The Patricians

XXVIII

THREE days after his first, and as he promised himself, his last society ball, Courtier received a note from Mrs. Noel, saying that she had left Monk-land for the present, and come up to a little flat on the riverside not far from Westminster.

When he made his way there that same July day, the Houses of Parliament were bright under a sun which warmed all the grave air emanating from counsels of perfection. Courtier passed them dubiously. His feelings in the presence of those towers were always a little mixed. There was not enough of the poet in him to cause him to see nothing there at all save only a becoming edifice, but there was enough of the poet to make him long to kick something; and in this mood he wended his way to the riverside.

Mrs. Noel was not at home, but since the maid informed him that she would be in directly, he sat down to wait. Her flat, which was on the first floor, overlooked the river, and had evidently been taken furnished, for there were visible marks of a recent struggle with that Edwardian taste which, flushed from triumph over Victorianism, had filled the rooms with Early Georgian remains. On the only definite victory, a rose-colored windowseat of great comfort and little age, Courtier sat down, and resigned himself to the doing of nothing with the ease of an old soldier. To the protective feeling he had once had for a small, very graceful, dark-haired child, he joined not only the championing pity of a man of warm heart watching a woman in distress, but the impatience of one who, though temperamentally incapable of feeling oppressed himself, rebelled at sight of all forms of tyranny affecting others. And as he coolly fumed on the window-seat of her flat, the sight of the gray towers, still just visible, under which Milton and his father sat, annoyed him deeply; symbolizing, to him, Authority — foe to his deathless mistress, the sweet, invincible, lost cause of Liberty.

But presently the river, bringing up in flood the unbound water that had bathed every shore, touched all sands, and seen the rising and falling of each mortal star, so soothed him with its soundless hymn to Freedom, that Audrey Noel, coming in with her hands full of flowers, found him sleeping firmly, with his mouth shut.

Noiselessly putting down the flowers, she waited for his awakening. That sanguine visage, with its prominent chin, flaring moustaches, and eyebrows raised rather V-shaped above his closed eyes, wore an expression of cheery defiance even in sleep; and perhaps no face in all London was so utterly its reverse as that of this dark, soft-haired woman, delicate, passive, and tremulous with pleasure at sight of the only person in the world from whom she felt she might learn of Milton, without losing her self-respect.

He woke at last, and manifesting no discomfiture, said, ‘It was like you not to wake me.’

They sat for a long while talking, the riverside traffic drowsily accompanying their voices, the flowers drowsily filling the room with scent; and when Courtier left, his heart was sore. She had not spoken of herself at all, but had talked nearly all the time of Barbara, praising her beauty and high spirit ; growing pale once or twice, and evidently drinking in with secret avidity every allusion to Milton. Clearly, her feelings had not changed, though she would not show them! And his pity for her became well-nigh violent.

It was in such a mood, mingled with very different feelings, that he donned evening clothes and set out to attend the last gathering of the season at Valleys House, a function which, held so late in July, was perforce almost perfectly political.

Mounting that wide and shining staircase which had so often baffled the arithmetic of little Ann, he was reminded of a picture entitled ‘The steps to Heaven,’in his nursery four-andthirty years before. At the top of this staircase, and surrounded by acquaintances, he came on Harbinger, who nodded curtly. The young man’s handsome face and figure appeared to Courtier’s jaundiced eye more obviously successful and complacent than ever; and our knight-errant passed on sardonically, manœuvring his way towards Lady Valleys, whom he could perceive stationed, like a general, in a little cleared space, where to and fro flowed constant streams of people, like the rays of a star.

She was looking her very best, going well with great and highly-polished spaces; and she greeted Courtier with a special cordiality of tone, which had in it, besides kindness towards one who must be feeling a strange bird, a certain diplomatic quality, compounded of her desires, as it were, to ‘warn him off,’ and her fear of saying something that might irritate and make him more dangerous. She had heard, she said, that he was off to Persia; she hoped he was not going to try and make things more difficult out there; then with the words, ‘So good of you to have come!’ she became once more the centre of her battlefield.

Perceiving that he was finished with, Courtier stood back against a wall and watched. Thus isolated, he was like a solitary cuckoo contemplating the gyrations of a flock of rooks. Their motions seemed a little meaningless to one so far removed from all the fetiches and shibboleths of Westminster. He heard them discussing Milton’s speech, the real significance of which apparently had only just been grasped. The words ‘doctrinaire,’ and ‘extremist,’ came to his ears, together with the saying, ‘ a new force.’ People were evidently impressed, disturbed, not pleased — as at the dislocation of a cherished illusion.

Searching this crowd for Barbara, Courtier had all the time an uneasy sense of shame. What business had he to come amongst these people, so strange to him, just for the sake of seeing her! What business had he to be hankering after this girl at all, knowing in his heart that he could not stand the atmosphere she lived in for a week, and that she was utterly unsuited for any atmosphere that he could give her; to say nothing of the unlikelihood that he could flutter the pulses of one half his age!

A voice behind him said, ‘ Mr. Courtier ! ’

He turned, and there was Barbara.

‘I want to talk to you about Milton, please. Will you come into the picture gallery?’

When at last they were close to a family group of Georgian Caradocs, and could as it were shut out the throng sufficiently for private speech, she began: —

‘He’s so awfully unhappy; I don’t know what to do for him. He’s making himself ill!’

And she suddenly looked up in Courtier’s face. She seemed to him very young and touching at that moment. Her eyes had a gleam of faith in them, like a child’s eyes, as if she relied on him to straighten out this tangle, to tell her not only about Milton’s trouble, but about all life, its meaning, and the secret of its happiness. And he said gently, —

‘What can I do? The poor woman is in town. But that’s no good, unless — ’ Not knowing how to finish that sentence, he was silent.

‘I wish I were Milton,’ she said.

At that quaint saying, Courtier was hard put to it not to take hold of the hands so close to him. This flash of rebellion in her had quickened all his blood. But she seemed to have seen what had passed in him, for her next speech was chilly enough.

‘It’s no good; stupid of me to be worrying you.’

‘It is quite impossible for you to worry me.’

Her eyes lifted suddenly again from her glove, and looked straight into his.

‘Are you really going to Persia?’

‘Yes.’

‘But I don’t want you to, not yet!’ And turning suddenly, she left him.

Strangely disturbed, Courtier remained motionless, taking counsel of the grave stare of the group of Georgian Caradocs.

A voice said, ‘ Good painting, is n’t it?’

Behind him was Lord Harbinger. And once more the memory of Lady Casterley’s words; the memory of the two figures with joined hands on the balcony above the election crowd; all his latent jealousy of this handsome young Colossus, his animus against one whom he could, as it were, smell out to be always fighting on the winning side; all his consciousness, too, of what a lost cause his own was, his doubt whether he were honorable to look on it as a cause at all, flared up in Courtier, and his answer was a stare. On Harbinger’s face, too, there had come a look as if a stubborn violence were slowly working its way up to the surface.

‘I said, “Good, is n’t it?” Mr. Courtier.'

‘I heard you.’

‘And you were pleased to answer?’

‘ Nothing.’

‘With the civility which might be expected of your habits.’

Coldly disdainful, Courtier answered, ‘If you want to say that sort of thing, please choose a place where I can reply to you ’; and turned abruptly on his heel.

He ground his teeth as he made his way out into the street.

In Hyde Park the grass was parched and dewless under a sky whose stars were veiled by the heat and dust haze. Never had Courtier so bitterly wanted consolation — the blessed sense of man’s insignificance in the face of the night’s dark beauty, which, dwarfing all petty rage and hunger, made him part of its majesty, exalted him to a sense of greatness.

XXIX

It was past four o’clock the following day when Barbara issued from Valleys House on foot; clad in a pale buff frock chosen for quietness, she attracted every eye. Very soon entering a taxicab, she drove to the Temple, stopped at the Strand entrance, and walked down the little narrow lane into the heart of the Law. Its votaries were hurrying back from the courts, streaming up from their chambers for tea, or escaping desperately to Lord’s or the Park — young votaries, unbound as yet by the fascination of fame or fees. And each one, as he passed, looked at Barbara, with his fingers itching to remove his hat, and a feeling that this was She. After a day spent amongst precedents and practice, after six hours at least of trying to discover what chance A had of standing on his rights, or B had of preventing him, it was difficult to feel otherwise about that calm apparition — like a slim golden tree walking.

