fifty. From her voice, manner, and whole personality, one might
suspect that she had been an acknowledged beauty; but there was now
more than a suspicion of maturity about her almost jovial face, with
its full grey-blue eyes; and coarsened complexion. Good comrade, and
essentially 'woman of the world,' was written on every line of her,
and in every tone of her voice. She was indeed a figure suggestive
of open air and generous living, endowed with abundant energy, and
not devoid of humour. It was she who answered Agatha's remark.
"Of course, my dear, the very best thing possible."
Lord Harbinger chimed in:
"By the way, Brabrook's going to speak on it. Did you ever hear him,
Lady Agatha? 'Mr. Speaker, Sir, I rise--and with me rises the
democratic principle----'"
But Agatha only smiled, for she was thinking:
"If I let Ann go as far as the gate, she'll only make it a stepping-
stone to something else to-morrow." Taking no interest in public
affairs, her inherited craving for command had resorted for
expression to a meticulous ordering of household matters. It was
indeed a cult with her, a passion--as though she felt herself a sort
of figurehead to national domesticity; the leader of a patriotic
movement.
Lord Valleys, having finished what seemed necessary, arose.
"Any message to your mother, Gertrude?"
"No, I wrote last night."
"Tell Miltoun to keep--an eye on that Mr. Courtier. I heard him
speak one day--he's rather good."
Lady Valleys, who had not yet sat down, accompanied her husband to
the door.
"By the way, I've told Mother about this woman, Geoff."
"Was it necessary?"
"Well, I think so; I'm uneasy--after all, Mother has some influence
with Miltoun."
Lord Valleys shrugged his shoulders, and slightly squeezing his
wife's arm, went out.
Though himself vaguely uneasy on that very subject, he was a man who
did not go to meet disturbance. He had the nerves which seem to be
no nerves at all--especially found in those of his class who have
much to do with horses. He temperamentally regarded the evil of the
day as quite sufficient to it. Moreover, his eldest son was a riddle
that he had long given up, so far as women were concerned.
Emerging into the outer hall, he lingered a moment, remembering that
he had not seen his younger and favourite daughter.
"Lady Barbara down yet?" Hearing that she was not, he slipped into
the motor coat held for him by Simmons, and stepped out under the
white portico, decorated by the Caradoc hawks in stone.
The voice of little Ann reached him, clear and high above the
smothered whirring of the car.
"Come on, Grandpapa!"
Lord Valleys grimaced beneath his crisp moustache--the word grandpapa
always fell queerly on the ears of one who was but fifty-six, and by
no means felt it--and jerking his gloved hand towards Ann, he said:
"Send down to the lodge gate for this."
The voice of little Ann answered loudly:
"No; I'm coming back by myself."
The car starting, drowned discussion.
Lord Valleys, motoring, somewhat pathetically illustrated the
invasion of institutions by their destroyer, Science. A supporter of
the turf, and not long since Master of Foxhounds, most of whose soul
(outside politics) was in horses, he had been, as it were, compelled
by common sense, not only to tolerate, but to take up and even press
forward the cause of their supplanters. His instinct of self-
preservation was secretly at work, hurrying him to his own
destruction; forcing him to persuade himself that science and her
successive victories over brute nature could be wooed into the
service of a prestige which rested on a crystallized and stationary
base. All this keeping pace with the times, this immersion in the
results of modern discoveries, this speeding-up of existence so that
it was all surface and little root--the increasing volatility,
cosmopolitanism, and even commercialism of his life, on which he
rather prided himself as a man of the world--was, with a secrecy too
deep for his perception, cutting at the aloofness logically demanded
of one in his position. Stubborn, and not spiritually subtle, though
by no means dull in practical matters, he was resolutely letting the
waters bear him on, holding the tiller firmly, without perceiving
that he was in the vortex of a whirlpool. Indeed, his common sense
continually impelled him, against the sort of reactionaryism of which
his son Miltoun had so much, to that easier reactionaryism, which,
living on its spiritual capital, makes what material capital it can
out of its enemy, Progress.
He drove the car himself, shrewd and self-contained, sitting easily,
with his cap well drawn over those steady eyes; and though this
unexpected meeting of the Cabinet in the Whitsuntide recess was not
only a nuisance, but gave food for anxiety, he was fully able to
enjoy the swift smooth movement through the summer air, which met him
with such friendly sweetness under the great trees of the long
avenue. Beside him, little Ann was silent, with her legs stuck out
rather wide apart. Motoring was a new excitement, for at home it was
forbidden; and a meditative rapture shone in her wide eyes above her
sudden little nose. Only once she spoke, when close to the lodge the
car slowed down, and they passed the lodge-keeper's little daughter.
"Hallo, Susie!"
There was no answer, but the look on Susie's small pale face was so
humble and adoring that Lord Valleys, not a very observant man,
noticed it with a sort of satisfaction. "Yes," he thought, somewhat
irrelevantly, "the country is sound at heart!"
CHAPTER II
At Ravensham House on the borders of Richmond Park, suburban seat of
the Casterley family, ever since it became usual to have a residence
within easy driving distance of Westminster--in a large conservatory
adjoining the hall, Lady Casterley stood in front of some Japanese
lilies. She was a slender, short old woman, with an ivory-coloured
face, a thin nose, and keen eyes half-veiled by delicate wrinkled
lids. Very still, in her grey dress, and with grey hair, she gave
the impression of a little figure carved out of fine, worn steel.
Her firm, spidery hand held a letter written in free somewhat
sprawling style:
MONKLAND COURT,
"DEVON.
"MY DEAR, MOTHER,
"Geoffrey is motoring up to-morrow. He'll look in on you on the way
if he can. This new war scare has taken him up. I shan't be in Town
myself till Miltoun's election is over. The fact is, I daren't leave
him down here alone. He sees his 'Anonyma' every day. That Mr.
Courtier, who wrote the book against War--rather cool for a man who's
been a soldier of fortune, don't you think?--is staying at the inn,
working for the Radical. He knows her, too--and, one can only hope,
for Miltoun's sake, too well--an attractive person, with red
moustaches, rather nice and mad. Bertie has just come down; I must
get him to have a talk with Miltoun, and see if he cant find out how
the land lies. One can trust Bertie--he's really very astute. I
must say, that she's quite a sweet-looking woman; but absolutely
nothing's known of her here except that she divorced her husband.
How does one find out about people? Miltoun's being so
extraordinarily strait-laced makes it all the more awkward. The
earnestness of this rising generation is most remarkable. I don't
remember taking such a serious view of life in my youth."
Lady Casterley lowered the coronetted sheet of paper. The ghost of a
grimace haunted her face--she had not forgotten her daughter's youth.
Raising the letter again, she read on:
"I'm sure Geoffrey and I feel years younger than either Miltoun or
Agatha, though we did produce them. One doesn't feel it with Bertie
or Babs, luckily. The war scare is having an excellent effect on
Miltoun's candidature. Claud Harbinger is with us, too, working for
Miltoun; but, as a matter of fact, I think he's after Babs. It's
rather melancholy, when you think that Babs isn't quite twenty--
still, one can't expect anything else, I suppose, with her looks; and
Claud is rather a fine specimen. They talk of him a lot now; he's
quite coming to the fore among the young Tories."
Lady Casterley again lowered the letter, and stood listening. A
prolonged, muffled sound as of distant cheering and groans had
penetrated the great conservatory, vibrating among the pale petals of
the lilies and setting free their scent in short waves of perfume.
She passed into the hall; where, stood an old man with sallow face
and long white whiskers.
"What was that noise, Clifton?"
"A posse of Socialists, my lady, on their way to Putney to hold a
demonstration; the people are hooting them. They've got blocked just
outside the gates."
"Are they making speeches?"
"They are talking some kind of rant, my lady."
"I'll go and hear them. Give me my black stick."
Above the velvet-dark, flat-toughed cedar trees, which rose like
pagodas of ebony on either side of the drive, the sky hung lowering
in one great purple cloud, endowed with sinister life by a single
white beam striking up into it from the horizon. Beneath this canopy
of cloud a small phalanx of dusty, dishevelled-looking men and women
were drawn up in the road, guarding, and encouraging with cheers, a
tall, black-coated orator. Before and behind this phalanx, a little
mob of men and boys kept up an accompaniment of groans and jeering.
Lady Casterley and her 'major-domo' stood six paces inside the
scrolled iron gates, and watched. The slight, steel-coloured figure
with steel-coloured hair, was more arresting in its immobility than
all the vociferations and gestures of the mob. Her eyes alone moved
under their half-drooped lids; her right hand clutched tightly the
handle of her stick. The speaker's voice rose in shrill protest
against the exploitation of 'the people'; it sank in ironical comment
on Christianity; it demanded passionately to be free from the
continuous burden of 'this insensate militarist taxation'; it
threatened that the people would take things info their own hands.
Lady Casterley turned her head:
"He is talking nonsense, Clifton. It is going to rain. I shall go
in."
