The little old lady's demeanour, confronted with this very pretty face

and figure was a thought less autocratic and abrupt than usual. Her

shrewd eyes saw at once that she had no common adventuress to deal with.

She was woman of the world enough, too, to know that 'birth' was not what

it had been in her young days, that even money was rather rococo, and

that good looks, manners, and a knowledge of literature, art, and music

(and this woman looked like one of that sort), were often considered

socially more valuable. She was therefore both wary and affable.

"How do you do?" she said. "I have heard of you. May we sit down for a

minute in your garden? The bull was a wretch!"

But even in speaking, she was uneasily conscious that Mrs. Noel's clear

eyes were seeing very well what she had come for. The look in them

indeed was almost cynical; and in spite of her sympathetic murmurs, she

did not somehow seem to believe in the bull. This was disconcerting.

Why had Barbara condescended to mention the wretched brute? And she

decided to take him by the horns.

"Babs," she said, "go to the Inn and order me a 'fly.' I shall drive

back, I feel very shaky," and, as Mrs. Noel offered to send her maid, she

added:

"No, no, my granddaughter will go."

Barbara having departed with a quizzical look, Lady Casterley patted the

rustic seat, and said:

"Do come and sit down, I want to talk to you:"

Mrs. Noel obeyed. And at once Lady Casterley perceived that "she had a

most difficult task before her. She had not expected a woman with whom

one could take no liberties. Those clear dark eyes, and that soft,

perfectly graceful manner--to a person so 'sympathetic' one should be

able to say anything, and--one couldn't! It was awkward. And suddenly

she noticed that Mrs. Noel was sitting perfectly upright, as

upright--more upright, than she was herself. A bad, sign--a very bad

sign! Taking out her handkerchief, she put it to her lips.

"I suppose you think," she said, "that we were not chased by a bull."

"I am sure you were."

"Indeed! Ah! But I've something else to talk to you about."

Mrs. Noel's face quivered back, as a flower might when it was going to be

plucked; and again Lady Casterley put her handkerchief to her lips. This

time she rubbed them hard. There was nothing to come off; to do so,

therefore, was a satisfaction.

"I am an old woman," she said, "and you mustn't mind what I say."

Mrs. Noel did not answer, but looked straight at her visitor; to whom it

seemed suddenly that this was another person. What was it about that

face, staring at her! In a weird way it reminded her of a child that one

had hurt--with those great eyes and that soft hair, and the mouth thin,

in a line, all of a sudden. And as if it had been jerked out of her, she

said:

"I don't want to hurt you, my dear. It's about my grandson, of course."

But Mrs. Noel made neither sign nor motion; and the feeling of irritation

which so rapidly attacks the old when confronted by the unexpected, came

to Lady Casterley's aid.

"His name," she said, "is being coupled with yours in a way that's doing

him a great deal of harm. You don't wish to injure him, I'm sure."

Mrs. Noel shook her head, and Lady Casterley went on:

"I don't know what they're not saying since the evening your friend Mr.

Courtier hurt his knee. Miltoun has been most unwise. You had not

perhaps realized that."

Mrs. Noel's answer was bitterly distinct:

"I didn't know anyone was sufficiently interested in my doings."

Lady Casterley suffered a gesture of exasperation to escape her.

"Good heavens!" she said; "every common person is interested in a woman

whose position is anomalous. Living alone as you do, and not a widow,

you're fair game for everybody, especially in the country."

Mrs. Noel's sidelong glance, very clear and cynical, seemed to say: "Even

for you."

"I am not entitled to ask your story," Lady Casterley went on, "but if

you make mysteries you must expect the worst interpretation put on them.

My grandson is a man of the highest principle; he does not see things

with the eyes of the world, and that should have made you doubly careful

not to compromise him, especially at a time like this."

Mrs. Noel smiled. This smile startled Lady Casterley; it seemed, by

concealing everything, to reveal depths of strength and subtlety. Would

the woman never show her hand? And she said abruptly:

"Anything serious, of course, is out of the question."

"Quite."

That word, which of all others seemed the right one, was spoken so that

Lady Casterley did not know in the least what it meant. Though

occasionally employing irony, she detested it in others. No woman should

be allowed to use it as a weapon! But in these days, when they were so

foolish as to want votes, one never knew what women would be at. This

particular woman, however, did not look like one of that sort. She was

feminine--very feminine--the sort of creature that spoiled men by being

too nice to them. And though she had come determined to find out all

about everything and put an end to it, she saw Barbara re-entering the

wicket gate with considerable relief.

"I am ready to walk home now," she said. And getting up from the rustic

seat, she made Mrs. Noel a satirical little bow.

"Thank you for letting me rest. Give me your arm, child."

Barbara gave her arm, and over her shoulder threw a swift smile at Mrs.

Noel, who did not answer it, but stood looking quietly after them, her

eyes immensely dark and large.

Out in the lane Lady Casterley walked on, very silent, digesting her

emotions.

"What about the 'fly,' Granny?"

"What 'fly'?"

"The one you told me to order."

"You don't mean to say that you took me seriously?"

"No," said Barbara.

"Ha!"

They proceeded some little way farther before Lady Casterley said

suddenly:

"She is deep."

"And dark," said Barbara. "I am afraid you were not good!"

Lady Casterley glanced upwards.

"I detest this habit," she said, "amongst you young people, of taking

nothing seriously. Not even bulls," she added, with a grim smile.

Barbara threw back her head and sighed.

"Nor 'flys,'" she said.

Lady Casterley saw that she had closed her eyes and opened her lips. And

she thought:

"She's a very beautiful girl. I had no idea she was so beautiful--but

too big!" And she added aloud:

"Shut your mouth! You will get one down!"

They spoke no more till they had entered the avenue; then Lady Casterley

said sharply:

"Who is this coming down the drive?"

"Mr. Courtier, I think."

"What does he mean by it, with that leg?"

"He is coming to talk to you, Granny."

Lady Casterley stopped short.

"You are a cat," she said; "a sly cat. Now mind, Babs, I won't have it!"

"No, darling," murmured Barbara; "you shan't have it--I'll take him off

your hands."

"What does your mother mean," stammered Lady Casterley, "letting you grow

up like this! You're as bad as she was at your age!"

"Worse!" said Barbara. "I dreamed last night that I could fly!"

"If you try that," said Lady Casterley grimly, "you'll soon come to

grief. Good-morning, sir; you ought to be in bed!"

Courtier raised his hat.

"Surely it is not for me to be where you are not!" And he added gloomily:

"The war scare's dead!"

"Ah!" said Lady Casterley: "your occupation's gone then. You'll go back

to London now, I suppose." Looking suddenly at Barbara she saw that the

girl's eyes were half-closed, and that she was smiling; it seemed to Lady

Casterley too or was it fancy?--that she shook her head.

CHAPTER XIII

Thanks to Lady Valleys, a patroness of birds, no owl was ever shot on the

Monkland Court estate, and those soft-flying spirits of the dusk hooted

and hunted, to the great benefit of all except the creeping voles. By

every farm, cottage, and field, they passed invisible, quartering the

dark air. Their voyages of discovery stretched up on to the moor as far

as the wild stone man, whose origin their wisdom perhaps knew. Round

Audrey Noel's cottage they were as thick as thieves, for they had just

there two habitations in a long, old, holly-grown wall, and almost seemed

to be guarding the mistress of that thatched dwelling--so numerous were

their fluttering rushes, so tenderly prolonged their soft sentinel

callings. Now that the weather was really warm, so that joy of life was

in the voles, they found those succulent creatures of an extraordinarily

pleasant flavour, and on them each pair was bringing up a family of

exceptionally fine little owls, very solemn, with big heads, bright large

eyes, and wings as yet only able to fly downwards. There was scarcely

any hour from noon of the day (for some of them had horns) to the small

sweet hours when no one heard them, that they forgot to salute the very

large, quiet, wingless owl whom they could espy moving about by day above

their mouse-runs, or preening her white and sometimes blue and sometimes

grey feathers morning and evening in a large square hole high up in the

front wall. And they could not understand at all why no swift

depredating graces nor any habit of long soft hooting belonged to that

lady-bird.

On the evening of the day when she received that early morning call, as

soon as dusk had fallen, wrapped in a long thin cloak, with black lace

over her dark hair, Audrey Noel herself fluttered out into the lanes, as

if to join the grave winged hunters of the invisible night. Those far,

continual sounds, not stilled in the country till long after the sun

dies, had but just ceased from haunting the air, where the late May-scent

clung as close as fragrance clings to a woman's robe. There was just the

barking of a dog, the boom of migrating chafers, the song of the stream,

and of the owls, to proclaim the beating in the heart of this sweet

Night. Nor was there any light by which Night's face could be seen; it

was hidden, anonymous; so that when a lamp in a cottage threw a blink

over the opposite bank, it was as if some wandering painter had wrought a

picture of stones and leaves on the black air, framed it in purple, and

left it hanging. Yet, if it could only have been come at, the Night was

as full of emotion as this woman who wandered, shrinking away against the

banks if anyone passed, stopping to cool her hot face with the dew on the

ferns, walking swiftly to console her warm heart. Anonymous Night

seeking for a symbol could have found none better than this errant

figure, to express its hidden longings, the fluttering, unseen rushes of

its dark wings, and all its secret passion of revolt against its own

anonymity....

At Monkland Court, save for little Ann, the morning passed but dumbly,

everyone feeling that something must be done, and no one knowing what.

At lunch, the only allusion to the situation had been Harbinger's

inquiry:

"When does Miltoun return?"

He had wired, it seemed, to say that he was motoring down that night.

"The sooner the better," Sir William murmured: "we've still a fortnight."

But all had felt from the tone in which he spoke these words, how serious

was the position in the eyes of that experienced campaigner.

What with the collapse of the war scare, and this canard about Mrs. Noel,

there was indeed cause for alarm.

The afternoon post brought a letter from Lord Valleys marked Express.

Lady Valleys opened it with a slight grimace, which deepened as she read.

Her handsome, florid face wore an expression of sadness seldom seen

there. There was, in fact, more than a touch of dignity in her reception

of the unpalatable news.

"Eustace declares his intention of marrying this Mrs. Noel"--so ran her

husband's letter--"I know, unfortunately, of no way in which I can

prevent him. If you can discover legitimate means of dissuasion, it

would be well to use them. My dear, it's the very devil."

It was the very devil! For, if Miltoun had already made up his mind to

marry her, without knowledge of the malicious rumour, what would not be

his determination now? And the woman of the world rose up in Lady

Valleys. This marriage must not come off. It was contrary to almost

every instinct of one who was practical not only by character, but by

habit of life and training. Her warm and full-blooded nature had a

sneaking sympathy with love and pleasure, and had she not been practical,

she might have found this side of her a serious drawback to the main

tenor of a life so much in view of the public eye. Her consciousness of

this danger in her own case made her extremely alive to the risks of an

undesirable connection--especially if it were a marriage--to any public

man. At the same time the mother-heart in her was stirred. Eustace had

never been so deep in her affection as Bertie, still he was her

first-born; and in face of news which meant that he was lost to her--for

this must indeed be 'the marriage of two minds' (or whatever that

quotation was)--she felt strangely jealous of a woman, who had won her

son's love, when she herself had never won it. The aching of this

jealousy gave her face for a moment almost a spiritual expression, then

passed away into impatience. Why should he marry her? Things could be

arranged. People spoke of it already as an illicit relationship; well

then, let people have what they had invented. If the worst came to the

worst, this was not the only constituency in England; and a dissolution

could not be far off. Better anything than a marriage which would

handicap him all his life! But would it be so great a handicap? After

all, beauty counted for much! If only her story were not too

conspicuous! But what was her story? Not to know it was absurd! That

was the worst of people who were not in Society, it was so difficult to

find out! And there rose in her that almost brutal resentment, which

ferments very rapidly in those who from their youth up have been hedged

round with the belief that they and they alone are the whole of the

world. In this mood Lady Valleys passed the letter to her daughters.

They read, and in turn handed it to Bertie, who in silence returned it to

his mother.

But that evening, in the billiard-room, having manoeuvred to get him to

herself, Barbara said to Courtier:

"I wonder if you will answer me a question, Mr. Courtier?"

"If I may, and can."

Her low-cut dress was of yew-green, with, little threads of flame-colour,

matching her hair, so that there was about her a splendour of darkness

and whiteness and gold, almost dazzling; and she stood very still,

leaning back against the lighter green of the billiard-table, grasping

its edge so tightly that the smooth strong backs of her hands quivered.

"We have just heard that Miltoun is going to ask Mrs. Noel to marry him.

People are never mysterious, are they, without good reason? I wanted you

to tell me--who is she?"

"I don't think I quite grasp the situation," murmured Courtier. "You

said--to marry him?"

Seeing that she had put out her hand, as if begging for the truth, he

added: "How can your brother marry her--she's married!"

"Oh!"

"I'd no idea you didn't know that much."

"We thought there was a divorce."

The expression of which mention has been made--that peculiar white-hot

sardonically jolly look--visited Courtier's face at once. "Hoist with

their own petard! The usual thing. Let a pretty woman live alone--the

tongues of men will do the rest."

"It was not so bad as that," said Barbara dryly; "they said she had

divorced her husband."

Caught out thus characteristically riding past the hounds Courtier bit

his lips.

"You had better hear the story now. Her father was a country parson, and

a friend of my father's; so that I've known her from a child. Stephen

Lees Noel was his curate. It was a 'snap' marriage--she was only twenty,

and had met hardly any men. Her father was ill and wanted to see her

settled before he died. Well, she found out almost directly, like a good

many other people, that she'd made an utter mistake."

Barbara came a little closer.

"What was the man like?"

"Not bad in his way, but one of those narrow, conscientious pig-headed

fellows who make the most trying kind of husband--bone egoistic. A

parson of that type has no chance at all. Every mortal thing he has to

do or say helps him to develop his worst points. The wife of a man like

that's no better than a slave. She began to show the strain of it at

last; though she's the sort who goes on till she snaps. It took him four

years to realize. Then, the question was, what were they to do? He's a

very High Churchman, with all their feeling about marriage; but luckily

his pride was wounded. Anyway, they separated two years ago; and there

she is, left high and dry. People say it was her fault. She ought to

have known her own mind--at twenty! She ought to have held on and hidden

it up somehow. Confound their thick-skinned charitable souls, what do

they know of how a sensitive woman suffers? Forgive me, Lady Barbara--I

get hot over this." He was silent; then seeing her eyes fixed on him,

went on: "Her mother died when she was born, her father soon after her

marriage. She's enough money of her own, luckily, to live on quietly.

As for him, he changed his parish and runs one somewhere in the Midlands.

One's sorry for the poor devil, too, of course! They never see each

other; and, so far as I know, they don't correspond. That, Lady Barbara,

is the simple history."

Barbara, said, "Thank you," and turned away; and he heard her mutter:

"What a shame!"

But he could not tell whether it was Mrs. Noel's fate, or the husband's

fate, or the thought of Miltoun that had moved her to those words.

She puzzled him by her self-possession, so almost hard, her way of

refusing to show feeling.' Yet what a woman she would make if the drying

curse of high-caste life were not allowed to stereotype and shrivel her!

If enthusiasm were suffered to penetrate and fertilize her soul! She

reminded him of a great tawny lily. He had a vision of her, as that

flower, floating, freed of roots and the mould of its cultivated soil, in

the liberty of the impartial air. What a passionate and noble thing she

might become! What radiance and perfume she would exhale! A spirit

Fleur-de-Lys! Sister to all the noble flowers of light that inhabited

the wind!

Leaning in the deep embrasure of his window, he looked at anonymous

Night. He could hear the owls hoot, and feel a heart beating out there

somewhere in the darkness, but there came no answer to his wondering.

Would she--this great tawny lily of a girl--ever become unconscious of

her environment, not in manner merely, but in the very soul, so that she

might be just a woman, breathing, suffering, loving, and rejoicing with

the poet soul of all mankind? Would she ever be capable of riding out

with the little company of big hearts, naked of advantage? Courtier had

not been inside a church for twenty years, having long felt that he must

not enter the mosques of his country without putting off the shoes of

freedom, but he read the Bible, considering it a very great poem. And

the old words came haunting him: 'Verily I say unto you, It is harder for

a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter

the kingdom of Heaven.' And now, looking into the Night, whose darkness

seemed to hold the answer to all secrets, he tried to read the riddle of

this girl's future, with which there seemed so interwoven that larger

enigma, how far the spirit can free itself, in this life, from the matter

that encompasseth.

