The Patricians

XIV

EXALTATION had not left Milton. His sallow face was flushed, his eyes glowed with a sort of beauty; and Mrs. 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 Milton 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 close to her, looking intently into her face. ‘I love you,’ he said.

Now that it had come, with this disconcerting swiftness, Mrs. Noel 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 the possession of that knowledge, she could never again be utterly unhappy. Then, too, in her nature, so deeply 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, was 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. In this moment, the happiest of both their lives, the twin spirits of the universe, Force and Love, had in their immortal, bright-winged quest of the flower-moment, chosen these two for the temple wherein to stay conflict, and worship Harmony, the Overmaster; for they were 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, well knowing 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 Milton’s face was not unhandsome; for Mrs. 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 Mrs. Noel’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 marvelous 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 humor — her gentle 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, without forms or ceremonies. A surge of bitter feeling against the man who stood between her and Milton 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 gray, 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 Milton.

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 as she did not answer, he added,

‘ I am sorry.’

The queer dry saying was so much more terrible than any outcry, that Mrs. Noel remained, deprived even of the power of breathing, with her eyes still fixed on Milton’s.

The smile of the old Cardinal had come up on his face, which was to her at that moment like a living accusation. It seemed strange that the hum of the bees and flies and the gentle swishing of the lime-tree leaves 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 her silence and her beauty.

At last he spoke.

‘I have made a foolish mistake, it seems. I thought you were free.’

Her lips just moved for the words to pass: ‘And I thought you knew. I never dreamed that 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 that I was dead.’

‘Is there no release?’

‘None. We have neither of us done wrong; besides, with him, marriage is — forever.’

‘My God!’

She had broken his smile, that was cruel without meaning to be cruel; and with a smile of her own that was cruel too, she said, —

‘I did n’t know that you believed in release.’

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 too. 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 seemed to be coming from her, as from a magnet, and Milton’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 veranda, 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.

XV

Lord Dennis 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. But ‘Old Magnificat’ 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 happy 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 sweet brown water.

He fished unhasting, religiously, like some good Catholic adding one more row of beads to those he had already told, as though he would fish himself gravely, without complaint, into the other world. With each fish caught he experienced a certain 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 little sigh had 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 footgrowth 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 some one advancing at full speed. He frowned slightly, feeling for the nerves of his fishes, whom he did not wish startled. The invader was Milton: hot, pale, disheveled, with a queer, hunted look on his face. He stopped on seeing his great-uncle, and instantly put on the mask of his smile.

Old Magnificat 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 halls of his London clubs.

Milton, no less polite, murmured, ‘I hope I have n’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 Milton’s mask; for 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 oddly sensitive, for an old man, to the signs of suffering in others.

Milton would not have obeyed that invitation from any one else, but there was something about Lord Dennis which people did not resist; his power lying perhaps in the serenity which radiated from so grave and simple a personality — the assurance that there was no afterthought about his mind, that he would never cause one to feel awkward.

The two sat side by side on the roots of trees. At first they talked a little of birds, and then were silent, so silent 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 evergreenness. 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. It goes against the grain. What do you say, Eustace ?’

‘They meant well,’ answered Milton, ‘but they protested too much.’

Lord Dennis moved his head in silent assent,

‘To be captain of your soul!' continued Milton in a better voice; ‘it ’s a pretty phrase!’

‘Pretty enough,’ murmured Old Magnificat.

Milton looked at him. ‘And suitable to you,’ he said.

‘No, my dear, a long way off that. Thank God!’

A large trout rose in the stillest coffee-colored pool. Lord Dennis looked at the splash. He knew that fellow, a half-pounder at the least, and his thoughts began to flight 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 Milton suddenly.

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 greatnephew. The boy — for what else was twenty-eight to seventy-eight? — 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 favorite 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?’

Milton 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 plain of air. A robin, from the dappled warmth of a mossy stone, was regarding them instead. There was another splash.

Old Magnificat said very gently, ‘Don’t move. 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 murmured.

But Milton had stolen away.

The further piece of information about Mrs. Noel, already known by Barbara, and diffused by the Bucklandbury Gazette, — in its quest of divinity, the reconciliation of whitewash and tar, — had not become common knowledge at the Court till great Lord Dennis had started out to fish. In combination with the news that Milton 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 divorcée, 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 Milton 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 a piece of interesting information, or at the worst made known, bona fide, 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 Milton’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 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 opinion might differ) reprehensible of them to do so! They recognized, too well, how a certain kind of conscience would appreciate this rumor; 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 Milton 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 Mrs. Noel was still married, so that the worst, fortunately, could not happen.

Milton 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 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 Milton from the United States. High on the wall above them 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 furthest limits of endurance.

Seeing it for the first time, Courtier said, ‘That’s a fine thing. It only wants a soul.’

Milton nodded. ‘Sit down,’ he said.

Courtier sat down.

There followed one of those silences in which men whose spirits, though different, are big, can say so much to one another.

At last Milton spoke. ‘I have been living in the clouds, it seems. You are her oldest friend. The question now is how to make it easiest for her. This miserable rumor!’

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.’

Milton 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.’