Under the stone porch she paused. The purple cloud had broken; a
blind fury of rain was deluging the fast-scattering crowd. A faint
smile came on Lady Casterley's lips.
"It will do them good to have their ardour damped a little. You will
get wet, Clifton--hurry! I expect Lord Valleys to dinner. Have a
room got ready for him to dress. He's motoring from Monkland."
CHAPTER III
In a very high, white-pannelled room, with but little furniture, Lord
Valleys greeted his mother-in-law respectfully.
"Motored up in nine hours, Ma'am--not bad going."
"I am glad you came. When is Miltoun's election?"
"On the twenty-ninth."
"Pity! He should be away from Monkland, with that--anonymous woman
living there."
"Ah! yes; you've heard of her!"
Lady Casterley replied sharply:
"You're too easy-going, Geoffrey."
Lord Valleys smiled.
"These war scares," he said, "are getting a bore. Can't quite make
out what the feeling of the country is about them."
Lady Casterley rose:
"It has none. When war comes, the feeling will be all right. It
always is. Give me your arm. Are you hungry?"...
When Lord Valleys spoke of war, he spoke as one who, since he arrived
at years of discretion, had lived within the circle of those who
direct the destinies of States. It was for him--as for the lilies in
the great glass house--impossible to see with the eyes, or feel with
the feelings of a flower of the garden outside. Soaked in the best
prejudices and manners of his class, he lived a life no more shut off
from the general than was to be expected. Indeed, in some sort, as a
man of facts and common sense, he was fairly in touch with the
opinion of the average citizen. He was quite genuine when he said
that he believed he knew what the people wanted better than those who
prated on the subject; and no doubt he was right, for temperamentally
he was nearer to them than their own leaders, though he would not
perhaps have liked to be told so. His man-of-the-world, political
shrewdness had been superimposed by life on a nature whose prime
strength was its practicality and lack of imagination. It was his
business to be efficient, but not strenuous, or desirous of pushing
ideas to their logical conclusions; to be neither narrow nor
puritanical, so long as the shell of 'good form' was preserved
intact; to be a liberal landlord up to the point of not seriously
damaging his interests; to be well-disposed towards the arts until
those arts revealed that which he had not before perceived; it was
his business to have light hands, steady eyes, iron nerves, and those
excellent manners that have no mannerisms. It was his nature to be
easy-going as a husband; indulgent as a father; careful and
straightforward as a politician; and as a man, addicted to pleasure,
to work, and to fresh air. He admired, and was fond of his wife, and
had never regretted his marriage. He had never perhaps regretted
anything, unless it were that he had not yet won the Derby, or quite
succeeded in getting his special strain of blue-ticked pointers to
breed absolutely true to type. His mother-in-law he respected, as
one might respect a principle.
There was indeed in the personality of that little old lady the
tremendous force of accumulated decision--the inherited assurance of
one whose prestige had never been questioned; who, from long
immunity, and a certain clear-cut matter-of-factness, bred by the
habit of command, had indeed lost the power of perceiving that her
prestige ever could be questioned. Her knowledge of her own mind was
no ordinary piece of learning, had not, in fact, been learned at all,
but sprang full-fledged from an active dominating temperament.
Fortified by the necessity, common to her class, of knowing
thoroughly the more patent side of public affairs; armoured by the
tradition of a culture demanded by leadership; inspired by ideas, but
always the same ideas; owning no master, but in servitude to her own
custom of leading, she had a mind, formidable as the two-edged swords
wielded by her ancestors the Fitz-Harolds, at Agincourt or Poitiers--
a mind which had ever instinctively rejected that inner knowledge of
herself or of the selves of others; produced by those foolish
practices of introspection, contemplation, and understanding, so
deleterious to authority. If Lord Valleys was the body of the
aristocratic machine, Lady Casterley was the steel spring inside it.
All her life studiously unaffected and simple in attire; of plain and
frugal habit; an early riser; working at something or other from
morning till night, and as little worn-out at seventy-eight as most
women of fifty, she had only one weak spot--and that was her
strength--blindness as to the nature and size of her place in the
scheme of things. She was a type, a force.
Wonderfully well she went with the room in which they were dining,
whose grey walls, surmounted by a deep frieze painted somewhat in the
style of Fragonard, contained many nymphs and roses now rather dim;
with the furniture, too, which had a look of having survived into
times not its own. On the tables were no flowers, save five lilies
in an old silver chalice; and on the wall over the great sideboard a
portrait of the late Lord Casterley.
She spoke:
"I hope Miltoun is taking his own line?"
"That's the trouble. He suffers from swollen principles--only wish
he could keep them out of his speeches."
"Let him be; and get him away from that woman as soon as his
election's over. What is her real name?"
"Mrs. something Lees Noel."
"How long has she been there?"
"About a year, I think."
"And you don't know anything about her?"
Lord Valleys raised his shoulders.
"Ah!" said Lady Casterley; "exactly! You're letting the thing drift.
I shall go down myself. I suppose Gertrude can have me? What has
that Mr. Courtier to do with this good lady?"
Lord Valleys smiled. In this smile was the whole of his polite and
easy-going philosophy. "I am no meddler," it seemed to say; and at
sight of that smile Lady Casterley tightened her lips.
"He is a firebrand," she said. "I read that book of his against War-
-most inflammatory. Aimed at Grant-and Rosenstern, chiefly. I've
just seen, one of the results, outside my own gates. A mob of anti-
War agitators."
Lord Valleys controlled a yawn.
"Really? I'd no idea Courtier had any influence."
"He is dangerous. Most idealists are negligible-his book was
clever."
"I wish to goodness we could see the last of these scares, they only
make both countries look foolish," muttered Lord Valleys.
Lady Casterley raised her glass, full of a bloody red wine. "The war
would save us," she said.
"War is no joke."
"It would be the beginning of a better state of things."
"You think so?"
"We should get the lead again as a nation, and Democracy would be put
back fifty years."
Lord Valleys made three little heaps of salt, and paused to count
them; then, with a slight uplifting of his eyebrows, which seemed to
doubt what he was going to say, he murmured: "I should have said that
we were all democrats nowadays.... What is it, Clifton?"
"Your chauffeur would like to know, what time you will have the car?"
"Directly after dinner."
Twenty minutes later, he was turning through the scrolled iron gates
into the road for London. It was falling dark; and in the tremulous
sky clouds were piled up, and drifted here and there with a sort of
endless lack of purpose. No direction seemed to have been decreed
unto their wings. They had met together in the firmament like a
flock of giant magpies crossing and re-crossing each others' flight.
The smell of rain was in the air. The car raised no dust, but bored
swiftly on, searching out the road with its lamps. On Putney Bridge
its march was stayed by a string of waggons. Lord Valleys looked to
right and left. The river reflected the thousand lights of buildings
piled along her sides, lamps of the embankments, lanterns of moored
barges. The sinuous pallid body of this great Creature, for ever
gliding down to the sea, roused in his mind no symbolic image. He
had had to do with her, years back, at the Board of Trade, and knew
her for what she was, extremely dirty, and getting abominably thin
just where he would have liked her plump. Yet, as he lighted a
cigar, there came to him a queer feeling--as if he were in the
presence of a woman he was fond of.
"I hope to God," he thought, "nothing'il come of these scares!" The
car glided on into the long road, swarming with traffic, towards the
fashionable heart of London. Outside stationers' shops, however, the
posters of evening papers were of no reassuring order.
'THE PLOT THICKENS.'
'MORE REVELATIONS.'
'GRAVE SITUATION THREATENED.'
And before each poster could be seen a little eddy in the stream of
the passers-by--formed by persons glancing at the news, and
disengaging themselves, to press on again. The Earl of Valleys
caught himself wondering what they thought of it! What was passing
behind those pale rounds of flesh turned towards the posters?
Did they think at all, these men and women in the street? What was
their attitude towards this vaguely threatened cataclysm? Face after
face, stolid and apathetic, expressed nothing, no active desire,
certainly no enthusiasm, hardly any dread. Poor devils! The thing,
after all, was no more within their control than it was within the
power of ants to stop the ruination of their ant-heap by some passing
boy! It was no doubt quite true, that the people had never had much
voice in the making of war. And the words of a Radical weekly, which
as an impartial man he always forced himself to read, recurred to
him. "Ignorant of the facts, hypnotized by the words 'Country' and
'Patriotism'; in the grip of mob-instinct and inborn prejudice
against the foreigner; helpless by reason of his patience, stoicism,
good faith, and confidence in those above him; helpless by reason of
his snobbery, mutual distrust, carelessness for the morrow, and lack
of public spirit-in the face of War how impotent and to be pitied is
the man in the street!" That paper, though clever, always seemed to
him intolerably hifalutin'!
It was doubtful whether he would get to Ascot this year. And his
mind flew for a moment to his promising two-year-old Casetta; then
dashed almost violently, as though in shame, to the Admiralty and the
doubt whether they were fully alive to possibilities. He himself
occupied a softer spot of Government, one of those almost nominal
offices necessary to qualify into the Cabinet certain tried minds,
for whom no more strenuous post can for the moment be found. From
the Admiralty again his thoughts leaped to his mother-in-law.
