Mrs. Boyce's lips tightened sharply. It seemed to her a foolish

question. _She_, at least, had had the experience of twenty years out of

which to answer it. Death had made no difference. She saw her husband's

character and her own seared and broken life with the same tragical

clearness; she felt the same gnawing of an affection not to be plucked

out while the heart still beat. This act of indelicacy and injustice was

like many that had gone before it; and there was in it the same evasion

and concealment towards herself. No matter. She had made her account

with it all twenty years before. What astonished her was, that the force

of her strong coercing will had been able to keep him for so long within

the limits of the smaller and meaner immoralities of this world.

"Have you read the rest of the will?" she asked, after a long pause.

Marcella lifted it again, and began listlessly to go through it.

"Mamma!" she said presently, looking up, the colour flushing back into

her face, "I find no mention of you in it throughout. There seems to be

no provision for you."

"There is none," said Mrs. Boyce, quietly. "There was no need. I have my

own income. We lived upon it for years before your father succeeded to

Mellor. It is therefore amply sufficient for me now."

"You cannot imagine," cried Marcella, trembling in every limb, "that I

am going to take the whole of my father's estate, and leave

nothing--_nothing_ for his wife. It would be impossible--unseemly. It

would be to do _me_ an injustice, mamma, as well as yourself," she added

proudly.

"No, I think not," said Mrs. Boyce, with her usual cold absence of

emotion. "You do not yet understand the situation. Your father's

misfortunes nearly ruined the estate for a time. Your grandfather went

through great trouble, and raised large sums to--" she paused for the

right phrase--"to free us from the consequences of your father's

actions. I benefited, of course, as much as he did. Those sums crippled

all your grandfather's old age. He was a man to whom I was

attached--whom I respected. Mellor, I believe, had never been

embarrassed before. Well, your uncle did a little towards recovery--but

on the whole he was a fool. Your father has done much more, and you, no

doubt, will complete it. As for me, I have no claim to anything more

from Mellor. The place itself is"--again she stopped for a word of which

the energy, when it came, seemed to escape her--"hateful to me. I shall

feel freer if I have no tie to it. And at last I persuaded your father

to let me have my way."

Marcella rose from her seat impetuously, walked quickly across the room,

and threw herself on her knees beside her mother.

"Mamma, are you still determined--now that we two are alone in the

world--to act towards me, to treat me as though I were not your

daughter--not your child at all, but a stranger?"

It was a cry of anguish. A sudden slight tremor swept over Mrs. Boyce's

thin and withered face. She braced herself to the inevitable.

"Don't let us make a tragedy of it, my dear," she said, with a light

touch on Marcella's hands. "Let us discuss it reasonably. Won't you sit

down? I am not proposing anything very dreadful. But, like you, I have

some interests of my own, and I should be glad to follow them--now--a

little. I wish to spend some of the year in London; to make that,

perhaps, my headquarters, so as to see something of some old friends

whom I have had no intercourse with for years--perhaps also of my

relations." She spoke of them with a particular dryness. "And I should

be glad--after this long time--to be somewhat taken out of oneself, to

read, to hear what is going on, to feed one's mind a little."

Marcella, looking at her, saw a kind of feverish light, a sparkling

intensity in the pale blue eyes, that filled her with amazement. What,

after all, did she know of this strange individuality from which her own

being had taken its rise? The same flesh and blood--what an irony of

nature!

"Of course," continued Mrs. Boyce, "I should go to you, and you would

come to me. It would only be for part of the year. Probably we should

get more from each other's lives so. As you know, I long to see things

as they are, not conventionally. Anyway, whether I were there or no, you

would probably want some companion to help you in your work and plans. I

am not fit for them. And it would be easy to find some one who could act

as chaperon in my absence."

The hot tears sprang to Marcella's eyes. "Why did you send me away from

you, mamma, all my childhood," she cried. "It was wrong--cruel. I have

no brother or sister. And you put me out of your life when I had no

choice, when I was too young to understand."

Mrs. Boyce winced, but made no reply. She sat with her delicate hand

across her brow. She was the white shadow of her former self; but her

fragility had always seemed to Marcella more indomitable than anybody

else's strength.

Sobs began to rise in Marcella's throat.

"And now," she said, in half-coherent despair, "do you know what you are

doing? You are cutting yourself off from me--refusing to have any real

bond to me just when I want it most. I suppose you think that I shall be

satisfied with the property and the power, and the chance of doing what

I like. But"--she tried her best to gulp back her pain, her outraged

feeling, to speak quietly--"I am not like that really any more. I can

take it all up, with courage and heart, if you will stay with me, and

let me--let me--love you and care for you. But, by myself, I feel as if

I could not face it! I am not likely to be happy--for a long

time--except in doing what work I can. It is very improbable that I

shall marry. I dare say you don't believe me, but it is true. We are

both sad and lonely. We have no one but each other. And then you talk in

this ghastly way of separating from me--casting me off."

Her voice trembled and broke, she looked at her mother with a frowning

passion.

Mrs. Boyce still sat silent, studying her daughter with a strange,

brooding eye. Under her unnatural composure there was in reality a

half-mad impatience, the result of physical and moral reaction. This

beauty, this youth, talk of sadness, of finality! What folly! Still, she

was stirred, undermined in spite of herself.

"There!" she said, with a restless gesture, "let us, please, talk of it

no more. I will come back with you--I will do my best. We will let the

matter of my future settlement alone for some months, at any rate, if

that will satisfy you or be any help to you."

She made a movement as though to rise from her low chair. But the great

waters swelled in Marcella--swelled and broke. She fell on her knees

again by her mother, and before Mrs. Boyce could stop her she had thrown

her young arms close round the thin, shrunken form.

"Mother!" she said. "Mother, be good to me--love me--you are all I

have!"

And she kissed the pale brow and cheek with a hungry, almost a violent

tenderness that would not be gainsaid, murmuring wild incoherent things.

Mrs. Boyce first tried to put her away, then submitted, being physically

unable to resist, and at last escaped from her with a sudden sob that

went to the girl's heart. She rose, went to the window, struggled hard

for composure, and finally left the room.

But that evening, for the first time, she let Marcella put her on the

sofa, tend her, and read to her. More wonderful still, she went to sleep

while Marcella was reading. In the lamplight her face looked piteously

old and worn. The girl sat for long with her hands clasped round her

knees, gazing down upon it, in a trance of pain and longing.

* * * * *

Marcella was awake early next morning, listening to the full voice of

the sea as it broke three hundred feet below, against the beach and

rocky walls of the little town. She was lying in a tiny white room, one

of the cells of the old monastery, and the sun as it rose above the

Salernian mountains--the mountains that hold Paestum in their blue and

purple shadows--danced in gold on the white wall. The bell of the

cathedral far below tolled the hour. She supposed it must be six

o'clock. Two hours more or so, and Lord Maxwell's letter might be looked

for.

She lay and thought of it--longed for it, and for the time of answering

it, with the same soreness that had marked all the dreams of a restless

night. If she could only see her father's letter! It was inconceivable

that he should have mentioned _her_ name in his plea. He might have

appealed to the old friendship between the families. That was possible,

and would have, at any rate, an _appearance_ of decency. But who could

answer for it--or for him? She clasped her hands rigidly behind her

head, her brows frowning, bending her mind with an intensity of will to

the best means of assuring Aldous Raeburn that she and her mother would

not encroach upon him. She had a perpetual morbid vision of herself as

the pursuer, attacking him now through his friend, now through her

father. Oh! when would that letter come, and let her write her own!

She tried to read, but in reality listened for every sound of awakening

life in the hotel. When at last her mother's maid came in to call her,

she sprang up with a start.

"Deacon, are the letters come?"

"There are two for your mother, miss; none for you."

Marcella threw on her dressing-gown, watched her opportunity, and

slipped in to her mother, who occupied a similar cell next door.

Mrs. Boyce was sitting up in bed, with a letter before her, her pale

blue eyes fixed absently on the far stretch of sea.

She looked round with a start as Marcella entered. "The letter is to me,

of course," she said.

Marcella read it breathlessly.

"Dear Mrs. Boyce,--I have this morning received from your solicitor, Mr.

French, a letter written by Mr. Boyce to myself in November of last

year. In it he asks me to undertake the office of executor, to which, I

hear from Mr. French, he has named me in his will. Mr. French also

enquires whether I shall be willing to act, and asks me to communicate

with you.

"May I, then, venture to intrude upon you with these few words? Mr.

Boyce refers in his touching letter to the old friendship between our

families, and to the fact that similar offices have often been performed

by his relations for mine, or _vice versa_. But no reminder of the kind

was in the least needed. If I can be of any service to yourself and to

Miss Boyce, neither your poor husband nor you could do me any greater

kindness than to command me.

"I feel naturally some diffidence in the matter. I gather from Mr.

French that Miss Boyce is her father's heiress, and comes at once into

the possession of Mellor. She may not, of course, wish me to act, in

which case I should withdraw immediately; but I sincerely trust that she

will not forbid me the very small service I could so easily and gladly

render.

"I cannot close my letter without venturing to express the deep

sympathy I have felt for you and yours during the past six months. I

have been far from forgetful of all that you have been going through,

though I may have seemed so. I trust that you and your daughter will not

hurry home for any business cause, if it is still best for your health

to stay in Italy. With your instructions Mr. French and I could arrange

everything.

"Believe me,

"Yours most sincerely,

"MAXWELL."

"You will find it difficult, my dear, to write a snub in answer to that

letter," said Mrs. Boyce, drily, as Marcella laid it down.

Marcella's face was, indeed, crimson with perplexity and feeling.

"Well, we can think it over," she said as she went away.

Mrs. Boyce pondered the matter a good deal when she was left alone. The

signs of reaction and change in Marcella were plain enough. What they

precisely meant, and how much, was another matter. As to him, Marcella's

idea of another attachment might be true, or might be merely the

creation of her own irritable pride. Anyway, he was in the mood to write

a charming letter. Mrs. Boyce's blanched lip had all its natural irony

as she thought it over. To her mind Aldous Raeburn's manners had always

been a trifle too good, whether for his own interests or for this wicked

world. And if he had any idea now of trying again, let him, for

Heaven's sake, not be too yielding or too eager! "It was always the

way," thought Mrs. Boyce, remembering a child in white frock and baby

shoes--"if you wished to make her want anything, you had to take it away

from her."

Meanwhile the mere thought that matters might even yet so settle

themselves drew from the mother a long breath of relief. She had spent

an all but sleepless night, tormented by Marcella's claim upon her.

After twenty years of self-suppression this woman of forty-five,

naturally able, original, and independent, had seen a glimpse of

liberty. In her first youth she had been betrayed as a wife, degraded as

a member of society. A passion she could not kill, combined with some

stoical sense of inalienable obligation, had combined to make her both

the slave and guardian of her husband up to middle life; and her family

and personal pride, so strong in her as a girl, had found its only

outlet in this singular estrangement she had achieved between herself

and every other living being, including her own daughter. Now her

husband was dead, and all sorts of crushed powers and desires, mostly of

the intellectual sort, had been strangely reviving within her. Just

emerged, as she was, from the long gloom of nursing, she already wished

to throw it all behind her--to travel, to read, to make

acquaintances--she who had lived as a recluse for twenty years! There

was in it a last clutch at youth, at life. And she had no desire to

enter upon this new existence--in comradeship with Marcella. They were

independent and very different human beings. That they were mother and

daughter was a mere physical accident.