One of them, asked by her the way to Milton’s staircase, preceded her with shy ceremony, and when she had vanished up those dusty stairs, lingered on, hoping that she might find her visitee out, and be obliged to return and ask him the way back. But she did not come, and he went sadly away, disturbed to the very bottom of all that he owned in fee simple.

In fact, no one answered Barbara’s knock, and discovering that the door yielded, she walked through the lobby past the clerk’s den, converted to a kitchen, into the sitting-room. It was empty. She had never been to Milton’s rooms before, and she stared about her curiously. Since he did not practice, much of the usual barrister’s gear was absent. The room indeed had a worn carpet, a few old chairs, and was lined from floor to ceiling with books. But the wall-space between the windows was occupied by an enormous map of England, scored all over with figures and crosses; and before this map stood a revolving desk, on which were piles of double foolscap covered with Milton’s neat and rather pointed writing. Barbara examined them, puckering up her forehead; she knew that he was working at a book on the land question, but she had never realized that the making of a book required so much writing. Papers, too, and Blue Books littered a large bureau on which stood bronze busts of Æschylus and Dante.

‘What, an uncomfortable place!’ she thought. The room, indeed, had an atmosphere, a spirit, which depressed her horribly. Seeing a few flowers down in the court below, she had a longing to get out to them. Then behind her she heard the sound of some one talking. But there was no one in the room, and the effect of this disrupted soliloquy, which came from nowhere, was so uncanny that she retreated to the door. The sound, as of two spirits speaking in one voice, grew louder, and involuntarily Barbara glanced at the busts. But they were guiltless. Though the sound had been behind her when she was at the window, it was again behind her now she was at the door; and she suddenly realized that it issued from a bookcase in the centre of the wall.

Barbara had her father’s nerve, and, walking up to the bookcase, she perceived that it had been affixed to, and covered, a door that was not quite closed. She pulled it towards her, and passed through. Across the centre of an unkempt bedroom Milton was striding, dressed only in his shirt and trousers. His feet were bare, and the look of his thin dark face went to Barbara’s heart, it was so twisted and worn. She ran forward, and took his hand. This was burning hot, but the sight of her seemed to have frozen his tongue and eyes. And the contrast of his burning hand with this frozen silence, frightened her horribly. She could think of nothing but to put her other hand to his forehead. That too was burning hot!

‘What brought you here?’ he said.

She could only murmur, ‘Oh! Eusty! Are you ill?’

Milton took hold of her wrists.

' It’s all right, I ’ve been working too hard; got a touch of fever.’

‘So I can feel,’ murmured Barbara. ‘You ought to be in bed. Come home with me.’

Milton smiled. ‘It’s not a case for leeches.’

The look of his smile, the sound of his voice, sent a shudder through her.

‘I’m not going to leave you here alone.’

But Milton’s grasp tightened on her wrists.

‘My dear Babs, you will do what I tell you. Go home, hold your tongue, and leave me to burn out in peace.’

Barbara sustained that painful grip without wincing; she had regained her calmness.

‘ You must come! You have n’t anything here, not even a cool drink.’

Milton dropped her arms. ‘My God! Barley water!’

The scorn he put into those two words was more withering than a whole philippic against redemption by creature comforts. And feeling it dart into her, Barbara closed her lips tight. He had dropped her wrists, and again began pacing up and down; suddenly he stopped.

You should read your Blake, Audrey.’

Barbara turned suddenly and went out, frightened. She passed through the sitting-room and corridor on to the staircase. What should she do? He was ill—raving! The fever in Milton’s veins seemed to have stolen through the clutch of his hands into her own veins. Her face was burning; she thought confusedly, breathed unevenly. She felt sore, and at the same time terribly sorry; and withal there kept rising in her gusts of the memory of Harbinger’s kiss.

She hurried down the stairs, turned by instinct downhill, and found herself on the Embankment. And suddenly, with her inherent power of swift decision, she hailed a cab, and drove to the nearest telephone office.

XXX

To a woman like Audrey Noel, born to be the counterpart and complement of another, whose occupations and effort were inherently divorced from the continuity of any stiff and strenuous purpose of her own, the uprooting she had voluntarily undergone was a serious matter.

Bereaved of the faces of her flowers, the friendly sighing of her lime tree, the wants of her cottagers; bereaved of that busy motonony of little home things which is the stay and solace of lonely women, she was extraordinarily lost. Even music for review seemed to have failed her. She had never lived in London, so that she had not the refuge of old haunts and habits, but had to make her own — and to make habits and haunts required a heart that could at least stretch out feelers and lay hold of things, and her heart was not now able. When she had struggled with her Edwardian flat, and laid down her simple routine of meals, she was as stranded as ever was convict let out of prison. She had not even that great support, the necessity of hiding her feelings for fear of disturbing others. She was planted there, with her longing and remorse, and nothing, nobody, to take her out of herself. Having willfully put herself into this position, she tried to make the best of it, feeling it less intolerable, at all events, than staying on at Monkland, where she had made that grievous and unpardonable error — falling in love.

This offense, on the part of one who felt within herself a great capacity to enjoy and to confer happiness, had arisen — like the other grievous and unpardonable offense, her marriage — from too much disposition to yield herself to the personality of another. But it was cold comfort to know that the desire to give and to receive love had twice over left her — a dead woman. Whatever the nature of those immature sensations with which, as a girl of twenty, she had accepted her husband, in her feeling towards Milton there was not only abandonment, but the higher flame of self-renunciation. She wanted to do the best for him, and had not even the consolation of the knowledge that she had sacrificed herself for his advantage. All had been taken out of her hands! Yet with characteristic fatalism she did not feel rebellious. If it were ordained that she should, for fifty, perhaps sixty years, repent in sterility and ashes that first error of her girlhood, rebellion was, none the less, too far-fetched. If she rebelled, it would not be in spirit, but in action. General principles were nothing to her; she lost no force brooding over the justice or injustice of her situation, but merely tried to digest its facts.

The whole day succeeding Courtier’s visit was spent by her in the National Gallery, whose roof, alone of all in London, seemed to offer her protection. She had found one painting, by an Italian master, the subject of which reminded her of Milton; and before this she sat for a very long time, attracting at last the gouty stare of an official. The still figure of this lady, with the oval face and grave beauty, both piqued his curiosity, and stimulated certain moral qualms. She was undoubtedly waiting for her lover. No woman, in his experience, had ever sat so long before a picture without ulterior motive; he kept his eyes well opened to see what this motive would be like. It gave him, therefore, a sensation almost amounting to chagrin when, coming round once more, he found they had eluded him and gone off together without coming under his inspection. Feeling his feet a good deal, for he had been on them all day, he sat down in the hollow which she had left behind her; and against his will found himself also looking at the picture. It was painted in a style he did not care for; the face of the subject, too, gave him the queer feeling that the gentleman was being roasted inside. He had not sat there long, however, before he perceived the lady standing by the picture, and the lips of the gentleman in the picture moving. It seemed to him against the rules and he got up at once, and went towards it; but as he did so, he found that his eyes were shut, and opened them hastily. There was no one there.

From the National Gallery, Audrey had gone into an A. B. C. for tea, and then home. Before the Mansions was a taxi-cab, and the maid met her with the news that ‘Lady Caradog’ was in the sitting-room.

Barbara was indeed standing in the middle of the room, with a look on her face such as her father wore sometimes on the race-course, in the hunting-field, or at some Cabinet. Council, — a look both resolute and sharp. She spoke at once:—

‘I got your address from Mr. Courtier. My brother is ill. I’m afraid it’ll be brain fever. I think you had better go and see him at his rooms in the Temple; there’s no time to be lost.’

To Audrey everything in the room seemed to go round; yet all her senses were preternaturally acute, so that she could distinctly smell the mud of the river at low tide. She said with a shudder, ‘Oh! I will go; yes, I will go at once.’

‘ He is quite alone. He has not asked for you; but I think your going is the only chance. I am no good to him. You told me once you were a good nurse.’

‘Yes.’

The room was steady enough now, but she had lost the preternatural acuteness of the senses, and felt confused. She heard Barbara say, ‘ I can take you to the door in my cab’; and murmuring, ‘I will get ready,’ went into her bedroom. For a moment she was so utterly bewildered that she did nothing. Then every other thought was lost in a strange, soft, almost painful delight, as if some new instinct were being born in her; and quickly, but without confusion or hurry, she began packing. She put into a valise her own toilet things; then flannel, cotton-wool, eau de Cologne, hot-water bottle, etna, shawl, everything that she had which could serve in illness. Changing to a plain dress, she took up the valise and returned to Barbara.