Wonderful old woman! What a statesman she would have made! Too
reactionary! Deuce of a straight line she had taken about Mrs. Lees
Noel! And with a connoisseur's twinge of pleasure he recollected
that lady's face and figure seen that morning as he passed her
cottage. Mysterious or not, the woman was certainly attractive!
Very graceful head with its dark hair waved back from the middle over
either temple--very charming figure, no lumber of any sort! Bouquet
about her! Some story or other, no doubt--no affair of his! Always
sorry for that sort of woman!
A regiment of Territorials returning from a march stayed the progress
of his car. He leaned forward watching them with much the same
contained, shrewd, critical look he would have bent on a pack of
hounds. All the mistiness and speculation in his mind was gone now.
Good stamp of man, would give a capital account of themselves! Their
faces, flushed by a day in the open, were masked with passivity, or,
with a half-aggressive, half-jocular self-consciousness; they were
clearly not troubled by abstract doubts, or any visions of the
horrors of war.
Someone raised a cheer 'for the Terriers!' Lord Valleys saw round him
a little sea of hats, rising and falling, and heard a sound, rather
shrill and tentative, swell into hoarse, high clamour, and suddenly
die out. "Seem keen enough!" he thought. "Very little does it!
Plenty of fighting spirit in the country." And again a thrill of
pleasure shot through him.
Then, as the last soldier passed, his car slowly forged its way
through the straggling crowd, pressing on behind the regiment--men of
all ages, youths, a few women, young girls, who turned their eyes on
him with a negligent stare as if their lives were too remote to
permit them to take interest in this passing man at ease.
CHAPTER IV
At Monkland, that same hour, in the little whitewashed 'withdrawing-
room' of a thatched, whitewashed cottage, two men sat talking, one on
either side of the hearth; and in a low chair between them a dark-
eyed woman leaned back, watching, the tips of her delicate thin
fingers pressed together, or held out transparent towards the fire.
A log, dropping now and then, turned up its glowing underside; and
the firelight and the lamplight seemed so to have soaked into the
white walls that a wan warmth exuded. Silvery dun moths, fluttering
in from the dark garden, kept vibrating, like spun shillings, over a
jade-green bowl of crimson roses; and there was a scent, as ever in
that old thatched cottage, of woodsmoke, flowers, and sweetbriar.
The man on the left was perhaps forty, rather above middle height,
vigorous, active, straight, with blue eyes and a sanguine face that
glowed on small provocation. His hair was very bright, almost red,
and his fiery moustaches which descended to the level of his chin,
like Don Quixote's seemed bristling and charging.
The man on the right was nearer thirty, evidently tall, wiry, and
very thin. He sat rather crumpled, in his low armchair, with hands
clasped round a knee; and a little crucified smile haunted the lips
of his lean face, which, with its parchmenty, tanned, shaven cheeks,
and deep-set, very living eyes, had a certain beauty.
These two men, so extravagantly unlike, looked at each other like
neighbouring dogs, who, having long decided that they are better
apart, suddenly find that they have met at some spot where they
cannot possibly have a fight. And the woman watched; the owner, as
it were, of one, but who, from sheer love of dogs, had always stroked
and patted the other.
"So, Mr. Courtier," said the younger man, whose dry, ironic voice,
like his smile, seemed defending the fervid spirit in his eyes; "all
you say only amounts, you see, to a defence of the so-called Liberal
spirit; and, forgive my candour, that spirit, being an importation
from the realms of philosophy and art, withers the moment it touches
practical affairs."
The man with the red moustaches laughed; the sound was queer--at once
so genial and so sardonic.
"Well put!" he said: "And far be it from me to gainsay. But since
compromise is the very essence of politics, high-priests of caste and
authority, like you, Lord Miltoun, are every bit as much out of it as
any Liberal professor."
"I don't agree!"
"Agree or not, your position towards public affairs is very like the
Church's attitude towards marriage and divorce; as remote from the
realities of life as the attitude of the believer in Free Love, and
not more likely to catch on. The death of your point of view lies in
itself--it's too dried-up and far from things ever to understand
them. If you don't understand you can never rule. You might just as
well keep your hands in your pockets, as go into politics with your
notions!"
"I fear we must continue to agree to differ."
"Well; perhaps I do pay you too high a compliment. After all, you
are a patrician."
"You speak in riddles, Mr. Courtier."
The dark-eyed woman stirred; her hands gave a sort of flutter, as
though in deprecation of acerbity.
Rising at once, and speaking in a deferential voice, the elder man
said
"We're tiring Mrs. Noel. Good-night, Audrey, It's high time I was
off." Against the darkness of the open French window, he turned
round to fire a parting shot.
"What I meant, Lord Miltoun, was that your class is the driest and
most practical in the State--it's odd if it doesn't save you from a
poet's dreams. Good-night!" He passed out on to the lawn, and
vanished.
The young man sat unmoving; the glow of the fire had caught his face,
so that a spirit seemed clinging round his lips, gleaming out of his
eyes. Suddenly he said:
"Do you believe that, Mrs. Noel?"
For answer Audrey Noel smiled, then rose and went over to the window.
"Look at my dear toad! It comes here every evening!"
On a flagstone of the verandah, in the centre of the stream of
lamplight, sat a little golden toad. As Miltoun came to look, it
waddled to one side, and vanished.
"How peaceful your garden is!" he said; then taking her hand, he very
gently raised it to his lips, and followed his opponent out into the
darkness.
Truly peace brooded over that garden. The Night seemed listening--
all lights out, all hearts at rest. It watched, with a little white
star for every tree, and roof, and slumbering tired flower, as a
mother watches her sleeping child, leaning above him and counting
with her love every hair of his head, and all his tiny tremors.
Argument seemed child's babble indeed under the smile of Night. And
the face of the woman, left alone at her window, was a little like
the face of this warm, sweet night. It was sensitive, harmonious;
and its harmony was not, as in some faces, cold--but seemed to
tremble and glow and flutter, as though it were a spirit which had
found its place of resting.
In her garden,--all velvety grey, with black shadows beneath the yew-
trees, the white flowers alone seemed to be awake, and to look at her
wistfully. The trees stood dark and still. Not even the night birds
stirred. Alone, the little stream down in the bottom raised its
voice, privileged when day voices were hushed.
It was not in Audrey Noel to deny herself to any spirit that was
abroad; to repel was an art she did not practise. But this night,
though the Spirit of Peace hovered so near, she did not seem to know
it. Her hands trembled, her cheeks were burning; her breast heaved,
and sighs fluttered from her lips, just parted.
CHAPTER V
Eustace Cardoc, Viscount Miltoun, had lived a very lonely life, since
he first began to understand the peculiarities of existence. With
the exception of Clifton, his grandmother's 'majordomo,' he made, as
a small child, no intimate friend. His nurses, governesses, tutors,
by their own confession did not understand him, finding that he took
himself with unnecessary seriousness; a little afraid, too, of one
whom they discovered to be capable of pushing things to the point of
enduring pain in silence. Much of that early time was passed at
Ravensham, for he had always been Lady Casterley's favourite
grandchild. She recognized in him the purposeful austerity which had
somehow been omitted from the composition of her daughter. But only
to Clifton, then a man of fifty with a great gravity and long black
whiskers, did Eustace relieve his soul. "I tell you this, Clifton,"
he would say, sitting on the sideboard, or the arm of the big chair
in Clifton's room, or wandering amongst the raspberries, "because you
are my friend."
And Clifton, with his head a little on one side, and a sort of wise
concern at his 'friend's' confidences, which were sometimes of an
embarrassing description, would answer now and then: "Of course, my
lord," but more often: "Of course, my dear."
There was in this friendship something fine and suitable, neither of
these 'friends' taking or suffering liberties, and both being
interested in pigeons, which they would stand watching with a
remarkable attention.
In course of time, following the tradition of his family, Eustace
went to Harrow. He was there five years--always one of those boys a
little out at wrists and ankles, who may be seen slouching, solitary,
along the pavement to their own haunts, rather dusty, and with one
shoulder slightly raised above the other, from the habit of carrying
something beneath one arm. Saved from being thought a 'smug,' by his
title, his lack of any conspicuous scholastic ability, his obvious
independence of what was thought of him, and a sarcastic tongue,
which no one was eager to encounter, he remained the ugly duckling
who refused to paddle properly in the green ponds of Public School
tradition. He played games so badly that in sheer self-defence his
fellows permitted him to play without them. Of 'fives' they made an
exception, for in this he attained much proficiency, owing to a
certain windmill-like quality of limb. He was noted too for daring
chemical experiments, of which he usually had one or two brewing,
surreptitiously at first, and afterwards by special permission of his
house-master, on the principle that if a room must smell, it had
better smell openly. He made few friendships, but these were
lasting.