The Night whispered suddenly, and low down, as if rising from the sea,

came the moon, dropping a wan robe of light till she gleamed out nude

against the sky-curtain. Night was no longer anonymous. There in the

dusky garden the statue of Diana formed slowly before his eyes, and

behind her--as it were, her temple--rose the tall spire of the cypress

tree.

CHAPTER XIV

A copy of the Bucklandbury News, containing an account of his evening

adventure, did not reach Miltoun till he was just starting on his return

journey. It came marked with blue pencil together with a note.

"MY DEAR EUSTACE,

"The enclosed--however unwarranted and impudent--requires attention. But

we shall do nothing till you come back.

"Yours ever,

"WILLIAM SHROPTON."

The effect on Miltoun might perhaps have been different had he not been

so conscious of his intention to ask Audrey Noel to be his wife; but in

any circumstances it is doubtful whether he would have done more than

smile, and tear the paper up. Truly that sort of thing had so little

power to hurt or disturb him personally, that he was incapable of seeing

how it could hurt or disturb others. If those who read it were affected,

so much the worse for them. He had a real, if unobtrusive, contempt for

groundlings, of whatever class; and it never entered his head to step an

inch out of his course in deference to their vagaries. Nor did it come

home to him that Mrs. Noel, wrapped in the glamour which he cast about

her, could possibly suffer from the meanness of vulgar minds. Shropton's

note, indeed, caused him the more annoyance of those two documents. It

was like his brother-in-law to make much of little!

He hardly dozed at all during his swift journey through the sleeping

country; nor when he reached his room at Monkland did he go to bed. He

had the wonderful, upborne feeling of man on the verge of achievement.

His spirit and senses were both on fire--for that was the quality of this

woman, she suffered no part of him to sleep, and he was glad of her

exactions.

He drank some tea; went out, and took a path up to the moor. It was not

yet eight o'clock when he reached the top of the nearest tor. And there,

below him, around, and above, was a land and sky transcending even his

exaltation. It was like a symphony of great music; or the nobility of a

stupendous mind laid bare; it was God up there, in His many moods.

Serenity was spread in the middle heavens, blue, illimitable, and along

to the East, three huge clouds, like thoughts brooding over the destinies

below, moved slowly toward the sea, so that great shadows filled the

valleys. And the land that lay under all the other sky was gleaming, and

quivering with every colour, as it were, clothed with the divine smile.

The wind, from the North, whereon floated the white birds of the smaller

clouds, had no voice, for it was above barriers, utterly free. Before

Miltoun, turning to this wind, lay the maze of the lower lands, the misty

greens, rose pinks, and browns of the fields, and white and grey dots and

strokes of cottages and church towers, fading into the blue veil of

distance, confined by a far range of hills. Behind him there was nothing

but the restless surface of the moor, coloured purplish-brown. On that

untamed sea of graven wildness could be seen no ship of man, save one, on

the far horizon--the grim hulk, Dartmoor Prison. There was no sound, no

scent, and it seemed to Miltoun as if his spirit had left his body, and

become part of the solemnity of God. Yet, as he stood there, with his

head bared, that strange smile which haunted him in moments of deep

feeling, showed that he had not surrendered to the Universal, that his

own spirit was but being fortified, and that this was the true and secret

source of his delight. He lay down in a scoop of the stones. The sun

entered there, but no wind, so that a dry sweet scent exuded from the

young shoots of heather. That warmth and perfume crept through the

shield of his spirit, and stole into his blood; ardent images rose before

him, the vision of an unending embrace. Out of an embrace sprang Life,

out of that the World was made, this World, with its innumerable forms,

and natures--no two alike! And from him and her would spring forms to

take their place in the great pattern. This seemed wonderful, and

right-for they would be worthy forms, who would hand on those traditions

which seemed to him so necessary and great. And then there broke on him

one of those delirious waves of natural desire, against which he had so

often fought, so often with great pain conquered. He got up, and ran

downhill, leaping over the stones, and the thicker clumps of heather.

Audrey Noel, too, had been early astir, though she had gone late enough

to bed. She dressed languidly, but very carefully, being one of those

women who put on armour against Fate, because they are proud, and dislike

the thought that their sufferings should make others suffer; because,

too, their bodies are to them as it were sacred, having been given them

in trust, to cause delight. When she had finished, she looked at herself

in the glass rather more distrustfully than usual. She felt that her

sort of woman was at a discount in these days, and being sensitive, she

was never content either with her appearance, or her habits. But, for

all that, she went on behaving in unsatisfactory ways, because she

incorrigibly loved to look as charming as she could; and even if no one

were going to see her, she never felt that she looked charming enough.

She was--as Lady Casterley had shrewdly guessed--the kind of woman who

spoils men by being too nice to them; of no use to those who wish women

to assert themselves; yet having a certain passive stoicism, very

disconcerting. With little or no power of initiative, she would do what

she was set to do with a thoroughness that would shame an initiator;

temperamentally unable to beg anything of anybody, she required love as a

plant requires water; she could give herself completely, yet remain oddly

incorruptible; in a word, hopeless, and usually beloved of those who

thought her so.

With all this, however, she was not quite what is called a 'sweet

woman--a phrase she detested--for there was in her a queer vein of gentle

cynicism. She 'saw' with extraordinary clearness, as if she had been

born in Italy and still carried that clear dry atmosphere about her soul.

She loved glow and warmth and colour; such mysticism as she felt was

pagan; and she had few aspirations--sufficient to her were things as they

showed themselves to be.

This morning, when she had made herself smell of geraniums, and fastened

all the small contrivances that hold even the best of women together, she

went downstairs to her little dining-room, set the spirit lamp going, and

taking up her newspaper, stood waiting to make tea.

It was the hour of the day most dear to her. If the dew had been brushed

off her life, it was still out there every morning on the face of Nature,

and on the faces of her flowers; there was before her all the pleasure of

seeing how each of those little creatures in the garden had slept; how

many children had been born since the Dawn; who was ailing, and needed

attention. There was also the feeling, which renews itself every morning

in people who live lonely lives, that they are not lonely, until, the day

wearing on, assures them of the fact. Not that she was idle, for she had

obtained through Courtier the work of reviewing music in a woman's paper,

for which she was intuitively fitted. This, her flowers, her own music,

and the affairs of certain families of cottagers, filled nearly all her

time. And she asked no better fate than to have every minute occupied,

having that passion for work requiring no initiation, which is natural to

the owners of lazy minds.

Suddenly she dropped her newspaper, went to the bowl of flowers on the

breakfast-table, and plucked forth two stalks of lavender; holding them

away from her, she went out into the garden, and flung them over the

wall.

This strange immolation of those two poor sprigs, born so early, gathered

and placed before her with such kind intention by her maid, seemed of all

acts the least to be expected of one who hated to hurt people's feelings,

and whose eyes always shone at the sight of flowers. But in truth the

smell of lavender--that scent carried on her husband's handkerchief and

clothes--still affected her so strongly that she could not bear to be in

a room with it. As nothing else did, it brought before her one, to live

with whom had slowly become torture. And freed by that scent, the whole

flood of memory broke in on her. The memory of three years when her

teeth had been set doggedly, on her discovery that she was chained to

unhappiness for life; the memory of the abrupt end, and of her creeping

away to let her scorched nerves recover. Of how during the first year of

this release which was not freedom, she had twice changed her abode, to

get away from her own story--not because she was ashamed of it, but

because it reminded her of wretchedness. Of how she had then come to

Monkland, where the quiet life had slowly given her elasticity again.

And then of her meeting with Miltoun; the unexpected delight of that

companionship; the frank enjoyment of the first four months. And she

remembered all her secret rejoicing, her silent identification of another

life with her own, before she acknowledged or even suspected love. And

just three weeks ago now, helping to tie up her roses, he had touched

her, and she had known. But even then, until the night of Courtier's

accident, she had not dared to realize. More concerned now for him than

for herself, she asked herself a thousand times if she had been to blame.

She had let him grow fond of her, a woman out of court, a dead woman! An

unpardonable sin! Yet surely that depended on what she was prepared to

give! And she was frankly ready to give everything, and ask for nothing.

He knew her position, he had told her that he knew. In her love for him

she gloried, would continue to glory; would suffer for it without regret.

Miltoun was right in believing that newspaper gossip was incapable of

hurting her, though her reasons for being so impervious were not what he

supposed. She was not, like him, secured from pain because such

insinuations about the private affairs of others were mean and vulgar and

beneath notice; it had not as yet occurred to her to look at the matter

in so lofty and general a light; she simply was not hurt, because she was

already so deeply Miltoun's property in spirit, that she was almost glad

that they should assign him all the rest of her. But for Miltoun's sake

she was disturbed to the soul. She had tarnished his shield in the eyes

of men; and (for she was oddly practical, and saw things in very clear

proportion) perhaps put back his career, who knew how many years!

She sat down to drink her tea. Not being a crying woman, she suffered

quietly. She felt that Miltoun would be coming to her. She did not know

at all what she should say when he did come. He could not care for her

so much as she cared for him! He was a man; men soon forget! Ah! but he

was not like most men. One could not look at his eyes without feeling

that he could suffer terribly! In all this her own reputation concerned

her not at all. Life, and her clear way of looking at things, had rooted

in her the conviction that to a woman the preciousness of her reputation

was a fiction invented by men entirely for man's benefit; a second-hand

fetish insidiously, inevitably set-up by men for worship, in novels,

plays, and law-courts. Her instinct told her that men could not feel

secure in the possession of their women unless they could believe that

women set tremendous store by sexual reputation. What they wanted to

believe, that they did believe! But she knew otherwise. Such

great-minded women as she had met or read of had always left on her the

impression that reputation for them was a matter of the spirit, having

little to do with sex. From her own feelings she knew that reputation,

for a simple woman, meant to stand well in the eyes of him or her whom

she loved best. For worldly women--and there were so many kinds of

those, besides the merely fashionable--she had always noted that its

value was not intrinsic, but commercial; not a crown of dignity, but just

a marketable asset. She did not dread in the least what people might say

of her friendship with Miltoun; nor did she feel at all that her

indissoluble marriage forbade her loving him. She had secretly felt free

as soon as she had discovered that she had never really loved her

husband; she had only gone on dutifully until the separation, from sheer

passivity, and because it was against her nature to cause pain to anyone.

The man who was still her husband was now as dead to her as if he had

never been born. She could not marry again, it was true; but she could

and did love. If that love was to be starved and die away, it would not

be because of any moral scruples.

She opened her paper languidly; and almost the first words she read,

under the heading of Election News, were these:

'Apropos of the outrage on Mr. Courtier, we are requested to state that

the lady who accompanied Lord Miltoun to the rescue of that gentleman was

Mrs. Lees Noel, wife of the Rev. Stephen Lees Noel, vicar of Clathampton,

Warwickshire.'

This dubious little daub of whitewash only brought a rather sad smile to

her lips. She left her tea, and went out into the air. There at the

gate was Miltoun coming in. Her heart leaped. But she went forward

quietly, and greeted him with cast-down eyes, as if nothing were out of

the ordinary.

CHAPTER XV

Exaltation had not left Miltoun. His sallow face was flushed, his eyes

glowed with a sort of beauty; and Audrey Noel who, better than most

women, could read what was passing behind a face, saw those eyes with the

delight of a moth fluttering towards a lamp. But in a very unemotional

voice she said:

"So you have come to breakfast. How nice of you!"

It was not in Miltoun to observe the formalities of attack. Had he been

going to fight a duel there would have been no preliminary, just a look,

a bow, and the swords crossed. So in this first engagement of his with

the soul of a woman!

He neither sat down nor suffered her to sit, but stood looking intently

into her face, and said:

"I love you."

Now that it had come, with this disconcerting swiftness, she was

strangely calm, and unashamed. The elation of knowing for sure that she

was loved was like a wand waving away all tremors, stilling them to

sweetness. Since nothing could take away that knowledge, it seemed that

she could never again be utterly unhappy. Then, too, in her nature, so

deeply, unreasoningly incapable of perceiving the importance of any

principle but love, there was a secret feeling of assurance, of triumph.

He did love her! And she, him! Well! And suddenly panic-stricken, lest

he should take back those words, she put her hand up to his breast, and

said:

"And I love you."

The feel of his arms round her, the strength and passion of that moment,

were so terribly sweet, that she died to thought, just looking up at him,

with lips parted and eyes darker with the depth of her love than he had

ever dreamed that eyes could be. The madness of his own feeling kept him

silent. And they stood there, so merged in one another that they knew

and cared nothing for any other mortal thing. It was very still in the

room; the roses and carnations in the lustre bowl, seeming to know that

their mistress was caught up into heaven, had let their perfume steal

forth and occupy every cranny of the abandoned air; a hovering bee, too,

circled round the lovers' heads, scenting, it seemed, the honey in their

hearts.

It has been said that Miltoun's face was not unhandsome; for Audrey Noel

at this moment when his eyes were so near hers, and his lips touching

her, he was transfigured, and had become the spirit of all beauty. And

she, with heart beating fast against him, her eyes, half closing from

delight, and her hair asking to be praised with its fragrance, her cheeks

fainting pale with emotion, and her arms too languid with happiness to

embrace him--she, to him, was the incarnation of the woman that visits

dreams.

So passed that moment.

The bee ended it; who, impatient with flowers that hid their honey so

deep, had entangled himself in Audrey's hair. And then, seeing that

words, those dreaded things, were on his lips, she tried to kiss them

back. But they came:

"When will you marry me?"

It all swayed a little. And with marvellous rapidity the whole position

started up before her. She saw, with preternatural insight, into its

nooks and corners. Something he had said one day, when they were talking

of the Church view of marriage and divorce, lighted all up. So he had

really never known about her! At this moment of utter sickness, she was

saved from fainting by her sense of humour--her cynicism. Not content to

let her be, people's tongues had divorced her; he had believed them! And

the crown of irony was that he should want to marry her, when she felt so

utterly, so sacredly his, to do what he liked with sans forms or

ceremonies. A surge of bitter feeling against the man who stood between

her and Miltoun almost made her cry out. That man had captured her

before she knew the world or her own soul, and she was tied to him, till

by some beneficent chance he drew his last breath when her hair was grey,

and her eyes had no love light, and her cheeks no longer grew pale when

they were kissed; when twilight had fallen, and the flowers, and bees no

longer cared for her.

It was that feeling, the sudden revolt of the desperate prisoner, which

steeled her to put out her hand, take up the paper, and give it to

Miltoun.

When he had read the little paragraph, there followed one of those

eternities which last perhaps two minutes.

He said, then:

"It's true, I suppose?" And, at her silence, added: "I am sorry."

This queer dry saying was so much more terrible than any outcry, that she

remained, deprived even of the power of breathing, with her eyes still

fixed on Miltoun's face.

The smile of the old Cardinal had come up there, and was to her like a

living accusation. It seemed strange that the hum of the bees and flies

and the gentle swishing of the limetree should still go on outside,

insisting that there was a world moving and breathing apart from her, and

careless of her misery. Then some of her courage came back, and with it

her woman's mute power. It came haunting about her face, perfectly

still, about her lips, sensitive and drawn, about her eyes, dark, almost

mutinous under their arched brows. She stood, drawing him with silence

and beauty.

At last he spoke:

"I have made a foolish mistake, it seems. I believed you were free."

Her lips just moved for the words to pass: "I thought you knew. I never,

dreamed you would want to marry me."

It seemed to her natural that he should be thinking only of himself, but

with the subtlest defensive instinct, she put forward her own tragedy:

"I suppose I had got too used to knowing I was dead."

"Is there no release?"

"None. We have neither of us done wrong; besides with him, marriage

is--for ever."

"My God!"

She had broken his smile, which had been cruel without meaning to be

cruel; and with a smile of her own that was cruel too, she said:

"I didn't know that you believed in release either."

Then, as though she had stabbed herself in stabbing him, her face

quivered.

He looked at her now, conscious at last that she was suffering. And she

felt that he was holding himself in with all his might from taking her

again into his arms. Seeing this, the warmth crept back to her lips, and

a little light into her eyes, which she kept hidden from him. Though she

stood so proudly still, some wistful force was coming from her, as from a

magnet, and Miltoun's hands and arms and face twitched as though palsied.

This struggle, dumb and pitiful, seemed never to be coming to an end in

the little white room, darkened by the thatch of the verandah, and sweet

with the scent of pinks and of a wood fire just lighted somewhere out at

the back. Then, without a word, he turned and went out. She heard the

wicket gate swing to. He was gone.