Moreover, though she was amply conscious of the fine development in

Marcella during the past two years, it is probable that she felt her

daughter even less congenial to her now than of old. For the rich,

emotional nature had, as we have seen, "suffered conviction," had turned

in the broad sense to "religion," was more and more sensitive,

especially since Hallin's death, to the spiritual things and symbols in

the world. At Naples she had haunted churches; had read, as her mother

knew, many religious books.

Now Mrs. Boyce in these matters had a curious history. She had begun

life as an ardent Christian, under evangelical influences. Her husband,

on the other hand, at the time she married him was a man of purely

sceptical opinions, a superficial disciple of Mill and Comte, and fond

of an easy profanity which seemed to place him indisputably with the

superior persons of this world. To the amazement and scandal of her

friends, Evelyn Merritt had not been three months his wife before she

had adopted his opinions _en bloc_, and was carrying them out to their

logical ends with a sincerity and devotion quite unknown to her teacher.

Thenceforward her conception of things--of which, however, she seldom

spoke--had been actively and even vehemently rationalist; and it had

been one of the chief sorenesses and shames of her life at Mellor that,

in order to suit his position as country squire, Richard Boyce had sunk

to what, in her eyes, were a hundred mean compliances with things

orthodox and established.

Then, in his last illness, he had finally broken away from her, and his

own past. "Evelyn, I should like to see a clergyman," he had said to

her in his piteous voice, "and I shall ask him to give me the

Sacrament." She had made every arrangement accordingly; but her bitter

soul could see nothing in the step but fear and hypocrisy; and he knew

it. And as he lay talking alone with the man whom they had summoned, two

or three nights before the end, she, sitting in the next room, had been

conscious of a deep and smarting jealousy. Had not the hard devotion of

twenty years made him at least her own? And here was this black-coated

reciter of incredible things stepping into her place. Only in death she

recovered him wholly. No priest interfered while he drew his last breath

upon her bosom.

And now Marcella! Yet the girl's voice and plea tugged at her withered

heart. She felt a dread of unknown softnesses--of being invaded and

weakened by things in her akin to her daughter, and so captured afresh.

Her mind fell upon the bare idea of a revival of the Maxwell engagement,

and caressed it.

Meanwhile Marcella stood dressing by the open window in the sunlight,

which filled the room with wavy reflections caught from the sea.

Fishing-boats were putting off from the beach, three hundred feet below

her; she could hear the grating of the keels, the songs of the boatmen.

On the little breakwater to the right an artist's white umbrella shone

in the sun; and a half-naked boy, poised on the bows of a boat moored

beside the painter, stood bent in the eager attitude of one about to

drop the bait into the blue wave below. His brown back burnt against the

water. Cliff, houses, sea, glowed in warmth and light; the air was full

of roses and orange-blossom; and to an English sense had already the

magic of summer.

And Marcella's hands, as she coiled and plaited her black hair, moved

with a new lightness; for the first time since her father's death her

look had its normal fire, crossed every now and then by something that

made her all softness and all woman. No! as her mother said, one could

not snub that letter or its writer. But how to answer it! In imagination

she had already penned twenty different replies. How not to be grasping

or effusive, and yet to show that you could feel and repay

kindness--there was the problem!

Meanwhile, from that letter, or rather in subtle connection with it, her

thoughts at last went wandering off with a natural zest to her new realm

of Mellor, and to all that she would and could do for the dwellers

therein.

CHAPTER IV.

It was a bleak east-wind day towards the end of March. Aldous was at

work in the library at the Court, writing at his grandfather's table,

where in general he got through his estate and county affairs, keeping

his old sitting-room upstairs for the pursuits that were more

particularly his own.

All the morning he had been occupied with a tedious piece of local

business, wading through endless documents concerning a dispute between

the head-master of a neighbouring grammar-school and his governing body,

of which Aldous was one. The affair was difficult, personal, odious. To

have wasted nearly three hours upon it was, to a man of Aldous's type,

to have lost a day. Besides he had not his grandfather's knack in such

things, and was abundantly conscious of it.

However, there it was, a duty which none but he apparently could or

would do, and he had been wrestling with it. With more philosophy than

usual, too, since every tick of the clock behind him bore him nearer to

an appointment which, whatever it might be, would not be tedious.

At last he got up and went to the window to look at the weather. A

cutting wind, clearly, but no rain. Then he walked into the

drawing-room, calling for his aunt. No one was to be seen, either there

or in the conservatory, and he came back to the library and rang.

"Roberts, has Miss Raeburn gone out?"

"Yes, my lord," said the old butler addressed. "She and Miss Macdonald

have gone out driving, and I was to tell your lordship that Miss Raeburn

would drop Miss Macdonald at Mellor on her way home."

"Is Sir Frank anywhere about?"

"He was in the smoking-room a little while ago, my lord."

"Will you please try and find him?"

"Yes, my lord."

Aldous's mouth twitched with impatience as the old servant shut the

door.

"How many times did Roberts manage to be-lord me in a minute?" he asked

himself; "yet if I were to remonstrate, I suppose I should only make him

unhappy."

And walking again to the window, he thrust his hands into his pockets

and stood looking out with a far from cheerful countenance.

One of the things that most tormented him indeed in this recent

existence was a perpetual pricking sense of the contrast between this

small world of his ancestral possessions and traditions, with all its

ceremonial and feudal usage, and the great rushing world outside it of

action and of thought. Do what he would, he could not un-king himself

within the limits of the Maxwell estate. To the people living upon it he

was the man of most importance within their ken, was inevitably their

potentate and earthly providence. He confessed that there was a real

need of him, if he did his duty. But on this need the class-practice of

generations had built up a deference, a sharpness of class-distinction,

which any modern must find more and more irksome in proportion to his

modernness. What was in Aldous's mind, as he stood with drawn brows

looking out over the view which showed him most of his domain, was a

sort of hot impatience of being made day by day, in a hundred foolish

ways, to play at greatness.

Yet, as we know, he was no democrat by conviction, had no comforting

faith in what seemed to him the rule of a multitudinous ignorance. Still

every sane man of to-day knows, at any rate, that the world has taken

the road of democracy, and that the key to the future, for good or ill,

lies not in the revolts and speculations of the cultivated few, but in

the men and movements that can seize the many. Aldous's temper was

despondently critical towards the majority of these, perhaps; he had,

constitutionally, little of that poet's sympathy with the crowd, as

such, which had given Hallin his power. But, at any rate, they filled

the human stage--these men and movements--and his mind as a beholder.

Beside the great world-spectacle perpetually in his eye and thought, the

small old-world pomps and feudalisms of his own existence had a way of

looking ridiculous to him. He constantly felt himself absurd. It was

ludicrously clear to him, for instance, that in this kingdom he had

inherited it would be thought a huge condescension on his part if he

were to ask the secretary of a trades union to dine with him at the

Court. Whereas, in his own honest opinion, the secretary had a far more

important and interesting post in the universe than he.

So that, in spite of a strong love of family, rigidly kept to himself,

he had very few of the illusions which make rank and wealth delightful.

On the other hand, he had a tyrannous sense of obligation, which kept

him tied to his place and his work--to such work as he had been spending

the morning on. This sense of obligation had for the present withdrawn

him from any very active share in politics. He had come to the

conclusion early in the year, just about the time when, owing to some

rearrangements in the _personnel_ of the Government, the Premier had

made him some extremely flattering overtures, that he must for the

present devote himself to the Court. There were extensive changes and

reforms going on in different parts of the estate: some of the schools

which he owned and mainly supported were being rebuilt and enlarged; and

he had a somewhat original scheme for the extension of adult education

throughout the property very much on his mind--a scheme which must be

organised and carried through by himself apparently, if it was to thrive

at all.

Much of this business was very dreary to him, some of it altogether

distasteful. Since the day of his parting with Marcella Boyce his only

real _pleasures_ had lain in politics or books. Politics, just as they

were growing absorbing to him, must, for a while at any rate, be put

aside; and even books had not fared as well as they might have been

expected to do in the country quiet. Day after day he walked or rode

about the muddy lanes of the estate, doing the work that seemed to him

to be his, as best he could, yet never very certain of its value;

rather, spending his thoughts more and more, with regard to his own

place and function in the world, on a sort of mental apologetic which

was far from stimulating; sorely conscious the while of the unmatched

charm and effectiveness with which his grandfather had gone about the

same business; and as lonely at heart as a man can well be--the wound of

love unhealed, the wound of friendship still deep and unconsoled. To

bring social peace and progress, as he understood them, to this bit of

Midland England a man of first-rate capacities was perhaps sacrificing

what ambition would have called his opportunities. Yet neither was he a

hero to himself nor to the Buckinghamshire farmers and yokels who

depended on him. They had liked the grandfather better, and had become

stolidly accustomed to the grandson's virtues.

The only gleam in the grey of his life since he had determined about

Christmas-time to settle down at the Court had come from Mr. French's

letter. That letter, together with Mr. Boyce's posthumous note, which

contained nothing, indeed, but a skilful appeal to neighbourliness and

old family friendship, written in the best style of the ex-Balkan

Commissioner, had naturally astonished him greatly. He saw at once what

_she_ would perceive in it, and turned impatiently from speculation as

to what Mr. Boyce might actually have meant, to the infinitely more

important matter, how she would take her father's act. Never had he

written anything with greater anxiety than he devoted to his letter to

Mrs. Boyce. There was in him now a craving he could not stay, to be

brought near to her again, to know how her life was going. It had first

raised its head in him since he knew that her existence and Wharton's

were finally parted, and had but gathered strength from the

self-critical loneliness and tedium of these later months.

Mrs. Boyce's reply couched in terms at once stately and grateful, which

accepted his offer of service on her own and her daughter's behalf, had

given him extraordinary pleasure. He turned it over again and again,

wondering what part or lot Marcella might have had in it, attributing to

her this cordiality or that reticence; picturing the two women together

in their black dresses--the hotel, the _pergola_, the cliff--all of

which he himself knew well. Finally, he went up to town, saw Mr. French,

and acquainted himself with the position and prospects of the Mellor

estate, feeling himself a sort of intruder, yet curiously happy in the

business. It was wonderful what that poor sickly fellow had been able to

do in the last two years; yet his thoughts fell rather into amused

surmise as to what _she_ would find it in her restless mind to do in the

_next_ two years.

Nevertheless, all the time, the resolution of which he had spoken to

Hallin seemed to himself unshaken. He recognised and adored the womanly

growth and deepening which had taken place in her; he saw that she

wished to show him kindness. But he thought he could trust himself now

and henceforward not to force upon her a renewed suit for which there

was in his eyes no real or abiding promise of happiness.

Marcella and her mother had now been at home some three or four days,

and he was just about to walk over to Mellor for his first interview

with them. A great deal of the merely formal business consequent on Mr.

Boyce's death had been already arranged by himself and Mr. French. Yet

he had to consult Marcella as to certain investments, and in a pleasant

though quite formal little note he had that morning received from her

she had spoken of asking his advice as to some new plans for the estate.