His Latin was so poor, and his Greek verse so vile, that all had been
surprised when towards the finish of his career he showed a very
considerable power of writing and speaking his own language. He left
school without a pang. But when in the train he saw the old Hill and
the old spire on the top of it fading away from him, a lump rose in
his throat, he swallowed violently two or three times, and, thrusting
himself far back into the carriage corner, appeared to sleep.
At Oxford, he was happier, but still comparatively lonely; remaining,
so long as custom permitted, in lodgings outside his College, and
clinging thereafter to remote, panelled rooms high up, overlooking
the gardens and a portion of the city wall. It was at Oxford that he
first developed that passion for self-discipline which afterwards
distinguished him. He took up rowing; and, though thoroughly
unsuited by nature to this pastime, secured himself a place in his
College 'torpid.' At the end of a race he was usually supported from
his stretcher in a state of extreme extenuation, due to having pulled
the last quarter of the course entirely with his spirit. The same
craving for self-discipline guided him in the choice of Schools; he
went out in 'Greats,' for which, owing to his indifferent mastery of
Greek and Latin, he was the least fitted. With enormous labour he
took a very good degree. He carried off besides, the highest
distinctions of the University for English Essays. The ordinary
circles of College life knew nothing of him. Not once in the whole
course of his University career, was he the better for wine. He, did
not hunt; he never talked of women, and none talked of women in his
presence. But now and then he was visited by those gusts which come
to the ascetic, when all life seemed suddenly caught up and devoured
by a flame burning night and day, and going out mercifully, he knew
not why, like a blown candle. However unsocial in the proper sense
of the word, he by no means lacked company in these Oxford days. He
knew many, both dons and undergraduates. His long stride, and
determined absence of direction, had severely tried all those who
could stomach so slow a pastime as walking for the sake of talking.
The country knew him--though he never knew the country--from Abingdon
to Bablock Hythe. His name stood high, too, at the Union, where he
made his mark during his first term in a debate on a 'Censorship of
Literature' which he advocated with gloom, pertinacity, and a certain
youthful brilliance that might well have carried the day, had not an
Irishman got up and pointed out the danger hanging over the Old
Testament. To that he had retorted: "Better, sir, it should run a
risk than have no risk to run." From which moment he was notable.
He stayed up four years, and went down with a sense of bewilderment
and loss. The matured verdict of Oxford on this child of hers, was
"Eustace Miltoun! Ah! Queer bird! Will make his mark!"
He had about this time an interview with his father which confirmed
the impression each had formed of the other. It took place in the
library at Monkland Court, on a late November afternoon.
The light of eight candles in thin silver candlesticks, four on
either side of the carved stone hearth, illumined that room. Their
gentle radiance penetrated but a little way into the great dark space
lined with books, panelled and floored with black oak, where the
acrid fragrance of leather and dried roseleaves seemed to drench the,
very soul with the aroma of the past. Above the huge fireplace, with
light falling on one side of his shaven face, hung a portrait--
painter unknown--of that Cardinal Caradoc who suffered for his faith
in the sixteenth century. Ascetic, crucified, with a little smile
clinging to the lips and deep-set eyes, he presided, above the
bluefish flames of a log fire.
Father and son found some difficulty in beginning.
Each of those two felt as though he were in the presence of someone
else's very near relation. They had, in fact, seen extremely little
of each other, and not seen that little long.
Lord Valleys uttered the first remark:
"Well, my dear fellow, what are you going to do now? I think we can
make certain of this seat down here, if you like to stand."
Miltoun had answered: "Thanks, very much; I don't think so at
present."
Through the thin fume of his cigar Lord Valleys watched that long
figure sunk deep in the chair opposite.
"Why not?" he said. "You can't begin too soon; unless you think you
ought to go round the world."
"Before I can become a man of it?"
Lord Valleys gave a rather disconcerted laugh.
"There's nothing in politics you can't pick up as you go along," he
said. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-four."
"You look older." A faint line, as of contemplation, rose between
his eyes. Was it fancy that a little smile was hovering about
Miltoun's lips?
"I've got a foolish theory," came from those lips, "that one must
know the conditions first. I want to give at least five years to
that."
Lord Valleys raised his eyebrows. "Waste of time," he said. "You'd
know more at the end of it, if you went into the House at once. You
take the matter too seriously."
"No doubt."
For fully a minute Lord Valleys made no answer; he felt almost
ruffled. Waiting till the sensation had passed, he said: "Well, my
dear fellow, as you please."
Miltoun's apprenticeship to the profession of politics was served in
a slum settlement; on his father's estates; in Chambers at the
Temple; in expeditions to Germany, America, and the British Colonies;
in work at elections; and in two forlorn hopes to capture a
constituency which could be trusted not to change its principles. He
read much, slowly, but with conscientious tenacity, poetry, history,
and works on philosophy, religion, and social matters.
Fiction, and especially foreign fiction, he did not care for. With
the utmost desire to be wide and impartial, he sucked in what
ministered to the wants of his nature, rejecting unconsciously all
that by its unsuitability endangered the flame of his private spirit.
What he read, in fact, served only to strengthen those profounder
convictions which arose from his temperament. With a contempt of the
vulgar gewgaws of wealth and rank he combined a humble but intense
and growing conviction of his capacity for leadership, of a spiritual
superiority to those whom he desired to benefit. There was no trace,
indeed, of the common Pharisee in Miltoun, he was simple and direct;
but his eyes, his gestures, the whole man, proclaimed the presence of
some secret spring of certainty, some fundamental well into which no
disturbing glimmers penetrated. He was not devoid of wit, but he was
devoid of that kind of wit which turns its eyes inward, and sees
something of the fun that lies in being what you are. Miltoun saw
the world and all the things thereof shaped like spires--even when
they were circles. He seemed to have no sense that the Universe was
equally compounded of those two symbols, whose point of
reconciliation had not yet been discovered.
Such was he, then, when the Member for his native division was made a
peer.
He had reached the age of thirty without ever having been in love,
leading a life of almost savage purity, with one solitary breakdown.
Women were afraid of him. And he was perhaps a little afraid of
woman. She was in theory too lovely and desirable--the half-moon.
in a summer sky; in practice too cloying, or too harsh. He had an
affection for Barbara, his younger sister; but to his mother, his
grandmother, or his elder sister Agatha, he had never felt close. It
was indeed amusing to see Lady Valleys with her first-born. Her fine
figure, the blown roses of her face, her grey-blue eyes which had a
slight tendency to roll, as though amusement just touched with
naughtiness bubbled behind them; were reduced to a queer, satirical
decorum in Miltoun's presence. Thoughts and sayings verging on the
risky were characteristic of her robust physique, of her soul which
could afford to express almost ail that occurred to it. Miltoun had
never, not even as a child, given her his confidence. She bore him
no resentment, being of that large, generous build in body and mind,
rarely--never in her class--associated with the capacity for feeling
aggrieved or lowered in any estimation, even its own. He was, and
always had been, an odd boy, and there was an end of it! Nothing had
perhaps so disconcerted Lady Valleys as his want of behaviour in
regard to women. She felt it abnormal, just as she recognized the
essential if duly veiled normality of her husband and younger son.
It was this feeling which made her realize almost more vividly than
she had time for, in the whirl of politics and fashion, the danger of
his friendship with this lady to whom she alluded so discreetly as
'Anonyma.'
Pure chance had been responsible for the inception of that
friendship. Going one December afternoon to the farmhouse of a
tenant, just killed by a fall from his horse, Miltoun had found the
widow in a state of bewildered grief, thinly cloaked in the manner of
one who had almost lost the power to express her feelings, and quite
lost it in presence of 'the gentry.' Having assured the poor soul
that she need have no fear about her tenancy, he was just leaving,
when he met, in the stone-flagged entrance, a lady in a fur cap and
jacket, carrying in her arms a little crying boy, bleeding from a cut
on the forehead. Taking him from her and placing him on a table in
the parlour, Miltoun looked at this lady, and saw that she was
extremely grave, and soft, and charming. He inquired of her whether
the mother should be told.
She shook her head.
"Poor thing, not just now: let's wash it, and bind it up first."
Together therefore they washed and bound up the cut. Having
finished, she looked at Miltoun, and seemed to say: "You would do the
telling so much better than I"
He, therefore, told the mother and was rewarded by a little smile
from the grave lady.
>From that meeting he took away the knowledge of her name, Audrey Lees
Noel, and the remembrance of a face, whose beauty, under a cap of
squirrel's fur, pursued him. Some days later passing by the village
green, he saw her entering a garden gate. On this occasion he had
asked her whether she would like her cottage re-thatched; an
inspection of the roof had followed; he had stayed talking a long
time. Accustomed to women--over the best of whom, for all their
grace and lack of affectation, high-caste life had wrapped the manner
which seems to take all things for granted--there was a peculiar
charm for Miltoun in this soft, dark-eyed lady who evidently lived
quite out of the world, and had so poignant, and shy, a flavour.
Thus from a chance seed had blossomed swiftly one of those rare
friendships between lonely people, which can in short time fill great
spaces of two lives.