They went out together to the cab. The moment it began to bear her to this ordeal at once so longed-for and so terrible, fear came over her again, so that she screwed herself into the corner, very white and still. She was aware of Barbara calling to the driver, ‘Go by the Strand, and stop at a poulterer’s for ice!’ And, when the bag of ice had been handed in, heard her saying, ‘I will bring you all you want — if he is really going to be ill.’

Then, as the cab stopped, and the open doorway of the staircase was before her, all her courage came back.

She felt the girl’s warm hand against her own, and grasping her valise and the bag of ice, got out, and hurried up the steps.

XXXI

On leaving Nettlefold, Milton had gone straight back to his rooms, and begun at once to work at his book on the land question. He worked all through that night — his third night without sleep—and all the following day. In the evening, feeling queer in the head, he went out and walked up and down the Embankment. Then, fearing to go to bed and lie sleepless, he sat down in his armchair. Falling asleep there, he had fearful dreams, and awoke unrefreshed. After his bath he drank coffee, and again forced himself to work. By the middle of the day he felt dizzy and exhausted, but utterly disinclined to eat. He went out into the hot Strand, bought himself a necessary book, and after drinking more coffee, came back, and again began to work. At four o’clock he found that he was not taking in the words. His head was burning hot, and he went into his bedroom to bathe it. Then somehow he began walking up and down, talking to himself, as Barbara had found him.

She had no sooner gone than he felt utterly exhausted. A small crucifix hung over his bed, and throwing himself down before it, he remained motionless with his face buried in the coverlet, and his arms stretched out toward the wall. He did not pray, but merely sought rest from sensation. Across his half-hypnotized consciousness little threads of burning fancy kept shooting. Then he could feel nothing but utter physical sickness, and against this his will revolted. He resolved that he would not be ill, a ridiculous log for women to hang over. But the moments of sickness grew longer and more frequent; and to drive them away he rose from his knees, and for some time again walked up and down; then, seized with vertigo, he was obliged to sit on the bed to save himself from falling. From being burning hot he had become deadly cold, glad to cover himself with the bedclothes. The heat soon flamed up in him again; but with a sick man’s instinct he did not throw off the clothes, and lay quite still. The room seemed to have turned to a thick white substance like a cloud, in which he lay enwrapped, unable to move hand or foot. His sense of smell and hearing, however, remained, and were even unnaturally acute; he smelled flowers, dust, and the leather of his books, even the scent left by Barbara’s clothes, and a curious odor of river-mud.

A clock struck six, he counted each stroke; and instantly the whole world seemed full of striking clocks, the sound of horses’ hoofs, bicycle bells, peoples’ footfalls. His sense of vision, on the contrary, was absorbed in consciousness of this white blanket of cloud wherein he was lifted above the earth, in the midst of a dull, incessant hammering. On the surface of the cloud there seemed to be forming a number of little golden spots; these spots were moving, and he saw that they were toads. Then, beyond them, he saw a huge face shape itself, very dark, as if of bronze, with eyes burning into his brain. The more he struggled to get away from these eyes, the more they bored and burned into him. His voice was gone, so that he was unable to cry out, and suddenly the face marched over him.

When he recovered consciousness his head was damp with moisture trickling from something held to his forehead by a figure leaning over him. Lifting his hand, he touched a cheek; and hearing a sob instantly suppressed, he sighed. His hand was gently taken; he felt kisses on it.

The room was so dark that he could scarcely see her face; his sight too was dim; but he could hear her breathing, and the least sound of her dress and movements — the scent too of her hands and hair seemed to envelop him, and in the midst of all the acute discomfort of his fever, he felt the band round his brain relax. He did not ask how long she had been there, but lay quite still, trying to keep his eyes on her, for fear of that face, which seemed lurking behind the air, ready to march on him again. Then feeling suddenly that he could not hold it back, he beckoned, and clutched at her, trying to cover himself with the protection of her breast. This time his swoon was not so deep; it gave way to delirium, with intervals when he knew that she was there, and by the shaded candlelight could see her in a white garment, floating close to him, or sitting still with her hand on his; he could even feel the faint comfort of the icecap, and of the scent of eau de Cologne. Then he would lose all consciousness of her presence, and pass through into the incoherent world, where the crucifix above his bed seemed to bulge and hang out, as if it must fall on him. He conceived a violent longing to tear it down, which grew till he had struggled up in bed and wrenched it from off the wall. Yet a mysterious consciousness of her presence permeated even his darkest journeys into the strange land; and once she seemed to be with him, where a strange light showed them fields and trees, a dark line of moor, and a bright sea, all whitened, and flashing with sweet violence.

Soon after dawn he had a long interval of consciousness, and took in with a sort of wonder her presence in the low chair by his bed. So still she sat in a white loose gown, pale with watching, her eyes immovably fixed on him, her lips pressed together, and quivering at his faintest motion. He drank in desperately the sweetness of her face, which had so lost remembrance of self.

XXXII

Barbara gave the news of her brother’s illness to no one else, common sense telling her to run no risk of disturbance. Of her own initiative, she brought a doctor, and went down twice a day to hear reports of Milton’s progress.

As a fact, her father and mother had gone down to Lord Dennis, for Goodwood, and the chief difficulty had been to excuse her own neglect of that favorite meeting. She had fallen back on the half-truth that Eustace wanted her in town; and, since Lord and Lady Valleys had neither of them shaken off a certain uneasiness about their son, the pretext sufficed.

It was not until the sixth day, when the crisis was well past and Milton quite free from fever, that she again went down to Nettlefold.

On arriving she at once sought out her mother, whom she found in her bedroom, resting. It had been very hot at Goodwood.

Barbara was not afraid of her — she was not, indeed, afraid of any one, except Milton, and in some strange way a little, perhaps, of Courtier; yet, when the maid had gone, she did not at once begin her tale. Lady Valleys too was busy at heart with matters other than those which occupied her tongue. She had just heard details of a society scandal, and, while she spoke of Good wood, was preparing an account of it suitable to her daughter’s ears — for some account she felt she must give to somebody.

‘Mother,’ said Barbara suddenly, ‘ Eustace has been ill. He’s out of danger now, and going on all right.’ Then, looking hard at the bewildered lady, she added, ‘Mrs. Noel is nursing him.’

The past tense in which illness had been mentioned, checking at the first moment any rush of panic in Lady Valleys, left her most confused by the situation conjured up by Barbara’s last words. Instead of feeding that part of man which loves a scandal, she had been fed, always an unenviable sensation. A woman did not nurse a man under such circumstances without being everything to him, in the world’s eyes.

‘I took her to him. It seemed the only thing to do — considering it’s all fretting for her,’ went on Barbara. ‘ Nobody knows, of course, except the doctor, and ’ — she added slowly — ‘Stacey.’

‘Heavens!’ muttered Lady Valleys.

‘It has saved him,’ said Barbara.

The mother-instinct in Lady Valleys took sudden fright. ‘Are you telling me the truth, Babs? Is he really out of danger? How wrong of you not to let me know before!’

But Barbara did not flinch; and her mother relapsed into rumination.

‘Stacey is a cat!’ she said suddenly. The details of that society scandal had included the usual maid. She could not find it in her to enjoy the irony of this coincidence. Then, seeing Barbara smile, she said tartly, ‘ I fail to see the joke.’

‘Only that I could n’t help throwing Stacey in, dear.’

‘What! You mean she does n’t know ? ’

‘Not a word.’

Lady Valleys smiled.

‘ What a little wretch you are, Babs! ’ And maliciously she added, ‘Claud and his mother are coming over from Whitewater, with Bertie and Lily Malvezin; you’d better go and dress.’

Her eyes searched her daughter’s so shrewdly that a flush rose to the girl’s cheeks.

When she had gone, Lady Valleys rang for her maid again, and relapsed into meditation. Her first thought was to consult her husband; her second that secrecy was strength. Since no one knew but Barbara, no one had better know.

Her astuteness and experience comprehended the far-reaching probabilities of this affair. It would not do to take a single false step. If she had no one’s action to control but her own and Barbara’s, so much the less chance of a slip. Her mind was a strange medley of thoughts and feelings, almost comic, well-nigh tragic; of worldly prudence and motherly instinct; of warm-blooded sympathy with all love-affairs, and cool-blooded concern for her son’s career. It was not yet too late perhaps to prevent real mischief; especially since it was agreed by every one that the woman was no adventuress. Whatever was done, they must not forget that she had nursed him — saved him, Barbara had said! She must be treated with all kindness and consideration.