CHAPTER XVI

Lord Denis was fly-fishing--the weather just too bright to allow the

little trout of that shallow, never silent stream to embrace with avidity

the small enticements which he threw in their direction. Nevertheless he

continued to invite them, exploring every nook of their watery pathway

with his soft-swishing line. In a rough suit and battered hat adorned

with those artificial and other flies, which infest Harris tweed, he

crept along among the hazel bushes and thorn-trees, perfectly happy.

Like an old spaniel, who has once gloried in the fetching of hares,

rabbits, and all manner of fowl, and is now glad if you will but throw a

stick for him, so one, who had been a famous fisher before the Lord, who

had harried the waters of Scotland and Norway, Florida and Iceland, now

pursued trout no bigger than sardines. The glamour of a thousand

memories hallowed the hours he thus spent by that brown water. He fished

unhasting, religious, like some good Catholic adding one more to the row

of beads already told, as though he would fish himself, gravely, without

complaint, into the other world. With each fish caught he experienced a

solemn satisfaction.

Though he would have liked Barbara with him that morning, he had only

looked at her once after breakfast in such a way that she could not see

him, and with a dry smile gone off by himself. Down by the stream it was

dappled, both cool and warm, windless; the trees met over the river, and

there were many stones, forming little basins which held up the ripple,

so that the casting of a fly required much cunning. This long dingle ran

for miles through the foot-growth of folding hills. It was beloved of

jays; but of human beings there were none, except a chicken-farmer's

widow, who lived in a house thatched almost to the ground, and made her

livelihood by directing tourists, with such cunning that they soon came

back to her for tea.

It was while throwing a rather longer line than usual to reach a little

dark piece of crisp water that Lord Dennis heard the swishing and

crackling of someone advancing at full speed. He frowned slightly,

feeling for the nerves of his fishes, whom he did not wish startled. The

invader was Miltoun, hot, pale, dishevelled, with a queer, hunted look on

his face. He stopped on seeing his great-uncle, and instantly assumed

the mask of his smile.

Lord Dennis was not the man to see what was not intended for him, and he

merely said:

"Well, Eustace!" as he might have spoken, meeting his nephew in the hall

of one of his London Clubs.

Miltoun, no less polite, murmured:

"Hope I haven't lost you anything."

Lord Dennis shook his head, and laying his rod on the bank, said:

"Sit down and have a chat, old fellow. You don't fish, I think?"

He had not, in the least, missed the suffering behind Miltoun's mask; his

eyes were still good, and there was a little matter of some twenty years'

suffering of his own on account of a woman--ancient history now--which

had left him quaintly sensitive, for an old man, to signs of suffering in

others.

Miltoun would not have obeyed that invitation from anyone else, but there

was something about Lord Dennis which people did not resist; his power

lay in a dry ironic suavity which could not but persuade people that

impoliteness was altogether too new and raw a thing to be indulged in.

The two sat side by side on the roots of trees. At first they talked a

little of birds, and then were dumb, so dumb that the invisible creatures

of the woods consulted together audibly. Lord Dennis broke that silence.

"This place," he said, "always reminds me of Mark Twain's writings--can't

tell why, unless it's the ever-greenness. I like the evergreen

philosophers, Twain and Meredith. There's no salvation except through

courage, though I never could stomach the 'strong man'--captain of his

soul, Henley and Nietzsche and that sort--goes against the grain with me.

What do you say, Eustace?"

"They meant well," answered Miltoun, "but they protested too much."

Lord Dennis moved his head in assent.

"To be captain of your soul!" continued Miltoun in a bitter voice; "it's

a pretty phrase!"

"Pretty enough," murmured Lord Dennis.

Miltoun looked at him.

"And suitable to you," he said.

"No, my dear," Lord Dennis answered dryly, "a long way off that, thank

God!"

His eyes were fixed intently on the place where a large trout had risen

in the stillest toffee-coloured pool. He knew that fellow, a

half-pounder at least, and his thoughts began flighting round the top of

his head, hovering over the various merits of the flies. His fingers

itched too, but he made no movement, and the ash-tree under which he sat

let its leaves tremble, as though in sympathy.

"See that hawk?" said Miltoun.

At a height more than level with the tops of the hills a buzzard hawk was

stationary in the blue directly over them. Inspired by curiosity at

their stillness, he was looking down to see whether they were edible; the

upcurved ends of his great wings flirted just once to show that he was

part of the living glory of the air--a symbol of freedom to men and

fishes.

Lord Dennis looked at his great-nephew. The boy--for what else was

thirty to seventy-six?--was taking it hard, whatever it might be, taking

it very hard! He was that sort--ran till he dropped. The worst kind to

help--the sort that made for trouble--that let things gnaw at them! And

there flashed before the old man's mind the image of Prometheus devoured

by the eagle. It was his favourite tragedy, which he still read

periodically, in the Greek, helping himself now and then out of his old

lexicon to the meaning of some word which had flown to Erebus. Yes,

Eustace was a fellow for the heights and depths!

He said quietly:

"You don't care to talk about it, I suppose?"

Miltoun shook his head, and again there was silence.

The buzzard hawk having seen them move, quivered his wings like a moth's,

and deserted that plane of air. A robin from the dappled warmth of a

mossy stone, was regarding them instead. There was another splash in the

pool.

Lord Dennis said gently:

"That fellow's risen twice; I believe he'd take a 'Wistman's treasure.'"

Extracting from his hat its latest fly, and binding it on, he began

softly to swish his line.

"I shall have him yet!" he muttered. But Miltoun had stolen away....

The further piece of information about Mrs. Noel, already known by

Barbara, and diffused by the 'Bucklandbury News', had not become common

knowledge at the Court till after Lord Dennis had started out to fish.

In combination with the report that Miltoun had arrived and gone out

without breakfast, it had been received with mingled feelings. Bertie,

Harbinger, and Shropton, in a short conclave, after agreeing that from

the point of view of the election it was perhaps better than if she had

been a divorcee, were still inclined to the belief that no time was to be

lost--in doing what, however, they were unable to determine. Apart from

the impossibility of knowing how a fellow like Miltoun would take the

matter, they were faced with the devilish subtlety of all situations to

which the proverb 'Least said, soonest mended' applies. They were in the

presence of that awe-inspiring thing, the power of scandal. Simple

statements of simple facts, without moral drawn (to which no legal

exception could be taken) laid before the public as pieces of interesting

information, or at the worst exposed in perfect good faith, lest the

public should blindly elect as their representative one whose private

life might not stand the inspection of daylight--what could be more

justifiable! And yet Miltoun's supporters knew that this simple

statement of where he spent his evenings had a poisonous potency, through

its power of stimulating that side of the human imagination the most

easily excited. They recognized only too well, how strong was a certain

primitive desire, especially in rural districts, by yielding to which the

world was made to go, and how remarkably hard it, was not to yield to it,

and how interesting and exciting to see or hear of others yielding to it,

and how (though here, of course, men might differ secretly) reprehensible

of them to do so! They recognized, too well, how a certain kind of

conscience would appreciate this rumour; and how the puritans would lick

their lengthened chops. They knew, too, how irresistible to people of

any imagination at all, was the mere combination of a member of a class,

traditionally supposed to be inclined to having what it wanted, with a

lady who lived alone! As Harbinger said: It was really devilish awkward!

For, to take any notice of it would be to make more people than ever

believe it true. And yet, that it was working mischief, they felt by the

secret voice in their own souls, telling them that they would have

believed it if they had not known better. They hung about, waiting for

Miltoun to come in.

The news was received by Lady Valleys with a sigh of intense relief, and

the remark that it was probably another lie. When Barbara confirmed it,

she only said: "Poor Eustace!" and at once wrote off to her husband to

say that 'Anonyma' was still married, so that the worst fortunately could

not happen.

Miltoun came in to lunch, but from his face and manner nothing could be

guessed. He was a thought more talkative than usual, and spoke of

Brabrook's speech--some of which he had heard. He looked at Courtier

meaningly, and after lunch said to him:

"Will you come round to my den?"

In that room, the old withdrawing-room of the Elizabethan wing--where

once had been the embroideries, tapestries, and missals of beruffled

dames were now books, pamphlets, oak-panels, pipes, fencing gear, and

along one wall a collection of Red Indian weapons and ornaments brought

back by Miltoun from the United States. High on the wall above these

reigned the bronze death-mask of a famous Apache Chief, cast from a

plaster taken of the face by a professor of Yale College, who had

declared it to be a perfect specimen of the vanishing race. That visage,

which had a certain weird resemblance to Dante's, presided over the room

with cruel, tragic stoicism. No one could look on it without feeling

that, there, the human will had been pushed to its farthest limits of

endurance.

Seeing it for the first time, Courtier said:

"Fine thing--that! Only wants a soul."

Miltoun nodded:

"Sit down," he said.

Courtier sat down.

There followed one of those silences in which men whose spirits, though

different, have a certain bigness in common--can say so much to one

another:

At last Miltoun spoke:

"I have been living in the clouds, it seems. You are her oldest friend.

The immediate question is how to make it easiest for her in face of this

miserable rumour!"

Not even Courtier himself could have put such whip-lash sting into the

word 'miserable.'

He answered:

"Oh! take no notice of that. Let them stew in their own juice. She

won't care."

Miltoun listened, not moving a muscle of his face.

"Your friends here," went on Courtier with a touch of contempt, "seem in

a flutter. Don't let them do anything, don't let them say a word. Treat

the thing as it deserves to be treated. It'll die."

Miltoun, however, smiled.

"I'm not sure," he said, "that the consequences will be as you think, but

I shall do as you say."

"As for your candidature, any man with a spark of generosity in his soul

will rally to you because of it."

"Possibly," said Miltoun. "It will lose me the election, for all that."

Then, dimly conscious that their last words had revealed the difference

of their temperaments and creeds, they stared at one another.

"No," said Courtier, "I never will believe that people can be so mean!"

"Until they are."

"Anyway, though we get at it in different ways, we agree."

Miltoun leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece, and shading his face with

his hand, said:

"You know her story. Is there any way out of that, for her?"

On Courtier's face was the look which so often came when he was speaking

for one of his lost causes--as if the fumes from a fire in his heart had

mounted to his head.

"Only the way," he answered calmly, "that I should take if I were you."

"And that?"

"The law into your own hands."

Miltoun unshaded his face. His gaze seemed to have to travel from an

immense distance before it reached Courtier. He answered:

"Yes, I thought you would say that."

CHAPTER XVII

When everything, that night, was quiet, Barbara, her hair hanging loose

outside her dressing gown, slipped from her room into the dim corridor.

With bare feet thrust into fur-crowned slippers which made no noise, she

stole along looking at door after door. Through a long Gothic window,

uncurtained, the mild moonlight was coming. She stopped just where that

moonlight fell, and tapped. There came no answer. She opened the door a

little way, and said:

"Are you asleep, Eusty?"

There still came no answer, and she went in.

The curtains were drawn, but a chink of moonlight peering through fell on

the bed. This was empty. Barbara stood uncertain, listening. In the

heart of that darkness there seemed to be, not sound, but, as it were,

the muffled soul of sound, a sort of strange vibration, like that of a

flame noiselessly licking the air. She put her hand to her heart, which

beat as though it would leap through the thin silk covering. From what

corner of the room was that mute tremor coming? Stealing to the window,

she parted the curtains, and stared back into the shadows. There, on the

far side, lying on the floor with his arms pressed tightly round his head

and his face to the wall, was Miltoun. Barbara let fall the curtains,

and stood breathless, with such a queer sensation in her breast as she

had never felt; a sense of something outraged-of scarred pride. It was

gone at once, in a rush of pity. She stepped forward quickly in the

darkness, was visited by fear, and stopped. He had seemed absolutely

himself all the evening. A little more talkative, perhaps, a little more

caustic than usual. And now to find him like this! There was no great

share of reverence in Barbara, but what little she possessed had always

been kept for her eldest brother. He had impressed her, from a child,

with his aloofness, and she had been proud of kissing him because he

never seemed to let anybody else do so. Those caresses, no doubt, had

the savour of conquest; his face had been the undiscovered land for her

lips. She loved him as one loves that which ministers to one's pride;

had for him, too, a touch of motherly protection, as for a doll that does

not get on too well with the other dolls; and withal a little

unaccustomed awe.

Dared she now plunge in on this private agony? Could she have borne that

anyone should see herself thus prostrate? He had not heard her, and she

tried to regain the door. But a board creaked; she heard him move, and

flinging away her fears, said: "It's me! Babs!" and dropped on her knees

beside him. If it had not been so pitch dark she could never have done

that. She tried at once to take his head into her arms, but could not

see it, and succeeded indifferently. She could but stroke his arm

continually, wondering whether he would hate her ever afterwards, and

blessing the darkness, which made it all seem as though it were not

happening, yet so much more poignant than if it had happened. Suddenly

she felt him slip away from her, and getting up, stole out. After the

darkness of that room, the corridor seemed full of grey filmy light, as

though dream-spiders had joined the walls with their cobwebs, in which

innumerable white moths, so tiny that they could not be seen, were

struggling. Small eerie noises crept about. A sudden frightened longing

for warmth, and light, and colour came to Barbara. She fled back to her

room. But she could not sleep. That terrible mute unseen vibration in

the unlighted room-like the noiseless licking of a flame at bland air;

the touch of Miltoun's hand, hot as fire against her cheek and neck; the

whole tremulous dark episode, possessed her through and through. Thus

had the wayward force of Love chosen to manifest itself to her in all its

wistful violence. At this fiat sight of the red flower of passion her

cheeks burned; up and down her, between the cool sheets, little hot cruel

shivers ran; she lay, wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling. She thought, of

the woman whom he so loved, and wondered if she too were lying sleepless,

flung down on a bare floor, trying to cool her forehead and lips against

a cold wall.

Not for hours did she fall asleep, and then dreamed of running

desperately through fields full of tall spiky asphodel-like flowers, and

behind her was running herself.

In the morning she dreaded to go down. Could she meet Miltoun now that

she knew of the passion in him, and he knew that she knew it? She had her

breakfast brought upstairs. Before she had finished Miltoun himself came

in. He looked more than usually self-contained, not to say ironic, and

only remarked: "If you're going to ride you might take this note for me

over to old Haliday at Wippincott." By his coming she knew that he was

saying all he ever meant to say about that dark incident. And

sympathizing completely with a reticence which she herself felt to be the

only possible way out for both of them, Barbara looked at him gratefully,

took the note and said: "All right!"

Then, after glancing once or twice round the room, Miltoun went away.

He left her restless, divested of the cloak 'of course,' in a strange

mood of questioning, ready as it were for the sight of the magpie wings

of Life, and to hear their quick flutterings. Talk jarred on her that

morning, with its sameness and attachment to the facts of the present and

the future, its essential concern with the world as it was-she avoided

all companionship on her ride. She wanted to be told of things that were

not, yet might be, to peep behind the curtain, and see the very spirit of

mortal happenings escaped from prison. And this was all so unusual with

Barbara, whose body was too perfect, too sanely governed by the flow of

her blood not to revel in the moment and the things thereof. She knew it

was unusual. After her ride she avoided lunch, and walked out into the

lanes. But about two o'clock, feeling very hungry, she went into a

farmhouse, and asked for milk. There, in the kitchen, like young

jackdaws in a row with their mouths a little open, were the three farm

boys, seated on a bench gripped to the alcove of the great fire-way,

munching bread and cheese. Above their heads a gun was hung, trigger

upwards, and two hams were mellowing in the smoke. At the feet of a

black-haired girl, who was slicing onions, lay a sheep dog of tremendous

age, with nose stretched out on paws, and in his little blue eyes a gleam

of approaching immortality. They all stared at, Barbara. And one of the

boys, whose face had the delightful look of him who loses all sense of

other things in what he is seeing at the moment, smiled, and continued

smiling, with sheer pleasure. Barbara drank her milk, and wandered out

again; passing through a gate at the bottom of a steep, rocky tor, she

sat down on a sun-warmed stone. The sunlight fell greedily on her here,

like an invisible swift hand touching her all over, and specially

caressing her throat and face. A very gentle wind, which dived over the

tor tops into the young fern; stole down at her, spiced with the fern

sap. All was warmth and peace, and only the cuckoos on the far thorn

trees--as though stationed by the Wistful Master himself--were there to

disturb her heart: But all the sweetness and piping of the day did not

soothe her. In truth, she could not have said what was the matter,

except that she felt so discontented, and as it were empty of all but a

sort of aching impatience with--what exactly she could not say. She had

that rather dreadful feeling of something slipping by which she could not

catch. It was so new to her to feel like that--for no girl was less given

to moods and repinings. And all the time a sort of contempt for this

soft and almost sentimental feeling made her tighten her lips and frown.