One day she asked him: "You know about me, I suppose?" Miltoun made
a motion of his head, signifying that he did. His informant had been
the vicar.
"Yes, I am told, her story is a sad one--a divorce."
"Do you mean that she has been divorced, or----"
For the fraction of a second the vicar perhaps had hesitated.
"Oh! no--no. Sinned against, I am sure. A nice woman, so far as I
have seen; though I'm afraid not one of my congregation."
With this, Miltoun, in whom chivalry had already been awakened, was
content. When she asked if he knew her story, he would not for the
world have had her rake up what was painful. Whatever that story,
she could not have been to blame. She had begun already to be shaped
by his own spirit; had become not a human being as it was, but an
expression of his aspiration....
On the third evening after his passage of arms with Courtier, he was
again at her little white cottage sheltering within its high garden
walls. Smothered in roses, and with a black-brown thatch overhanging
the old-fashioned leaded panes of the upper windows, it had an air of
hiding from the world. Behind, as though on guard, two pine trees
spread their dark boughs over the outhouses, and in any south-west
wind could be heard speaking gravely about the weather. Tall lilac
bushes flanked the garden, and a huge lime-tree in the adjoining
field sighed and rustled, or on still days let forth the drowsy hum
of countless small dusky bees who frequented that green hostelry.
He found her altering a dress, sitting over it in her peculiar
delicate fashion--as if all objects whatsoever, dresses, flowers,
books, music, required from her the same sympathy.
He had come from a long day's electioneering, had been heckled at two
meetings, and was still sore from the experience. To watch her, to
be soothed, and ministered to by her had never been so restful; and
stretched out in a long chair he listened to her playing.
Over the hill a Pierrot moon was slowly moving up in a sky the colour
of grey irises. And in a sort of trance Miltoun stared at the burnt-
out star, travelling in bright pallor.
Across the moor a sea of shallow mist was rolling; and the trees in
the valley, like browsing cattle, stood knee-deep in whiteness, with
all the air above them wan from an innumerable rain as of moondust,
falling into that white sea. Then the moon passed behind the lime-
tree, so that a great lighted Chinese lantern seemed to hang blue-
black from the sky.
Suddenly, jarring and shivering the music, came a sound of hooting.
It swelled, died away, and swelled again.
Miltoun rose.
"That has spoiled my vision," he said. "Mrs. Noel, I have something
I want to say." But looking down at her, sitting so still, with her
hands resting on the keys, he was silent in sheer adoration.
A voice from the door ejaculated:
"Oh! ma'am--oh! my lord! They're devilling a gentleman on the
green!"
CHAPTER VI
When the immortal Don set out to ring all the bells of merriment, he
was followed by one clown. Charles Courtier on the other hand had
always been accompanied by thousands, who really could not understand
the conduct of this man with no commercial sense. But though he
puzzled his contemporaries, they did not exactly laugh at him,
because it was reported that he had really killed some men, and loved
some women. They found such a combination irresistible, when coupled
with an appearance both vigorous and gallant. The son of an
Oxfordshire clergyman, and mounted on a lost cause, he had been
riding through the world ever since he was eighteen, without once
getting out of the saddle. The secret of this endurance lay perhaps
in his unconsciousness that he was in the saddle at all. It was as
much his natural seat as office stools to other mortals. He made no
capital out of errantry, his temperament being far too like his red-
gold hair, which people compared to flames, consuming all before
them. His vices were patent; too incurable an optimism; an
admiration for beauty such as must sometimes have caused him to
forget which woman he was most in love with; too thin a skin; too hot
a heart; hatred of humbug, and habitual neglect of his own interest.
Unmarried, and with many friends, and many enemies, he kept his body
like a sword-blade, and his soul always at white heat.
That one who admitted to having taken part in five wars should be
mixing in a by-election in the cause of Peace, was not so
inconsistent as might be supposed; for he had always fought on the
losing side, and there seemed to him at the moment no side so losing
as that of Peace. No great politician, he was not an orator, nor
even a glib talker; yet a quiet mordancy of tongue, and the white-hot
look in his eyes, never failed to make an impression of some kind on
an audience.
There was, however, hardly a corner of England where orations on
behalf of Peace had a poorer chance than the Bucklandbury division.
To say that Courtier had made himself unpopular with its matter-of-
fact, independent, stolid, yet quick-tempered population, would be
inadequate. He had outraged their beliefs, and roused the most
profound suspicions. They could not, for the life of them, make out
what he was at. Though by his adventures and his book, "Peace-a lost
Cause," he was, in London, a conspicuous figure, they had naturally
never heard of him; and his adventure to these parts seemed to them
an almost ludicrous example of pure idea poking its nose into plain
facts--the idea that nations ought to, and could live in peace being
so very pure; and the fact that they never had, so very plain!
At Monkland, which was all Court estate, there were naturally but few
supporters of Miltoun's opponent, Mr. Humphrey Chilcox, and the
reception accorded to the champion of Peace soon passed from
curiosity to derision, from derision to menace, till Courtier's
attitude became so defiant, and his sentences so heated that he was
only saved from a rough handling by the influential interposition of
the vicar.
Yet when he began to address them he had felt irresistibly attracted.
They looked such capital, independent fellows. Waiting for his turn
to speak, he had marked them down as men after his own heart. For
though Courtier knew that against an unpopular idea there must
always be a majority, he never thought so ill of any individual as to
suppose him capable of belonging to that ill-omened body.
Surely these fine, independent fellows were not to be hoodwinked by
the jingoes! It had been one more disillusion. He had not taken it
lying down; neither had his audience. They dispersed without
forgiving; they came together again without having forgotten.
The village Inn, a little white building whose small windows were
overgrown with creepers, had a single guest's bedroom on the upper
floor, and a little sitting-room where Courtier took his meals. The
rest of the house was but stone-floored bar with a long wooden bench
against the back wall, whence nightly a stream of talk would issue,
all harsh a's, and sudden soft u's; whence too a figure, a little
unsteady, would now and again emerge, to a chorus of 'Gude naights,'
stand still under the ash-trees to light his pipe, then move slowly
home.
But on that evening, when the trees, like cattle, stood knee-deep in
the moon-dust, those who came out from the bar-room did not go away;
they hung about in the shadows, and were joined by other figures
creeping furtively through the bright moonlight, from behind the Inn.
Presently more figures moved up from the lanes and the churchyard
path, till thirty or more were huddled there, and their stealthy
murmur of talk distilled a rare savour of illicit joy. Unholy
hilarity, indeed, seemed lurking in the deep tree-shadow, before the
wan Inn, whence from a single lighted window came forth the half-
chanting sound of a man's voice reading out loud. Laughter was
smothered, talk whispered.
"He'm a-practisin' his spaches." "Smoke the cunnin' old vox out!"
"Red pepper's the proper stuff." "See men sneeze! We've a-screed up
the door."
Then, as a face showed at the lighted window, a burst of harsh
laughter broke the hush.
He at the window was seen struggling violently to wrench away a bar.
The laughter swelled to hooting. The prisoner forced his way
through, dropped to the ground, rose, staggered, and fell.
A voice said sharply:
"What's this?"
Out of the sounds of scuffling and scattering came the whisper: "His
lordship!" And the shade under the ash-trees became deserted, save
by the tall dark figure of a man, and a woman's white shape.
"Is that you, Mr. Courtier? Are you hurt?"
A chuckle rose from the recumbent figure.
"Only my knee. The beggars! They precious nearly choked me,
though."
CHAPTER VII
Bertie Caradoc, leaving the smoking-room at Monkland Court that same
evening,--on his way to bed, went to the Georgian corridor, where his
pet barometer was hanging. To look at the glass had become the
nightly habit of one who gave all the time he could spare from his
profession to hunting in the winter and to racing in the summer.'
The Hon. Hubert Caradoc, an apprentice to the calling of diplomacy,
more completely than any living Caradoc embodied the characteristic
strength and weaknesses of that family. He was of fair height, and
wiry build. His weathered face, under sleek, dark hair, had regular,
rather small features, and wore an expression of alert resolution,
masked by impassivity. Over his inquiring, hazel-grey eyes the lids
were almost religiously kept half drawn. He had been born reticent,
and great, indeed, was the emotion under which he suffered when the
whole of his eyes were visible. His nose was finely chiselled, and
had little flesh. His lips, covered by a small, dark moustache,
scarcely opened to emit his speeches, which were uttered in a voice
singularly muffled, yet unexpectedly quick. The whole personality
was that of a man practical, spirited, guarded, resourceful, with
great power of self-control, who looked at life as if she were a
horse under him, to whom he must give way just so far as was
necessary to keep mastery of her. A man to whom ideas were of no
value, except when wedded to immediate action; essentially neat;
demanding to be 'done well,' but capable of stoicism if necessary;
urbane, yet always in readiness to thrust; able only to condone the
failings and to compassionate the kinds of distress which his own
experience had taught him to understand. Such was Miltoun's younger
brother at the age of twenty-six.
Having noted that the glass was steady, he was about to seek the
stairway, when he saw at the farther end of the entrance-hall three
figures advancing arm-in-arm. Habitually both curious and wary, he
waited till they came within the radius of a lamp; then, seeing them
to be those of Miltoun and a footman, supporting between them a lame
man, he at once hastened forward.
"Have you put your knee out, sir? Hold on a minute! Get a chair,
Charles."
Seating the stranger in this chair, Bertie rolled up the trouser, and
passed his fingers round the knee. There was a sort, of loving-
kindness in that movement, as of a hand which had in its time felt
the joints and sinews of innumerable horses.
"H'm!" he said; "can you stand a bit of a jerk? Catch hold of him
behind, Eustace. Sit down on the floor, Charles, and hold the legs
of the chair. Now then!" And taking up the foot, he pulled. There
was a click, a little noise of teeth ground together; and Bertie
said: "Good man--shan't have to have the vet. to you, this time."
Having conducted their lame guest to a room in the Georgian corridor
hastily converted to a bedroom, the two brothers presently left him
to the attentions of the footman.
"Well, old man," said Bertie, as they sought their rooms; "that's put
paid to his name--won't do you any more harm this journey. Good
plucked one, though!"
The report that Courtier was harboured beneath their roof went the
round of the family before breakfast, through the agency of one whose
practice it was to know all things, and to see that others partook of
that knowledge, Little Ann, paying her customary morning visit to her
mother's room, took her stand with face turned up and hands clasping
her belt, and began at once.
"Uncle Eustace brought a man last night with a wounded leg, and Uncle
Bertie pulled it out straight. William says that Charles says he
only made a noise like this"--there was a faint sound of small
chumping teeth: "And he's the man that's staying at the Inn, and the
stairs were too narrow to carry him up, William says; and if his knee
was put out he won't be able to walk without a stick for a long time.
Can I go to Father?"
Agatha, who was having her hair brushed, thought:
"I'm not sure whether belts so low as that are wholesome," murmured:
"Wait a minute!"
But little Ann was gone; and her voice could be heard in the
dressing-room climbing up towards Sir William, who from the sound of
his replies, was manifestly shaving. When Agatha, who never could
resist a legitimate opportunity of approaching her husband, looked
in, he was alone, and rather thoughtful--a tall man with a solid,
steady face and cautious eyes, not in truth remarkable except to his
own wife.
"That fellow Courtier's caught by the leg," he said. "Don't know
what your Mother will say to an enemy in the camp."
"Isn't he a freethinker, and rather----"
Sir William, following his own thoughts, interrupted:
"Just as well, of course, so far as Miltoun's concerned, to have got
him here."
Agatha sighed: "Well, I suppose we shall have to be nice to him.
I'll tell Mother."
Sir William smiled.
"Ann will see to that," he said.
Ann was seeing to that.
Seated in the embrasure of the window behind the looking-glass, where
Lady Valleys was still occupied, she was saying:
"He fell out of the window because of the red pepper. Miss Wallace
says he is a hostage--what does hostage mean, Granny?"
When six years ago that word had first fallen on Lady Valleys' ears,
she had thought: "Oh! dear! Am I really Granny? "It had been a
shock, had seemed the end of so much; but the matter-of-fact heroism
of women, so much quicker to accept the inevitable than men, had soon
come to her aid, and now, unlike her husband, she did not care a bit.
For all that she answered nothing, partly because it was not
necessary to speak in order to sustain a conversation with little
Ann, and partly because she was deep in thought.
The man was injured! Hospitality, of course--especially since their
own tenants had committed the outrage! Still, to welcome a man who
had gone out of his way to come down here and stump the country
against her own son, was rather a tall order. It might have been
worse, no doubt. If; for instance, he had been some 'impossible'
Nonconformist Radical! This Mr. Courtier was a free lance--rather a
well-known man, an interesting creature. She must see that he felt
'at home' and comfortable. If he were pumped judiciously, no doubt
one could find out about this woman. Moreover, the acceptance of
their 'salt' would silence him politically if she knew anything of
that type of man, who always had something in him of the Arab's
creed. Her mind, that of a capable administrator, took in all the
practical significance of this incident, which, although untoward,
was not without its comic side to one disposed to find zest and
humour in everything that did not absolutely run counter to her
interests and philosophy.
The voice of little Ann broke in on her reflections.
"I'm going to Auntie Babs now."
"Very well; give me a kiss first."
Little Ann thrust up her face, so that its sudden little nose
penetrated Lady Valleys' soft curving lips....
When early that same afternoon Courtier, leaning on a stick, passed
from his room out on to the terrace, he was confronted by three
sunlit peacocks marching slowly across a lawn towards a statue of
Diana. With incredible dignity those birds moved, as if never in
their lives had they been hurried. They seemed indeed to know that
when they got there, there would be nothing for them to do but to
come back again. Beyond them, through the tall trees, over some
wooded foot-hills of the moorland and a promised land of pinkish
fields, pasture, and orchards, the prospect stretched to the far sea.
Heat clothed this view with a kind of opalescence, a fairy garment,
transmuting all values, so that the four square walls and tall
chimneys of the pottery-works a few miles down the valley seemed to
Courtier like a vision of some old fortified Italian town. His
sensations, finding himself in this galley, were peculiar. For his
feeling towards Miltoun, whom he had twice met at Mrs. Noel's, was,
in spite of disagreements, by no means unfriendly; while his feeling
towards Miltoun's family was not yet in existence. Having lived from
hand to mouth, and in many countries, since he left Westminster
School, he had now practically no class feelings. An attitude of
hostility to aristocracy because it was aristocracy, was as
incomprehensible to him as an attitude of deference.
His sensations habitually shaped themselves in accordance with those
two permanent requirements of his nature, liking for adventure, and
hatred of tyranny. The labourer who beat his wife, the shopman who
sweated his 'hands,' the parson who consigned his parishioners to
hell, the peer who rode roughshod--all were equally odious to him.
He thought of people as individuals, and it was, as it were, by
accident that he had conceived the class generalization which he had
fired back at Miltoun from Mrs. Noel's window. Sanguine, accustomed
to queer environments, and always catching at the moment as it flew,
he had not to fight with the timidities and irritations of a nervous
temperament. His cheery courtesy was only disturbed when he became
conscious of some sentiment which appeared to him mean or cowardly.
On such occasions, not perhaps infrequent, his face looked as if his
heart were physically fuming, and since his shell of stoicism was
never quite melted by this heat, a very peculiar expression was the
result, a sort of calm, sardonic, desperate, jolly look.
His chief feeling, then, at the outrage which had laid him captive in
the enemy's camp, was one of vague amusement, and curiosity. People
round about spoke fairly well of this Caradoc family. There did not
seem to be any lack of kindly feeling between them and their tenants;
there was said to be no griping destitution, nor any particular ill-
housing on their estate. And if the inhabitants were not encouraged
to improve themselves, they were at all events maintained at a
certain level, by steady and not ungenerous supervision. When a roof
required thatching it was thatched; when a man became too old to
work, he was not suffered to lapse into the Workhouse. In bad years
for wool, or beasts, or crops, the farmers received a graduated
remission of rent. The pottery-works were run on a liberal if
autocratic basis. It was true that though Lord Valleys was said to
be a staunch supporter of a 'back to the land' policy, no disposition
was shown to encourage people to settle on these particular lands, no
doubt from a feeling that such settlers would not do them so much
justice as their present owner. Indeed so firmly did this conviction
seemingly obtain, that Lord Valleys' agent was not unfrequently
observed to be buying a little bit more.
But, since in this life one notices only what interests him, all this
gossip, half complimentary, half not, had fallen but lightly on the
ears of the champion of Peace during his campaign, for he was, as
has, been said, but a poor politician, and rode his own horse very
much his own way.
While he stood there enjoying the view, he heard a small high voice,
and became conscious of a little girl in a very shady hat so far back
on her brown hair that it did not shade her; and of a small hand put
out in front. He took the hand, and answered:
"Thank you, I am well--and you?" perceiving the while that a pair of
wide frank eyes were examining his leg.
"Does it hurt?"
"Not to speak of."
"My pony's leg was blistered. Granny is coming to look at it."
"I see."
"I have to go now. I hope you'll soon be better. Good-bye!"
Then, instead of the little girl, Courtier saw a tall and rather
florid woman regarding him with a sort of quizzical dignity. She
wore a stiffish fawn-coloured dress that seemed to be cut a little
too tight round her substantial hips, for it quite neglected to
embrace her knees. She had on no hat, no gloves, no ornaments,
except the rings on her fingers, and a little jewelled watch in a
leather bracelet on her wrist. There was, indeed, about her whole
figure an air of almost professional escape from finery.
Stretching out a well-shaped but not small hand, she said:
"I most heartily apologize to you, Mr. Courtier."
"Not at all."
"I do hope you're comfortable. Have they given you everything you
want?"
"More than everything."