Hastening her toilet, she in turn went to her daughter’s room.

She found her already dressed, leaning out of her window towards the sea.

She began almost timidly: ‘ My dear, is Eustace out of bed yet? ’

‘ He was to get up to-day for an hour or two.’

‘I see. Now, would there be any danger if you and I went up and took charge over from Mrs. Noel?’

‘Poor Eusty!’

‘Yes, yes. But exercise your judgment. Do you think it would harm him?’

Barbara was silent. ‘ No,’ she said at last, ‘I don’t suppose it would.’

Lady Valleys exhibited a manifest relief.

‘Very well, then, we’ll do it —seeing the doctor first, of course. He will have to have an ordinary nurse, I suppose, for a bit.’ Looking stealthily at Barbara, she added, ‘I mean to be very nice to her; but one must n’t be romantic, you know, Babs.’

From the little smile on Barbara’s lips she derived no sense of certainty; indeed she was visited by all her late disquietude about her young daughter, by all the feeling that she, as well as Milton, was hovering on the verge of some folly.

‘Well, my dear,’ she said, ‘I am going down.’

But Barbara lingered a little longer in that bedroom where ten nights ago she had lain tossing, till in despair she went and cooled herself in the dark sea.

Her last little interview with Courtier stood between her and a fresh meeting with Harbinger, whom at Valleys House she had not suffered to be alone with her. She came down late.

That same evening, out on the beach road, under a sky swarming with stars, the people were strolling — folk from the towns, down for their fortnight’s holiday. In twos and threes, in parties of six or eight, they passed the wall at the end of Lord Dennis’s little domain; and the sound of their sparse talk and laughter, together with the sighing of the young waves, was blown over the wall to the ears of Harbinger, Bertie, Barbara, and Lily Malvezin, when they strolled out after dinner to sniff the sea. The holiday-makers stared dully at the four figures in evening dress looking out above their heads. They had other things than these to think of, becoming more and more silent as the night grew dark. The four young people too were rather silent. There was something in this warm night, with its sighing, and its darkness, and its stars, that was not favorable to talk, so that presently they split into couples, drifting a little apart.

Standing there, gripping the wall, it seemed to Harbinger that there were no words left in the world. Not even his worst enemy could have called this young man romantic; yet that figure beside him, the gleam of her neck and her pale cheek in the dark, gave him perhaps the most poignant glimpse of mystery that he had ever had. His mind, essentially that of a man of affairs, by nature and by habit at home amongst the material aspects of things, was but gropingly conscious that here, in this dark night, and the dark sea, and the pale figure of this girl whose heart was dark to him and secret, there was perhaps something — yes, something — which surpassed the confines of his philosophy, something beckoning him on out of his snug compound into the desert of divinity. If so, it was soon gone in the aching of his senses at the scent of her hair, and the longing to escape from this weird silence.

‘Babs,’ he said, ‘have you forgiven me?’

Her answer came, without turn of head, natural, indifferent: ’Yes — I told you so.’

‘ Is that all you have to say to a fellow ?'

‘What shall we talk about — the running of Casetta? ’

Deep down within him Harbinger uttered a noiseless oath. There was something that was making her behave like this to him! It was that fellow — that fellow! And suddenly he said, — ‘Tell me something — ’ Then speech seemed to stick in his throat. No! If there were anything in that, he preferred not to hear it. There was a limit!

Down below, a pair of lovers passed, very silent, their arms round each other’s waists.

Barbara turned and walked away towards the house.

XXXIII

The days when Milton was first allowed out of bed were a time of mingled joy and sorrow to her who had nursed him. To see him sitting up, amazed at his own weakness, was happiness; but to think that he would be no more wholly dependent, no more that sacred thing, a helpless creature, brought her the sadness of a mother whose child no longer needs her. With every hour he would now get further from her, back into the fastnesses of his own spirit. With every hour she would be less his nurse and comforter, and more the woman he loved. And though that thought shone out in the obscure future like a glamourous flower, it brought too much wistful uncertainty to the present. She was very tired, too, now that all excitement was over — so tired that she hardly knew what she did or where moved. But a smile had become so faithful to her eyes that it clung there above the shadows of fatigue, and kept taking her lips prisoner.

Between the two bronze busts she had placed a bowl of lilies of the valley; and every free niche in that room of books had a little vase of roses to welcome Milton’s return.

He was lying back in his big leather chair, wrapped in a Turkish gown of Lord Valleys’s — on which Barbara had laid hands, having failed to find anything resembling a dressing-gown amongst her brother’s austere clothing. The perfume of lilies had overcome the scent of books, and a bee, dusky adventurer, filled the room with his pleasant humming.

They did not speak, but smiled faintly, looking at one another. In this still moment, before passion had returned to claim its own, their spirits passed through the sleepy air, and became entwined, so that neither could withdraw that soft, slow, encountering glance. In mutual contentment, each to each, close as music to the strings of a violin, their spirits clung — so lost, the one in the other, that neither for that brief time seemed to know which was self.

In fulfillment of her resolution Lady Valleys, who had returned to town by a morning train, started with Barbara for the Temple about three in the afternoon, and stopped at the doctor’s on the way. The whole thing would be much simpler if Eustace were in fit condition to be moved at once to Valleys House; and with much relief she found that the doctor saw no danger in this course.

The recovery had been remarkable— touch-and-go for bad brain fever—just avoided. Lord Milton’s constitution was extremely sound. Yes, he would certainly favor a removal. His rooms were too confined in this weather. Well nursed — decidedly! Oh, yes! and as he spoke, the doctor’s eyes became perhaps a trifle more intense. Not a professional, he understood. It might be as well to have another nurse, if they were making the change. They would have this one knocking up. Quite so! Yes, he would see to that. An ambulance carriage he thought advisable. That could all be arranged for this afternoon —at once— he himself would look to it. They might take Lord Milton off just as he was; the men would know what to do. And when they had him at Valleys House, the moment he showed interest in his food, down to the sea — down to the sea! At this time of year nothing like it! Then with regard to nourishment, he would be inclined already to shove in a leetle stimulant, a thimblefull perhaps four times a day with food, — not without, — mixed with an egg, with arrowroot, with custard. A week would see him on his legs, a fortnight at the sea make him as good a man as ever. Overwork — burning the candle — a leetle more would have seen a very different state of things! Quite so, quite so! Would come round himself before dinner, and make sure. His patient might feel it just at first! He bowed Lady Valleys out; and when she had gone, sat down at his telephone with a smile flickering on his clean-cut lips.

Greatly fortified by this interview, Lady Valleys rejoined her daughter in the car; but while it slid on amongst the multitudinous traffic, signs of unwonted nervousness began to overlay the placidity of her face.

‘I wish, my dear,’she said suddenly, ‘ that some one else had to do this. Suppose Eustace refuses!’

‘He won’t,’Barbara answered; ‘she looks so tired, poor dear. Besides —’

Lady Valleys gazed with curiosity at that young face, which had flushed pink. Yes, this daughter of hers was a woman already, with all a woman’s intuitions.

She said gravely, ‘It was a rash stroke of yours, Babs; let’s hope it won’t lead to disaster.’

Barbara bit her lips.

‘If you’d seen him as I saw him! And, what disaster? May n’t they love each other, if they want?’

Lady Valleys swallowed a grimace. It was so exactly her own point of view. And yet—!

‘That’s only the beginning,’she said; ‘you forget the sort of boy Eustace is.’

‘ Why can’t the poor thing be let out of her cage?’ cried Barbara. ‘What good does it do to any one? Mother, if ever, when I am married, I want to get free, I will!’

The tone of her voice was so quivering, and unlike the happy voice of Barbara, that Lady Valleys involuntarily caught hold of her hand and squeezed it hard.

‘My dear sweet,’she said, ‘don’t let’s talk of such gloomy things.’

‘Yes, but I mean it. Nothing shall stop me.’

But Lady Valleys’s face had suddenly become rather grim.

‘So we think, child; it’s not so simple.’

‘It can’t be worse, anyway/ muttered Barbara, ‘than being buried alive as that wretched woman is.’

For answer Lady Valleys only murmured, ‘The doctor promised that ambulance carriage at four o’clock. What am I going to say?’

‘She’ll understand when you look at her. She’s that sort.’

The door was opened to them by Mrs. Noel herself.

It was the first time Lady Valleys had seen her in a house, and there was real curiosity mixed with the assurance which masked her nervousness. A pretty creature, even lovely! But the quite genuine sympathy in her words, ‘I am truly grateful. You must be quite worn-out,’ did not prevent her adding hastily, ‘The doctor says he must be got home out of these hot rooms. We’ll wait here while you tell him.’