She felt distrustful and sarcastic towards a mood so utterly subversive

of that fetich 'Hardness,' to the unconscious worship of which she had

been brought up. To stand no sentiment or nonsense either in herself or

others was the first article of faith; not to slop-over anywhere. So

that to feel as she did was almost horrible to Barbara. Yet she could

not get rid of the sensation. With sudden recklessness she tried giving

herself up to it entirely. Undoing the scarf at her throat, she let the

air play on her bared neck, and stretched out her arms as if to hug the

wind to her; then, with a sigh, she got up, and walked on. And now she

began thinking of 'Anonyma'; turning her position over and over. The

idea that anyone young and beautiful should thus be clipped off in her

life, roused her impatient indignation. Let them try it with her! They

would soon see! For all her cultivated 'hardness,' Barbara really hated

anything to suffer. It seemed to her unnatural. She never went to that

hospital where Lady Valleys had a ward, nor to their summer camp for

crippled children, nor to help in their annual concert for sweated

workers, without a feeling of such vehement pity that it was like being

seized by the throat: Once, when she had been singing to them, the rows

of wan, pinched faces below had been too much for her; she had broken

down, forgotten her words, lost memory of the tune, and just ended her

performance with a smile, worth more perhaps to her audience than those

lost verses. She never came away from such sights and places without a

feeling of revolt amounting almost to rage; and she only continued to go

because she dimly knew that it was expected of her not to turn her back

on such things, in her section of Society.

But it was not this feeling which made her stop before Mrs. Noel's

cottage; nor was it curiosity. It was a quite simple desire to squeeze

her hand.

'Anonyma' seemed taking her trouble as only those women who are no good

at self-assertion can take things--doing exactly as she would have done

if nothing had happened; a little paler than usual, with lips pressed

rather tightly together.

They neither of them spoke at first, but stood looking, not at each

other's faces, but at each other's breasts. At last Barbara stepped

forward impulsively and kissed her.

After that, like two children who kiss first, and then make acquaintance,

they stood apart, silent, faintly smiling. It had been given and

returned in real sweetness and comradeship, that kiss, for a sign of

womanhood making face against the world; but now that it was over, both

felt a little awkward. Would that kiss have been given if Fate had been

auspicious? Was it not proof of misery? So Mrs. Noel's smile seemed

saying, and Barbara's smile unwillingly admitted. Perceiving that if

they talked it could only be about the most ordinary things, they began

speaking of music, flowers, and the queerness of bees' legs. But all the

time, Barbara, though seemingly unconscious, was noting with her smiling

eyes, the tiny movement's, by which one woman can tell what is passing in

another. She saw a little quiver tighten the corner of the lips, the

eyes suddenly grow large and dark, the thin blouse desperately rise and

fall. And her fancy, quickened by last night's memory, saw this woman

giving herself up to the memory of love in her thoughts. At this sight

she felt a little of that impatience which the conquering feel for the

passive, and perhaps just a touch of jealousy.

Whatever Miltoun decided, that would this woman accept! Such

resignation, while it simplified things, offended the part of Barbara

which rebelled against all inaction, all dictation, even from her

favourite brother. She said suddenly:

"Are you going to do nothing? Aren't you going to try and free yourself?

If I were in your position, I would never rest till I'd made them free

me."

But Mrs. Noel did not answer; and sweeping her glance from that crown of

soft dark hair, down the soft white figure, to the very feet, Barbara

cried:

"I believe you are a fatalist."

Soon after that, not knowing what more to say, she went away. But

walking home across the fields, where full summer was swinging on the

delicious air and there was now no bull but only red cows to crop short

the 'milk-maids' and buttercups, she suffered from this strange

revelation of the strength of softness and passivity--as though she had

seen in the white figure of 'Anonyma,' and heard in her voice something

from beyond, symbolic, inconceivable, yet real.

CHAPTER XVIII

Lord Valleys, relieved from official pressure by subsidence of the war

scare, had returned for a long week-end. To say that he had been

intensely relieved by the news that Mrs. Noel was not free, would be to

put it mildly. Though not old-fashioned, like his mother-in-law, in

regard to the mixing of the castes, prepared to admit that exclusiveness

was out of date, to pass over with a shrug and a laugh those numerous

alliances by which his order were renewing the sinews of war, and indeed

in his capacity of an expert, often pointing out the dangers of too much

in-breeding--yet he had a peculiar personal feeling about his own family,

and was perhaps a little extra sensitive because of Agatha; for Shropton,

though a good fellow, and extremely wealthy, was only a third baronet,

and had originally been made of iron. It was inadvisable to go outside

the inner circle where there was no material necessity for so doing. He

had not done it himself. Moreover there was a sentiment about these

things!

On the morning after his arrival, visiting the kennels before breakfast,

he stood chatting with his head man, and caressing the wet noses of his

two favourite pointers,--with something of the feeling of a boy let out

of school. Those pleasant creatures, cowering and quivering with pride

against his legs, and turning up at him their yellow Chinese eyes, gave

him that sense of warmth and comfort which visits men in the presence of

their hobbies. With this particular pair, inbred to the uttermost, he

had successfully surmounted a great risk. It was now touch and go

whether he dared venture on one more cross to the original strain, in the

hope of eliminating the last clinging of liver colour. It was a

gamble--and it was just that which rendered it so vastly interesting.

A small voice diverted his attention; he looked round and saw little Ann.

She had been in bed when he arrived the night before, and he was

therefore the newest thing about.

She carried in her arms a guinea-pig, and began at once:

"Grandpapa, Granny wants you. She's on the terrace; she's talking to Mr.

Courtier. I like him--he's a kind man. If I put my guinea-pig down,

will they bite it? Poor darling--they shan't! Isn't it a darling!"

Lord Valleys, twirling his moustache, regarded the guinea-pig without

favour; he had rather a dislike for all senseless kinds of beasts.

Pressing the guinea-pig between her hands, as it might be a concertina,

little Ann jigged it gently above the pointers, who, wrinkling horribly

their long noses, gazed upwards, fascinated.

"Poor darlings, they want it--don't they? Grandpapa"

"Yes."

"Do you think the next puppies will be spotted quite all over?"

Continuing to twirl his moustache, Lord Valleys answered:

"I think it is not improbable, Ann."

"Why do you like them spotted like that? Oh! they're kissing Sambo--I

must go!"

Lord Valleys followed her, his eyebrows a little raised.

As he approached the terrace his wife came, towards him. Her colour was,

deeper than usual, and she had the look, higher and more resolute,

peculiar to her when she had been opposed. In truth she had just been

through a passage of arms with Courtier, who, as the first revealer of

Mrs. Noel's situation, had become entitled to a certain confidence on

this subject. It had arisen from what she had intended as a perfectly

natural and not unkind remark, to the effect that all the trouble had

come from Mrs. Noel not having made her position clear to Miltoun from

the first.

He had at once grown very red.

"It's easy, Lady Valleys, for those who have never been in the position

of a lonely woman, to blame her."

Unaccustomed to be withstood, she had looked at him intently:

"I am the last person to be hard on a woman for conventional reasons.

But I think it showed lack of character."

Courtier's reply had been almost rude.

"Plants are not equally robust, Lady Valleys. Some, as we know, are

actually sensitive."

She had retorted with decision

"If you like to so dignify the simpler word 'weak'"

He had become very rigid at that, biting deeply into his moustache.

"What crimes are not committed under the sanctity of that creed 'survival

of the fittest,' which suits the book of all you fortunate people so

well!"

Priding herself on her restraint, Lady Valleys answered:

"Ah! we must talk that out. On the face of them your words sound a

little unphilosophic, don't they?"

He had looked straight at her with a queer, unpleasant smile; and she had

felt at once disturbed and angry. It was all very well to pet and even

to admire these original sort of men, but there were limits. Remembering,

however, that he was her guest, she had only said:

"Perhaps after all we had better not talk it out;" and moving away, she

heard him answer: "In any case, I'm certain Audrey Noel never wilfully

kept your son in the dark; she's much too proud."

Though rude, she could not help liking the way he stuck up for this

woman; and she threw back at him the words:

"You and I, Mr. Courtier, must have a good fight some day!"

She went towards her husband conscious of the rather pleasurable

sensation which combat always roused in her.

These two were very good comrades. Theirs had been a love match, and

making due allowance for human nature beset by opportunity, had remained,

throughout, a solid and efficient alliance. Taking, as they both did,

such prominent parts in public and social matters, the time they spent

together was limited, but productive of mutual benefit and reinforcement.

They had not yet had an opportunity of discussing their son's affair;

and, slipping her hand through his arm, Lady Valleys drew him away from

the house.

"I want to talk to you about Miltoun, Geoff."

"H'm!" said Lord Valleys; "yes. The boy's looking worn. Good thing when

this election's over."

"If he's beaten and hasn't something new and serious to concentrate

himself on, he'll fret his heart out over that woman."

Lord Valleys meditated a little before replying.

"I don't think that, Gertrude. He's got plenty of spirit."

"Of course! But it's a real passion. And, you know, he's not like most

boys, who'll take what they can."

She said this rather wistfully.

"I'm sorry for the woman," mused Lord Valleys; "I really am."

"They say this rumour's done a lot of harm."

"Our influence is strong enough to survive that."

"It'll be a squeak; I wish I knew what he was going to do. Will you ask

him?"

"You're clearly the person to speak to him," replied Lord Valleys. "I'm

no hand at that sort of thing."

But Lady Valleys, with genuine discomfort, murmured:

"My dear, I'm so nervous with Eustace. When he puts on that smile of his

I'm done for, at once."

"This is obviously a woman's business; nobody like a mother."

"If it were only one of the others," muttered Lady Valleys: "Eustace has

that queer way of making you feel lumpy."

Lord Valleys looked at her askance. He had that kind of critical

fastidiousness which a word will rouse into activity. Was she lumpy? The

idea had never struck him.

"Well, I'll do it, if I must," sighed Lady Valleys.

When after breakfast she entered Miltoun's 'den,' he was buckling on his

spurs preparatory, to riding out to some of the remoter villages. Under

the mask of the Apache chief, Bertie was standing, more inscrutable and

neat than ever, in a perfectly tied cravatte, perfectly cut riding

breeches, and boots worn and polished till a sooty glow shone through

their natural russet. Not specially dandified in his usual dress, Bertie

Caradoc would almost sooner have died than disgrace a horse. His eyes,

the sharper because they had only half the space of the ordinary eye to

glance from, at once took in the fact that his mother wished to be alone

with 'old Miltoun,' and he discreetly left the room.

That which disconcerted all who had dealings with Miltoun was the

discovery made soon or late, that they could not be sure how anything

would strike him. In his mind, as in his face, there was a certain

regularity, and then--impossible to say exactly where--it would, shoot

off and twist round a corner. This was the legacy no doubt of the

hard-bitten individuality, which had brought to the front so many of his

ancestors; for in Miltoun was the blood not only of the Caradocs and

Fitz-Harolds, but of most other prominent families in the kingdom, all of

whom, in those ages before money made the man, must have had a forbear

conspicuous by reason of qualities, not always fine, but always poignant.

And now, though Lady Valleys had the audacity of her physique, and was

not customarily abashed, she began by speaking of politics, hoping her

son would give her an opening. But he gave her none, and she grew

nervous. At last, summoning all her coolness, she said:

"I'm dreadfully sorry about this affair, dear boy. Your father told me

of your talk with him. Try not to take it too hard."

Miltoun did not answer, and silence being that which Lady Valleys

habitually most dreaded, she took refuge in further speech, outlining for

her son the whole episode as she saw it from her point of view, and

ending with these words:

"Surely it's not worth it."

Miltoun heard her with his peculiar look, as of a man peering through a

vizor. Then smiling, he said:

"Thank you;" and opened the door.

Lady Valleys, without quite knowing whether he intended her to do so,

indeed without quite knowing anything at the moment, passed out, and

Miltoun closed the door behind her.

Ten minutes later he and Bertie were seen riding down the drive.

CHAPTER XIX

That afternoon the wind, which had been rising steadily, brought a flurry

of clouds up from the South-West. Formed out on the heart of the

Atlantic, they sailed forward, swift and fleecy at first, like the

skirmishing white shallops of a great fleet; then, in serried masses,

darkened the sun. About four o'clock they broke in rain, which the wind

drove horizontally with a cold whiffling murmur. As youth and glamour

die in a face before the cold rains of life, so glory died on the moor.

The tors, from being uplifted wild castles, became mere grey

excrescences. Distance failed. The cuckoos were silent. There was none

of the beauty that there is in death, no tragic greatness--all was

moaning and monotony. But about seven the sun tore its way back through

the swathe, and flared out. Like some huge star, whose rays were

stretching down to the horizon, and up to the very top of the hill of

air, it shone with an amazing murky glamour; the clouds splintered by its

shafts, and tinged saffron, piled themselves up as if in wonder. Under

the sultry warmth of this new great star, the heather began to steam a

little, and the glitter of its wet unopened bells was like that of

innumerable tiny smoking fires. The two brothers were drenched as they

cantered silently home. Good friends always, they had never much to say

to one another. For Miltoun was conscious that he thought on a different

plane from Bertie; and Bertie grudged even to his brother any inkling of

what was passing in his spirit, just as he grudged parting with

diplomatic knowledge, or stable secrets, or indeed anything that might

leave him less in command of life. He grudged it, because in a private

sort of way it lowered his estimation of his own stoical

self-sufficiency; it hurt something proud in the withdrawing-room of his

soul. But though he talked little, he had the power of

contemplation--often found in men of decided character, with a tendency

to liver. Once in Nepal, where he had gone to shoot, he had passed a

month quite happily with only a Ghoorka servant who could speak no

English. To those who asked him if he had not been horribly bored, he

had always answered: "Not a bit; did a lot of thinking."

With Miltoun's trouble he had the professional sympathy of a brother and

the natural intolerance of a confirmed bachelor. Women were to him very

kittle-cattle. He distrusted from the bottom of his soul those who had

such manifest power to draw things from you. He was one of those men in

whom some day a woman might awaken a really fine affection; but who,

until that time, would maintain the perfectly male attitude to the entire

sex, and, after it, to all the sex but one. Women were, like Life

itself, creatures to be watched, carefully used, and kept duly

subservient. The only allusion therefore that he made to Miltoun's

trouble was very sudden.

"Old man, I hope you're going to cut your losses."

The words were followed by undisturbed silence: But passing Mrs. Noel's

cottage Miltoun said:

"Take my horse on; I want to go in here."....

She was sitting at her piano with her hands idle, looking at a line of

music.... She had been sitting thus for many minutes, but had not yet

taken in the notes.

When Miltoun's shadow blotted the light by which she was seeing so

little, she gave a slight start, and got up. But she neither went

towards him, nor spoke. And he, without a word, came in and stood by the

hearth, looking down at the empty grate. A tortoise-shell cat which had

been watching swallows, disturbed by his entrance, withdrew from the

window beneath a chair.

This silence, in which the question of their future lives was to be

decided, seemed to both interminable; yet, neither could end it.

At last, touching his sleeve, she said: "You're wet!"

Miltoun shivered at that timid sign of possession. And they again stood

in silence broken only by the sound of the cat licking its paws.

But her faculty for dumbness was stronger than his, and--he had to speak

first.

"Forgive me for coming; something must be settled. This--rumour----"

"Oh! that!" she said. "Is there anything I can do to stop the harm to

you?"

It was the turn of Miltoun's lips to curl. "God! no; let them talk!"

Their eyes had come together now, and, once together, seemed unable to

part.

Mrs. Noel said at last:

"Will you ever forgive me?"

"What for--it was my fault."

"No; I should have known you better."

The depth of meaning in those words--the tremendous and subtle admission

they contained of all that she had been ready to do, the despairing

knowledge in them that he was not, and never had been, ready to 'bear it

out even to the edge of doom'--made Miltoun wince away.

"It is not from fear--believe that, anyway."

"I do."

There followed another long, long silence! But though so close that they

were almost touching, they no longer looked at one another. Then Miltoun

said:

"There is only to say good-bye, then."

At those clear words spoken by lips which, though just smiling, failed so

utterly to hide his misery, Mrs. Noel's face became colourless as her

white gown. But her eyes, which had grown immense, seemed from the sheer

lack of all other colour, to have drawn into them the whole of her

vitality; to be pouring forth a proud and mournful reproach.