"It really was disgraceful! However it's brought us the pleasure of
making your acquaintance. I've read your book, of course."
To Courtier it seemed that on this lady's face had come a look which
seemed to say: Yes, very clever and amusing, quite enjoyable! But
the ideas----What? You know very well they won't do--in fact they
mustn't do!
"That's very nice of you."
But into Lady Valleys' answer, "I don't agree with it a bit, you
know!" there had crept a touch of asperity, as though she knew that
he had smiled inside. "What we want preached in these days are the
warlike virtues--especially by a warrior."
"Believe me, Lady Valleys, the warlike virtues are best left to men
of more virgin imagination."
He received a quick look, and the words: "Anyway, I'm sure you don't
care a rap for politics. You know Mrs. Lees Noel, don't you? What a
pretty woman she is!"
But as she spoke Courtier saw a young girl coming along the terrace.
She had evidently been riding, for she wore high boots and a skirt
which had enabled her to sit astride. Her eyes were blue, and her
hair--the colour of beech-leaves in autumn with the sun shining
through--was coiled up tight under a small soft hat. She was tall,
and moved towards them like one endowed with great length from the
hip joint to the knee. Joy of life, serene, unconscious vigour,
seemed to radiate from her whole face and figure.
At Lady Valleys' words:
"Ah, Babs! My daughter Barbara--Mr. Courtier," he put out his hand,
received within it some gauntleted fingers held out with a smile, and
heard her say:
"Miltoun's gone up to Town, Mother; I was going to motor in to
Bucklandbury with a message he gave me; so I can fetch Granny out
from the station:"
"You had better take Ann, or she'll make our lives a burden; and
perhaps Mr. Courtier would like an airing. Is your knee fit, do you
think?"
Glancing at the apparition, Courtier replied:
"It is."
Never since the age of seven had he been able to look on feminine
beauty without a sense of warmth and faint excitement; and seeing now
perhaps the most beautiful girl he had ever beheld, he desired to be
with her wherever she might be going. There was too something very
fascinating in the way she smiled, as if she had a little seen
through his sentiments.
"Well then," she said, "we'd better look for Ann."
After short but vigorous search little Ann was found--in the car,
instinct having told her of a forward movement in which it was her
duty to take part. And soon they had started, Ann between them in
that peculiar state of silence to which she became liable when really
interested.
>From the Monkland estate, flowered, lawned, and timbered, to the open
moor, was like passing to another world; for no sooner was the last
lodge of the Western drive left behind, than there came into sudden
view the most pagan bit of landscape in all England. In this wild
parliament-house, clouds, rocks, sun, and winds met and consulted.
The 'old' men, too, had left their spirits among the great stones,
which lay couched like lions on the hill-tops, under the white
clouds, and their brethren, the hunting buzzard hawks. Here the very
rocks were restless, changing form, and sense, and colour from day to
day, as though worshipping the unexpected, and refusing themselves to
law. The winds too in their passage revolted against their courses,
and came tearing down wherever there were combes or crannies, so that
men in their shelters might still learn the power of the wild gods.
The wonders of this prospect were entirely lost on little Ann, and
somewhat so on Courtier, deeply engaged in reconciling those two
alien principles, courtesy, and the love of looking at a pretty face.
He was wondering too what this girl of twenty, who had the self-
possession of a woman of forty, might be thinking. It was little Ann
who broke the silence.
"Auntie Babs, it wasn't a very strong house, was it?"
Courtier looked in the direction of her small finger. There was the
wreck of a little house, which stood close to a stone man who had
obviously possessed that hill before there were men of flesh. Over
one corner of the sorry ruin, a single patch of roof still clung, but
the rest was open.
"He was a silly man to build it, wasn't he, Ann? That's why they
call it Ashman's Folly."
"Is he alive?"
"Not quite--it's just a hundred years ago."
"What made him build it here?"
"He hated women, and--the roof fell in on him."
"Why did he hate women?"
"He was a crank."
"What is a crank?"
"Ask Mr. Courtier."
Under this girl's calm quizzical glance, Courtier endeavoured to find
an answer to that question.
"A crank," he said slowly, "is a man like me."
He heard a little laugh, and became acutely conscious of Ann's
dispassionate examining eyes.
"Is Uncle Eustace a crank?"
"You know now, Mr. Courtier, what Ann thinks of you. You think a
good deal of Uncle Eustace, don't you, Ann?"
"Yes," said Ann, and fixed her eyes before her. But Courtier gazed
sideways--over her hatless head.
His exhilaration was increasing every moment. This girl reminded him
of a two-year-old filly he had once seen, stepping out of Ascot
paddock for her first race, with the sun glistening on her satin
chestnut skin, her neck held high, her eyes all fire--as sure to win,
as that grass was green. It was difficult to believe her Miltoun's
sister. It was difficult to believe any of those four young Caradocs
related. The grave ascetic Miltoun, wrapped in the garment of his
spirit; mild, domestic, strait-laced Agatha; Bertie, muffled, shrewd,
and steely; and this frank, joyful conquering Barbara--the range was
wide.
But the car had left the moor, and, down a steep hill, was passing
the small villas and little grey workmen's houses outside the town of
Bucklandbury.
"Ann and I have to go on to Miltoun's headquarters. Shall I drop you
at the enemy's, Mr. Courtier? Stop, please, Frith."
And before Courtier could assent, they had pulled up at a house on
which was inscribed with extraordinary vigour: "Chilcox for
Bucklandbury."
Hobbling into the Committee-room of Mr. Humphrey Chilcox, which
smelled of paint, Courtier took with him the scented memory of youth,
and ambergris, and Harris tweed.
In that room three men were assembled round a table; the eldest of
whom, endowed with little grey eyes, a stubbly beard, and that
mysterious something only found in those who have been mayors, rose
at once and came towards him.
"Mr. Courtier, I believe," he said bluffly. "Glad to see you, sir.
Most distressed to hear of this outrage. Though in a way, it's done
us good. Yes, really. Grossly against fair play. Shouldn't be
surprised if it turned a couple of hundred votes. You carry the
effects of it about with you, I see."
A thin, refined man, with wiry hair, also came up, holding a
newspaper in his hand.
"It has had one rather embarrassing effect," he said. "Read this
"'OUTRAGE ON A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR.
"'LORD MILTOUN'S EVENING ADVENTURE.'"
Courtier read a paragraph.
The man with the little eyes broke the ominous silence which ensued.
"One of our side must have seen the whole thing, jumped on his
bicycle and brought in the account before they went to press. They
make no imputation on the lady--simply state the facts. Quite
enough," he added with impersonal grimness; "I think he's done for
himself, sir."
The man with the refined face added nervously:
"We couldn't help it, Mr. Courtier; I really don't know what we can
do. I don't like it a bit."
"Has your candidate seen this?" Courtier asked.
"Can't have," struck in the third Committee-man; "we hadn't seen it
ourselves until an hour ago."
"I should never have permitted it," said the man with the refined
face; "I blame the editor greatly."
"Come to that----" said the little-eyed man, "it's a plain piece of
news. If it makes a stir, that's not our fault. The paper imputes
nothing, it states. Position of the lady happens to do the rest.
Can't help it, and moreover, sir, speaking for self, don't want to.
We'll have no loose morals in public life down here, please God!"
There was real feeling in his words; then, catching sight of
Courtier's face, he added: "Do you know this lady?"
"Ever since she was a child. Anyone who speaks evil of her, has to
reckon with me."
The man with the refined face said earnestly:
"Believe me, Mr. Courtier, I entirely sympathize. We had nothing to
do with the paragraph. It's one of those incidents where one
benefits against one's will. Most unfortunate that she came out on
to the green with Lord Miltoun; you know what people are."
"It's the head-line that does it;" said the third Committee-man;
"they've put what will attract the public."
"I don't know, I don't know," said the little-eyed man stubbornly;
"if Lord Miltoun will spend his evenings with lonely ladies, he can't
blame anybody but himself."
Courtier looked from face to face.
"This closes my connection with the campaign," he said: "What's the
address of this paper?" And without waiting for an answer, he took
up the journal and hobbled from the room. He stood a minute outside
finding the address, then made his way down the street.
CHAPTER VIII
By the side of little Ann, Barbara sat leaning back amongst the
cushions of the car. In spite of being already launched into high-
caste life which brings with it an early knowledge of the world, she
had still some of the eagerness in her face which makes children
lovable. Yet she looked negligently enough at the citizens of
Bucklandbury, being already a little conscious of the strange mixture
of sentiment peculiar to her countrymen in presence of herself--that
curious expression on their faces resulting from the continual
attempt to look down their noses while slanting their eyes upwards.
Yes, she was already alive to that mysterious glance which had built
the national house and insured it afterwards--foe to cynicism,
pessimism, and anything French or Russian; parent of all the national
virtues, and all the national vices; of idealism and muddle-
headedness, of independence and servility; fosterer of conduct,
murderer of speculation; looking up, and looking down, but never
straight at anything; most high, most deep, most queer; and ever
bubbling-up from the essential Well of Emulation.