And then she saw that it was true: this woman was the sort who understood!

Left in the dark passage, she peered round at Barbara.

The girl was standing against the wall with her head thrown back. Lady Valleys could not see her face; but she felt all of a sudden exceedingly uncomfortable, and whispered, ‘Two murders and a theft, Babs; was n’t it “Our Mutual Friend”?’

‘ Mother! ’

‘What?’

‘Her face! When you’re going to throw away a flower, it looks at you!'

‘ My dear! ’ murmured Lady Valleys, thoroughly distressed, ‘what things you’re saying to-day!’

This lurking in a dark passage, this whispering girl — it was all queer, unlike an experience in proper life.

And then through the reopened door she saw Milton, stretched out in a chair, very pale, but still with that look about his eyes and lips which, of all things in the world, had a chastening effect on Lady Valleys, making her feel somehow incurably mundane.

She said rather timidly, ‘I’m so glad you ’re better, dear. What a time you must have had! They never told me anything till yesterday.'

But Milton’s answer was, as usual, thoroughly disconcerting.

’Thanks, yes! I have had a perfect time — and have now to pay for it, I suppose.’

Held back by his smile from bending to kiss him, poor Lady Valleys fidgeted from head to foot. A sudden impulse of sheer womanliness caused a tear to fall on his hand.

When Milton perceived that moisture, he said, ‘It’s all right, mother. I’m quite willing to come.’

Wounded by his voice, Lady Valleys recovered instantly. And while preparing for departure she watched them furtively.

They hardly looked at each other, and when they did, their eyes baffled her. The expression was outside her experience, belonging, as it were, to a different world, with its faintly smiling, almost shining gravity.

Vastly relieved when Milton, covered with a fur, had been taken down to the carriage, she lingered to speak to Mrs. Noel.

‘We owe you a great debt. It might have been so much worse. You must n’t be disconsolate. Go to bed and have a good long rest.’ And from the door, she murmured again, ‘Now do take a real rest.’

Descending the stone stairs, she thought: “Anonyma,” — yes, it was quite the name for her.’ And suddenly she saw Barbara come running up again.

' What is it, Babs ? ’

Barbara answered, ‘Eustace would like some of those lilies.’ And, passing Lady Valleys, she went on up to Milton’s chambers.

Mrs. Noel was not in the sittingroom, and going to the bedroom door, the girl looked in.

She was standing by the bed, drawing her hand over and over the white surface of the pillow. Stealing noiselessly back, Barbara caught up the bunch of lilies, and fled.

XXXIV

Milton, whose constitution had the steel-like quality of Lady Casterley’s, had a very rapid convalescence. And, having begun to take an interest in his food, he was allowed to travel on the seventh day to Sea House in charge of Barbara.

The two spent their time in a little summer-house close to the sea, lying out on the beach under the groynes, and, as Milton grew stronger, motoring and walking on the Downs.

To Barbara, keeping a close watch, he seemed tranquilly enough drinking in from Nature what was necessary to restore balance after the struggle and breakdown of the past weeks. Yet she could never get rid of a queer feeling that he was not really there at all; to look at him was like watching an uninhabited house that was waiting for some one to enter.

During a whole fortnight he did not make a single allusion to Mrs. Noel, till, on the very last morning, as they were watching the weaves, he said with his queer smile,—

‘It almost makes one believe her theory, that Pan is not dead. Do you ever see the great god, Babs? or are you, like me, obtuse?’

Certainly about those lithe invasions of the sea-nymph waves, with ashy, streaming hair, flinging themselves into the arms of the land, there was the old pagan rapture, an inexhaustible delight, a passionate, soft acceptance of eternal fate, a wonderful acquiescence in the untiring mystery of life.

But Barbara, ever disconcerted by that tone in his voice, and by this quick dive into the waters of unaccustomed thought, failed to find an answer.

Milton went on: ‘She says, too, we can hear Apollo singing. Shall we try ? ’

But all that came was the sigh of the sea, and the wind in the tamarisk.

‘No,’ muttered Milton at last, ‘she alone can hear it.’

And Barbara saw once more on his face that look, neither sad nor impatient, but as of one uninhabited and waiting.

She left Sea House next day to rejoin her mother, who, having been to Cowes, and to the Duchess of Gloucester’s, was back in town waiting for Parliament to rise, before going off to Scotland. And that same afternoon the girl made her way to Mrs. Noel’s flat. In paying this visit she was moved not so much by compassion, as by uneasiness, and a strange curiosity. Now that Milton was well again, she was seriously disturbed in mind. Had she made an error in summoning Mrs. Noel to nurse him?

When she went into the little drawing-room that lady was sitting in the deep-cushioned window-seat, with a book on her knee; and by the fact that it was open at the index, Barbara judged that she had not been reading too attentively. She showed no signs of agitation at the sight of her visitor, nor any eagerness to hear news of Milton. But the girl had not been five minutes in the room before the thought came to her, ‘Why! she has the same look as Eustace!’ She, too, was like an empty tenement: without impatience, discontent, or grief — waiting! Barbara had scarcely realized this with a curious sense of discomposure, when Courtier was announced. Whether there was in this an absolute coincidence, or just that amount of calculation which might follow on his part from receipt of a note written from Sea House, — saying that Milton was well again, that she was coming up and meant to go and thank Mrs. Noel, — was not clear, nor were her own sensations; and she drew over her face that armored look which she perhaps knew Courtier could not bear to see.

His face was very red when he shook hands. He had come, he told Mrs. Noel, to say good-bye. He was definitely off next week. Fighting had broken out; the revolutionaries were greatly outnumbered. Indeed, he ought to have been there long ago!

Barbara had gone over to the window; she turned suddenly, and said, — ‘You were preaching peace two months ago! ’

Courtier bowed.

‘We are not all perfectly consistent, Lady Barbara. These poor devils have a holy cause.’

Barbara held out her hand to Mrs. Noel.

‘You only think their cause holy because they happen to be weak. Goodbye, Mrs. Noel; the world is meant for the strong, is n’t it?'

She meant that to hurt him; and from the tone of his voice, she knew it had.

‘Don’t, Lady Barbara; from your mother, yes; not from you!’

‘It’s what I believe. Good-bye!’

And she went out.

She had told him that she did not want him to go — not yet; and he was going!

But no sooner had she got outside, after that strange outburst, than she bit her lips to keep back an angry, miserable feeling. He had been rude to her, she had been rude to him; that was the way they had said good-bye! Then, as she emerged into the sunlight, she thought, ‘Oh, well; he does n’t care, and I’m sure I don’t!’

Then she heard a voice behind her, ‘May I get you a cab?’ and at once the sore feeling began to die away; but she did not look round, only smiled, and shook her head, and made a little room for him on the pavement.

But though they walked, they did not at first talk. There was rising within Barbara a tantalizing devil of desire to know the feelings that really lay behind that deferential gravity, to make him show her how much he really cared. She kept her eyes demurely lowered, but she let the glimmer of a smile flicker about her lips; she knew too that her cheeks were glowing, and for that she was not sorry. Was she not to have any — any — was he calmly to go away — without — And she thought, He shall say something! He shall show me, without that horrible irony of his!

She said suddenly, ‘Those two are just waiting — something will happen!'

‘It is probable,’ was his perfectly grave answer.

She looked at him, then — it pleased her to see him quiver as if that glance had gone right into him; and she said softly, ‘And I think they will be quite right.’

She knew she had spoken recklessly, not knowing whether she meant what she said, but because she thought the words would move him somehow. And she saw from his face that they had. Then, after a little pause, she said, ‘Happiness is the great thing’; and with soft, wicked slowness, ‘ Is n’t it, Mr. Courtier?’

All the cheeriness had gone out of his face; it had grown almost pale. He lifted his hand, and let it drop. Then she felt sorry. It was just as if he had asked her to spare him.

‘As to that,’he said, ‘“two things stand like stone” — and the rest of that little rhyme. Life’s frightfully jolly sometimes.’

‘As now?’

He looked at her with firm gravity, and answered, ‘As now.’

A sense of utter mortification seized on Barbara. He was too strong for her — he was quixotic — he was hateful! And determined not to show a sign, to be at least as strong as he, she said calmly, ‘Now I think I’ll have that cab! ’

And when she was in the cab, and he was standing with his hat lifted, she only looked at him in the way that women can, so that he did not know that she had looked.