Shivering, and crushing himself together with his arms, Miltoun walked

towards the window. There was not the faintest sound from her, and he

looked back. She was following him with her eyes. He threw his hand up

over his face, and went quickly out. Mrs. Noel stood for a little while

where he had left her; then, sitting down once more at the piano, began

again to con over the line of music. And the cat stole back to the window

to watch the swallows. The sunlight was dying slowly on the top branches

of the lime-tree; a, drizzling rain began to fall.

CHAPTER XX

Claud Fresnay, Viscount Harbinger was, at the age of thirty-one, perhaps

the least encumbered peer in the United Kingdom. Thanks to an ancestor

who had acquired land, and departed this life one hundred and thirty

years before the town of Nettlefold was built on a small portion of it,

and to a father who had died in his son's infancy, after judiciously

selling the said town, he possessed a very large income independently of

his landed interests. Tall and well-built, with handsome,

strongly-marked features, he gave at first sight an impression of

strength--which faded somewhat when he began to talk. It was not so much

the manner of his speech--with its rapid slang, and its way of turning

everything to a jest--as the feeling it produced, that the brain behind

it took naturally the path of least resistance. He was in fact one of

those personalities who are often enough prominent in politics and social

life, by reason of their appearance, position, assurance, and of a

certain energy, half genuine, and half mere inherent predilection for

short cuts. Certainly he was not idle, had written a book, travelled, was

a Captain of Yeomanry, a Justice of the Peace, a good cricketer, and a

constant and glib speaker. It would have been unfair to call his

enthusiasm for social reform spurious. It was real enough in its way,

and did certainly testify that he was not altogether lacking either in

imagination or good-heartedness. But it was over and overlaid with the

public-school habit--that peculiar, extraordinarily English habit, so

powerful and beguiling that it becomes a second nature stronger than the

first--of relating everything in the Universe to the standards and

prejudices of a single class. Since practically all his intimate

associates were immersed in it, he was naturally not in the least

conscious of this habit; indeed there was nothing he deprecated so much

in politics as the narrow and prejudiced outlook, such as he had observed

in the Nonconformist, or labour politician. He would never have admitted

for a moment that certain doors had been banged-to at his birth, bolted

when he went to Eton, and padlocked at Cambridge. No one would have

denied that there was much that was valuable in his standards--a high

level of honesty, candour, sportsmanship, personal cleanliness, and

self-reliance, together with a dislike of such cruelty as had been

officially (so to speak) recognized as cruelty, and a sense of public

service to a State run by and for the public schools; but it would have

required far more originality than he possessed ever to look at Life from

any other point of view than that from which he had been born and bred to

watch Her. To fully understand harbinger, one must, and with

unprejudiced eyes and brain, have attended one of those great cricket

matches in which he had figured conspicuously as a boy, and looking down

from some high impartial spot have watched the ground at lunch time

covered from rope to rope and stand to stand with a marvellous swarm, all

walking in precisely the same manner, with precisely the same expression

on their faces, under precisely the same hats--a swarm enshrining the

greatest identity of, creed and habit ever known since the world began.

No, his environment had not been favourable to originality. Moreover he

was naturally rapid rather than deep, and life hardly ever left him alone

or left him silent. Brought into contact day and night with people to

whom politics were more or less a game; run after everywhere; subjected

to no form of discipline--it was a wonder that he was as serious as he

was. Nor had he ever been in love, until, last year, during her first

season, Barbara had, as he might have expressed it--in the case of

another 'bowled him middle stump. Though so deeply smitten, he had not

yet asked her to marry him--had not, as it were, had time, nor perhaps

quite the courage, or conviction. When he was near her, it seemed

impossible that he could go on longer without knowing his fate; when he

was away from her it was almost a relief, because there were so many

things to be done and said, and so little time to do or say them in. But

now, during this fortnight, which, for her sake, he had devoted to

Miltoun's cause, his feeling had advanced beyond the point of comfort.

He did not admit that the reason of this uneasiness was Courtier, for,

after all, Courtier was, in a sense, nobody, and 'an extremist' into the

bargain, and an extremist always affected the centre of Harbinger's

anatomy, causing it to give off a peculiar smile and tone of voice.

Nevertheless, his eyes, whenever they fell on that sanguine, steady,

ironic face, shone with a sort of cold inquiry, or were even darkened by

the shade of fear. They met seldom, it is true, for most of his day was

spent in motoring and speaking, and most of Courtier's in writing and

riding, his leg being still too weak for walking. But once or twice in

the smoking room late at night, he had embarked on some bantering

discussion with the champion of lost causes; and very soon an

ill-concealed impatience had crept into his voice. Why a man should

waste his time, flogging dead horses on a journey to the moon, was

incomprehensible! Facts were facts, human nature would never be anything

but human nature! And it was peculiarly galling to see in Courtier's eye

a gleam, to catch in his voice a tone, as if he were thinking: "My young

friend, your soup is cold!"

On a morning after one of these encounters, seeing Barbara sally forth in

riding clothes, he asked if he too might go round the stables, and

started forth beside her, unwontedly silent, with an odd feeling about

his heart, and his throat unaccountably dry.

The stables at Monkland Court were as large as many country houses.

Accommodating thirty horses, they were at present occupied by twenty-one,

including the pony of little Ann. For height, perfection of lighting,

gloss, shine, and purity of atmosphere they were unequalled in the

county. It seemed indeed impossible that any horse could ever so far

forget himself in such a place as to remember that he was a horse. Every

morning a little bin of carrots, apples, and lumps of sugar, was set

close to the main entrance, ready for those who might desire to feed the

dear inhabitants.

Reined up to a brass ring on either side of their stalls with their noses

towards the doors, they were always on view from nine to ten, and would

stand with their necks arched, ears pricked, and coats gleaming,

wondering about things, soothed by the faint hissing of the still busy

grooms, and ready to move their noses up and down the moment they saw

someone enter.

In a large loose-box at the end of the north wing Barbara's favourite

chestnut hunter, all but one saving sixteenth of whom had been entered in

the stud book, having heard her footstep, was standing quite still with

his neck turned. He had been crumping up an apple placed amongst his

feed, and his senses struggled between the lingering flavour of that

delicacy,--and the perception of a sound with which he connected carrots.

When she unlatched his door, and said "Hal," he at once went towards his

manger, to show his independence, but when she said: "Oh! very well!" he

turned round and came towards her. His eyes, which were full and of a

soft brilliance, under thick chestnut lashes, explored her all over.

Perceiving that her carrots were not in front, he elongated his neck, let

his nose stray round her waist, and gave her gauntletted hand a nip with

his lips. Not tasting carrot, he withdrew his nose, and snuffled. Then

stepping carefully so as not to tread on her foot, he bunted her gently

with his shoulder, till with a quick manoeuvre he got behind her and

breathed low and long on her neck. Even this did not smell of carrots,

and putting his muzzle over her shoulder against her cheek, he slobbered

a very little. A carrot appeared about the level of her waist, and

hanging his head over, he tried to reach it. Feeling it all firm and

soft under his chin, he snuffled again, and gave her a gentle dig with

his knee. But still unable to reach the carrot, he threw his head up,

withdrew, and pretended not to see her. And suddenly he felt two long

substances round his neck, and something soft against his nose. He

suffered this in silence, laying his ears back. The softness began

puffing on his muzzle. Pricking his ears again, he puffed back a little

harder, with more curiosity, and the softness was withdrawn. He

perceived suddenly that he had a carrot in his mouth.

Harbinger had witnessed this episode, oddly pale, leaning against the

loose-box wall. He spoke, as it came to an end:

"Lady Babs!"

The tone of his voice must have been as strange as it sounded to himself,

for Barbara spun round.

"Yes?"

"How long am I going on like this?"

Neither changing colour nor dropping her eyes, she regarded him with a

faintly inquisitive interest. It was not a cruel look, had not a trace

of mischief, or sex malice, and yet it frightened him by its serene

inscrutability. Impossible to tell what was going on behind it. He took

her hand, bent over it, and said in a low voice:

"You know what I feel; don't be cruel to me!"

She did not pull away her hand; it was as if she had not thought of it.

"I am not a bit cruel."

Looking up, he saw her smiling.

"Then--Babs!"

His face was close to hers, but Barbara did not shrink back. She just

shook her head; and Harbinger flushed up.

"Why?" he asked; and as though the enormous injustice of that rejecting

gesture had suddenly struck him, he dropped her hand.

"Why?" he said again, sharply.

But the silence was only broken by the cheeping of sparrows outside the

round window, and the sound of the horse, Hal, munching the last morsel

of his carrot. Harbinger was aware in his every nerve of the sweetish,

slightly acrid, husky odour of the loosebox, mingling with the scent of

Barbara's hair and clothes. And rather miserably, he said for the third

time:

"Why?"

But folding her hands away behind her back she answered gently:

"My dear, how should I know why?"

She was calmly exposed to his embrace if he had only dared; but he did

not dare, and went back to the loose-box wall. Biting his finger, he

stared at her gloomily. She was stroking the muzzle of her horse; and a

sort of dry rage began whisking and rustling in his heart. She had

refused him--Harbinger! He had not known, had not suspected how much he

wanted her. How could there be anybody else for him, while that young,

calm, sweet-scented, smiling thing lived, to make his head go round, his

senses ache, and to fill his heart with longing! He seemed to himself at

that moment the most unhappy of all men.

"I shall not give you up," he muttered.

Barbara's answer was a smile, faintly curious, compassionate, yet almost

grateful, as if she had said:

"Thank you--who knows?"

And rather quickly, a yard or so apart, and talking of horses, they

returned to the house.

It was about noon, when, accompanied by Courtier, she rode forth.

The Sou-Westerly spell--a matter of three days--had given way before

radiant stillness; and merely to be alive was to feel emotion. At a

little stream running beside the moor under the wild stone man, the

riders stopped their horses, just to listen, and, inhale the day. The far

sweet chorus of life was tuned to a most delicate rhythm; not one of

those small mingled pipings of streams and the lazy air, of beasts, men;

birds, and bees, jarred out too harshly through the garment of sound

enwrapping the earth. It was noon--the still moment--but this hymn to

the sun, after his too long absence, never for a moment ceased to be

murmured. And the earth wore an under-robe of scent, delicious, very

finely woven of the young fern sap, heather buds; larch-trees not yet

odourless, gorse just going brown, drifted woodsmoke, and the breath of

hawthorn. Above Earth's twin vestments of sound and scent, the blue

enwrapping scarf of air, that wistful wide champaign, was spanned only by

the wings of Freedom.

After that long drink of the day, the riders mounted almost in silence to

the very top of the moor. There again they sat quite still on their

horses, examining the prospect. Far away to South and East lay the sea,

plainly visible. Two small groups of wild ponies were slowly grazing

towards each other on the hillside below.

Courtier said in a low voice:

"'Thus will I sit and sing, with love in my arms; watching our two herds

mingle together, and below us the far, divine, cerulean sea.'"

And, after another silence, looking steadily in Barbara's face, he added:

"Lady Barbara, I am afraid this is the last time we shall be alone

together. While I have the chance, therefore, I must do homage.... You

will always be the fixed star for my worship. But your rays are too

bright; I shall worship from afar. From your seventh Heaven, therefore,

look down on me with kindly eyes, and do not quite forget me:"

Under that speech, so strangely compounded of irony and fervour, Barbara

sat very still, with glowing cheeks.

"Yes," said Courtier, "only an immortal must embrace a goddess. Outside

the purlieus of Authority I shall sit cross-legged, and prostrate myself

three times a day."

But Barbara answered nothing.

"In the early morning," went on Courtier, "leaving the dark and dismal

homes of Freedom I shall look towards the Temples of the Great; there

with the eye of faith I shall see you."

He stopped, for Barbara's lips were moving.

"Don't hurt me, please."

Courtier leaned over, took her hand, and put it to his lips. "We will

now ride on...."

That night at dinner Lord Dennis, seated opposite his great-niece, was

struck by her appearance.

"A very beautiful child," he thought, "a most lovely young creature!"

She was placed between Courtier and Harbinger. And the old man's still

keen eyes carefully watched those two. Though attentive to their

neighbours on the other side, they were both of them keeping the corner

of an eye on Barbara and on each other. The thing was transparent to

Lord Dennis, and a smile settled in that nest of gravity between his

white peaked beard and moustaches. But he waited, the instinct of a

fisherman bidding him to neglect no piece of water, till he saw the child

silent and in repose, and watched carefully to see what would rise.

Although she was so calmly, so healthily eating, her eyes stole round at

Courtier. This quick look seemed to Lord Dennis perturbed, as if

something were exciting her. Then Harbinger spoke, and she turned to

answer him. Her face was calm now, faintly smiling, a little eager,

provocative in its joy of life. It made Lord Dennis think of his own

youth. What a splendid couple! If Babs married young Harbinger there

would not be a finer pair in all England. His eyes travelled back to

Courtier. Manly enough! They called him dangerous! There was a look of

effervescence, carefully corked down--might perhaps be attractive to a

girl! To his essentially practical and sober mind, a type like Courtier

was puzzling. He liked the look of him, but distrusted his ironic

expression, and that appearance of blood to the head. Fellow--no

doubt--that would ride off on his ideas, humanitarian! To Lord Dennis

there was something queer about humanitarians. They offended perhaps his

dry and precise sense of form. They were always looking out for cruelty

or injustice; seemed delighted when they found it--swelled up, as it

were, when they scented it, and as there was a good deal about, were

never quite of normal size. Men who lived for ideas were, in fact, to

one for whom facts sufficed always a little worrying! A movement from

Barbara brought him back to actuality. Was the possessor of that crown of

hair and those divine young shoulders the little Babs who had ridden with

him in the Row? Time was certainly the Devil! Her eyes were searching

for something; and following the direction of that glance, Lord Dennis

found himself observing Miltoun. What a difference between those two!

Both no doubt in the great trouble of youth; which sometimes, as he knew

too well, lasted on almost to old age. It was a curious look the child

was giving her brother, as if asking him to help her. Lord Dennis had

seen in his day many young creatures leave the shelter of their freedom

and enter the house of the great lottery; many, who had drawn a prize and

thereat lost forever the coldness of life; many too, the light of whose

eyes had faded behind the shutters of that house, having drawn a blank.

The thought of 'little' Babs on the threshold of that inexorable saloon,

filled him with an eager sadness; and the sight of the two men watching

for her, waiting for her, like hunters, was to him distasteful. In any

case, let her not, for Heaven's sake, go ranging as far as that red

fellow of middle age, who might have ideas, but had no pedigree; let her

stick to youth and her own order, and marry the--young man, confound him,

who looked like a Greek god, of the wrong period, having grown a

moustache. He remembered her words the other evening about these two and

the different lives they lived. Some romantic notion or other was

working in her! And again he looked at Courtier. A Quixotic type--the

sort that rode slap-bang at everything! All very well--but not for Babs!

She was not like the glorious Garibaldi's glorious Anita! It was truly

characteristic of Lord Dennis--and indeed of other people--that to him

champions of Liberty when dead were far dearer than champions of Liberty

when living. Yes, Babs would want more, or was it less, than just a life

of sleeping under the stars for the man she loved, and the cause he

fought for. She would want pleasure, and, not too much effort, and

presently a little power; not the uncomfortable after-fame of a woman who

went through fire, but the fame and power of beauty, and Society

prestige. This, fancy of hers, if it were a fancy, could be nothing but

the romanticism of a young girl. For the sake of a passing shadow, to

give up substance? It wouldn't do! And again Lord Dennis fixed his

shrewd glance on his great-niece. Those eyes, that smile! Yes! She

would grow out of this. And take the Greek god, the dying

Gaul--whichever that young man was!

CHAPTER XXI

It was not till the morning of polling day itself that Courtier left

Monkland Court. He had already suffered for some time from bad

conscience. For his knee was practically cured, and he knew well that it

was Barbara, and Barbara alone, who kept him staying there. The

atmosphere of that big house with its army of servants, the impossibility

of doing anything for himself, and the feeling of hopeless insulation

from the vivid and necessitous sides of life, galled him greatly. He

felt a very genuine pity for these people who seemed to lead an existence

as it were smothered under their own social importance. It was not their

fault. He recognized that they did their best. They were good specimens

of their kind; neither soft nor luxurious, as things went in a degenerate

and extravagant age; they evidently tried to be simple--and this seemed

to him to heighten the pathos of their situation. Fate had been too much

for them. What human spirit could emerge untrammelled and unshrunken from

that great encompassing host of material advantage? To a Bedouin like

Courtier, it was as though a subtle, but very terrible tragedy was all

the time being played before his eyes; and in, the very centre of this

tragedy was the girl who so greatly attracted him. Every night when he

retired to that lofty room, which smelt so good, and where, without

ostentation, everything was so perfectly ordered for his comfort, he

thought:

"My God, to-morrow I'll be off!"