Surrounded by that glance, waiting for Courtier, Barbara, not less
British than her neighbours, was secretly slanting her own eyes up
and down over the absent figure of her new acquaintance. She too
wanted something she could look up to, and at the same time see
damned first. And in this knight-errant it seemed to her that she
had got it.
He was a creature from another world. She had met many men, but not
as yet one quite of this sort. It was rather nice to be with a
clever man, who had none the less done so many outdoor things, been
through so many bodily adventures. The mere writers, or even the
'Bohemians,' whom she occasionally met, were after all only
'chaplains to the Court,' necessary to keep aristocracy in touch with
the latest developments of literature and art. But this Mr. Courtier
was a man of action; he could not be looked on with the amused,
admiring toleration suited to men remarkable only for ideas, and the
way they put them into paint or ink. He had used, and could use, the
sword, even in the cause of Peace. He could love, had loved, or so
they said: If Barbara had been a girl of twenty in another class, she
would probably never have heard of this, and if she had heard, it
might very well have dismayed or shocked her. But she had heard, and
without shock, because she had already learned that men were like
that, and women too sometimes.
It was with quite a little pang of concern that she saw him hobbling
down the street towards her; and when he was once more seated, she
told the chauffeur: "To the station, Frith. Quick, please!" and
began:
"You are not to be trusted a bit. What were you doing?"
But Courtier smiled grimly over the head of Ann, in silence.
At this, almost the first time she had ever yet encountered a
distinct rebuff, Barbara quivered, as though she had been touched
lightly with a whip. Her lips closed firmly, her eyes began to
dance. "Very well, my dear," she thought. But presently stealing a
look at him, she became aware of such a queer expression on his face,
that she forgot she was offended.
"Is anything wrong, Mr. Courtier?"
"Yes, Lady Barbara, something is very wrong--that miserable mean
thing, the human tongue."
Barbara had an intuitive knowledge of how to handle things, a kind of
moral sangfroid, drawn in from the faces she had watched, the talk
she had heard, from her youth up. She trusted those intuitions, and
letting her eyes conspire with his over Ann's brown hair, she said:
"Anything to do with Mrs. N-----?" Seeing "Yes" in his eyes, she
added quickly: "And M-----?"
Courtier nodded.
"I thought that was coming. Let them babble! Who cares?"
She caught an approving glance, and the word, "Good!"
But the car had drawn up at Bucklandbury Station.
The little grey figure of Lady Casterley, coming out of the station
doorway, showed but slight sign of her long travel. She stopped to
take the car in, from chauffeur to Courtier.
"Well, Frith!--Mr. Courtier, is it? I know your book, and I don't
approve of you; you're a dangerous man--How do you do? I must have
those two bags. The cart can bring the rest.... Randle, get up in
front, and don't get dusty. Ann!" But Ann was already beside the
chauffeur, having long planned this improvement. "H'm! So you've
hurt your leg, sir? Keep still! We can sit three.... Now, my dear,
I can kiss you! You've grown!"
Lady Casterley's kiss, once received, was never forgotten; neither
perhaps was Barbara's. Yet they were different. For, in the case of
Lady Casterley, the old eyes, bright and investigating, could be seen
deciding the exact spot for the lips to touch; then the face with its
firm chin was darted forward; the lips paused a second, as though to
make quite certain, then suddenly dug hard and dry into the middle of
the cheek, quavered for the fraction of a second as if trying to
remember to be soft, and were relaxed like the elastic of a catapult.
And in the case of Barbara, first a sort of light came into her eyes,
then her chin tilted a little, then her lips pouted a little, her
body quivered, as if it were getting a size larger, her hair
breathed, there was a small sweet sound; it was over.
Thus kissing her grandmother, Barbara resumed her seat, and looked at
Courtier. 'Sitting three' as they were, he was touching her, and it
seemed to her somehow that he did not mind.
The wind had risen, blowing from the West, and sunshine was flying on
it. The call of the cuckoos--a little sharpened--followed the swift-
travelling car. And that essential sweetness of the moor, born of
the heather roots and the South-West wind, was stealing out from
under the young ferns.
With her thin nostrils distended to this scent, Lady Casterley bore a
distinct resemblance to a small, fine game-bird.
"You smell nice down here," she said. "Now, Mr. Courtier, before I
forget--who is this Mrs. Lees Noel that I hear so much of?"
At that question, Barbara could not help sliding her eyes round. How
would he stand up to Granny? It was the moment to see what he was
made of. Granny was terrific!
"A very charming woman, Lady Casterley."
"No doubt; but I am tired of hearing that. What is her story?"
"Has she one?"
"Ha!" said Lady Casterley.
Ever so slightly Barbara let her arm press against Courtiers. It was
so delicious to hear Granny getting no forwarder.
"I may take it she has a past, then?"
"Not from me, Lady Casterley."
Again Barbara gave him that imperceptible and flattering touch.
"Well, this is all very mysterious. I shall find out for myself.
You know her, my dear. You must take me to see her."
"Dear Granny! If people hadn't pasts, they wouldn't have futures."
Lady Casterley let her little claw-like hand descend on her grand-
daughter's thigh.
"Don't talk nonsense, and don't stretch like that!" she said; "you're
too large already...."
At dinner that night they were all in possession of the news. Sir
William had been informed by the local agent at Staverton, where Lord
Harbinger's speech had suffered from some rude interruptions. The
Hon. Geoffrey Winlow; having sent his wife on, had flown over in his
biplane from Winkleigh, and brought a copy of 'the rag' with him.
The one member of the small house-party who had not heard the report
before dinner was Lord Dennis Fitz-Harold, Lady Casterley's brother.
Little, of course, was said. But after the ladies had withdrawn,
Harbinger, with that plain-spoken spontaneity which was so
unexpected, perhaps a little intentionally so, in connection with his
almost classically formed face, uttered words to the effect that, if
they did not fundamentally kick that rumour, it was all up with
Miltoun. Really this was serious! And the beggars knew it, and they
were going to work it. And Miltoun had gone up to Town, no one knew
what for. It was the devil of a mess!
In all the conversation of this young man there was that peculiar
brand of voice, which seems ever rebutting an accusation of being
serious--a brand of voice and manner warranted against anything save
ridicule; and in the face of ridicule apt to disappear. The words,
just a little satirically spoken: "What is, my dear young man?"
stopped him at once.
Looking for the complement and counterpart of Lady Casterley, one
would perhaps have singled out her brother. All her abrupt decision
was negated in his profound, ironical urbanity. His voice and look
and manner were like his velvet coat, which had here and there a
whitish sheen, as if it had been touched by moonlight. His hair too
had that sheen. His very delicate features were framed in a white
beard and moustache of Elizabethan shape. His eyes, hazel and still
clear, looked out very straight, with a certain dry kindliness. His
face, though unweathered and unseamed, and much too fine and thin in
texture, had a curious affinity to the faces of old sailors or
fishermen who have lived a simple, practical life in the light of an
overmastering tradition. It was the face of a man with a very set
creed, and inclined to be satiric towards innovations, examined by
him and rejected full fifty years ago. One felt that a brain not
devoid either of subtlety or aesthetic quality had long given up all
attempts to interfere with conduct; that all shrewdness of
speculation had given place to shrewdness of practical judgment based
on very definite experience. Owing to lack of advertising power,
natural to one so conscious of his dignity as to have lost all care
for it, and to his devotion to a certain lady, only closed by death,
his life had been lived, as it were, in shadow. Still, he possessed
a peculiar influence in Society, because it was known to be
impossible to get him to look at things in a complicated way. He was
regarded rather as a last resort, however. "Bad as that? Well,
there's old Fitz-Harold! Try him! He won't advise you, but he'll
say something."
And in the heart of that irreverent young man, Harbinger, there
stirred a sort of misgiving. Had he expressed himself too freely?
Had he said anything too thick? He had forgotten the old boy!
Stirring Bertie up with his foot, he murmured "Forgot you didn't
know, sir. Bertie will explain."
Thus called on, Bertie, opening his lips a very little way, and
fixing his half-closed eyes on his great-uncle, explained. There was
a lady at the cottage--a nice woman--Mr. Courtier knew her--old
Miltoun went there sometimes--rather late the other evening--these
devils were making the most of it--suggesting--lose him the election,
if they didn't look out. Perfect rot, of course!
In his opinion, old Miltoun, though as steady as Time, had been a
flat to let the woman come out with him on to the Green, showing
clearly where he had been, when he ran to Courtier's rescue. You
couldn't play about with women who had no form that anyone knew
anything of, however promising they might look.
Then, out of a silence Winlow asked: What was to be done? Should
Miltoun be wired for? A thing like this spread like wildfire! Sir
William--a man not accustomed to underrate difficulties--was afraid
it was going to be troublesome. Harbinger expressed the opinion that
the editor ought to be kicked. Did anybody know what Courtier had
done when he heard of it. Where was he--dining in his room? Bertie
Back to Full Books
|