Milton smiled. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ’that the consequences will be what 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 Milton, ‘but it will lose me the election.’

They stared at one another, dimly conscious that their last words had revealed the difference of their temperaments and creeds.

‘Damn it!’ 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.’

Milton leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece, and shading his face with his hand, said, ‘You know her story. Is there any way out of it, 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.’

Milton 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.’

XVI

When everything, that night, was quiet in the great house, Barbara, with 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. It 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 coverings. 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 Milton.

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 lost divinity — of scarred pride. It was gone in a moment, before 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 savor 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 any one 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, she said, ‘It’s me! Babs!’ and sank on her knees beside him. She tried at once to take his head into her arms, but she could not see it, and succeeded indifferently. She could but stroke his arm, 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 gray, 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 color 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 Milton’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 first sight of the red flower of passion, Barbara’s 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 the 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 spikey flowers like asphodels, and behind her was running herself.

In the morning she dreaded to go down. Could she meet Milton, now that she knew of the passion in him, and he knew that she knew it? She had her breakfast brought upstairs. But she need not have feared. Before she had finished, Milton himself came in. He looked more than usually self-contained, not to say ironic, and he only said, ‘ 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!’

After glancing once or twice round the room, Milton went out.

But he left her restless, divested of the cloak ‘of course,’ in a mood of strange questioning, ready as it were for the sight of the magpie wings of Life, and to hear their quick flutterings. The talk of the big house jarred on her, with its sameness and attachment to things done and about to be done, its essential concern with the world as it was. She wanted to be told that morning of things that were not, yet might be; to peep behind the curtain, and see the very spirit of mortal happenings riding on the tall air. This was unusual with her, whose body was too perfect, too sanely governed by the flow of her blood, not to revel in the moment and the things thereof. Restlessness sent her swinging out into the lanes. It drove her before it all the morning, and hungry, at midday, into a farmhouse to beg 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, 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, as if an archangel had asked for milk. 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. The milk was new. Barbara drank it, and wandered out. She went up a lane, and 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 as she leaned back against the wall, 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 — no girl was less given to moods and repinings. And all the time a sort of contempt for this soft and almost sentimental feeling in her, made her tighten her lips and frown. She felt distrustful and sarcastic towards a mood so utterly subversive of that fetich ‘hardness’ which unconsciously she had been brought up to worship. To stand no sentiment or nonsense either in herself or in others was the first article of faith; not to slop over anywhere. And to feel like this was almost horrible to Barbara. And 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 again of Mrs. Noel; turning her position over and over with impatience. The idea that any one young and beautiful should thus be clipped off in her life, roused indignation in Barbara. Let them try it with her! They would soon see! Besides, she 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; yet she continued to go, because she dimly knew that it was expected of her not to turn her back on things.

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.

She seemed to be taking her trouble as only those women who are not 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.

Neither of them spoke at first, but they 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 make acquaintance afterwards, 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 admitting. 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 movements 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 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 Milton should decide, that would this woman accept! Such resignation, while it simplified things, offended that part of Barbara which rebelled against all inaction, all dictation, even from her favorite brother.

She said suddenly, ‘Are you going to do nothing? Are n’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 said, ‘I believe you are a fatalist.’

Then, not knowing what more to say, she soon 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 ‘milkmaids’ and buttercups, she suffered from this strange revelation of the strength of softness and passivity — as though she had seen in Mrs. Noel’s white figure, and heard in her voice, something from beyond, symbolic, inconceivable, yet real.

XVII

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-inlaw, in regard to the marriage question, and quite prepared to admit in general that exclusiveness was out of date, 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 orginally been made of iron. And though Lord Valleys passed over with a shrug and a laugh — as much as to say, ‘ It’s quite natural nowadays’ — those numerous alliances by which his caste were renewing t he sinews of war; and indeed, in his capacity of an expert, often pointed out the dangers of too much in-breeding; still, when it came to his own family, he felt that the case was different. There was no material necessity whatever for going outside the inner circle; 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 favorite pointers, with something of the feeling of a boy let out of school. Those white 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 that last clinging touch of liver color. 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 his granddaughter, little Ann Shropton. 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! Is n’t it a darling?’

Lord Valleys, twirling his moustache, regarded the guinea-pig without favor; 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 quite white?’

Continuing to twirl his moustache. Lord Valleys answered, ‘I think it is not improbable, Ann.’

‘Why do you like them quite white? 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 color 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 arisen from Mrs. Noel not having made her position clear to Milton from the first.

He had gone very red.

‘It ’s easy,’ he said, ‘for those who have never been in the position of a lonely woman, to blame her.’

Unaccustomed to be withstood, Lady Valleys had looked at him intently.

‘I am the last person to be hard on a woman for conventional reasons. I merely think it showed a lack of character.'

Courtier’s reply had been almost rude.

‘Plants are not equally robust, Lady Valleys. Some are sensitive. ’

She had retorted with decision, ‘If you like so to 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 unphilosophical, don’t they? ’

He had looked straight at her with a queer, rather unpleasant smile; and she had felt at once uneasy, and really angry. But remembering that he was her guest, she had only said dryly, ‘ Perhaps, after all, we had better not talk it out.’