It was the first letter she herself had as yet written to him; hitherto

all his correspondence had been carried on with Mrs. Boyce. It had

struck him, by the way, as remarkable that there was no mention of the

wife in the will. He could only suppose that she was otherwise provided

for. But there had been some curious expressions in her letters.

Where was Frank? Aldous looked impatiently at the clock, as Roberts did

not reappear. He had invited Leven to walk with him to Mellor, and the

tiresome boy was apparently not to be found. Aldous vowed he would not

wait a minute, and going into the hall, put on coat and hat with most

business-like rapidity.

He was just equipped when Roberts, somewhat breathless with long

searching, arrived in time to say that Sir Frank was on the front

terrace.

And there Aldous caught sight of the straight though somewhat heavily

built figure, in its grey suit with the broad band of black across the

arm.

"Hullo, Frank! I thought you were to look me up in the library. Roberts

has been searching the house for you."

"You said nothing about the library," said the boy, rather sulkily, "and

Roberts hadn't far to search. I have been in the smoking-room till this

minute."

Aldous did not argue the point, and they set out. It was presently

clear to the elder man that his companion was not in the best of

tempers. The widowed Lady Leven had sent her firstborn over to the Court

for a few days that Aldous might have some discussion as to his

immediate future with the young man. She was a silly, frivolous woman;

but it was clear, even to her, that Frank was not doing very well for

himself in the world; and advice she would not have taken from her son's

Oxford tutor seemed cogent to her when it came from a Raeburn. "Do at

least, for goodness' sake, get him to give up his absurd plan of going

to America!" she wrote to Aldous; "if he can't take his degree at

Oxford, I suppose he must get on without it, and certainly his dons seem

very unpleasant. But at least he might stay at home and do his duty to

me and his sisters till he marries, instead of going off to the

'Rockies' or some other ridiculous place. He really never seems to think

of Fanny and Rachel, or what he might do to help me to get them settled

now that his poor father is gone."

No; certainly the young man was not much occupied with "Fanny and

Rachel!" He spoke with ill-concealed impatience, indeed, of both his

sisters and his mother. If his people would get in the way of everything

he wanted to do, they needn't wonder if he cut up rough at home. For the

present it was settled that he should at any rate go back to Oxford till

the end of the summer term--Aldous heartily pitying the unfortunate dons

who might have to do with him--but after that he entirely declined to be

bound. He swore he would not be tied at home like a girl; he must and

would see the world. This in itself, from a lad who had been accustomed

to regard his home as the centre of all delights, and had on two

occasions stoutly refused to go with his family to Rome, lest he should

miss the best month for his father's trout-stream, was sufficiently

surprising.

However, of late some tardy light had been dawning upon Aldous! The

night after Frank's arrival at the Court Betty Macdonald came down to

spend a few weeks with Miss Raeburn, being for the moment that lady's

particular pet and _protégée_. Frank, whose sulkiness during the

twenty-four hours before she appeared had been the despair of both his

host and hostess, brightened up spasmodically when he heard she was

expected, and went fishing with one of the keepers, on the morning

before her arrival, with a fair imitation of his usual spirits. But

somehow, since that first evening, though Betty had chattered, and

danced, and frolicked her best, though her little figure running up and

down the big house gave a new zest to life in it, Frank's manners had

gone from bad to worse. And at last Aldous, who had not as yet seen the

two much together, and was never an observant man in such matters, had

begun to have an inkling. Was it _possible_ that the boy was in love,

and with Betty? He sounded Miss Raeburn; found that she did not rise to

his suggestion at all--was, in fact, annoyed by it--and with the usual

stupidity of the clever man failed to draw any reasonable inference from

the queerness of his aunt's looks and sighs.

As to the little minx herself, she was inscrutable. She teased them all

in turns, Frank, perhaps, less than the others. Aldous, as usual, found

her a delightful companion. She would walk all over the estate with him

in the most mannish garments and boots conceivable, which only made her

childish grace more feminine and more provocative than ever. She took an

interest in all his tenants; she dived into all his affairs; she

insisted on copying his letters. And meanwhile, on either side were Miss

Raeburn, visibly recovering day by day her old cheeriness and bustle,

and Frank--Frank, who ate nothing, or nothing commensurate to his bulk,

and, if possible, said less.

Aldous had begun to feel that the situation must be probed somehow, and

had devised this walk, indeed, with some vague intention of plying

remonstrances and enquiries. He had an old affection for the boy, which

Lady Leven had reckoned upon.

The first difficulty, of course, was to make him talk at all. Aldous

tried various sporting "gambits" with very small success. At last, by

good-luck, the boy rose to something like animation in describing an

encounter he had had the week before with a piebald weasel in the course

of a morning's ferreting.

"All at once we saw the creature's head poke out of the hole--_pure

white_, with a brown patch on it. When it saw us, back it scooted!--and

we sent in another ferret after the one that was there already. My

goodness! there _was_ a shindy down in the earth--you could hear them

rolling and kicking like anything. We had our guns ready,--but all of a

sudden everything stopped--not a sound or a sign of anything! We threw

down our guns and dug away like blazes. Presently we came on the two

ferrets gorging away at a dead rabbit,--nasty little beasts!--that

accounted for _them_; but where on earth was the weasel? I really began

to think we had imagined the creature, when, whish! came a flash of

white lightning, and out the thing bolted--pure white with a splash of

brown--its winter coat, of course. I shot at it, but it was no go. If

I'd only put a bag over the hole, and not been an idiot, I should have

caught it."

The boy swung along, busily ruminating for a minute or two, and

forgetting his trouble.

"I've seen one something like it before," he went on--"ages ago, when I

was a little chap, and Harry Wharton and I were out rabbiting. By the

way--" he stopped short--"do you see that that fellow's come back?"

"I saw the paragraph in the _Times_ this morning," said Aldous, drily.

"And I've got a letter from Fanny this morning, to say that he and Lady

Selina are to be married in July, and that she's going about making a

martyr and a saint of him, talking of the 'persecution' he's had to put

up with, and the vulgar fellows who couldn't appreciate him, and

generally making an ass of herself. Oh! he won't ask any of us to his

wedding--trust him. It is a rum business. You know Willie Ffolliot--that

queer dark fellow--that used to be in the 10th Hussars--did all those

wild things in the Soudan?"

"Yes--slightly."

"I heard all about it from him. He was one of that gambling set at

Harry's club there's been all that talk about you know, since Harry came

to grief. Well!--he was going along Piccadilly one night last summer,

quite late, between eleven and twelve, when Harry caught hold of him

from behind. Willie thought he was out of his mind, or drunk. He told me

he never saw anybody in such a queer state in his life. 'You come along

with me,' said Harry, 'come and talk to me, or I shall shoot myself!' So

Willie asked him what was up. 'I'm engaged to be married,' said Harry.

Whereupon Willie remarked that, considering his manner and his

appearance, he was sorry for the young lady. '_Young_!' said Harry as

though he would have knocked him down. And then it came out that he had

just--that moment!--engaged himself to Lady Selina. And it was the very

same day that he got into that precious mess in the House--the _very

same night_! I suppose he went to her to be comforted, and thought he'd

pull something off, anyway! Why she took him! But of course she's no

chicken, and old Alresford may die any day. And about the bribery

business--I suppose he made her think him an injured innocent. Anyway,

he talked to Willie, when they got to his rooms, like a raving lunatic,

and you know he was always such a cool hand. 'Ffolliot,' he said, 'can

you come with me to Siam next week?' 'How much?' said Will. 'I thought

you were engaged to Lady Selina.' Then he swore little oaths, and vowed

he had told her he must have a year. 'We'll go and explore those temples

in Siam,' he said, and then he muttered something about 'Why should I

ever come back?' Presently he began to talk of the strike--and the

paper--and the bribe, and all the rest of it, making out a long

rigmarole story. Oh! of course he'd done everything for the best--trust

him!--and everybody else was a cur and a slanderer. And Ffolliot

declared he felt quite pulpy--the man was such a wreck; and he said he'd

go with him to Siam, or anywhere else, if he'd only cheer up. And they

got out the maps, and Harry began to quiet down, and at last Will got

him to bed. Fanny says Ffolliot reports he had great difficulty in

dragging him home. However, Lady Selina has no luck!--there he is."

"Oh! he will be one of the shining lights of our side before long," said

Aldous, with resignation. "Since he gave up his seat here, there has

been some talk of finding him one in the Alresfords' neighbourhood, I

believe. But I don't suppose anybody's very anxious for him. He is to

address a meeting, I see, on the Tory Labour Programme next week. The

_Clarion_, I suppose, will go round with him."

"Beastly rag!" said Frank, fervently. "It's rather a queer thing, isn't

it, that such a clever chap as that should have made such a mess of his

chances. It almost makes one not mind being a fool."

He laughed, but bitterly, and at the same moment the cloud that for some

twenty minutes or so seemed to have completely rolled away descended

again on eye and expression.

"Well, there are worse things than being a fool," said Aldous, with

insidious emphasis--"sulking, and shutting up with your best friends,

for instance."

Frank flushed deeply, and turned upon him with a sort of uncertain fury.

"I don't know what you mean."

Whereupon Aldous slipped his arm inside the boy's, and prepared himself

with resignation for the scene that had to be got through somehow, when

Frank suddenly exclaimed:

"I say, there's Miss Boyce!"

Never was a man more quickly and completely recalled from altruism to

his own affairs. Aldous dropped his companion's arm, straightened

himself with a thrill of the whole being, and saw Marcella some distance

ahead of them in the Mellor drive, which they had just entered. She was

stooping over something on the ground, and was not apparently aware of

their approach. A ray of cold sun came out at the moment, touched the

bending figure and the grass at her feet--grass starred with primroses,

which she was gathering.

"I didn't know you were going to call," said Frank, bewildered. "Isn't

it too soon?"

And he looked at his companion in astonishment.

"I came to speak to Miss Boyce and her mother on business," said Aldous,

with all his habitual reserve. "I thought you wouldn't mind the walk

back by yourself."

"Business?" the boy echoed involuntarily.

Aldous hesitated, then said quietly:

"Mr. Boyce appointed me executor under his will."

Frank lifted his eyebrows, and allowed himself at least an inward "By

Jove!"

By this time Marcella had caught sight of them, and was advancing. She

was in deep mourning, but her hands were full of primroses, which shone

against the black; and the sun, penetrating the thin green of some

larches to her left, danced in her eyes and on a face full of sensitive

and beautiful expression.

They had not met since they stood together beside Hallin's grave. This

fact was in both their minds. Aldous felt it, as it were, in the touch

of her hand. What he could not know was, that she was thinking quite as

much of his letter to her mother and its phrases.

They stood talking a little in the sunshine. Then, as Frank was taking

his leave, Marcella said:

"Won't you wait for--for Lord Maxwell, in the old library? We can get at

it from the garden, and I have made it quite habitable. My mother, of

course, does not wish to see anybody."