But every morning when he met her at breakfast his thought was precisely

the same, and there were moments when he caught himself wondering: "Am I

falling under the spell of this existence--am I getting soft?" He

recognized as never before that the peculiar artificial 'hardness' of the

patrician was a brine or pickle, in which, with the instinct of

self-preservation they deliberately soaked themselves, to prevent the

decay of their overprotected fibre. He perceived it even in Barbara--a

sort of sentiment-proof overall, a species of mistrust of the emotional

or lyrical, a kind of contempt of sympathy and feeling. And every day he

was more and more tempted to lay rude hands on this garment; to see

whether he could not make her catch fire, and flare up with some emotion

or idea. In spite of her tantalizing, youthful self-possession, he saw

that she felt this longing in him, and now and then he caught a glimpse

of a streak of recklessness in her which lured him on:

And yet, when at last he was saying good-bye on the night before polling

day, he could not flatter himself that he had really struck any spark

from her. Certainly she gave him no chance, at that final interview, but

stood amongst the other women, calm and smiling, as if determined that he

should not again mock her with his ironical devotion.

He got up very early the next morning, intending to pass away unseen. In

the car put at his disposal; he found a small figure in a holland-frock,

leaning back against the cushions so that some sandalled toes pointed up

at the chauffeur's back. They belonged to little Ann, who in the course

of business had discovered the vehicle before the door. Her sudden little

voice under her sudden little nose, friendly but not too friendly, was

comforting to Courtier.

"Are you going? I can come as, far as the gate." "That is lucky."

"Yes. Is that all your luggage?"

"I'm afraid it is."

"Oh! It's quite a lot, really, isn't it?"

"As much as I deserve."

"Of course you don't have to take guinea-pigs about with you?"

"Not as a rule."

"I always do. There's great-Granny!"

There certainly was Lady Casterley, standing a little back from the

drive, and directing a tall gardener how to deal with an old oak-tree.

Courtier alighted, and went towards her to say good-bye. She greeted him

with a certain grim cordiality.

"So you are going! I am glad of that, though you quite understand that I

like you personally."

"Quite!"

Her eyes gleamed maliciously.

"Men who laugh like you are dangerous, as I've told you before!"

Then, with great gravity; she added

"My granddaughter will marry Lord Harbinger. I mention that, Mr.

Courtier, for your peace of mind. You are a man of honour; it will go no

further."

Courtier, bowing over her hand, answered:

"He will be lucky."

The little old lady regarded him unflinchingly.

"He will, sir. Good-bye!"

Courtier smilingly raised his hat. His cheeks were burning. Regaining

the car, he looked round. Lady Casterley was busy once more exhorting

the tall gardener. The voice of little Ann broke in on his thoughts:

"I hope you'll come again. Because I expect I shall be here at

Christmas; and my brothers will be here then, that is, Jock and Tiddy,

not Christopher because he's young. I must go now. Good-bye! Hallo,

Susie!"

Courtier saw her slide away, and join the little pale adoring figure of

the lodge-keeper's daughter.

The car passed out into the lane.

If Lady Casterley had planned this disclosure, which indeed she had not,

for the impulse had only come over her at the sound of Courtier's laugh,

she could not have, devised one more effectual, for there was deep down

in him all a wanderer's very real distrust, amounting almost to contempt,

of people so settled and done for; as aristocrats or bourgeois, and all a

man of action's horror of what he called puking and muling. The pursuit

of Barbara with any other object but that of marriage had naturally not

occurred to one who had little sense of conventional morality, but much

self-respect; and a secret endeavour to cut out Harbinger, ending in a

marriage whereat he would figure as a sort of pirate, was quite as little

to the taste of a man not unaccustomed to think himself as good as other

people.

He caused the car to deviate up the lane that led to Audrey Noel's,

hating to go away without a hail of cheer to that ship in distress.

She came out to him on the verandah. From the clasp of her hand, thin

and faintly browned--the hand of a woman never quite idle--he felt that

she relied on him to understand and sympathize; and nothing so awakened

the best in Courtier as such mute appeals to his protection. He said

gently:

"Don't let them think you're down;" and, squeezing her hand hard: "Why

should you be wasted like this? It's a sin and shame!"

But he stopped in what he felt to be an unlucky speech at sight of her

face, which without movement expressed so much more than his words. He

was protesting as a civilized man; her face was the protest of Nature,

the soundless declaration of beauty wasted against its will, beauty that

was life's invitation to the embrace which gave life birth.

"I'm clearing out, myself," he said: "You and I, you know, are not good

for these people. No birds of freedom allowed!"

Pressing his hand, she turned away into the house, leaving Courtier

gazing at the patch of air where her white figure had stood. He had

always had a special protective feeling for Audrey Noel, a feeling which

with but little encouragement might have become something warmer. But

since she had been placed in her anomalous position, he would not for the

world have brushed the dew off her belief that she could trust him. And,

now that he had fixed his own gaze elsewhere, and she was in this bitter

trouble, he felt on her account the rancour that a brother feels when

Justice and Pity have conspired to flout his sister. The voice of Frith

the chauffeur roused him from gloomy reverie.

"Lady Barbara, sir!"

Following the man's eyes, Courtier saw against the sky-line on the for

above Ashman's Folly, an equestrian statue. He stopped the car at once,

and got out.

He reached her at the ruin, screened from the road, by that divine chance

which attends on men who take care that it shall. He could not tell

whether she knew of his approach, and he would have given all he had,

which was not much, to have seen through the stiff grey of her coat, and

the soft cream of her body, into that mysterious cave, her heart. To

have been for a moment, like Ashman, done for good and all with material

things, and living the white life where are no barriers between man and

woman. The smile on her lips so baffled him, puffed there by her spirit,

as a first flower is puffed through the sur face of earth to mock at the

spring winds. How tell what it signified! Yet he rather prided himself

on his knowledge of women, of whom he had seen something. But all he

found to say was:

"I'm glad of this chance."

Then suddenly looking up, he found her strangely pale and quivering.

"I shall see you in London!" she said; and, touching her horse with her

whip, without looking back, she rode away over the hill.

Courtier returned to the moor road, and getting into the car, muttered:

"Faster, please, Frith!"....

CHAPTER XXII

Polling was already in brisk progress when Courtier arrived in

Bucklandbury; and partly from a not unnatural interest in the result,

partly from a half-unconscious clinging to the chance of catching another

glimpse of Barbara, he took his bag to the hotel, determined to stay for

the announcement of the poll. Strolling out into the High Street he

began observing the humours of the day. The bloom of political belief

had long been brushed off the wings of one who had so flown the world's

winds. He had seen too much of more vivid colours to be capable now of

venerating greatly the dull and dubious tints of blue and yellow. They

left him feeling extremely philosophic. Yet it was impossible to get

away from them, for the very world that day seemed blue and yellow, nor

did the third colour of red adopted by both sides afford any clear

assurance that either could see virtue in the other; rather, it seemed to

symbolize the desire of each to have his enemy's blood. But Courtier

soon observed by the looks cast at his own detached, and perhaps

sarcastic, face, that even more hateful to either side than its

antagonist, was the philosophic eye. Unanimous was the longing to heave

half a brick at it whenever it showed itself. With its d---d

impartiality, its habit of looking through the integument of things to

see if there might be anything inside, he felt that they regarded it as

the real adversary--the eternal foe to all the little fat 'facts,' who,

dressed up in blue and yellow, were swaggering and staggering, calling

each other names, wiping each other's eyes, blooding each other's noses.

To these little solemn delicious creatures, all front and no behind, the

philosophic eye, with its habit of looking round the corner, was clearly

detestable. The very yellow and very blue bodies of these roistering

small warriors with their hands on their tin swords and their lips on

their tin trumpets, started up in every window and on every wall

confronting each citizen in turn, persuading him that they and they alone

were taking him to Westminster. Nor had they apparently for the most

part much trouble with electors, who, finding uncertainty distasteful,

passionately desired to be assured that the country could at once be

saved by little yellow facts or little blue facts, as the case might be;

who had, no doubt, a dozen other good reasons for being on the one side

or the other; as, for instance, that their father had been so before

them; that their bread was buttered yellow or buttered blue; that they

had been on the other side last time; that they had thought it over and

made up their minds; that they had innocent blue or naive yellow beer

within; that his lordship was the man; or that the words proper to their

mouths were 'Chilcox for Bucklandbury'; and, above all, the one really

creditable reason, that, so far as they could tell with the best of their

intellect and feelings, the truth at the moment was either blue or

yellow.

The narrow high street was thronged with voters. Tall policemen

stationed there had nothing to do. The certainty of all, that they were

going to win, seemed to keep everyone in good humour. There was as yet

no need to break anyone's head, for though the sharpest lookout was kept

for any signs of the philosophic eye, it was only to be found--outside

Courtier--in the perambulators of babies, in one old man who rode a

bicycle waveringly along the street and stopped to ask a policeman what

was the matter in the town, and in two rather green-faced fellows who

trundled barrows full of favours both blue and yellow.

But though Courtier eyed the 'facts' with such suspicion, the keenness of

everyone about the business struck him as really splendid. They went at

it with a will. Having looked forward to it for months, they were going

to look back on it for months. It was evidently a religious ceremony,

summing up most high feelings; and this seemed to one who was himself a

man of action, natural, perhaps pathetic, but certainly no matter for

scorn.

It was already late in the afternoon when there came debouching into the

high street a long string of sandwichmen, each bearing before and behind

him a poster containing these words beautifully situated in large dark

blue letters against a pale blue ground:

"NEW COMPLICATIONS.

DANGER NOT PAST.

VOTE FOR MILTOUN AND THE GOVERNMENT,

AND SAVE THE EMPIRE."

Courtier stopped to look at them with peculiar indignation. Not only did

this poster tramp in again on his cherished convictions about Peace, but

he saw in it something more than met the unphilosophic eye. It

symbolized for him all that was catch-penny in the national life-an

epitaph on the grave of generosity, unutterably sad. Yet from a Party

point of view what could be more justifiable? Was it not desperately

important that every blue nerve should be strained that day to turn

yellow nerves, if not blue, at all events green, before night fell? Was

it not perfectly true that the Empire could only be saved by voting blue?

Could they help a blue paper printing the words, 'New complications,'

which he had read that morning? No more than the yellows could help a

yellow journal printing the words 'Lord Miltoun's Evening Adventure.'

Their only business was to win, ever fighting fair. The yellows had not

fought fair, they never did, and one of their most unfair tactics was the

way they had of always accusing the blues of unfair fighting, an

accusation truly ludicrous! As for truth! That which helped the world to

be blue, was obviously true; that which didn't, as obviously not. There

was no middle policy! The man who saw things neither was a softy, and no

proper citizen. And as for giving the yellows credit for sincerity--the

yellows never gave them credit! But though Courtier knew all that, this

poster seemed to him particularly damnable, and he could not for the life

of him resist striking one of the sandwich-boards with his cane. The

resounding thwack startled a butcher's pony standing by the pavement. It

reared, and bolted forward, with Courtier, who had naturally seized the

rein, hanging on. A dog dashed past. Courtier tripped and fell. The

pony, passing over, struck him on the head with a hoof. For a moment he

lost consciousness; then coming to himself, refused assistance, and went

to his hotel. He felt very giddy, and, after bandaging a nasty cut, lay

down on his bed.

Miltoun, returning from that necessary exhibition of himself, the

crowning fact, at every polling centre, found time to go and see him.

"That last poster of yours!" Courtier began, at once.

"I'm having it withdrawn."

"It's done the trick--congratulations--you'll get in!"

"I knew nothing of it."

"My dear fellow, I didn't suppose you did."

"When there is a desert, Courtier, between a man and the sacred city, he

doesn't renounce his journey because he has to wash in dirty water on the

way: The mob--how I loathe it!"

There was such pent-up fury in those words as to astonish even one whose

life had been passed in conflict with majorities.

"I hate its mean stupidities, I hate the sound of its voice, and the look

on its face--it's so ugly, it's so little. Courtier, I suffer purgatory

from the thought that I shall scrape in by the votes of the mob. There

is sin in using this creature and I am expiating it."

To this strange outburst, Courtier at first made no reply.

"You've been working too hard," he said at last, "you're off your

balance. After all, the mob's made up of men like you and me."

"No, Courtier, the mob is not made up of men like you and me. If it were

it would not be the mob."

"It looks," Courtier answered gravely, "as if you had no business in this

galley. I've always steered clear of it myself."

"You follow your feelings. I have not that happiness."

So saying, Miltoun turned to the door.

Courtier's voice pursued him earnestly.

"Drop your politics--if you feel like this about them; don't waste your

life following whatever it is you follow; don't waste hers!"

But Miltoun did not answer.

It was a wondrous still night, when, a few minutes before twelve, with

his forehead bandaged under his hat, the champion of lost causes left the

hotel and made his way towards the Grammar School for the declaration of

the poll. A sound as of some monster breathing guided him, till, from a

steep empty street he came in sight of a surging crowd, spread over the

town square, like a dark carpet patterned by splashes of lamplight. High

up above that crowd, on the little peaked tower of the Grammar School, a

brightly lighted clock face presided; and over the passionate hopes in

those thousands of hearts knit together by suspense the sky had lifted;

and showed no cloud between them and the purple fields of air. To

Courtier descending towards the square, the swaying white faces, turned

all one way, seemed like the heads of giant wild flowers in a dark field,

shivered by wind. The night had charmed away the blue and yellow facts,

and breathed down into that throng the spirit of emotion. And he

realized all at once the beauty and meaning of this scene--expression of

the quivering forces, whose perpetual flux, controlled by the Spirit of

Balance, was the soul of the world. Thousands of hearts with the thought

of self lost in one over-mastering excitement!

An old man with a long grey beard, standing close to his elbow, murmured:

"'Tis anxious work--I wouldn't ha' missed this for anything in the

world."

"Fine, eh?" answered Courtier.

"Aye," said the old man, "'tis fine. I've not seen the like o' this

since the great year--forty-eight. There they are--the aristocrats!"

Following the direction of that skinny hand Courtier saw on a balcony

Lord and Lady Valleys, side by side, looking steadily down at the crowd.

There too, leaning against a window and talking to someone behind, was

Barbara. The old man went on muttering, and Courtier could see that his

eyes had grown very bright, his whole face transfigured by intense

hostility; he felt drawn to this old creature, thus moved to the very

soul. Then he saw Barbara looking down at him, with her hand raised to

her temple to show that she saw his bandaged head. He had the presence

of mind not to lift his hat.

The old man spoke again.

"You wouldn't remember forty-eight, I suppose. There was a feeling in

the people then--we would ha' died for things in those days. I'm

eighty-four," and he held his shaking hand up to his breast, "but the

spirit's alive here yet! God send the Radical gets in!" There was

wafted from him a scent as of potatoes.

Far behind, at the very edge of the vast dark throng, some voices began

singing: "Way down upon the Swanee ribber." The tune floated forth,

ceased, spurted up once more, and died.

Then, in the very centre of the square a stentorian baritone roared

forth: "Should auld acquaintance be forgot!"

The song swelled, till every kind of voice, from treble to the old

Chartist's quavering bass, was chanting it; here and there the crowd

heaved with the movement of linked arms. Courtier found the soft fingers

of a young woman in his right hand, the old Chartist's dry trembling paw

in his left. He himself sang loudly. The grave and fearful music sprang

straight up into they air, rolled out right and left, and was lost among

the hills. But it had no sooner died away than the same huge baritone

yelled "God save our gracious King!" The stature of the crowd seemed at

once to leap up two feet, and from under that platform of raised hats

rose a stupendous shouting.

"This," thought Courtier, "is religion!"

They were singing even on the balconies; by the lamplight he could see

Lord Valleys mouth not opened quite enough, as though his voice were just

a little ashamed of coming out, and Barbara with her head flung back

against the pillar, pouring out her heart. No mouth in all the crowd was

silent. It was as though the soul of the English people were escaping

from its dungeon of reserve, on the pinions of that chant.

But suddenly, like a shot bird closing wings, the song fell silent and

dived headlong back to earth. Out from under the clock-face had moved a

thin dark figure. More figures came behind. Courtier could see Miltoun.

A voice far away cried: "Up; Chilcox!" A huge: "Husill" followed; then

such a silence, that the sound of an engine shunting a mile away could be

heard plainly.