XXXV

When Milton came to thank her, Audrey Noel was waiting in the middle of the room, dressed in white, her lips smiling, her dark eyes smiling, still as a flower on a windless day.

In that first look passing between them, they forgot everything but happiness. Swallows, on the first day of summer, in their discovery of the bland air, can neither remember that cold winds blow, nor imagine the death of sunlight on their feathers, and, flitting hour after hour over the golden fields, seem no longer birds, but just the breathing of a new season. Swallows are no more forgetful of misfortune than were those two. His contemplation of her was as still as she herself; her look at him had in it the quietude of all emotion, fused and clear as in a crucible.

When they sat down to talk it was as if they had gone back to those days at Monkland, when he had come to her so often to discuss everything in heaven and earth. And yet, over that tranquil, eager drinking-in of each other’s presence, hovered a sort of awe. It was the mood of morning before the sun had soared. Cobwebs enwrapped the flowers of their hearts — a smother of gray, but so fine that every flower could be seen, as yet a prisoner in the net of the cool morning.

Each seemed looking through that web at the color and the deep-down forms there enshrouded so jealously; each feared deliciously to unveil the other’s heart. And they were like lovers who, rambling in a shy wood, never dare stay their babbling talk of the trees and birds and lost blue flowers, lest in the deep waters of a kiss their star of all that is to come should fall and be drowned. To each hour its familiar spirit! The spirit of that hour was the spirit of white flowers in a bowl on the window-sill above her head.

They spoke of Monkland, and Milton’s illness; of his first speech, his impressions of the House of Commons; of music, Barbara, Courtier, the river. He told her of his health, and described his days down by the sea. She, as ever, spoke little of herself, persuaded that it could not interest even him; but she described a visit to the opera; and how she had found a picture in the National Gallery which reminded her of him. To all these trivial things and countless others, the tone of their voices — soft, almost murmuring, with a sort of delighted gentleness — gave a high, sweet importance, a halo that neither for the world would have dislodged from where it hovered.

It was past six when he got up to go, and there had not been a moment to break the calm of that sacred feeling in both their hearts. They parted with another tranquil look, which seemed to say, ‘It is well with us — we have drunk of happiness.’

And in this same amazing calm Milton remained after he had gone away, till, about half-past nine in the evening, he started forth, to walk down to the House. It was now that sort of warm, clear night, which in the country has firefly magic, and even over the town spreads a dark glamour. And for Milton, in the delight of his new health and well-being, with every sense alive and clean, to walk through the warmth and beauty of this night was sheer pleasure. He passed by way of St. James’s Park, treading down the purple shadows of plane-tree leaves into the pools of lamplight, almost with remorse, so beautiful, and as if alive, were they. There were moths out, and gnats, born on the water, and a scent of new-mown grass drifted up from the lawns. His heart felt light as a swallow he had seen that morning, swooping at a gray feather, carrying it along, letting it flutter away, then diving to seize it again; so elated was he by the beauty of the night. And as he neared the House of Commons, he thought he would walk a little longer, and turned westward to the river.

On that warm night the water, without movement at turn of tide, was like the black, snake-smooth hair of Nature streaming out on her couch of Earth, waiting for the caress of a divine hand. Far away on the farther bank throbbed some huge machine, not stilled by night. A few stars were out in the dark sky, but no moon to invest with pallor the gleam of the lamps. Scarcely any one passed. Milton strolled along the river wall, then crossed, and came back in front of the Mansions where she lived. By the railing he stood still. In the sitting-room of her little flat there was no light, but the casement window was wide open, and the crown of white flowers in the bowl on the window-sill still gleamed out in the darkness like a crescent moon lying on its face. Suddenly, he saw two pale hands rise one on either side of that bowl, lift it, and draw it in. And he quivered as though they had touched him. Again those two hands came floating up; they were parted now by darkness; the moon of flowers had gone, in its place had been set handfuls of purple or crimson blossoms. And a puff of warm air rising quickly out of the night drifted their scent of cloves into his face, so that he held his breath for fear of calling out her name.

Again the hands had vanished — through the open window there was nothing to be seen but darkness; and such a rush of longing seized on Milton as stole from him all power of movement. He could hear her playing. The tune was the barcarolle from ‘The Tales of Hoffmann’; and the murmurous current of its melody was like the night itself, sighing, throbbing, languorously soft. It seemed that in this music she was calling him, telling him that she, too, was longing; her heart, too, empty. It died away; and at the window her white figure appeared. From that vision he could not, nor did he try to, shrink, but moved out into the lamplight. And he saw her suddenly stretch out her hands to him, and withdraw them to her breast. Then all save the madness of his longing deserted Milton. He ran down the little garden, across the hall, up the stairs.

The door was open. He passed through. There, in the sitting-room, where the red flowers in the window scented all the air, it was so dark that he could not see her, till against the piano he caught the glimmer of her white dress. She was sitting with hands resting on the pale notes. And falling on his knees, he buried his face against her. Then without looking up, he raised his hands. Her tears fell on them, covering her heart, that throbbed as if the passionate night itself were breathing in there, and all but the night and her love had stolen forth.

XXXVI

On a spur of the Sussex Downs, inland from Nettlefold, there stands a beech-grove. The traveler who enters it out of the heat and brightness takes off the shoes of his spirit before its sanctity; and, reaching the centre, across the clean beech-mat, he sits refreshing his brow with air, and silence. For the flowers of sunlight on the ground under those branches are pale and rare, no insects hum, the birds are almost mute. And close to the border trees are the quiet, milk-white sheep, in congregation, escaping from noon heat. Here, above fields and dwellings, above the ceaseless network of men’s doings, and the vapor of their talk, the traveler feels solemnity. All seems conveying divinity — the great white clouds moving their wings above him, the faint longing murmur of the boughs, and, in far distance, the sea. And for a space his restlessness and fear know the peace of God.

So it was with Milton when he reached this temple, three days after that passionate night, having walked for hours, alone and full of conflict. During those three days he had been borne forward on the flood tide; and now, tearing himself out of London, where to think was impossible, he had come to the solitude of the Downs to walk, and face his new position.

For that position he saw to be very serious. In the flush of full realization, there was for him no question of renunciation. She was his, he hers; that was determined. But what, then, was he to do? There was no chance of her getting free. In her husband’s view, it seemed, under no circumstances was marriage dissoluble. Nor, indeed, to Milton would divorce have made things easier, believing as he did that he and she were guilty, and that for the guilty there could be no marriage. She, it was true, asked nothing of him, but just to be his in secret; and that was the course he knew most men would take, without further thought. There was no material reason in the world why he should not so act, and maintain unchanged every other current of his life. It would be simple, easy. And, with her faculty for selfeffacement, he knew she would not be unhappy. But conscience, in Milton, was a terrible and fierce thing. In the delirium of his illness it had become that Great Face which had marched over him. And though, during the weeks of his recuperation, struggle of all kind had ceased, now that he had yielded to his passion, conscience, in a new and dismal shape, had crept up again to sit above his heart. He must and would let this man, her husband, know; but even if this caused no scandal, could he go on deceiving those who, if they had knowledge of an illicit love, would no longer allow him to represent them in Parliament? If it were known that she was his mistress, he could no longer continue in public life; was he not therefore bound in honor of his own accord to resign it? Night and day he was haunted by the thought: How can I, living in defiance of authority, pretend to authority over my fellows? How can I remain in public life? But if he did not remain in public life, what was he to do? That way of life was in his blood; he had been bred and born into it; had thought of nothing else since he was a boy. There was no other occupation or interest that could hold him for a moment — he saw very plainly that he would be cast away on the waters of existence.

So the battle raged in his proud and twisted spirit, which took everything so hard — his nature imperatively commanding him to keep his work and his power for usefulness; his conscience telling him as urgently that if he sought to wield authority, he must obey it.

He entered the beech grove at the height of this misery, flaming with rebellion against the dilemma which Fate had placed before him; visited by gusts of resentment against this passion, which forced him to pay the price, either of his career, or of his self-respect; gusts, followed by remorse that he could so for one moment regret his love for that tender creature. The face of Lucifer was not more dark, more tortured, than Milton’s face in the twilight of the grove, above the kingdoms of the world, for which his ambition and his conscience fought.