Frank hesitated, then, pushed by a certain boyish curiosity, and by the

angry belief that Betty had been carried off by Miss Raeburn, and was

out of his reach till luncheon-time, said he would wait. Marcella led

the way, opened the garden-door of the lower corridor, close to the spot

where she had seen Wharton standing in the moonlight on a

never-to-be-forgotten night, and then ushered them into the library. The

beautiful old place had been decently repaired, though in no sense

modernised. The roof had no holes, and its delicate stucco-work,

formerly stained and defaced by damp, had been whitened, so that the

brown and golden tones of the books in the latticed cases told against

it with delightful effect. The floor was covered with a cheap matting,

and there were a few simple chairs and tables. A wood fire burnt on the

old hearth. Marcella's books and work lay about, and some shallow

earthenware pans filled with home-grown hyacinths scented the air. What

with the lovely architecture of the room itself, its size, its books

and old portraits, and the signs it bore of simple yet refined use, it

would have been difficult to find a gentler, mellower place. Aldous

looked round him with delight.

"I hope to make a village drawing-room of it in time," she said casually

to Frank as she stooped to put a log on the fire. "I think we shall get

them to come, as it has a separate door, and scraper, and mat all to

itself."

"Goodness!" said Frank, "they won't come. It's too far from the

village."

"Don't you be so sure," said Marcella, laughing. "Mr. Craven has all

sorts of ideas."

"Who's Mr. Craven?"

"Didn't you meet him at my rooms?"

"Oh! I remember," ejaculated the boy--"a frightful Socialist!"

"And his wife's worse," said Marcella, merrily. "They've come down to

settle here. They're going to help me."

"Then for mercy's sake keep them to yourself," cried Frank, "and don't

let them go loose over the county. We don't want them at our place."

"Oh! your turn will come. Lord Maxwell"--her tone changed--became shy

and a little grave. "Shall we go into the Stone Parlour? My mother will

come down if you wish to see her, but she thought that--that--perhaps we

could settle things."

Aldous had been standing by, hat in hand, watching her as she chattered

to Frank. As she addressed him he gave a little start.

"Oh! I think we can settle everything," he said.

"Well, this is rum!" said Frank to himself, as the door closed behind

them, and instead of betaking himself to the chair and the newspaper

with which Marcella had provided him, he began to walk excitedly up and

down. "Her father makes him executor--he manages her property for

her--and they behave nicely to each other, as though nothing had ever

happened at all. What the deuce does it mean? And all the time

Betty--why, Betty's devoted to him!--and it's as plain as a pikestaff

what that old cat, Miss Raeburn, is thinking of from morning till night!

Well, I'm beat!"

And throwing himself down on a stool by the fire, his chin between his

hands, he stared dejectedly at the burning logs.

CHAPTER V.

Meanwhile Marcella and her companion were sitting in the Stone Parlour

side by side, save for a small table between them, which held the

various papers Aldous had brought with him. At first, there had been on

her side--as soon as they were alone--a feeling of stifling

embarrassment. All the painful, proud sensations with which she had

received the news of her father's action returned upon her; she would

have liked to escape; she shrank from what once more seemed an

encroachment, a situation as strange as it was embarrassing.

But his manner very soon made it impossible, indeed ridiculous, to

maintain such an attitude of mind. He ran through his business with his

usual clearness and rapidity. It was not complicated; her views proved

to be the same as his; and she was empowered to decide for her mother.

Aldous took notes of one or two of her wishes, left some papers with her

for her mother's signature, and then his work was practically done.

Nothing, throughout, could have been more reassuring or more everyday

than his demeanour.

Then, indeed, when the end of their business interview approached, and

with it the opportunity for conversation of a different kind, both were

conscious of a certain tremor. To him this old parlour was torturingly

full of memories. In this very place where they sat he had given her

his mother's pearls, and taken a kiss in return from the cheek that was

once more so near to him. With what free and exquisite curves the hair

set about the white brow! How beautiful was the neck--the hand! What

ripened, softened charm in every movement! The touching and rebuking

thought rose in his mind that from her nursing experience, and its frank

contact with the ugliest realities of the physical life--a contact he

had often shrunk from realising--there had come to her, not so much

added strength, as a new subtlety and sweetness, some delicate,

vibrating quality, that had been entirely lacking to her first splendid

youth.

Suddenly she said to him, with a certain hesitation:

"There was one more point I wanted to speak to you about. Can you advise

me about selling some of those railway shares?"

She pointed to an item in a short list of investments that lay beside

them.

"But why?" said Aldous, surprised. "They are excellent property already,

and are going up in value."

"Yes, I know. But I want some ready money immediately--more than we

have--to spend on cottage-building in the village. I saw a builder

yesterday and came to a first understanding with him. We are altering

the water-supply too. They have begun upon it already, and it will cost

a good deal."

Aldous was still puzzled.

"I see," he said. "But--don't you suppose that the income of the estate,

now that your father has done so much to free it, will be enough to meet

expenses of that kind, without trenching on investments? A certain

amount, of course, should be systematically laid aside every year for

rebuilding, and estate improvements generally."

"Yes; but you see I only regard half of the income as mine."

She looked up with a little smile.

He was now standing in front of her, against the fire, his grey eyes,

which could be, as she well knew, so cold and inexpressive, bent upon

her with eager interest.

"Only half the income?" he repeated. "Ah!"--he smiled kindly--"is that

an arrangement between you and your mother?"

Marcella let her hand fall with a little despairing gesture.

"Oh no!" she said--"oh no! Mamma--mamma will take nothing from me or

from the estate. She has her own money, and she will live with me part

of the year."

The intonation in the words touched Aldous profoundly.

"Part of the year?" he said, astonished, yet not knowing how to question

her. "Mrs. Boyce will not make Mellor her home?"

"She would be thankful if she had never seen it," said Marcella,

quickly--"and she would never see it again if it weren't for me. It's

dreadful what she went through last year, when--when I was in London."

Her voice fell. Glancing up at him involuntarily, her eye looked with

dread for some chill, some stiffening in him. Probably he condemned her,

had always condemned her for deserting her home and her parents. But

instead she saw nothing but sympathy.

"Mrs. Boyce has had a hard life," he said, with grave feeling.

Marcella felt a tear leap, and furtively raised her handkerchief to

brush it away. Then, with a natural selfishness, her quick thought took

another turn. A wild yearning rose in her mind to tell him much more

than she had ever done in old days of the miserable home-circumstances

of her early youth; to lay stress on the mean unhappiness which had

depressed her own child-nature whenever she was with her parents, and

had withered her mother's character. Secretly, passionately, she often

made the past an excuse. Excuse for what? For the lack of delicacy and

loyalty, of the best sort of breeding, which had marked the days of her

engagement?

Never--_never_ to speak of it with him!--to pour out everything--to ask

him to judge, to understand, to forgive!--

She pulled herself together by a strong effort, reminding herself in a

flash of all that divided them:--of womanly pride--of Betty Macdonald's

presence at the Court--of that vain confidence to Hallin, of which her

inmost being must have been ashamed, but that something calming and

sacred stole upon her whenever she thought of Hallin, lifting everything

concerned with him into a category of its own.

No; let her selfish weakness make no fettering claim upon the man before

her. Let her be content with the friendship she had, after all,

achieved, that was now doing its kindly best for her.

All these images, like a tumultuous procession, ran through the mind in

a moment. He thought, as she sat there with her bent head, the hands

clasped round the knee in the way he knew so well, that she was full of

her mother, and found it difficult to put what she felt into words.

"But tell me about your plan," he said gently, "if you will."

"Oh! it is nothing," she said hurriedly. "I am afraid you will think it

impracticable--perhaps wrong. It's only this: you see, as there is no

one depending on me--as I am practically alone--it seemed to me I might

make an experiment. Four thousand a year is a great deal more than I

need ever spend--than I _ought_, of course, to spend on myself. I don't

think altogether what I used to think. I mean to keep up this house--to

make it beautiful, to hand it on, perhaps _more_ beautiful than I found

it, to those that come after. And I mean to maintain enough service in

it both to keep it in order and to make it a social centre for all the

people about--for everybody of all classes, so far as I can. I want it

to be a place of amusement and delight and talk to us all--especially to

the very poor. After all"--her cheek flushed under the quickening of her

thought--"_everybody_ on the estate, in their different degree, has

contributed to this house, in some sense, for generations. I want it to

come into their lives--to make it _their_ possession, _their_ pride,--as

well as mine. But then that isn't all. The people here can enjoy

nothing, use nothing, till they have a worthier life of their own. Wages

here, you know, are terribly low, much lower"--she added timidly--"than

with you. They are, as a rule, eleven or twelve shillings a week. Now

there seem to be about one hundred and sixty labourers on the estate

altogether, in the farmers' employment and in our own. Some, of course,

are boys, and some old men earning a half-wage. Mr. Craven and I have

worked it out, and we find that an average weekly increase of five

shillings per head--which would give the men of full age and in full

work about a pound a week--would work out at about two thousand a year."

She paused a moment, trying to put her further statement into its best

order.

"Your farmers, you know," he said, smiling, after a pause, "will be your

chief difficulty."

"Of course! But I thought of calling a meeting of them. I have discussed

it with Mr. French--of course he thinks me mad!--but he gave me some

advice. I should propose to them all fresh leases, with certain small

advantages that Louis Craven thinks would tempt them, at a reduced

rental exactly answering to the rise in wages. Then, in return they must

accept a sort of fair-wage clause, binding them to pay henceforward the

standard wage of the estate."

She looked up, her face expressing urgent though silent interrogation.

"You must remember," he said quickly, "that though the estate is

recovering, and rents have been fairly paid about here during the last

eighteen months, you may be called upon at any moment to make the

reductions which hampered your uncle. These reductions will, of course,

fall upon you as before, seeing that the farmers, in a different way,

will be paying as much as before. Have you left margin enough?"

"I think so," she said eagerly. "I shall live here very simply, and

accumulate all the reserve fund I can. I have set all my heart upon it.

I know there are not many people _could_ do such a thing--other

obligations would, must, come first. And it may turn out a mistake.

But--whatever happens--whatever any of us, Socialists or not, may hope

for in the future--here one _is_ with one's conscience, and one's money,

and these people, who like oneself have but the one life? In all labour,

it is the modern question, isn't it?--_how much_ of the product of

labour the workman can extract from the employer? About here there is no

union to act for the labourers--they have practically no power. But _in

the future_, we must surely _hope_ they will combine, that they will be

stronger--strong enough to _force_ a decent wage. What ought to prevent

my free will anticipating a moment--since I _can_ do it--that we all

want to see?"

She spoke with a strong feeling; but his ear detected a new

note--something deeper and wistfuller than of old.

"Well--as you say, you are for experiments!" he replied, not finding it

easy to produce his own judgment quickly. Then, in another tone--"it was

always Hallin's cry."

She glanced up at him, her lips trembling.

"I know. Do you remember how he used to say--'the big changes may

come--the big Collectivist changes. But neither you nor I will see them.

I pray _not_ to see them. Meanwhile--all still hangs upon, comes back

to, the individual, Here are you with your money and power; there are

those men and women whom you can share with--in new and honourable

ways--_to-day_.'"

Then she checked herself suddenly.

"But now I want you to tell me--will you tell me?--all the objections

you see. You must often have thought such things over."

She was looking nervously straight before her. She did not see the flash

of half-bitter, half-tender irony that crossed his face. Her tone of

humility, of appeal, was so strange to him, remembering the past.