The dark figure moved forward, and a tiny square of paper gleamed out

white against the black of his frock-coat.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Result of the Poll:

"Miltoun Four thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight. Chilcox Four

thousand eight hundred and two."

The silence seemed to fall to earth, and break into a thousand pieces.

Through the pandemonium of cheers and groaning, Courtier with all his

strength forced himself towards the balcony. He could see Lord Valleys

leaning forward with a broad smile; Lady Valleys passing her hand across

her eyes; Barbara with her hand in Harbinger's, looking straight into his

face. He stopped. The old Chartist was still beside him, tears rolling

down his cheeks into his beard.

Courtier saw Miltoun come forward, and stand, unsmiling, deathly pale.

PART II

CHAPTER I

At three o'clock in the afternoon of the nineteenth of July little Ann

Shropton commenced the ascent of the main staircase of Valleys House,

London. She climbed slowly, in the very middle, an extremely small white

figure on those wide and shining stairs, counting them aloud. Their

number was never alike two days running, which made them attractive to

one for whom novelty was the salt of life.

Coming to that spot where they branched, she paused to consider which of

the two flights she had used last, and unable to remember, sat down. She

was the bearer of a message. It had been new when she started, but was

already comparatively old, and likely to become older, in view of a

design now conceived by her of travelling the whole length of the picture

gallery. And while she sat maturing this plan, sunlight flooding through

a large window drove a white refulgence down into the heart of the wide

polished space of wood and marble, whence she had come. The nature of

little Ann habitually rejected fairies and all fantastic things, finding

them quite too much in the air, and devoid of sufficient reality and

'go'; and this refulgence, almost unearthly in its travelling glory,

passed over her small head and played strangely with the pillars in the

hall, without exciting in her any fancies or any sentiment. The

intention of discovering what was at the end of the picture gallery

absorbed the whole of her essentially practical and active mind.

Deciding on the left-hand flight of stairs, she entered that immensely

long, narrow, and--with blinds drawn--rather dark saloon. She walked

carefully, because the floor was very slippery here, and with a kind of

seriousness due partly to the darkness and partly to the pictures. They

were indeed, in this light, rather formidable, those old Caradocs black,

armoured creatures, some of them, who seemed to eye with a sort of

burning, grim, defensive greed the small white figure of their descendant

passing along between them. But little Ann, who knew they were only

pictures, maintained her course steadily, and every now and then, as she

passed one who seemed to her rather uglier than the others, wrinkled her

sudden little nose. At the end, as she had thought; appeared a door.

She opened it, and passed on to a landing. There was a stone staircase

in the corner, and there were two doors. It would be nice to go up the

staircase, but it would also be nice to open the doors. Going towards

the first door, with a little thrill, she turned the handle. It was one

of those rooms, necessary in houses, for which she had no great liking;

and closing this door rather loudly she opened the other one, finding

herself in a chamber not resembling the rooms downstairs, which were all

high and nicely gilded, but more like where she had lessons, low, and

filled with books and leather chairs. From the end of the room which she

could not see, she heard a sound as of someone kissing something, and

instinct had almost made her turn to go away when the word: "Hallo!"

suddenly opened her lips. And almost directly she saw that Granny and

Grandpapa were standing by the fireplace. Not knowing quite whether they

were glad to see her, she went forward and began at once:

"Is this where you sit, Grandpapa?"

"It is."

"It's nice, isn't it, Granny? Where does the stone staircase go to?"

"To the roof of the tower, Ann."

"Oh! I have to give a message, so I must go now."

"Sorry to lose you."

"Yes; good-bye!"

Hearing the door shut behind her, Lord and Lady Valleys looked at each

other with a dubious smile.

The little interview which she had interrupted, had arisen in this way.

Accustomed to retire to this quiet and homely room, which was not his

official study where he was always liable to the attacks of secretaries,

Lord Valleys had come up here after lunch to smoke and chew the cud of a

worry.

The matter was one in connection with his Pendridny estate, in Cornwall.

It had long agitated both his agent and himself, and had now come to him

for final decision. The question affected two villages to the north of

the property, whose inhabitants were solely dependent on the working of a

large quarry, which had for some time been losing money.

A kindly man, he was extremely averse to any measure which would plunge

his tenants into distress, and especially in cases where there had been

no question of opposition between himself and them. But, reduced to its

essentials, the matter stood thus: Apart from that particular quarry the

Pendridny estate was not only a going, but even a profitable concern,

supporting itself and supplying some of the sinews of war towards Valleys

House and the racing establishment at Newmarket and other general

expenses; with this quarry still running, allowing for the upkeep of

Pendridny, and the provision of pensions to superannuated servants, it

was rather the other way.

Sitting there, that afternoon, smoking his favourite pipe, he had at last

come to the conclusion that there was nothing for it but to close down.

He had not made this resolution lightly; though, to do him justice, the

knowledge that the decision would be bound to cause an outcry in the

local, and perhaps the National Press, had secretly rather spurred him on

to the resolve than deterred him from it. He felt as if he were being

dictated to in advance, and he did not like dictation. To have to

deprive these poor people of their immediate living was, he knew, a good

deal more irksome to him than to those who would certainly make a fuss

about it, his conscience was clear, and he could discount that future

outcry as mere Party spite. He had very honestly tried to examine the

thing all round; and had reasoned thus: If I keep this quarry open, I am

really admitting the principle of pauperization, since I naturally look

to each of my estates to support its own house, grounds, shooting, and to

contribute towards the support of this house, and my family, and racing

stable, and all the people employed about them both.

To allow any business to be run on my estates which does not contribute

to the general upkeep, is to protect and really pauperize a portion of my

tenants at the expense of the rest; it must therefore be false economics

and a secret sort of socialism. Further, if logically followed out, it

might end in my ruin, and to allow that, though I might not personally

object, would be to imply that I do not believe that I am by virtue of my

traditions and training, the best machinery through which the State can

work to secure the welfare of the people....

When he had reached that point in his consideration of the question, his

mind, or rather perhaps, his essential self, had not unnaturally risen up

and said: Which is absurd!

Impersonality was in fashion, and as a rule he believed in thinking

impersonally. There was a point, however, where the possibility of doing

so ceased, without treachery to oneself, one's order, and the country.

And to the argument which he was quite shrewd enough to put to himself,

sooner than have it put by anyone else, that it was disproportionate for

a single man by a stroke of the pen to be able to dispose of the

livelihood of hundreds whose senses and feelings were similar to his

own--he had answered: "If I didn't, some plutocrat or company would--or,

worse still, the State!" Cooperative enterprise being, in his opinion,

foreign to the spirit of the country, there was, so far as he could see,

no other alternative. Facts were facts and not to be got over!

Notwithstanding all this, the necessity for the decision made him sorry,

for if he had no great sense of proportion, he was at least humane.

He was still smoking his pipe and staring at a sheet of paper covered

with small figures when his wife entered. Though she had come to ask his

advice on a very different subject, she saw at once that he was vexed,

and said:

"What's the matter, Geoff?"

Lord Valleys rose, went to the hearth, deliberately tapped out his pipe,

then held out to her the sheet of paper.

"That quarry! Nothing for it--must go!"

Lady Valleys' face changed.

"Oh, no! It will mean such dreadful distress."

Lord Valleys stared at his nails. "It's putting a drag on the whole

estate," he said.

"I know, but how could we face the people--I should never be able to go

down there. And most of them have such enormous families."

Since Lord Valleys continued to bend on his nails that slow,

thought-forming stare, she went on earnestly:

"Rather than that I'd make sacrifices. I'd sooner Pendridny were let

than throw all those people out of work. I suppose it would let."

"Let? Best woodcock shooting in the world."

Lady Valleys, pursuing her thoughts, went on:

"In time we might get the people drafted into other things. Have you

consulted Miltoun?"

"No," said Lord Valleys shortly, "and don't mean to--he's too

unpractical."

"He always seems to know what he wants very well."

"I tell you," repeated Lord Valleys, "Miltoun's no good in a matter of

this sort--he and his ideas throw back to the Middle Ages."

Lady Valleys went closer, and took him by the lapels of his collar.

"Geoff-really, to please me; some other way!"

Lord Valleys frowned, staring at her for some time; and at last answered:

"To please you--I'll leave it over another year."

"You think that's better than letting?"

"I don't like the thought of some outsider there. Time enough to come to

that if we must. Take it as my Christmas present."

Lady Valleys, rather flushed, bent forward and kissed his ear.

It was at this moment that little Ann had entered.

When she was gone, and they had exchanged that dubious look, Lady Valleys

said:

"I came about Babs. I don't know what to make of her since we came up.

She's not putting her heart into things."

Lord Valleys answered almost sulkily:

"It's the heat probably--or Claud Harbinger." In spite of his easy-going

parentalism, he disliked the thought of losing the child whom he so

affectionately admired.

"Ah!" said Lady Valleys slowly, "I'm not so sure."

"How do you mean?"

"There's something queer about her. I'm by no means certain she hasn't

got some sort of feeling for that Mr. Courtier."

"What!" said Lord Valleys, growing most unphilosophically red.

"Exactly!"

"Confound it, Gertrude, Miltoun's business was quite enough for one

year."

"For twenty," murmured Lady Valleys. "I'm watching her. He's going to

Persia, they say."

"And leaving his bones there, I hope," muttered Lord Valleys. "Really,

it's too much. I should think you're all wrong, though."

Lady Valleys raised her eyebrows. Men were very queer about such things!

Very queer and worse than helpless!

"Well," she said, "I must go to my meeting. I'll take her, and see if I

can get at something," and she went away.

It was the inaugural meeting of the Society for the Promotion of the

Birth Rate, over which she had promised to preside. The scheme was one

in which she had been prominent from the start, appealing as it did to

her large and full-blooded nature. Many movements, to which she found it

impossible to refuse her name, had in themselves but small attraction;

and it was a real comfort to feel something approaching enthusiasm for

one branch of her public work. Not that there was any academic

consistency about her in the matter, for in private life amongst her

friends she was not narrowly dogmatic on the duty of wives to multiply

exceedingly. She thought imperially on the subject, without bigotry.

Large, healthy families, in all cases save individual ones! The prime

idea at the back of her mind was--National Expansion! Her motto, and she

intended if possible to make it the motto of the League, was: 'De

l'audace, et encore de l'audace!' It was a question of the full

realization of the nation. She had a true, and in a sense touching belief

in 'the flag,' apart from what it might cover. It was her idealism.

"You may talk," she would say, "as much as you like about directing

national life in accordance with social justice! What does the nation

care about social justice? The thing is much bigger than that. It's a

matter of sentiment. We must expand!"

On the way to the meeting, occupied with her speech, she made no attempt

to draw Barbara into conversation. That must wait. The child, though

languid, and pale, was looking so beautiful that it was a pleasure to

have her support in such a movement.

In a little dark room behind the hall the Committee were already

assembled, and they went at once on to the platform.

CHAPTER II

Unmoved by the stares of the audience, Barbara sat absorbed in moody

thoughts.

Into the three weeks since Miltoun's election there had been crowded such

a multitude of functions that she had found, as it were, no time, no

energy to know where she stood with herself. Since that morning in the

stable, when he had watched her with the horse Hal, Harbinger had seemed

to live only to be close to her. And the consciousness of his passion

gave her a tingling sense of pleasure. She had been riding and dancing

with him, and sometimes this had been almost blissful. But there were

times too, when she felt--though always with a certain contempt of

herself, as when she sat on that sunwarmed stone below the tor--a queer

dissatisfaction, a longing for something outside a world where she had to

invent her own starvations and simplicities, to make-believe in

earnestness.

She had seen Courtier three times. Once he had come to dine, in response

to an invitation from Lady Valleys worded in that charming, almost

wistful style, which she had taught herself to use to those below her in

social rank, especially if they were intelligent; once to the Valleys

House garden party; and next day, having told him what time she would be

riding, she had found him in the Row, not mounted, but standing by the

rail just where she must pass, with that look on his face of mingled

deference and ironic self-containment, of which he was a master. It

appeared that he was leaving England; and to her questions why, and

where, he had only shrugged his shoulders. Up on this dusty platform, in

the hot bare hall, facing all those people, listening to speeches whose

sense she was too languid and preoccupied to take in, the whole medley of

thoughts, and faces round her, and the sound of the speakers' voices,

formed a kind of nightmare, out of which she noted with extreme

exactitude the colour of her mother's neck beneath a large black hat, and

the expression on the face of a Committee man to the right, who was

biting his fingers under cover of a blue paper. She realized that

someone was speaking amongst the audience, casting forth, as it were,

small bunches of words. She could see him--a little man in a black coat,

with a white face which kept jerking up and down.

"I feel that this is terrible," she heard him say; "I feel that this is

blasphemy. That we should try to tamper with the greatest force, the

greatest and the most sacred and secret-force, that--that moves in the

world, is to me horrible. I cannot bear to listen; it seems to make

everything so small!" She saw him sit down, and her mother rising to

answer.

"We must all sympathize with the sincerity and to a certain extent with

the intention of our friend in the body of the hall. But we must ask

ourselves:

"Have we the right to allow ourselves the luxury, of private feelings in

a matter which concerns the national expansion. We must not give way to

sentiment. Our friend in the body of the hall spoke--he will forgive me

for saying so--like a poet, rather than a serious reformer. I am afraid

that if we let ourselves drop into poetry, the birth rate of this country

will very soon drop into poetry too. And that I think it is impossible

for us to contemplate with folded hands. The resolution I was about to

propose when our friend in the body of the hall----"

But Barbara's attention, had wandered off again into that queer medley of

thoughts, and feelings, out of which the little man had so abruptly

roused her. Then she realized that the meeting was breaking up, and her

mother saying:

"Now, my dear, it's hospital day. We've just time."

When they were once more in the car, she leaned back very silent,

watching the traffic.

Lady Valleys eyed her sidelong.

"What a little bombshell," she said, "from that small person! He must

have got in by mistake. I hear Mr. Courtier has a card for Helen

Gloucester's ball to-night, Babs."

"Poor man!"

"You will be there," said Lady Valleys dryly.

Barbara drew back into her corner.

"Don't tease me, Mother!"

An expression of compunction crossed Lady Valleys' face; she tried to

possess herself of Barbara's hand. But that languid hand did not return

her squeeze.

"I know the mood you're in, dear. It wants all one's pluck to shake it

off; don't let it grow on you. You'd better go down to Uncle Dennis

to-morrow. You've been overdoing it."

Barbara sighed.

"I wish it were to-morrow."

The car had stopped, and Lady Valleys said:

"Will you come in, or are you too tired? It always does them good to see

you."

"You're twice as tired as me," Barbara answered; "of course I'll come."

At the entrance of the two ladies, there rose at once a faint buzz and

murmur. Lady Valleys, whose ample presence radiated suddenly a

businesslike and cheery confidence, went to a bedside and sat down. But

Barbara stood in a thin streak of the July sunlight, uncertain where to

begin, amongst the faces turned towards her. The poor dears looked so

humble, and so wistful, and so tired. There was one lying quite flat,

who had not even raised her head to see who had come in. That slumbering,

pale, high cheek-boned face had a frailty as if a touch, a breath, would

shatter it; a wisp of the blackest hair, finer than silk, lay across the

forehead; the closed eyes were deep sunk; one hand, scarred almost to the

bone with work, rested above her breast. She breathed between lips which

had no colour. About her, sleeping, was a kind of beauty. And there

came over the girl a queer rush of emotion. The sleeper seemed so apart

from everything there, from all the formality and stiffness of the ward.

To look at her swept away the languid, hollow feeling with which she had

come in; it made her think of the tors at home, when the wind was

blowing, and all was bare, and grand, and sometimes terrible. There was

something elemental in that still sleep. And the old lady in the next

led, with a brown wrinkled face and bright black eyes brimful of life,

seemed almost vulgar beside such remote tranquillity, while she was

telling Barbara that a little bunch of heather in the better half of a

soap-dish on the window-sill had come from Wales, because, as she

explained: "My mother was born in Stirling, dearie; so I likes a bit of

heather, though I never been out o' Bethnal Green meself."

But when Barbara again passed, the sleeping woman was sitting up, and

looked but a poor ordinary thing--her strange fragile beauty all

withdrawn.

It was a relief when Lady Valleys said:

"My dear, my Naval Bazaar at five-thirty; and while I'm there you must go

home and have a rest, and freshen yourself up for the evening. We dine

at Plassey House."