He threw himself down among the trees; and stretching out his arms, by chance touched a beetle trying to crawl over the grassless soil. Some bird had maimed it. He took the little creature up. The beetle, it was true, could no longer work, but Fate had spared it that which lay before himself. For Fate, which was waiting to destroy his power of movement, would leave him conscious of wasted life. The world would not roll away down there. He would still see himself cumbering the ground, when his powers were taken from him. This thought was torture. Why had he been suffered to meet her, to love her, and to be loved by her? What had made him so certain from the first moment, if she were not meant for him? If he lived to be a hundred, he would never meet another. Why, because of his love, must he bury the will and force of a man? If there were no more coherence in God’s scheme than this, let him too be incoherent! Let him hold authority, and live outside authority! Why stifle his powers for the sake of a coherence which did not exist? That would indeed be madness greater than that of a mad world!

There was no answer to his thoughts in the stillness of the grove, unless it were the cooing of a dove, or the faint thudding of the sheep issuing again into sunlight. But slowly that stillness stole into Milton’s spirit. ‘Is it like this in the grave?’ he thought. ’Are the boughs of those trees the dark earth over me? And the sound in them the sound the dead hear when flowers are growing, and the wind passing through them? and is the feel of this earth how it feels to lie looking up forever at nothing? Is life anything but a nightmare, a dream? and is not this the reality? And why my fury, my insignificant flame, blowing here and there, when there is really no wind, only a shroud of still air, and these flowers of sunlight that have been dropped on me! Why not let my spirit sleep, instead of eating itself away with rage; why not resign myself at once to wait for the substance, of which this is but the shadow!'

And he lay scarcely breathing, looking up at the unmoving branches setting with their darkness the pearls of the sky.

‘Is not peace enough?’ he thought. ‘Is not love enough? Can I not be reconciled, like a woman? Is not that salvation, and happiness? What is all the rest, “ but sound and fury, signifying nothing ” ? ’

And as though afraid to lose his hold of that thought, he got up and hurried from the grove.

The whole wide landscape of field and wood, cut by the pale roads, was glimmering under the afternoon sun. Here was no wild, wind-swept land, gleaming red and purple, and guarded by the gray rocks; no home of the winds, and the wild gods. It was all serene and silver-golden. In place of the shrill wailing pipe of the hunting buzzardhawks half-lost up in the wind, invisible larks were letting fall hymns to tranquillity; and even the sea —no adventuring spirit sweeping the shore with its wing — seemed to lie resting by the side of land.

XXXVII

When on the afternoon of that same day Milton did not come, all the chilly doubts which his presence alone kept away crowded thick and fast into the mind of one only too prone to distrust her own happiness. It could not last — how could it!

His nature and her own were so far apart! Even in that giving of herself which had been such happiness, she had yet doubted. There was so much in him that was to her mysterious. All that he loved in music and nature, had in it something craggy and culminating, something with a menace which overtopped the spirit. The soft and fiery, the subtle and harmonious, seemed to leave him cold. He had no particular love for all those simple natural things, birds, bees, animals, trees, and flowers, that seemed to her precious and divine.

Though it was not yet four o’clock she was already beginning to droop like a flower that wants water. But she sat down to her piano, resolutely, till tea came; playing on and on with a spirit only half present, the other half of her wandering in the town, seeking for Milton. After tea she tried first to read, then to sew, and once more came back to her piano. The clock struck six; and as if its last stroke had broken the armor of her mind, she felt suddenly sick with anxiety. Why was he so long? But she kept on playing, turning the pages without taking in the notes, haunted by the idea that he might again have fallen ill. Should she telegraph? What good, when she could not tell in the least where he might be? And all the unreasoning terror of not knowing where the loved one is, beset her so that her hands, in sheer numbness, dropped from the keys.

Unable to keep still, now, she wandered from window to door, out into the little hall, and back hastily to the window. Over her anxiety brooded a darkness, compounded of vague growing fears. What if it were the end? What if he had chosen this as the most merciful way of leaving her? But surely he would never be so cruel!

Close on the heels of this too painful thought came reaction; and she told herself that she was a fool. He was at the House; something quite ordinary was keeping him. It was absurd to be anxious! She would have to get used to this now. To be a drag on him would be dreadful. Sooner than that she would rather — yes — rather he never came back! And she took up a book, determined to read quietly till he came. But the moment that she sat down her fears returned with redoubled force—the cold, sickly, horrible feeling of uncertainty, of the knowledge that she could do nothing but wait until she was relieved by something over which she had no control. And in the superstition that to stay there in the window where she could see him come, was keeping him from her, she went into her bedroom. From there she could watch the sunset clouds wine-dark over the river. A little talking wind shivered along the houses; the dusk began creeping in. She would not turn on the light, being unwilling to admit that it was really getting late, but began to change her dress, lingering desperately over every little detail of her toilet, deriving therefrom a faint, mysterious comfort, trying to make herself feel beautiful. From sheer dread of going back before he came, she let her hair fall, though it was quite smooth and tidy, and began brushing it.

Suddenly she thought with horror of her efforts at adornment — by specially preparing for him, she must seem presumptuous to Fate. At any little sound she stopped and stood listening; save for her hair and eyes, as white from head to foot as a double narcissus flower in the dusk, bending towards some faint tune played to it somewhere out in the fields. But all those little sounds ceased, one after another— they had meant nothing; and each time, her spirit, returning within the pale walls of the room, began once more to inhabit her lingering fingers. During that hour in her bedroom she lived through years. It was dark when she left it.

XXXVIII

When Milton came it was past nine o’clock.

Silent, but quivering all over, she clung to him in the hall; and this passion of emotion, without sound to give it substance, affected him profoundly. How terribly sensitive and tender she was! She seemed to have no armor. But though stirred by her emotion, he was none the less exasperated. She incarnated at that moment the life to which he must now resign himself — a life of unending tenderness, consideration, and passivity.

For a long time he could not bring himself to speak of his decision. Every look of her eyes, every movement of her body, seemed pleading with him not to tell her. But in Milton’s character there was an element of rigidity which never suffered him to diverge from an objective once determined.

When he had finished telling her, she only said, ‘Why can’t we go on in secret?’

And he felt with a sort of horror that he must begin his struggle over again. He got up, and threw open the window. The wind had risen; the sky was dark above the river. That restless murmuration, and the width of the night with its scattered stars, seemed to come rushing at his face. He withdrew from it; and leaning on the sill looked down at her. What flower-like delicacy she had! And there flashed across him the memory of a drooping blossom, which, in the spring, he had seen her throw into the flames, with the words, ‘ I can’t bear flowers to fade, I always want to burn them.' He could see again those waxen petals yield to the fierce clutch of the little red creeping sparks, and the slender stalk quivering, and glowing, and writhing to blackness like a live thing. And, torn in two, he began, —

’I can’t live a lie. What right have I to lead, if I can’t follow? I’m not like our friend Courtier who believes in liberty. I never have, I never shall. Liberty? What is liberty ? Only those who conform to authority have the right to wield it. Only a churl enforces laws when he himself has not the strength to observe them. I will not be one of whom it can be said, “He can rule others, himself—”!’

‘No one will know.’

Milton turned away.

‘I shall know,’ he said; but he saw clearly that she did not understand him. Her face had a strange, brooding, shut-away look, as though he had frightened her. And the thought that she could not understand angered him.

He said stubbornly, ‘No, I can’t remain in public life.’

‘But what has it to do with politics? It’s such a little thing.’

‘If it had been a little thing to me, should I have left you at Monkland, and spent those five weeks in purgatory before my illness? A little thing!’

She exclaimed with sudden fire, ‘Circumstances are the little thing; it’s love that’s the great thing.’

Milton stared at her, for the first time understanding that she had a philosophy as deep and stubborn as his own. But he answered cruelly, ‘Well! the great thing has conquered me!’

And then he saw her looking at him, as if, seeing into the recesses of his soul, she had made some ghastly discovery. The look was so mournful, so uncannily intent, that he turned away from it.

‘Perhaps it is a little thing,’ he muttered; ‘I don’t know. I can’t see my way. I ’ve lost my bearings; I must find them again before I can do anything.’

But as if she had not heard, or not taken in the sense of his words, she said again, ‘Oh, don’t let us alter anything; I won’t ever want what you can’t give.’

And this stubbornness, when he was doing the very thing that would give him to her utterly, seemed to him unreasonable.

‘I’ve had it out with myself,’ he said. ‘Don’t let’s talk about it any more.’

But again, with a sort of dry anguish, she murmured, ‘No, no! Let us go on as we are! ’

Feeling that he had borne all he could, Milton put his hands on her shoulders, and said, ‘That’s enough!’

Then, in sudden remorse, he lifted her, and clasped her to him.

But she stood inert in his arms, her eyes closed, not returning his kisses.