But as she moved away, she heard him say, ‘In any case, I ’m certain Audrey Noel never willfully kept your son in the dark.’

Though still ruffled, she could not help admiring 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, so prominent a part 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 arm through his, Lady Valleys led him away from the house. ‘I want to talk to you about Milton, Geoff.’

‘H’m!’ said Lord Valleys. ‘Yes. The boy’s looking worn. Good thing when this election’s over, anyway!’

‘If he’s beaten and has n’t something new and serious to concentrate himself on, he’ll fret his heart out over this 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 that woman,’ mused Lord Valleys; ‘ I really am.’

‘They say this rumor ’s done a lot of harm.’

‘Oh, 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 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 she entered Milton’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 cravat, 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 Milton,’ and he discreetly left the room.

That which disconcerted all who had dealings with Milton 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-bitted individuality which had brought to the front so many of his ancestors; for in Milton was the blood not only of the Caradocs and Fitz Harolds, but of most other prominent families in the kingdom, all of whom at one time or another had had a forbear conspicuous by reason of qualities, not always fine, but always poignant.

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 soon 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.’

Milton 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.’

Milton heard her with the peculiar look, as of a man peering through a vizor. Then smiling faintly, 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 Milton closed the door behind her.

Ten minutes later he and Bertie were seen riding down the drive.

XVIII

That afternoon the wind, which had been rising steadily, brought a flurry of clouds up from the southwest. Formed out on the heart of the Atlantic, they sailed forward, swift and fleecy at first, like the skirmishing white shallops of a dark fleet, then in great serried masses overwhelmed 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 gray 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 swath, 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 Milton was conscious that he thought on a different plane from his brother; 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. In describing that existence afterwards, he had said, ‘ No, was n’t bored a bit; thought a lot, of course.’

With Milton’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 a perfectly male attitude to the entire sex. Women were, like life itself, creatures to be watched, carefully used, and kept duly subservient. The only allusion, therefore, that he made to Milton’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, Milton said, —

‘Take my horse on, old fellow. 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 Milton’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 tortoiseshell 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!’

Milton 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 spoke first.

‘Forgive me for coming; something must be settled. This rumor —’

‘That!’ she said scornfully; but quickly added, ‘Is there anything I can do to stop the harm to you ? ’

It was the turn of Milton’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 Milton wince away. With desolate dryness, he said, ‘It is not from fear — believe that, anyway.’

She answered, ‘I do.’

There followed another long silence. So close that they were almost touching, they no longer looked at one another. Then Milton said,—

‘There is only to say good-by, then.’

At these clear words, spoken by lips which, though just smiling, failed so utterly to hide his misery, Mrs. Noel’s face became as colorless as her white gown. But those eyes, which had grown immense, seemed, from the sheer lack of all other color, 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, Milton 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.

XIX

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 selling the said town, he possessed a very large and well-nursed income independently of his landed interests.

He was tall, strong, and well-built, had nice easy manners, a regular face, with dark hair and a light moustache, more than average wits, and a genial smile. He had traveled, written two books, was a Captain of Yeomanry, a Justice of the Peace, a good cricketer, a very glib speaker, and marked for early promotion to the Cabinet. He had lately taken up Social Reform very seriously, so far as a nature rapid rather than deep, and a life in which he was hardly ever alone, or silent, suffered him. Brought into contact day and night with people to whom politics was a game, run after everywhere, subjected to no form of discipline, it was a wonder that he was as serious as he was. Moreover, he had never been in love until, the year before, during her first season, he met Barbara. She had, as he would have expressed it,— in the case of another, — ‘bowled his middle stump.’ But though 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. Yet, when he was near her, it seemed impossible that he could go on longer without knowing his fate; but then again, 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. During the fortnight, however, which, for her sake, he had managed, with intervals of rushing up to London, to devote to Milton’s cause, his feeling had advanced beyond the point of comfort. He was, in a word, uneasy.

He did not admit that the cause 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, Harbinger 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, and human nature would never be anything but human nature! 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 walked at her side, unwontedly silent, with an odd, icy feeling about his heart, his throat unaccountably dry.

The stables at Monkland Court were as large as many country-houses. They accommodated thirty horses, but 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 unequaled 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 some one enter.

In a large loose-box at the end of the north wing, Barbara’s favorite hunter, a bright chestnut, patrician all but one sixteenth of him, 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 flavor 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 gauntleted 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 manœuvre 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, and with more curiosity, and the softness was withdrawn. He perceived suddenly that he had a carrot in his mouth.

Lord Harbinger had witnessed this episode, oddly pale, leaning against the wall of the loose-box. 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 color 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, hurried voice, ‘You know what I feel; don’t be cruel to me!’

She did not pull her hand away; 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; then, as though the enormous injustice of that rejecting gesture had suddenly struck him, dropped her hand. ‘Why?’ he said again, sharply.

But the silence was broken only 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 odor of the loose-box, 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 loosebox 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, he had not suspected, how much he wanted her. How could there be anybody else for him, while that young, calm, sweetscented, 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.

(To be continued.)