"Yes, very often," he answered. "Well, I think these are the kind of

arguments you will have to meet."

He went through the objections that any economist would be sure to weigh

against a proposal of the kind, as clearly as he could, and at some

length--but without zest. What affected Marcella all through was not so

much the matter of what he said, as the manner of it. It was so

characteristic of the two voices in him--the voice of the idealist

checked and mocked always by the voice of the observer and the student.

A year before, the little harangue would have set her aflame with

impatience and wrath. Now, beneath the speaker, she felt and yearned

towards the man.

Yet, as to the scheme, when all demurs were made, she was "of the same

opinion still"! His arguments were not new to her; the inward eagerness

over-rode them.

"In my own case"--he said at last, the tone passing instantly into

reserve and shyness, as always happened when he spoke of himself--"my

own wages are two or three shillings higher than those paid generally by

the farmers on the estate; and we have a pension fund. But so far, I

have felt the risks of any wholesale disturbance of labour on the

estate, depending, as it must entirely in my case, on the individual

life and will, to be too great to let me go further. I sometimes believe

that it is the farmers who would really benefit most by experiments of

the kind!"

She protested vehemently, being at the moment, of course, not at all in

love with mankind in general, but only with those members of mankind who

came within the eye of imagination. He was enchanted to see the old self

come out again--positive, obstinate, generous; to see the old confident

pose of the head, the dramatic ease of gesture.

Meanwhile something that had to be said, that must, indeed, be said, if

he were to give her serious and official advice, pressed uncomfortably

on his tongue.

"You know," he said, not looking at her, when at last she had for the

moment exhausted argument and prophecy, "you have to think of those who

will succeed you here; still more you have to think--of marriage--before

you pledge yourself to the halving of your income."

Now he must needs look at her intently, out of sheer nervousness. The

difficulty he had had in compelling himself to make the speech at all

had given a certain hardness and stiffness to his voice. She felt a

sudden shock and chill--resented what he had dismally felt to be an

imperative duty.

"I do not think I have any need to think of it--in this connection," she

said proudly. And getting up, she began to gather her papers together.

The spell was broken, the charm gone. He felt that he was dismissed.

With a new formality and silence, she led the way into the hall, he

following. As they neared the library there was a sound of voices.

Marcella opened the door in surprise, and there, on either side of the

fire, sat Betty Macdonald and Frank Leven.

"_That's_ a mercy!" cried Betty, running forward to Marcella and kissing

her. "I really don't know what would have happened if Mr. Leven and I

had been left alone any longer. As for the Kilkenny cats, my dear, don't

mention them!"

The child was flushed and agitated, and there was an angry light in her

blue eyes. Frank looked simply lumpish and miserable.

"Yes, here I am," said Betty, holding Marcella, and chattering as fast

as possible. "I made Miss Raeburn bring me over, that I might _just_

catch a sight of you. She would walk home, and leave the carriage for

me. Isn't it like all the topsy-turvy things nowadays? When _I'm_ her

age I suppose I shall have gone back to dolls. Please to look at those

ponies!--they're pawing your gravel to bits. And as for my watch, just

inspect it!"--She thrust it reproachfully under Marcella's eyes. "You've

been such a time in there talking, that Sir Frank and I have had time to

quarrel for life, and there isn't a minute left for anything rational.

Oh! good-bye, my dear, good-bye. I never kept Miss Raeburn waiting for

lunch yet, did I, Mr. Aldous? and I mustn't begin now. Come along, Mr.

Aldous! You'll have to come home with me. I'm frightened to death of

those ponies. You shan't drive, but if they bolt, I'll give them to you

to pull in. Dear, _dear_ Marcella, let me come again--soon--directly!"

A few more sallies and kisses, a few more angry looks at Frank and

appeals to Aldous, who was much less responsive than usual, and the

child was seated, very erect and rosy, on the driving seat of the little

pony-carriage, with Aldous beside her.

"Are you coming, Frank?" said Aldous; "there's plenty of room."

His strong brow had a pucker of annoyance. As he spoke he looked, not at

Frank, but at Marcella. She was standing a trifle back, among the

shadows of the doorway, and her attitude conveyed to him an impression

of proud aloofness. A sigh that was half pain, half resignation, passed

his lips unconsciously.

"Thank you, I'll walk," said Frank, fiercely.

* * * * *

"Now, will you please explain to me why you look like that, and talk

like that?" said Marcella, with cutting composure, when she was once

more in the library, and Frank, crimson to the roots of his hair, and

saying incoherent things, had followed her there.

"I should think you might guess," said Frank, in reproachful misery, as

he hung over the fire.

"Not at all!" said Marcella; "you are rude to Betty, and disagreeable to

me, by which I suppose that you are unhappy. But why should _you_ be

allowed to show your feelings, when other people don't?"

Frank fairly groaned.

"Well," he said, making efforts at a tragic calm, and looking for his

hat, "you will, none of you, be troubled with me long. I shall go home

to-morrow, and take my ticket for California the day after."

_"You,"_ said Marcella, "go to California! What right have you to go to

California?"

"What right?" Frank stared, then he went on impetuously. "If a girl

torments a man, as Betty has been tormenting me, there is nothing for

it, I should think, but to clear out of the way. I am going to clear out

of the way, whatever anybody says."

"And shoot big game, I suppose--amuse yourself somehow?"

Frank hesitated.

"Well, a fellow can't do nothing," he said helplessly. "I suppose I

shall shoot."

"And what right have you to do it? Have you any more right than a public

official would have to spend public money in neglecting his duties?"

Frank stared at her.

"Well, I don't know what you mean," he said at last, angrily; "give it

up."

"It's quite simple what I mean. You have inherited your father's

property. Your tenants pay you rent, that comes from their labour. Are

you going to make no return for your income, and your house, and your

leisure?"

"Ah! that's your Socialism!" cried the young fellow, roused by her tone.

"No return? Why, they have the land."

"If I were a thorough-going Socialist," said Marcella, steadily, "I

should say to you, Go! The sooner you throw off all ties to your

property, the sooner you prove to the world that you and your class are

mere useless parasites, the sooner we shall be rid of you. But

unfortunately _I_ am not such a good Socialist as that. I waver--I am

not sure of what I wish. But one thing I _am_ sure of, that unless

people like you are going to treat their lives as a profession, to take

their calling seriously, there are no more superfluous drones, no more

idle plunderers than you, in all civilised society!"

Was she pelting him in this way that she might so get rid of some of her

own inner smart and restlessness? If so, the unlucky Frank could not

guess it. He could only feel himself intolerably ill-used. He had meant

to pour himself out to her on the subject of Betty and his woes, and

here she was rating him as to his _duties_, of which he had hardly as

yet troubled himself to think, being entirely taken up either with his

grievances or his enjoyments.

"I'm sure you know you're talking nonsense," he said sulkily, though he

shrank from meeting her fiery look. "And if I _am_ idle, there are

plenty of people idler than me--people who live on their money, with no

land to bother about, and nothing to do for it at all."

"On the contrary, it is they who have an excuse. They have no natural

opening, perhaps--no plain call. You have both, and, as I said before,

you have no _right_ to take holidays before you have earned them. You

have got to learn your business first, and then do it. Give your eight

hours' day like other people! Who are you that you should have all the

cake of the world, and other people the crusts?"

Frank walked to the window, and stood staring out, with his back turned

to her. Her words stung and tingled; and he was too miserable to fight.

"I shouldn't care whether it were cake or crusts," he said at last, in a

low voice, turning round to her, "if only Betty would have me."

"Do you think she is any the more likely to have you," said Marcella,

unrelenting, "if you behave as a loafer and a runaway? Don't you suppose

that Betty has good reasons for hesitating when she sees the difference

between you--and--and other people?"

Frank looked at her sombrely--a queer mixture of expressions on the

face, in which the maturer man was already to be discerned at war with

the powerful young animal.

"I suppose you mean Lord Maxwell?"

There was a pause.

"You may take what I said," she said at last, looking into the fire, "as

meaning anybody who pays honestly with work and brains for what society

has given him--as far as he can pay, at any rate."

"Now look here," said Frank, coming dolefully to sit down beside her;

"don't slate me any more. I'm a bad lot, I know--well, an idle lot--I

don't think I am a _bad_ lot--But it's no good your preaching to me

while Betty's sticking pins into me like this. Now just let me tell you

how she's been behaving."

Marcella succumbed, and heard him. He glanced at her surreptitiously

from time to time, but he could make nothing of her. She sat very quiet

while he described the constant companionship between Aldous and Betty,

and the evident designs of Miss Raeburn. Just as when he made his first

confidences to her in London, he was vaguely conscious that he was doing

a not very gentlemanly thing. But again, he was too unhappy to restrain

himself, and he longed somehow to make an ally of her.

"Well, I have only one thing to say," she said at last, with an odd

nervous impatience--"go and ask her, and have done with it! She might

have some respect for you then. No, I won't help you; but if you don't

succeed, I'll pity you--I promise you that. And now you must go away."

He went, feeling himself hardly treated, yet conscious nevertheless of a

certain stirring of the moral waters which had both stimulus and balm in

it.

She, left behind, sat quiet in the old library for a few lonely minutes.

The boy's plight made her alternately scornful and repentant of her

sharpness to him. As to his report, one moment it plunged her in an

anguish she dared not fathom; the next she was incredulous--could not

simply make herself take the thing as real.

But one thing had been real--that word from Aldous to her of

"_marriage_"! The nostril dilated, the breast heaved, as she lost all

thought of Frank in a resentful passion that could neither justify nor

calm itself. It seemed still as though he had struck her. Yet she knew

well that she had nothing to forgive.

* * * * *

Next morning she went down to the village meaning to satisfy herself on

two or three points connected with the new cottages. On the way she

knocked at the Rectory garden-door, in the hope of finding Mary Harden

and persuading her to come with her.

She had not seen much of Mary since their return. Still, she had had

time to be painfully struck once or twice with the white and bloodless

look of the Rector's sister, and with a certain patient silence about

her which seemed to Marcella new. Was it the monotony of the life? or

had both of them been overworking and underfeeding as usual? The Rector

had received Marcella with his old gentle but rather distant kindness.

Two years before he had felt strongly about many of her proceedings, and

had expressed himself frankly enough, at least to Mary. Now he had put

his former disapprovals out of his mind, and was only anxious to work

smoothly with the owner of Mellor. He had a great respect for

"dignities," and she, as far as the village was concerned, was to be his

"dignity" henceforward. Moreover, he humbly and truly hoped that she

might be able to enlighten him as to a good many modern conceptions and

ideas about the poor, for which, absorbed as he was, either in

almsgiving of the traditional type, or spiritual ministration, or

sacramental theory, he had little time, and, if the truth were known,

little affinity.

In answer to her knock Marcella heard a faint "Come in" from the

interior of the house. She walked into the dining-room, and found Mary

sitting by the little table in tears. There were some letters before

her, which she pushed away as Marcella entered, but she did not attempt

to disguise her agitation.

"What is it, dear? Tell me," said Marcella, sitting down beside her, and

kissing one of the hands she held.

And Mary told her. It was the story of her life--a simple tale of

ordinary things, such as wring the quiet hearts and train the unnoticed

saints of this world. In her first youth, when Charles Harden was for a

time doing some divinity lecturing in his Oxford college, Mary had gone

up to spend a year with him in lodgings. Their Sunday teas and other

small festivities were frequented by her brother's friends, men of like

type with himself, and most of them either clergymen or about to be

ordained. Between one of them, a young fellow looking out for his first

curacy, and Mary an attachment had sprung up, which Mary could not even

now speak of. She hurried over it, with a trembling voice, to the

tragedy beyond. Mr. Shelton got his curacy, went off to a parish in the

Lincolnshire Fens, and there was talk of their being married in a year

or so. But the exposure of a bitter winter's night, risked in the

struggle across one of the bleakest flats of the district to carry the

Sacrament to a dying parishioner, had brought on a peculiar and

agonising form of neuralgia. And from this pain, so nobly earned, had

sprung--oh! mystery of human fate!--a morphia-habit, with all that such

a habit means for mind and body. It was discovered by the poor fellow's

brother, who brought him up to London and tried to cure him. Meanwhile

he himself had written to Mary to give her up. "I have no will left, and

am no longer a man," he wrote to her. "It would be an outrage on my

part, and a sin on yours, if we did not cancel our promise." Charles,

who took a hard, ascetic view, held much the same language, and Mary

submitted, heart-broken.

Then came a gleam of hope. The brother's care and affection prevailed;

there were rumours of great improvement, of a resumption of work. "Just

two years ago, when you first came here, I was beginning to

believe"--she turned away her head to hide the rise of tears--"that it

might still come right." But after some six or eight months of clerical

work in London fresh trouble developed, lung mischief showed itself, and

the system, undermined by long and deep depression, seemed to capitulate

at once.

"He died last December, at Madeira," said Mary, quietly. "I saw him

before he left England. We wrote to each other almost to the end. He was

quite at peace. This letter here was from the chaplain at Madeira, who

was kind to him, to tell me about his grave."

That was all. It was the sort of story that somehow might have been

expected to belong to Mary Harden--to her round, plaintive face, to her

narrow, refined experience; and she told it in a way eminently

characteristic of her modes of thinking, religious or social, with

old-fashioned or conventional phrases which, whatever might be the case

with other people, had lost none of their bloom or meaning for her.

Marcella's face showed her sympathy. They talked for half an hour, and

at the end of it Mary flung her arms round her companion's neck.

"There!" she said, "now we must not talk any more about it. I am glad I

told you. It was a comfort. And somehow--I don't mean to be unkind; but

I couldn't have told you in the old days--it's wonderful how much better

I like you now than I used to do, though perhaps we don't agree much

better."

Both laughed, though the eyes of both were full of tears.

* * * * *

Presently they were in the village together. As they neared the Hurds'

old cottage, which was now empty and to be pulled down, a sudden look of

disgust crossed Marcella's face.

"Did I tell you my news of Minta Hurd?" she said.

No; Mary had heard nothing. So Marcella told the grotesque and ugly

news, as it seemed to her, which had reached her at Amalfi. Jim Hurd's

widow was to be married again, to the queer lanky "professor of

elocution," with the Italian name and shifty eye, who lodged on the

floor beneath her in Brown's Buildings, and had been wont to come in of

an evening and play comic songs to her and the children. Marcella was

vehemently sure that he was a charlatan--that he got his living by a

number of small dishonesties, that he had scented Minta's pension. But

apart from the question whether he would make Minta a decent husband, or

live upon her and beat her, was the fact itself of her re-marriage, in

itself hideous to the girl.

"_Marry_ him!" she said. "Marry any one! Isn't it incredible?"

They were in front of the cottage. Marcella paused a moment and looked

at it. She saw again in sharp vision the miserable woman fainting on the

settle, the dwarf sitting, handcuffed, under the eye of his captors;

she felt again the rush of that whirlwind of agony through which she had

borne the wife's helpless soul in that awful dawn.

And after that--exit!--with her "professor of elocution." It made the

girl sick to think of. And Mary, out of a Puseyite dislike of second

marriage, felt and expressed much the same repulsion.

Well--Minta Hurd was far away, and if she had been there to defend

herself her powers of expression would have been no match for theirs.

Nor does youth understand such pleas as she might have urged.

"Will Lord Maxwell continue the pension?" said Mary.

Marcella stopped again, involuntarily.

"So that was his doing?" she said. "I supposed as much."

"You did not know?" cried Mary, in distress. "Oh! I believe I ought not

to have said anything about it."

"I always guessed it," said Marcella, shortly, and they walked on in

silence.

Presently they found themselves in front of Mrs. Jellison's very trim

and pleasant cottage, which lay farther along the common, to the left of

the road to the Court. There was an early pear-tree in blossom over the

porch, and a swelling greenery of buds in the little garden.

"Will you come in?" said Mary. "I should like to see Isabella Westall."

Marcella started at the name.

"How is she?" she asked.

"Just the same. She has never been in her right mind since. But she is

quite harmless and quiet."

They found Mrs. Jellison on one side of the fire, with her daughter on

the other, and the little six-year-old Johnnie playing between them.

Mrs. Jellison was straw-plaiting, twisting the straws with amazing

rapidity, her fingers stained with red from the dye of them. Isabella

was, as usual, doing nothing. She stared when Marcella and Mary came in,

but she took no other notice of them. Her powerful and tragic face had

the look of something originally full of intention, from which spirit

and meaning had long departed, leaving a fine but lifeless outline.

Marcella had seen it last on the night of the execution, in ghastly

apparition at Minta Hurd's window, when it might have been caught by

some sculptor in quest of the secrets of violent expression, fixed in

clay or marble, and labelled "Revenge," or "Passion."

Its passionless emptiness now filled her with pity and horror. She sat

down beside the widow and took her hand. Mrs. Westall allowed it for a

moment, then drew her own away suddenly, and Marcella saw a curious and

sinister contraction of the eyes.

"Ah! yo never know how much Isabella unnerstan's, an' how much she

don't," Mrs. Jellison was saying to Mary. "I can't allus make her out,

but she don't give no trouble. An' as for that boy, he's a chirruper, he

is. He gives 'em fine times at school, he do. Miss Barton, she ast him

in class, Thursday, 'bout Ananias and Sappira. 'Johnnie,' says she,

'whatever made 'em do sich a wicked thing?' 'Well, _I_ do'n' know,' says

he; 'it was jus' their nassty good-for-nothink,' says he; 'but they was

great sillies,' says he. Oh! he don't mean no harm!--lor' bless yer,

the men is all born contrary, and they can't help themselves. Oh! thank

yer, miss, my 'ealth is pretty tidy, though I 'ave been plagued this

winter with a something they call the 'flenzy. I wor very bad! 'Yo go to

bed, Mrs. Jellison,' says Dr. Sharpe, 'or yo'll know of it.' But I

worn't goin' to be talked to by 'im. Why, I knowed 'im when he wor no

'igher nor Johnnie. An' I kep' puddlin' along, an' one mornin' I wor

fairly choked, an' I just crawled into that parlour, an' I took a sup o'

brandy out o' the bottle"--she looked complacently at Mary, quite

conscious that the Rector's sister must be listening to her with

disapproving ears--"an', lor' bless yer, it cut the phlegm, it did, that

very moment. My! I did cough. I drawed it up by the yard, I did--and I

crep' back along the wall, and yo cud ha' knocked me down wi' one o' my

own straws. But I've been better iver since, an' beginnin' to eat my

vittles, too, though I'm never no great pecker--I ain't--not at no

time."

Mary managed to smother her emotions on the subject of the brandy, and

the old woman chattered on, throwing out the news of the village in a

series of humorous fragments, tinged in general with the lowest opinion

of human nature.

When the girls took leave of her, she said slily to Marcella:

"An' 'ow about your plaitin', miss?--though I dessay I'm a bold 'un for

astin'."

Marcella coloured.

"Well, I've got it to think about, Mrs. Jellison. We must have a meeting

in the village and talk it over one of these days."

The old woman nodded in a shrewd silence, and watched them depart.

"Wull, I reckon Jimmy Gedge ull lasst my time," she said to herself with

a chuckle.

* * * * *

If Mrs. Jellison had this small belief in the powers of the new mistress

of Mellor over matters which, according to her, had been settled

generations ago by "the Lord and natur'," Marcella certainly was in no

mood to contradict her. She walked through the village on her return

scanning everything about her--the slatternly girls plaiting on the

doorsteps, the children in the lane, the loungers round the various

"publics," the labourers, old and young, who touched their caps to

her--with a moody and passionate eye.

"Mary!" she broke out as they neared the Rectory, "I shall be

twenty-four directly. How much harm do you think I shall have done here

by the time I am sixty-four?"

Mary laughed at her, and tried to cheer her. But Marcella was in the

depths of self-disgust.

"What is wanted, really wanted," she said with intensity, "is not _my_

help, but _their_ growth. How can I make them _take for

themselves_--take, roughly and selfishly even, if they will only take!

As for my giving, what relation has it to anything real or lasting?"

Mary was scandalised.

"I declare you are as bad as Mr. Craven," she said. "He told Charles

yesterday that the curtseys of the old women in the village to him and

Charles--women old enough to be their grandmothers--sickened him of the

whole place, and that he should regard it as the chief object of his

work here to make such things impossible in the future. Or perhaps

you're still of Mr.--Mr. Wharton's opinion--you'll be expecting Charles

and me to give up charity. But it's no good, my dear. We're not

'advanced,' and we never shall be."

At the mention of Wharton Marcella threw her proud head back; wave after

wave of changing expression passed over the face.

"I often remember the things Mr. Wharton said in this village," she said

at last. "There was life and salt and power in many of them. It's not

what he said, but what he was, that one wants to forget."

They parted presently, and Marcella went heavily home. The rising of the

spring, the breath of the April air, had never yet been sad and

oppressive to her as they were to-day.

CHAPTER VI.

"Oh! Miss Boyce, may I come in?"

The voice was Frank Leven's. Marcella was sitting in the old library

alone late on the following afternoon. Louis Craven, who was now her

paid agent and adviser, had been with her, and she had accounts and

estimates before her.

"Come in," she said, startled a little by Frank's tone and manner, and

looking at him interrogatively.

Frank shut the heavy old door carefully behind him. Then, as he advanced

to her she saw that his flushed face wore an expression unlike anything

she had yet seen there--of mingled joy and fear.

She drew back involuntarily.

"Is there anything--anything wrong?"

"No," he said impetuously, "no! But I have something to tell you, and I

don't know how. I don't know whether I ought. I have run almost all the

way from the Court."

And, indeed, he could hardly get his breath. He took a stool she pushed

to him, and tried to collect himself. She heard her heart beat as she

waited for him to speak.

"It's about Lord Maxwell," he said at last, huskily, turning his head

away from her to the fire. "I've just had a long walk with him. Then he

left me; he had no idea I came on here. But something drove me; I felt

I must come, I must tell. Will you promise not to be angry with me--to

believe that I've thought about it--that I'm doing it for the best?"

He looked at her nervously.

"If you wouldn't keep me waiting so long," she said faintly, while her

cheeks and lips grew white.

"Well,--I was mad this morning! Betty hasn't spoken to me since

yesterday. She's been always about with him, and Miss Raeburn let me see

once or twice last night that she thought I was in the way. I never

slept a wink last night, and I kept out of their sight all the morning.

Then, after lunch, I went up to him, and I asked him to come for a walk

with me. He looked at me rather queerly--I suppose I was pretty savage.

Then he said he'd come. And off we went, ever so far across the park.

And I let out. I don't know what I said; I suppose I made a beast of

myself. But anyway, I asked him to tell me what he meant, and to tell

me, if he could, what Betty meant. I said I knew I was a cool hand, and

he might turn me out of the house, and refuse to have anything more to

do with me if he liked. But I was going to rack and ruin, and should

never be any good till I knew where I stood--and Betty would never be

serious--and, in short, was he in love with her himself? for any one

could see what Miss Raeburn was thinking of."

The boy gulped down something like a sob, and tried to give himself time

to be coherent again. Marcella sat like a stone.

"When he heard me say that--'in love with her yourself,' he stopped

dead. I saw that I had made him angry. 'What right have you or any one

else,' he said, very short, 'to ask me such a question?' Then I just

lost my head, and said anything that came handy. I told him everybody

talked about it--which, of course, was rubbish--and at last I said, 'Ask

anybody; ask the Winterbournes, ask Miss Boyce--they all think it as

much as I do.' '_Miss Boyce_!' he said--'Miss Boyce thinks I want to

marry Betty Macdonald?' Then I didn't know what to say--for, of course,

I knew I'd taken your name in vain; and he sat down on the grass beside

a little stream there is in the park, and he didn't speak to me for a

long time--I could see him throwing little stones into the water. And at

last he called me. 'Frank!' he said; and I went up to him. And then--"

The lad seemed to tremble all over. He bent forward and laid his hand on

Marcella's knee, touching her cold ones.

"And then he said, 'I can't understand yet, Frank, how you or anybody

else can have mistaken my friendship for Betty Macdonald. At any rate, I

know there's been no mistake on her part. And if you take my advice,

you'll go and speak to her like a man, with all your heart, and see what

she says. You don't deserve her yet, that I can tell you. As for me'--I

can't describe the look of his face; I only know I wanted to go

away--'you and I will be friends for many years, I hope, so perhaps you

may just understand this, once for all. For me there never has been, and

there never will be, but one woman in the world--to love. And you know,'

he said after a bit, 'or you ought to know, very well, who that woman

is.' And then he got up and walked away. He did not ask me to come, and

I felt I dared not go after him. And then I lay and thought. I

remembered being here; I thought of what I had said to you--of what I

had fancied now and then about--about you. I felt myself a brute all

round; for what right had I to come and tell you what he told me? And

yet, there it was--I had to come. And if it was no good my coming, why,

we needn't say anything about it ever, need we? But--but--just look

here, Miss Boyce; if you--if you could begin over again, and make Aldous

happy, then there'd be a good many other people happy too--I can tell

you that."

He could hardly speak plainly. Evidently there was on him an

overmastering impulse of personal devotion, gratitude, remorse, which

for the moment even eclipsed his young passion. It was but vaguely

explained by anything he had said; it rested clearly on the whole of his

afternoon's experience.

But neither could Marcella speak, and her pallor began to alarm him.

"I say!" he cried; "you're not angry with me?"

She moved away from him, and with her shaking finger began to cut the

pages of a book that lay open on the mantelpiece. The little mechanical

action seemed gradually to restore her to self-control.

"I don't think I can talk about it," she said at last, with an effort;

"not now."

"Oh! I know," said Frank, in penitence, looking at her black dress;

"you've been upset, and had such a lot of trouble. But I--"

She laid her hand on his shoulder. He thought he had never seen her so

beautiful, pale as she was.

"I'm not the least angry. I'll tell you so--another day. Now, are you

going to Betty?"

The young fellow sprang up, all his expression changing, answering to

the stimulus of the word.

"They'll be home directly, Miss Raeburn and Betty," he said steadily,

buttoning his coat; "they'd gone out calling somewhere. Oh! she'll lead

me a wretched life, will Betty, before she's done!"

A charming little ghost of a smile crossed Marcella's white lips.

"Probably Betty knows her business," she said; "if she's quite

unmanageable, send her to me."

In his general turmoil of spirits the boy caught her hand and kissed

it--would have liked, indeed, to kiss her and all the world. But she

laughed, and sent him away, and with a sly, lingering look at her he

departed.

She sank into her chair and never moved for long. The April sun was just

sinking behind the cedars, and through the open south window of the

library came little spring airs and scents of spring flowers. There was

an endless twitter of birds, and beside her the soft chatter of the wood

fire. An hour before, her mood had been at open war with the spring, and

with all those impulses and yearnings in herself which answered to it.

Now it seemed to her that a wonderful and buoyant life, akin to all the

vast stir, the sweet revivals of Nature, was flooding her whole being.

She gave herself up to it, in a trance interwoven with all the loveliest

and deepest things she had ever felt--with her memory of Hallin, with

her new gropings after God. Just as the light was going she got up

hurriedly and went to her writing-table. She wrote a little note, sat

over it a while, with her face hidden in her hands, then sealed,

addressed, and stamped it. She went out herself to the hall to put it in

the letter-box. For the rest of the evening she went about in a state of

dream, overcome sometimes by rushes of joy, which yet had in them

exquisite elements of pain; hungering for the passage of the hours, for

sleep that might cancel some of them; picturing the road to the Court

and Widrington, along which the old postman had by now carried her

letter--the bands of moonlight and shade lying across it, the quiet of

the budding woods, and the spot on the hillside where he had spoken to

her in that glowing October. It must lie all night in a dull office--her

letter; she was impatient and sorry for it. And when he got it, it would

tell him nothing, though she thought it would rather surprise him. It

was the merest formal request that he would, if he could, come and see

her again the following morning on business.

During the evening Mrs. Boyce lay on the sofa and read. It always still

gave the daughter a certain shock of surprise when she saw the slight

form resting in this way. In words Mrs. Boyce would allow nothing, and

her calm composure had been unbroken from the moment of their return

home, though it was not yet two months since her husband's death. In

these days she read enormously, which again was a new trait--especially

novels. She read each through rapidly, laid it down without a word of

comment, and took up another. Once or twice, but very rarely, Marcella

surprised her in absent meditation, her hand covering the page. From the

hard, satiric brightness of her look on these occasions it seemed

probable that she was speculating on the discrepancies between fiction

and real life, and on the falsity of most literary sentiment.

To-night Marcella sat almost silent--she was making a frock for a

village child she had carried off from its mother, who was very ill--and

Mrs. Boyce read. But as the clock approached ten, the time when they

generally went upstairs, Marcella made a few uncertain movements, and

finally got up, took a stool, and sat down beside the sofa.

* * * * *

An hour later Marcella entered her own room. As she closed the door

behind her she gave an involuntary sob, put down her light, and hurrying

up to the bed, fell on her knees beside it and wept long. Yet her mother

had not been unkind to her. Far from it. Mrs. Boyce had praised her--in

few words, but with evident sincerity--for the courage that could, if

necessary, put convention aside; had spoken of her own relief; had said

pleasant things of Lord Maxwell; had bantered Marcella a little on her

social schemes, and wished her the independence to stick to them.

Finally, as they got up to go to bed, she kissed Marcella twice instead

of once, and said:

"Well, my dear, I shall not be in your way to-morrow morning; I promise

you that."

The speaker's satisfaction was plain; yet nothing could have been less

maternal. The girl's heart, when she found herself alone, was very sore,

and the depression of a past which had been so much of a failure, so

lacking in any satisfied emotion and the sweet preludes of family

affection, darkened for a while even the present and the future.

After a time she got up, and leaving her room, went to sit in a passage

outside it. It was the piece of wide upper corridor leading to the

winding stairs she had descended on the night of the ball. It was one of

the loneliest and oddest places in the house, for it communicated only

with her room and the little staircase, which was hardly ever used. It

was, indeed, a small room in itself, and was furnished with a few huge

old chairs with moth-eaten frames and tattered seats. A flowery paper of

last-century date sprawled over the walls, the carpet had many holes in

it, and the shallow, traceried windows, set almost flush in the outer

surface of the wall, were curtainless now, as they had been two years

before.

She drew one of the old chairs to a window, and softly opened it. There

was a young moon, and many stars, seen uncertainly through the rush of

April cloud. Every now and then a splash of rain moved the creepers and

swept across the lawn, to be followed by a spell of growing and

breathing silence. The scent of hyacinths and tulips mounted through the

wet air. She could see a long ghostly line of primroses, from which rose

the grey base of the Tudor front, checkered with a dim light and shade.

Beyond the garden, with its vague forms of fountain and sun-dial, the

cedars stood watching; the little church slept to her left.

So, face to face with Nature, the old house, and the night, she took

passionate counsel with herself. After to-night surely, she would be no

more lonely! She was going for ever from her own keeping to that of

another. For she never, from the moment she wrote her letter, had the

smallest doubt as to what his answer to her would be; never the smallest

dread that he would, even in the lightest passing impression, connect

what she was going to do with any thought of blame or wonder. Her pride

and fear were gone out of her; only, she dared not think of how he would

look and speak when the moment came, because it made her sick and faint

with feeling.

How strange to imagine what, no doubt, would be said and thought about

her return to him by the outside world! His great place in society, his

wealth, would be the obvious solution of it for many--too obvious even

to be debated. Looking back upon her thoughts of this night in after

years, she could not remember that the practical certainty of such an

interpretation had even given her a moment's pain. It was too remote

from all her now familiar ways of thinking--and his. In her early Mellor

days the enormous importance that her feverish youth attached to wealth

and birth might have been seen in her very attacks upon them. Now all

her standards were spiritualised. She had come to know what happiness

and affection are possible in three rooms, or two, on twenty-eight

shillings a week; and, on the other hand, her knowledge of Aldous--a man

of stoical and simple habit, thrust, with a student's tastes, into the

position of a great landowner--had shown her, in the case at least of

one member of the rich class, how wealth may be a true moral burden and

test, the source of half the difficulties and pains--of half the

nobleness also--of a man's life. Not in mere wealth and poverty, she

thought, but in things of quite another order--things of social sympathy

and relation--alterable at every turn, even under existing conditions,

by the human will, lie the real barriers that divide us man from man.

Had they ever really formed a part of historical time, those eight

months of their engagement? Looking back upon them, she saw herself

moving about in them like a creature without eyes, worked, blindfold, by

a crude inner mechanism that took no account really of impressions from

without. Yet that passionate sympathy with the poor--that hatred of

oppression? Even these seemed to her to-night the blind, spasmodic

efforts of a mind that all through _saw_ nothing--mistook its own

violences and self-wills for eternal right, and was but traitor to what

should have been its own first loyalties, in seeking to save and reform.

Was _true_ love now to deliver her from that sympathy, to deaden in her

that hatred? Her whole soul cried out in denial. By daily life in

natural relations with the poor, by a fruitful contact with fact, by the

clash of opinion in London, by the influence of a noble friendship, by

the education of awakening passion--what had once been mere tawdry and

violent hearsay had passed into a true devotion, a true thirst for

social good. She had ceased to take a system cut and dried from the

Venturists, or any one else; she had ceased to think of whole classes

of civilised society with abhorrence and contempt; and there had dawned

in her that temper which is in truth implied in all the more majestic

conceptions of the State--the temper that regards the main institutions

of every great civilisation, whether it be property, or law, or

religious custom, as necessarily, in some degree, divine and sacred. For

man has not been their sole artificer! Throughout there has been working

with him "the spark that fires our clay."

Yes!--but modification, progress, change, there must be, for us as for

our fathers! Would marriage fetter her? It was not the least probable

that he and she, with their differing temperaments, would think alike in

the future, any more than in the past. She would always be for

experiments, for risks, which his critical temper, his larger brain,

would of themselves be slow to enter upon. Yet she knew well enough that

in her hands they would become bearable and even welcome to him. And for

himself, she thought with a craving, remorseful tenderness of that

pessimist temper of his towards his own work and function that she knew

so well. In old days it had merely seemed to her inadequate, if not

hypocritical. She would have liked to drive the dart deeper, to make him

still unhappier! Now, would not a wife's chief function be to reconcile

him with himself and life, to cheer him forward on the lines of his own

nature, to believe, understand, help?

Yet always in the full liberty to make her own sacrifices, to realise

her own dreamlands! She thought with mingled smiles and tears of her

plans for this bit of earth that fate had brought under her hand; she

pledged herself to every man, woman, and child on it so to live her life

that each one of theirs should be the richer for it; she set out, so far

as in her lay, to "choose equality." And beyond Mellor, in the great

changing world of social speculation and endeavour, she prayed always

for the open mind, the listening heart.

"There is one conclusion, one cry, I always come back to at last," she

remembered hearing Hallin say to a young Conservative with whom he had

been having a long economic and social argument. "_Never resign

yourself_!--that seems to be the main note of it. Say, if you

will--believe, if you will, that human nature, being what it is, and

what, so far as we can see, it always must be, the motives which work

the present social and industrial system can never be largely

superseded; that property and saving--luck, too!--struggle, success, and

failure, must go on. That is one's intellectual conclusion; and one has

a right to it--you and I are at one in it. But then--on the heels of it

comes the moral imperative! 'Hold what you please about systems and

movements, and fight for what you hold; only, as an individual--_never

say--never think!_--that it is in the order of things, in the purpose of

God, that one of these little ones--this Board-School child, this man

honestly out of work, this woman "sweated" out of her life--should

perish!' A contradiction, or a commonplace, you say? Well and good. The

only truths that burn themselves into the conscience, that work

themselves out through the slow and manifold processes of the personal

will into a pattern of social improvement, are the contradictions and

the commonplaces!"

So here, in the dark, alone with the haunting, uplifting presences of

"admiration, hope, and love," Marcella vowed, within the limits of her

personal scope and power, never to give up the struggle for a nobler

human fellowship, the lifelong toil to understand, the passionate effort

to bring honour and independence and joy to those who had them not. But

not alone; only, not alone! She had learnt something of the dark

aspects, the crushing complexity of the world. She turned from them

to-night, at last, with a natural human terror, to hide herself in her

own passion, to make of love her guide and shelter. Her whole rich being

was wrought to an intoxication of self-giving. Oh! let the night go

faster! faster! and bring his step upon the road, her cry of repentance

to his ear.

* * * * *

"I trust I am not late. Your clocks, I think, are ahead of ours. You

said eleven?"

Aldous advanced into the room with hand outstretched. He had been

ushered into the drawing-room, somewhat to his surprise.

Marcella came forward. She was in black as before, and pale, but there

was a knot of pink anemones fastened at her throat, which, in the play

they made with her face and hair, gave him a start of pleasure.

"I wanted," she said, "to ask you again about those shares--how to

manage the sale of them. Could you--could you give me the name of some

one in the City you trust?"

He was conscious of some astonishment.

"Certainly," he said. "If you would rather not entrust it to Mr. French,

I can give you the name of the firm my grandfather and I have always

employed; or I could manage it for you if you would allow me. You have

quite decided?"

"Yes," she said mechanically,--"quite. And--and I think I could do it

myself. Would you mind writing the address for me, and will you read

what I have written there?"

She pointed to the little writing-table and the writing materials upon

it, then turned away to the window. He looked at her an instant with

uneasy amazement.

He walked up to the table, put down his hat and gloves beside it, and

stooped to read what was written.

_"It was in this room you told me I had done you a great wrong. But

wrongdoers may be pardoned sometimes, if they ask it. Let me know by a

sign, a look, if I may ask it. If not it would be kind to go away

without a word."_

She heard a cry. But she did not look up. She only knew that he had

crossed the room, that his arms were round her, her head upon his

breast.

"Marcella!--wife!" was all he said, and that in a voice so low, so

choked, that she could hardly hear it.

He held her so for a minute or more, she weeping, his own eyes dim with

tears, her cheek laid against the stormy beating of his heart.

At last he raised her face, so that he could see it.

"So this--this was what you had in your mind towards me, while I have

been despairing--fighting with myself, walking in darkness. Oh, my

darling! explain it. How can it be? Am I real? Is this face--these lips

real?"--he kissed both, trembling. "Oh! when a man is raised thus--in a

moment--from torture and hunger to full joy, there are no words--"

His head sank on hers, and there was silence again, while he wrestled

with himself.

At last she looked up, smiling.

"You are to please come over here," she said, and leading him by the

hand, she took him to the other side of the room. "That is the chair you

sat in that morning. Sit down!"

He sat down, wondering, and before he could guess what she was going to

do she had sunk on her knees beside him.

"I am going to tell you," she said, "a hundred things I never told you

before. You are to hear me confess; you are to give me penance; you are

to say the hardest things possible to me. If you don't I shall distrust

you."

She smiled at him again through her tears. "Marcella," he cried in

distress, trying to lift her, to rise himself, "you can't imagine that I

should let _you_ kneel to _me_!"

"You must," she said steadily; "well, if it will make you happier, I

will take a stool and sit by you. But you are there above me--I am at

your feet--it is the same chair, and you shall not move"--she stooped in

a hasty passion, as though atoning for her "shall," and kissed his

hand--"till I have said it all--every word!"

So she began it--her long confession, from the earliest days. He winced

often--she never wavered. She carried through the sharpest analysis of

her whole mind with regard to him; of her relations to him and Wharton

in the old days; of the disloyalty and lightness with which she had

treated the bond, that yet she had never, till quite the end, thought

seriously of breaking; of her selfish indifference to, even contempt

for, his life, his interests, his ideals; of her calm forecasts of a

married state in which she was always to take the lead and always to be

in the right--then of the real misery and struggle of the Hurd trial.

"That was my first true _experience_," she said; "it made me wild and

hard, but it burnt, it purified. I began to live. Then came the day

when--when we parted--the time in hospital--the nursing--the evening on

the terrace. I had been thinking of you--because remorse made me think

of you--solitude--Mr. Hallin--everything. I wanted you to be kind to me,

to behave as though you had forgotten everything, because it would have

made me comfortable and happy; or I thought it would. And then, that

night you wouldn't be kind, you wouldn't forget--instead, you made me

pay my penalty."

She stared at him an instant, her dark brows drawn together, struggling

to keep her tears back, yet lightening from moment to moment into a

divine look of happiness. He tried to take possession of her, to stop

her, to silence all this self-condemnation on his breast. But she would

not have it; she held him away from her.

"That night, though I walked up and down the terrace with Mr. Wharton

afterwards, and tried to fancy myself in love with him--that night, for

the first time, I began to love you! It was mean and miserable, wasn't

it, not to be able to appreciate the gift, only to feel when it was

taken away? It was like being good when one is punished, because one

must--"

She laid down her head against his chair with a long sigh. He could bear

it no longer. He lifted her in his arms, talking to her passionately of

the feelings which had been the counterpart to hers, the longings,

jealousies, renunciations--above all, the agony of that moment at the

Mastertons' party.

"Hallin was the only person who understood," he said; "he knew all the

time that I should love you to my grave. I could talk to him."

She gave a little sob of joy, and pushing herself away from him an

instant, she laid a hand on his shoulder.

"I told him," she said--"I told him, that night he was dying."

He looked at her with an emotion too deep even for caresses.

"He never spoke--coherently--after you left him. At the end he motioned

to me, but there were no words. If I could possibly love you more, it

would be because you gave him that joy."

He held her hand, and there was silence. Hallin stood beside them,

living and present again in the life of their hearts.

Then, little by little, delight and youth and love stole again upon

their senses.

"Do you suppose," he exclaimed, "that I yet understand in the least how

it is that I am here, in this chair, with you beside me? You have told

me much ancient history!--but all that truly concerns me this morning

lies in the dark. The last time I saw you, you were standing at the

garden-door, with a look which made me say to myself that I was the same

blunderer I had always been, and had far best keep away. Bridge me the

gap, please, between that hell and this heaven!"

She held her head high, and changed her look of softness for a frown.

"You had spoken of '_marriage!_'" she said. "Marriage in the abstract,

with a big _M_. You did it in the tone of my guardian giving me away.

Could I be expected to stand that?"

He laughed. The joy in the sound almost hurt her.

"So one's few virtues smite one," he said as he captured her hand again.

"Will you acknowledge that I played my part well? I thought to myself,

in the worst of tempers, as I drove away, that I could hardly have been

more official. But all this is evasion. What I desire to know,

categorically, is, what made you write that letter to me last night,

after--after the day before?"

She sat with her chin on her hand, a smile dancing.

"Whom did you walk with yesterday afternoon?" she said slowly.

He looked bewildered.

"There!" she cried, with a sudden wild gesture; "when I have told you it

will undo it all. Oh! if Frank had never said a word to me; if I had had

no excuse, no assurance, nothing to go upon, had just called to you in

the dark, as it were, there would be some generosity, some atonement in

that! Now you will think I waited to be meanly sure, instead of--"

She dropped her dark head upon his hand again with an abandonment which

unnerved him, which he had almost to brace himself against.

"So it was Frank," he said--"_Frank!_ Two hours ago, from my window, I

saw him and Betty down by the river in the park. They were supposed to

be fishing. As far as I could see they were sifting or walking hand in

hand, in the face of day and the keepers. I prepared wise things to say

to them. None of them will be said now, or listened to. As Frank's

mentor I am undone."

He held her, looking at her intently.

"Shall I tell you," he asked, in a lower voice--"shall I show you

something--something that I had on my heart as I was walking here?"

He slipped his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat, and drew out a

little plain black leather case. When he opened it she saw that it

contained a pen-and-ink sketch of herself that had been done one evening

by a young artist staying at the Court, and--a bunch of traveller's joy.

She gazed at it with a mixture of happiness and pain. It reminded her of

cold and selfish thoughts, and set them in relief against his constancy.

But she had given away all rights--even the right to hate herself.

Piteously, childishly, with seeking eyes, she held out her hand to him,

as though mutely asking him for the answer to her outpouring--the last

word of it all. He caught her whisper.

"Forgive?" he said to her, scorning her for the first and only time in

their history. "Does a man _forgive_ the hand that sets him free, the

voice that recreates him? Choose some better word--my wife!"