XXXIX

On the next day, before Parliament rose, Lord Valleys, with a light heart, mounted his horse for a gallop in the Row. He was riding a blood mare with a plain snaffle, and the seat of one who had hunted from the age of seven, and been for twenty years a colonel of yeomanry. Greeting affably every one he knew, he maintained a frank demeanor on all subjects, especially of government policy, secretly enjoying the surmises and prognostications, and the way questions and hints perished before his sphinx-like candor. He spoke cheerily too of Milton, who was ‘all right again,’ and ‘burning for the fray’ when the House met again in the autumn. And he chaffed Lord Malvezin about his wife. If anything — he said — could make Bertie take an interest in politics, it would be she. He had two capital gallops, being well known to the police. The day was bright, and he was sorry to turn home. Falling in with Harbinger, he asked him to come back to lunch. It had struck him that there had been something different lately, an almost morose look, about young Harbinger; and his wife’s disquieting words about Barbara came back to him with a shock. He had seen little of the child lately, and in the general clearing up of this time of year had forgotten all about them.

Agatha was still staying at Valleys House with little Ann, waiting to travel up to Scotland with her mother, and join Sir William at his shooting, Garviemoore; but she was out, and there was no one at lunch but Lady Valleys and Barbara herself, so that conversation flagged, for the young couple were extremely silent, Lady Valleys, who had to preside at a meeting that evening, was considering what to say, and Lord Valleys rather carefully watching his daughter. The message that Lord Milton was in his lordship’s study came as a surprise, and somewhat of a relief to all. To an exhortation to bring him in to lunch, the servant replied that Lord Milton had lunched, and would wait.

‘Does he know there’s no one here?'

‘Yes, my lady.’

Lady Valleys pushed back her plate, and rose.

‘Oh, well!’ she said, ‘I’ve finished.’

Lord Valleys also got up, and they went out together, leaving Barbara, who had risen, looking uneasily at the door.

Lord Valleys had recently been told of the nursing episode, and had received the news with the dubious air of one hearing something about an eccentric person which, heard about any one else, could have but one significance. If Eustace had been a normal young man his father would have shrugged his shoulders, and thought, ‘Oh, well! There it is!’ As it was, he had literally not known what to think. And now, crossing the salon which intervened between the dining-room and the study, he said to his wife uneasily, ‘Is it this woman again, Gertrude — or what?’

Lady Valleys answered with a shrug, ‘Goodness knows, my dear.’

Milton was standing in the embrasure of a window above the terrace. He looked well, and his greeting was the same as usual.

‘Well, my dear fellow,’ said Lord Valleys, ‘you’re all right again evidently — What’s the news?’

‘ Only that I’ve decided to resign my seat. ’

Lord Valleys stared.

‘What on earth for?’ he said.

But Lady Valleys, with the greater quickness of women, divining already something of the reason, flushed a deep pink.

‘Nonsense, my dear,’ she said; ’it can’t possibly be necessary, even if—’ Recovering herself, she added dryly: ‘Give us some reason.’

‘The reason is simply that I’ve joined my life to Mrs. Noel’s. I can’t go on as I am, living a lie. If it were known I should obviously have to resign at once.’

‘Good God!’ exclaimed Lord Valleys.

Lady Valleys made a rapid movement. In the face of what she felt to be a really serious crisis between these two utterly different creatures of the other sex, her husband and her son, the great lady in her became merged at once in the essential woman. Unconsciously both men felt this change, and in speaking, turned towards her.

‘I can’t argue it,’ said Milton; ’I consider myself bound in honor.’

‘And then?’ she asked.

Lord Valleys, with a note of real feeling, interjected, ‘By Heaven! I did think you put your country above your private affairs.’

‘Geoff!’ said Lady Valleys.

But Lord Valleys went on: ‘No, Eustace, I’m out of touch with your view of things altogether. I don’t even begin to understand it.’

‘That is true,’ said Milton.

‘Listen to me, both of you!’ said Lady Valleys. ‘You two are altogether different; and you must not quarrel. I won’t have that. Now Eustace, you are our son, and you have got to be kind and considerate. Sit down, and let’s talk it over.’

And motioning her husband to a chair, she sat down in the embrasure of a window. Milton remained standing. Visited by a sudden dread, Lady Valleys said, ‘Is it — you’ve not — there is n’t going to be a scandal?’

Milton smiled grimly.

‘I shall tell this man, of course, but you may make your minds easy, I imagine; I understand that his view of marriage does not permit of divorce in any case whatever.’

Lady Valleys sighed with an utter and undisguised relief.

‘Well, then, my dear boy,’ she began, ‘even if you do feel you must tell him, there is surely no reason why it should not otherwise be kept secret.’

Lord Valleys interrupted her. ‘I should be glad if you would point out the connection between your honor and the resignation of your seat,’ he said stiffly.

Milton shook his head.

‘If you don’t see already, it would be useless.’

‘ I do not see. The whole matter is — is unfortunate, but to give up your work, so long as there is no absolute necessity, seems to me far-fetched and absurd. How many men are there into whose lives there has not entered some such relation at one time or another? The idea would disqualify half the nation.’

His eyes seemed in this crisis both to consult and to avoid his wife’s, as though he were at once asking her indorsement of his point of view, and observing the proprieties. And for a moment in the midst of her anxiety, her sense of humor got the better of Lady Valleys. It was so funny that Geoff should have to give himself away; she could not for the life of her help fixing him with her eyes.

‘My dear,’ she murmured, ‘you underestimate — three quarters, at the very least!’

But Lord Valleys, confronted with danger, was growing steadier.

‘It passes my comprehension,’ he said, ‘why you should want to mix up sex and politics at all.’

Milton’s answer came very slowly, as if the confession were hurting his lips.

’There is — forgive me for using the word — such a thing as one’s religion. I don’t happen to regard life as divided into public and private departments. My vision of things is gone — broken — I can see no object before me now in public life — no goal — and no certainty.’

Lady Valleys caught his hand: ‘Oh! my dear,’ she said, ‘that’s too dreadfully puritanical!’ But at Milton’s queer smile, she added hastily, ‘Logical — I meant.’

‘Consult your common sense, Eustace, for goodness’ sake,’ broke in Lord Valleys; ‘is n’t it your simple duty to put your scruples in your pocket, and do the best you can for your country with the powers that have been given you ? ’

‘ I have no common sense.’

‘In that case, of course, it may be just as well that you should leave public life.’

Milton bowed.

‘Nonsense!’ cried Lady Valleys. ‘You don’t understand, Geoffrey; I ask you again, Eustace, what will you do afterwards ? ’

‘I don’t know.'

‘You will eat your heart out.’

‘Quite possibly.’

‘If you can’t come to a reasonable arrangement with your conscience,’ again broke in Lord Valleys, ' for Heaven’s sake give her up, like a man, and cut all these knots.'

‘I beg your pardon, sir!’ said Milton icily.

Lady Valleys laid her hand on his arm. ‘You must allow us a little logic too. You don’t imagine that she would wish you to throw away your life for her ? I’m not such a bad judge of character as that.’

She stopped before the expression on Milton’s face.

‘You go too fast,’ he said; ‘ I may become a free spirit yet.’

To this saying, which seemed to her cryptic and sinister, Lady Valleys did not know what to answer.

‘If you feel, as you say,’ Lord Valleys began once more, ‘ that the bottom has been knocked out of things for you by this — this affair, don’t, for goodness’ sake, do anything in a hurry. Wait! Go abroad! Get your balance back! You’ll find the thing settle itself in a few months. Don’t precipitate matters; you can make your health an excuse to miss the autumn session.’

Lady Valleys chimed in eagerly: ‘You really are seeing the thing out of all proportion. What is a love-affair? My dear boy, do you suppose for a moment any one would think the worse of you, even if they knew? and really not a soul need know.’

‘It has not occurred to me to consider what they would think.’

‘Then,’ cried Lady Valleys, nettled, ‘it’s simply your own pride.’

‘You have said.’

Lord Valleys, who had turned away, spoke in an almost tragic voice: —

‘I did not think that on a point of honor I should differ from my son.'

Catching at the word honor, Lady Valleys cried suddenly, ‘Eustace, promise me, before you do anything, to consult your Uncle Dennis.’

Milton smiled. ‘This becomes comic,’he said.

At that word, which indeed seemed to them quite wanton, Lord and Lady Valleys turned on their son, and the three stood staring, perfectly silent. A little noise from the doorway interrupted them. Barbara stood there.

(To be continued.)