The Duchess of Gloucester's Ball, a function which no one could very well

miss, had been fixed for this late date owing to the Duchess's announced

desire to prolong the season and so help the hackney cabmen; and though

everybody sympathized, it had been felt by most that it would be simpler

to go away, motor up on the day of the Ball, and motor down again on the

following morning. And throughout the week by which the season was thus

prolonged, in long rows at the railway stations, and on their stands, the

hackney cabmen, unconscious of what was being done for them, waited,

patient as their horses. But since everybody was making this special

effort, an exceptionally large, exclusive, and brilliant company

reassembled at Gloucester House.

In the vast ballroom over the medley of entwined revolving couples,

punkahs had been fixed, to clear and freshen the languid air, and these

huge fans, moving with incredible slowness, drove a faint refreshing

draught down over the sea of white shirt-fronts and bare necks, and freed

the scent from innumerable flowers.

Late in the evening, close by one of the great clumps of bloom, a very

pretty woman stood talking to Bertie Caradoc. She was his cousin, Lily

Malvezin, sister of Geoffrey Winlow, and wife of a Liberal peer, a

charming creature, whose pink cheeks, bright eyes, quick lips, and

rounded figure, endowed her with the prettiest air of animation. And

while she spoke she kept stealing sly glances at her partner, trying as

it were to pierce the armour of that self-contained young man.

"No, my dear," she said in her mocking voice, "you'll never persuade me

that Miltoun is going to catch on. 'Il est trop intransigeant'. Ah!

there's Babs!"

For the girl had come gliding by, her eyes wandering lazily, her lips

just parted; her neck, hardly less pale than her white frock; her face

pale, and marked with languor, under the heavy coil of her tawny hair;

and her swaying body seeming with each turn of the waltz to be caught by

the arms of her partner from out of a swoon.

With that immobility of lips, learned by all imprisoned in Society, Lily

Malvezin murmured:

"Who's that she's dancing with? Is it the dark horse, Bertie?"

Through lips no less immobile Bertie answered:

"Forty to one, no takers."

But those inquisitive bright eyes still followed Barbara, drifting in the

dance, like a great waterlily caught in the swirl of a mill pool; and the

thought passed through that pretty head:

"She's hooked him. It's naughty of Babs, really!" And then she saw

leaning against a pillar another whose eyes also were following those

two; and she thought: "H'm! Poor Claud--no wonder he's looking like

that. Oh! Babs!"

By one of the statues on the terrace Barbara and her partner stood, where

trees, disfigured by no gaudy lanterns, offered the refreshment of their

darkness and serenity.

Wrapped in her new pale languor, still breathing deeply from the waltz,

she seemed to Courtier too utterly moulded out of loveliness. To what end

should a man frame speeches to a vision! She was but an incarnation of

beauty imprinted on the air, and would fade out at a touch-like the

sudden ghosts of enchantment that came to one under the blue, and the

starlit snow of a mountain night, or in a birch wood all wistful golden!

Speech seemed but desecration! Besides, what of interest was there for

him to say in this world of hers, so bewildering and of such glib

assurance--this world that was like a building, whose every window was

shut and had a blind drawn down. A building that admitted none who had

not sworn, as it were, to believe it the world, the whole world, and

nothing but the world, outside which were only the nibbled remains of

what had built it. This, world of Society, in which he felt like one

travelling through a desert, longing to meet a fellow-creature.

The voice of Harbinger behind them said:

"Lady-Babs!"

Long did the punkahs waft their breeze over that brave-hued wheel of

pleasure, and the sound of the violins quaver and wail out into the

morning. Then quickly, as the spangles of dew vanish off grass when the

sun rises, all melted away; and in the great rooms were none but flunkeys

presiding over the polished surfaces like flamingoes by some lakeside at

dawn.

CHAPTER III

A brick dower-house of the Fitz-Harolds, just outside the little

seaside town of Nettlefold, sheltered the tranquil days of Lord

Dennis. In that south-coast air, sanest and most healing in all

England, he raged very slowly, taking little thought of death, and

much quiet pleasure in his life. Like the tall old house with its

high windows and squat chimneys, he was marvellously self-contained.

His books, for he somewhat passionately examined old civilizations,

and described their habits from time to time with a dry and not too

poignant pen in a certain old-fashioned magazine; his microscope, for

he studied infusoria; and the fishing boat of his friend John Bogle,

who had long perceived that Lord Dennis was the biggest fish he ever

caught; all these, with occasional visitors, and little runs to

London, to Monkland, and other country houses, made up the sum of a

life which, if not desperately beneficial, was uniformly kind and

harmless, and, by its notorious simplicity, had a certain negative

influence not only on his own class but on the relations of that

class with the country at large. It was commonly said in Nettlefold,

that he was a gentleman; if they were all like him there wasn't much

in all this talk against the Lords. The shop people and lodging-house

keepers felt that the interests of the country were safer in

his hands: than in the hands of people who wanted to meddle with

everything for the good of those who were only anxious to be let

alone. A man too who could so completely forget he was the son of a

Duke, that other people never forgot it, was the man for their money.

It was true that he had never had a say in public affairs; but this

was overlooked, because he could have had it if he liked, and the

fact that he did not like, only showed once more that he was a

gentleman.

Just as he was the one personality of the little town against whom

practically nothing was ever, said, so was his house the one house which

defied criticism. Time had made it utterly suitable. The ivied walls,

and purplish roof lichened yellow in places, the quiet meadows harbouring

ponies and kine, reaching from it to the sea--all was mellow. In truth

it made all the other houses of the town seem shoddy--standing alone

beyond them, like its, master, if anything a little too esthetically

remote from common wants.

He had practically no near neighbours of whom he saw anything, except

once in a way young Harbinger three miles distant at Whitewater. But

since he had the faculty of not being bored with his own society, this

did not worry him. Of local charity, especially to the fishers of the

town, whose winter months were nowadays very bare of profit, he was

prodigal to the verge of extravagance, for his income was not great. But

in politics, beyond acting as the figure-head of certain municipal

efforts, he took little or no part. His Toryism indeed was of the mild

order, that had little belief in the regeneration of the country by any

means but those of kindly feeling between the classes. When asked how

that was to be brought about, he would answer with his dry, slightly

malicious, suavity, that if you stirred hornets' nests with sticks the

hornets would come forth. Having no land, he was shy of expressing

himself on that vexed question; but if resolutely attacked would give

utterance to some such sentiment as this: "The land's best in our hands

on the whole, but we want fewer dogs-in-the-manger among us."

He had, as became one of his race, a feeling for land, tender and

protective, and could not bear to think of its being put out to farm with

that cold Mother, the State. He was ironical over the views of Radicals

or Socialists, but disliked to hear such people personally abused behind

their backs. It must be confessed, however, that if contradicted he

increased considerably the ironical decision of his sentiments.

Withdrawn from all chance in public life of enforcing his views on

others, the natural aristocrat within him was forced to find some

expression.

Each year, towards the end of July, he placed his house at the service of

Lord Valleys, who found it a convenient centre for attending Goodwood.

It was on the morning after the Duchess of Gloucester's Ball, that he

received this note:

"VALLEYS HOUSE.

"DEAREST UNCLE DENNIS,

"May I come down to you a little before time and rest? London is so

terribly hot. Mother has three functions still to stay for, and I shall

have to come back again for our last evening, the political one--so I

don't want to go all the way to Monkland; and anywhere else, except with

you, would be rackety. Eustace looks so seedy. I'll try and bring him,

if I may. Granny is terribly well.

"Best love, dear, from your.

"BABS."

The same afternoon she came, but without Miltoun, driving up from the

station in a fly. Lord Dennis met her at the gate; and, having kissed

her, looked at her somewhat anxiously, caressing his white peaked beard.

He had never yet known Babs sick of anything, except when he took her out

in John Bogle's boat. She was certainly looking pale, and her hair was

done differently--a fact disturbing to one who did not discover it.

Slipping his arm through hers he led her out into a meadow still full of

buttercups, where an old white pony, who had carried her in the Row

twelve years ago, came up to them and rubbed his muzzle against her

waist. And suddenly there rose in Lord Dennis the thoroughly

discomforting and strange suspicion that, though the child was not going

to cry, she wanted time to get over the feeling that she was. Without

appearing to separate himself from her, he walked to the wall at the end

of the field, and stood looking at the sea.

The tide was nearly up; the South wind driving over it brought him the

scent of the sea-flowers, and the crisp rustle of little waves swimming

almost to his feet. Far out, where the sunlight fell, the smiling waters

lay white and mysterious in July haze, giving him a queer feeling. But

Lord Dennis, though he had his moments of poetic sentiment, was on the

whole quite able to keep the sea in its proper place--for after all it

was the English Channel; and like a good Englishman he recognized that if

you once let things get away from their names, they ceased to be facts,

and if they ceased to be facts, they became--the devil! In truth he was

not thinking much of the sea, but of Barbara. It was plain that she was

in trouble of some kind. And the notion that Babs could find trouble in

life was extraordinarily queer; for he felt, subconsciously, what a great

driving force of disturbance was necessary to penetrate the hundred folds

of the luxurious cloak enwrapping one so young and fortunate. It was not

Death; therefore it must be Love; and he thought at once of that fellow

with the red moustaches. Ideas were all very well--no one would object

to as many as you liked, in their proper place--the dinner-table, for

example. But to fall in love, if indeed it were so, with a man who not

only had ideas, but an inclination to live up to them, and on them, and

on nothing else, seemed to Lord Dennis 'outre'.

She had followed him to the wall, and he looked--at her dubiously.

"To rest in the waters of Lethe, Babs? By the way, seen anything of our

friend Mr. Courtier? Very picturesque--that Quixotic theory of life!"

And in saying that, his voice (like so many refined voices which have

turned their backs on speculation) was triple-toned-mocking at ideas,

mocking at itself for mocking at ideas, yet showing plainly that at

bottom it only mocked at itself for mocking at ideas, because it would

be, as it were, crude not to do so.

But Barbara did not answer his question, and began to speak of other

things. And all that afternoon and evening she talked away so lightly

that Lord Dennis, but for his instinct, would have been deceived.

That wonderful smiling mask--the inscrutability of Youth--was laid aside

by her at night. Sitting at her window, under the moon, 'a gold-bright

moth slow-spinning up the sky,' she watched the darkness hungrily, as

though it were a great thought into whose heart she was trying to see.

Now and then she stroked herself, getting strange comfort out of the

presence of her body. She had that old unhappy feeling of having two

selves within her. And this soft night full of the quiet stir of the

sea, and of dark immensity, woke in her a terrible longing to be at one

with something, somebody, outside herself. At the Ball last night the

'flying feeling' had seized on her again; and was still there--a queer

manifestation of her streak of recklessness. And this result of her

contacts with Courtier, this 'cacoethes volandi', and feeling of clipped

wings, hurt her--as being forbidden hurts a child.

She remembered how in the housekeeper's room at Monkland there lived a

magpie who had once sought shelter in an orchid-house from some pursuer.

As soon as they thought him wedded to civilization, they had let him go,

to see whether he would come back. For hours he had sat up in a high

tree, and at last come down again to his cage; whereupon, fearing lest

the rooks should attack him when he next took this voyage of discovery,

they clipped one of his wings. After that the twilight bird, though he

lived happily enough, hopping about his cage and the terrace which served

him for exercise yard, would seem at times restive and frightened, moving

his wings as if flying in spirit, and sad that he must stay on earth.

So, too, at her window Barbara fluttered her wings; then, getting into

bed, lay sighing and tossing. A clock struck three; and seized by an

intolerable impatience at her own discomfort, she slipped a motor coat

over her night-gown, put on slippers, and stole out into the passage.

The house was very still. She crept downstairs, smothering her

footsteps. Groping her way through the hall, inhabited by the thin

ghosts of would-be light, she slid back the chain of the door, and fled

towards the sea. She made no more noise running in the dew, than a bird

following the paths of air; and the two ponies, who felt her figure pass

in the darkness, snuffled, sending out soft sighs of alarm amongst the

closed buttercups. She climbed the wall over to the beach. While she

was running, she had fully meant to dash into the sea and cool herself,

but it was so black, with just a thin edging scarf of white, and the sky

was black, bereft of lights, waiting for the day!

She stood, and looked. And all the leapings and pulsings of flesh and

spirit slowly died in that wide dark loneliness, where the only sound was

the wistful breaking of small waves. She was well used to these dead

hours--only last night, at this very time, Harbinger's arm had been round

her in a last waltz! But here the dead hours had such different faces,

wide-eyed, solemn, and there came to Barbara, staring out at them, a

sense that the darkness saw her very soul, so that it felt little and

timid within her. She shivered in her fur-lined coat, as if almost

frightened at finding herself so marvellously nothing before that black

sky and dark sea, which seemed all one, relentlessly great.... And

crouching down, she waited for the dawn to break.

It came from over the Downs, sweeping a rush of cold air on its wings,

flighting towards the sea. With it the daring soon crept back into her

blood. She stripped, and ran down into the dark water, fast growing

pale. It covered her jealously, and she set to work to swim. The water

was warmer than the air. She lay on her back and splashed, watching the

sky flush. To bathe like this in the half-dark, with her hair floating

out, and no wet clothes clinging to her limbs, gave her the joy of a

child doing a naughty thing. She swam out of her depth, then scared at

her own adventure, swam in again as the sun rose.

She dashed into her two garments, climbed the wall, and scurried back to

the house. All her dejection, and feverish uncertainty were gone; she

felt keen, fresh, terribly hungry, and stealing into the dark

dining-room, began rummaging for food. She found biscuits, and was still

munching, when in the open doorway she saw Lord Dennis, a pistol in one

hand and a lighted candle in the other. With his carved features and

white beard above an old blue dressing-gown, he looked impressive, having

at the moment a distinct resemblance to Lady Casterley, as though danger

had armoured him in steel.

"You call this resting!" he said, dryly; then, looking at her drowned

hair, added: "I see you have already entrusted your trouble to the waters

of Lethe."

But without answer Barbara vanished into the dim hall and up the stairs.

CHAPTER IV

While Barbara was swimming to meet the dawn, Miltoun was bathing in those

waters of mansuetude and truth which roll from wall to wall in the

British House of Commons.

In that long debate on the Land question, for which he had waited to make

his first speech, he had already risen nine times without catching the

Speaker's eye, and slowly a sense of unreality was creeping over him.

Surely this great Chamber, where without end rose the small sound of a

single human voice, and queer mechanical bursts of approbation and

resentment, did not exist at all but as a gigantic fancy of his own! And

all these figures were figments of his brain! And when he at last spoke,

it would be himself alone that he addressed! The torpid air tainted with

human breath, the unwinking stare of the countless lights, the long rows

of seats, the queer distant rounds of pale listening flesh perched up so

high, they were all emanations of himself! Even the coming and going in

the gangway was but the coming and going of little wilful parts of him!

And rustling deep down in this Titanic creature of his fancy was 'the

murmuration' of his own unspoken speech, sweeping away the puff balls of

words flung up by that far-away, small, varying voice.

Then, suddenly all that dream creature had vanished; he was on his feet,

with a thumping heart, speaking.

Soon he had no tremors, only a dim consciousness that his words sounded

strange, and a queer icy pleasure in flinging them out into the silence.

Round him there seemed no longer men, only mouths and eyes. And he had

enjoyment in the feeling that with these words of his he was holding

those hungry mouths and eyes dumb and unmoving. Then he knew that he had

reached the end of what he had to say, and sat down, remaining motionless

in the centre of a various sound; staring at the back of the head in

front of him, with his hands clasped round his knee. And soon, when that

little faraway voice was once more speaking, he took his hat, and

glancing neither to right nor left, went out.

Instead of the sensation of relief and wild elation which fills the heart

of those who have taken the first plunge, Miltoun had nothing in his deep

dark well but the waters of bitterness. In truth, with the delivery of

that speech he had but parted with what had been a sort of anodyne to

suffering. He had only put the fine point on his conviction, of how vain

was his career now that he could not share it with Audrey Noel. He

walked slowly towards the Temple, along the riverside, where the lamps

were paling into nothingness before that daily celebration of Divinity,

the meeting of dark and light.

For Miltoun was not one of those who take things lying down; he took

things desperately, deeply, and with revolt. He took them like a rider

riding himself, plunging at the dig of his own spurs, chafing and wincing

at the cruel tugs of his own bitt; bearing in his friendless, proud heart

all the burden of struggles which shallower or more genial natures shared

with others.

He looked hardly less haggard, walking home, than some of those homeless

ones who slept nightly by the river, as though they knew that to lie near

one who could so readily grant oblivion, alone could save them from

seeking that consolation. He was perhaps unhappier than they, whose

spirits, at all events, had long ceased to worry them, having oozed out

from their bodies under the foot of Life: