The Patricians

[Lord Milton, son of the Earl of Valleys, and grandson of Lady Casterley of ‘Ravensham,’is in the thick of a political campaign. By birth, training, and education he represents the old order, and is opposed by Humphrey Chilcox, with whom is associated a socialistic leader, Courtier, who is an enthusiast in the cause of Peace.

Milton, dreamy and ascetic, meets by chance a Mrs. Noel, discreetly referred to by the family as ‘ Anonyma.’ They are mutually attracted. Little is known of her antecedents, and Lady Casterley determines to keep them apart. During one of his daring speeches against Milton’s candidacy, a mob attacks Courtier, and Milton goes to his rescue. To do so, he happens, by chance, to leave Mrs. Noel’s house at a late hour in the evening. In the resulting fray Courtier is slightly injured, and is removed to ‘Ravensham.’ While he is talking to Lady Valleys a young girl enters the drawing-room.]

VII

SHE had been riding, and wore high boots and a skirt which enabled her to sit astride. Her eyes were blue, and her hair — the color of beech-leaves in autumn with the sun shining through — was coiled up tight under a small soft hat. Five feet nine inches in height, she moved like one endowed with great length from the hip-joint to the knee; and there radiated from her whole face and figure such perfect joy in life, such serene, unconscious vigor, as though Care fled before her, and she had winged to the earth straight from the home of Good Fortune.

‘Ah, Babs!' said Lady Valleys. ‘My daughter Barbara — Mr. Courtier.’

Greeting Courtier with a smile of the frankest curiosity, the young girl said,—

‘Milton’s gone up to town, mother; I was going to motor into Bucklandbury after lunch, and fetch Granny. Anything I can do for you?’

‘Nothing, my dear; unless Mr. Courtier would like an airing. Is your leg fit, do you think?’

Having looked at Barbara, Courtier replied, —

‘It is.’

From the Monkland estate, flowered, lawned, and timbered, to the open moor, was like passing to another world. When t he last lodge of the western drive was left behind, there came into sudden view the most pagan bit of landscape in all England. In this parliament-house of the wild gods, clouds, rocks, sun, and winds met and consulted. The ‘old’ men too had left their spirits among the great stones, which lay couched like lions on the hill-tops, under the white clouds, their brethren, and the hunting buzzardhawks. Here the very rocks were restless, changing form, sense, and color from day to day, as though worshiping the unexpected, and refusing themselves to law. The winds in their passage up here revolted against their courses, and came tearing down wherever there were combes or crannies, so that men in their shelters might still learn the power of the wild gods.

The wonders of this prospect were somewhat lost on Courtier, too busy admiring his young companion, loo conscious of the curiosity masked by self-possession in her blue eyes.

They passed the wreck of a little house standing close to a wild stone man who had possessed that hill before ever there were men of flesh. Over this sorry ruin one patch of roof still clung, but all the rest was open to the sun, the starlight, or the mist.

‘They say,’said Barbara, ‘that Ashman is still seen in his Folly.’

‘Alive?’

‘Not quite — it’s just a hundred years ago.'

‘What made him build up here?’

‘He hated women, and — the roof fell in on him.'

‘I see: a crank — like me; I was almost going to say, like your brother, Lady Barbara.’

He saw her eyes opening wide; and this childlike gesture secretly delighted him.

’I don’t think you must call Milton names. He is a dear.'

‘I quite see that,’ said Courtier.

An exhilaration had come on him. Whatever life might do to others, it could surely not touch this beautiful young creature! She was like a thoroughbred filly stepping out of Ascot paddock for her first race, with the sun gleaming on her satin chestnut skin, her neck held high, her eyes all fire — as sure to win as that God had made grass green. It was difficult to believe her Milton’s sister. It was difficult to believe any of those four young Caradocs related. The grave ascetic Milton, wrapped in the garment of his spirit — mild, domestic, strait-laced Agatha — Bert ie, muffled, shrewd, and steely — and this frank, joyful, conquering Barbara — the range was wide.

But the car had left the moor, and down a steep hill began to pass numbers of small villas and little gray workmen’s houses outside the town ol Buckland bury.

‘I have to go on to Milton’s headquarters, Mr. Courtier. Shall I drop you at the enemy’s? Stop, please, Frith.

And before Courtier could assent, they had pulled up at a house on which was inscribed with extraordinary vigor, ‘Chilcox for Bucklandbury.’

Hobbling into the committee-room of Mr. Humphrey Chilcox, Courtier took with him the scented memory of youth, and ambergris, and Harris tweed. In that room three men were assembled round a table. The eldest of these, who had little gray eyes, a stubbly beard, and that mysterious something only found in those who have been mayors, rose at once and came toward him.

‘Mr. Courtier, I believe,’he said bluffly; ‘glad to see you, sir. Most distressed to hear of this outrage. Though in a way, it’s done us good. Yes, really. Grossly against fair play. Should n’t be surprised if it turned a couple of hundred votes. You carry the effects of it about with you, I see.’

A thin, refined man with wiry hair came up, too, holding a newspaper in his hand.

‘ It has had one rather embarrassing effect,’ he said. ‘Read this!

‘ “ Outrage on a Distinguished Visitor.”

‘ “ Lord Milton’s Evening Adventure.” '

The man with the little eyes broke an ominous silence.

‘One of our side must have seen the whole thing, jumped on his bicycle, and brought in the account before they went to press. They make no imputation on the lady — simply state the facts. Quite enough,’ he added, with impersonal grimness; ‘I think he’s done for himself, sir.’

The man with the refined face said nervously, —

‘We could n’t help this, Mr. Courtier; I really don’t know what we can do. I don’t like it a bit.’

‘Has your candidate seen it?’ Courtier asked, in a rather husky voice.

‘Can’t have,’ struck in the third committee-man; ‘we had n’t seen it ourselves until an hour ago.’

‘I should never have permitted it,’ said the man with the refined face; ’I blame the editor greatly.’

‘Oh! well! come to that,’ said the little-eyed man, ‘it’s a plain piece of news. If it makes a stir, that’s not our fault. The paper imputes nothing; it states. Position of the lady happens to do the rest. Can’t help that; and moreover, sir, speaking for self, don’t want to. We’ll have no loose morals in public life down here, please God!’

There was real feeling in his words; then, catching sight of the expression of Courtier’s face, he added, ‘Do you know this lady, sir?’

‘Ever since she was a child. Whoever speaks evil of her, has to reckon with me.’

The man with the refined face said earnestly. —

‘Believe me, Mr. Courtier, I entirely sympathize. We had nothing to do with the paragraph. It’s one of those incidents where one benefits against one’s will. Most unfortunate that this lady came out on to the green with Lord Milton; you know what people are.'

‘It’s the headline that does it,’ said the third committee-man; ‘they’ve put what will attract the public.’

‘1 don’t know, T don’t know,’ said the little-eyed man stubbornly; ‘if Lord Milton will spend his evenings with lonely ladies, he can’t blame anybody but himself.’

Courtier looked from face to face.

‘This closes my connection with the campaign,’ he said. ‘What’s the address of this paper?’

And without waiting for an answer, he took up the journal and hobbled from the room. He stood a minute outside, to find the address of the paper, then made his way down the street.

VIII

Barbara sat leaning back amongst the cushions of the car. In spite of being already launched into that, highcaste life which brings with it. such early knowledge of the world, she had still some of that eagerness in her face which makes children lovable. And encircled by the aureole of her high destiny, she seemed to the citizens of Bucklandbury part of the glamour of that; summer day. In their eyes, turned toward her, could be seen a glimmer of the devotion crystallized for all time in the eye of Botticelli’s cow. A candle was lighted in their hearts at sight of her.

It was not merely that she was beautiful, for the girl in the post-office had as much beauty; it was rather that she satisfied for them the deep mysterious longing in the souls of Englishmen, to slant their eyes just a little upwards. That longing, crudely sneered at in the phrase, ‘he dearly loved a lord,’ had in truth built the whole national house, and insured it afterwards. No little thing was that upturned eye — the foe of cynicism, pessimism, or anything French or Russian; the parent of all t he national virtues and all the national vices. It did not grudge or envy, but admired, and so it had founded sentiment; it could not see things fair and square, and so it: had begotten muddle-headedness. It had brought forth the twins, independence and servility. It had encouraged conduct, and sat heavily on speculation. Men had called it snobbery; men had called it the political sense. It was very deep; and where it; came from, no one knew.

Sitting in the centre of that upturned eye, Barbara looked at it a little eagerly, though a little carelessly. A little eagerly because life was full of joy, and this was part of life; a little carelessly because they were mostly such funny little people.

She was thinking of Courtier. To her he was a creature from another world, and something of a wounded knight. She wanted to stroke and pet him; to be amused and petted by him. She had met so many men, but not as yet one quite of this sort. It was rather nice to be with a man who was clever, who had none the less done so many out-door things, been through so many bodily adventures. The mere writers, or even the ‘Bohemians,’ whom she occasionally met, were after all only ‘chaplains to the Court,’ necessary to keep aristocra cy in touch with the latest developments of literature and art. But this Mr. Courtier was a man of action; he could not be looked on with the amused, admiring toleration suited to men remarkable only for ideas, and the way they put them into paint or ink. He had used, and could use, the sword, even in the cause of Peace. He could love, had loved. If Barbara had been a girl of twenty in another class, she would probably never have heard this, and if she had heard, it might very well have dismayed or shocked her. But she had heard, and without shock; not because she was unhealthy-minded, but because she knew that men were like that, and women too sometimes.

It was with quite a little pang of motherly concern that she saw him hobbling down the street toward her. And when he was once more seated, she told the chauffeur, ‘To the station, Frith. Quick, please!’ and began,— ‘You ’re not to be trusted a bit. What were you doing over there?’

But Courtier smiled grimly, and did not answer.

This was almost the first time Barbara had ever yet felt up against something that would not yield to her; she quivered, as though she had been touched lightly with a whip. Her lips closed firmly, and her eyes began to dance. ‘Very well, my dear,’ she thought. But presently stealing a look at him, she became aware of such a queer expression on his face that she forgot she was offended.

‘Is anything wrong, Mr. Courtier?’

‘Yes, Lady Barbara, something is very wrong — that cursed mean thing, the human tongue.’

Barbara had an intuitive wisdom of the world, a knowledge of how to handle things, a kind of moral sangfroid, drawn in from the faces she had watched, the talk she had heard, from her youth up. She trusted those intuitions.

‘Has it anything to do with Mrs. Noel?’ Seeing that it had, she added quickly, ‘And Milton?’

Courtier nodded.

‘I thought that was coming. Let them babble! Who cares?’

Courtier looked at her. ‘ Good! ’ he said.

But the car had drawn up at BuckIandbury station.

The little steel-clad figure of Lady Casterley, coming out of the station doorway, showed but slight sign of her long travel. She stopped to take the car in, from chauffeur to Courtier.

‘Well, Frith! Mr. Courtier, is it? I know your book, and I don’t approve of you, sir; you ’re a dangerous man. How do you do? I must have those two bags. The cart, can bring the rest — Randle, get up in front., and don’t get dusty— Keep still, with your poor leg — We can sit three. — Now, my dear, I can kiss you! You’ve grown!’

Lady Casterley’s kiss, once received, was never forgotten; neither perhaps was Barbara’s. Yet were they different. For, in the first case, the old eyes, bright and investigating, could be seen deciding the exact spot for the lips to touch, then the face with its firm chin was darted forward; the lips paused a second, as though to make quite certain, suddenly dug hard and dry into the middle of the cheek, quavered for the fraction of a second, as if trying to remember to be soft, and were relaxed like the elastic of a catapult. And Barbara’s? First a sort of light came into her eyes, then her chin tilted a little, then her lips pouted a little, her body quivered, as if it were getting a size larger, her hair breathed, there was a sweet little sound, it was over.

While she was kissing her grandmother thus, Barbara looked at Courtier. ‘Sitting three’ as they were, he was touching her, and it seemed to her somehow that he did not mind this.

The wind had risen, blowing from the west, and sunshine was flying on it. There was a dapple of light, and blueblack shadows. The call of the cuckoos — a little sharpened — followed the swift-traveling car. And that essential sweetness of the moor, born of the heather-roots and the southwest wind, was stealing out from under the young ferns.

With her thin nostrils distended to this scent, Lady Casteriey bore a resemblance to some small, line, gamebird.

’You smell nice down here, ’ she said. ‘Now, Mr. Courtier, before I forget — who is this Mrs. Noel that I hear so much of?’

For the life of her, Barbara could not help sliding her eyes round at him. How would he stand up to Granny? It was the moment to see what he was made of. Granny was terrific!

‘A very charming woman, Lady Casterley.’

‘No doubt; but I am tired of hearing that. What is her story?’

‘Has she one?’

‘Ha!’ said Lady Casteriey.

Ever so slightly Barbara let her arm press against Courtier’s. It was delicious to hear Granny getting no forwarder.

‘ I may take it she has a past, then ? ’

’Not. from me, Lady Casteriey.’

And again Barbara gave him that imperceptible and flattering touch.

‘Well, this is all very mysterious. I shall find out for myself. You know her, my dear. You must take me to see her.’

‘Dear Granny! If people hadn’t pasts they would n’t have futures.’

Lady Casteriey let her little steellike hand descend on her grand-daughter’s thigh.

‘Don’t talk nonsense, and don’t stretch,’ she said, ‘you’re too large already.’

The great dining-hall at Monkland was one of the finest of its period in the United Kingdom. And since they who dined in it numbered, at the moment, only twelve, they were collected at a table athwart the eastern end.

From their casual references to this great room, no one would have suspected the Caradocs of the possessive pride in it which had soaked into their fibre till it had vanished into their spiritual life.

Courtier found them all in possession of the news. Lady Agatha and her husband, Sir William Shropton, — whose grandfather had been created a baronet by the fourth William, on account of a great and useful fortune made in iron, — had brought it back from Staverton. Lord Harbinger had been interrupted there in his speech by rude questions, and informed of the rumor afterwards by the local agent. The Hon. Geoffrey Window, having sent his wife on, had flown over in his bi-plane from Winkleigh, and brought a copy of ‘the rag’ with him. The one member of the house-party who had not heard the report before dinner, was Lord Dennis Fitz-Harold, Lady Casterley’s brother, known in society by the nickname of ‘Old Magnificat.’

Little, of course, was said at dinner. But after the ladies had withdrawn, Harbinger, with that plain-spoken spontaneity which was rather charming in connection with his handsome face, uttered words to the effect that, if they did not fundamentally kick that rumor, it was all up with Milton. Really this was serious! And the beggars knew it, and they were going to work it. And Milton had gone up to town, no one knew what for. And it was the devil of a mess!

‘What is, my dear young man?’ The voice was that of ’Old Magnificat’ — why so called, no one now knew, for the name had come down from the fifties, when he who bore it was at Eton.

Looking for the complement and counterpart of Lady Casterley, one would have chosen out her brother. All her steely decision was negated in the profound urbanity of that old man. His voice and look and manner were like his velvet coat, which had here and there a whitish sheen, as if it had been touched by moonlight. His hair too had that sheen. His very delicate features were framed in a white beard and moustache of Elizabethan shape. His eyes, hazel and still clear, looked out with a strange, rather touching directness, and that kindly simplicity which persists in the eyes of some old people who will never learn better. His face, though unweathered and unseamed, and too fine and dry in texture, had a strange affinity with the faces of old sailors or fishermen, who have lived a simple life of conduct in the light of an overmastering tradition.

Owing to lack of advertising power, natural to one not conscious of his dignity; and to his devotion to a certain lady, only closed by death, his life had been lived, as it were, in shadow. Yet, in spite of this, he possessed peculiar influence, because it was known to be impossible to get him to look at things in a complicated way. He was regarded as a last resort. ‘ Bad as that? Tut, tut! Well, there’s “Old Magnificat”! Try him! He won’t advise you, but he’ll say something. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!'

In the heart of that irreverent young man, Lord Harbinger, there stirred a sort of affectionate misgiving. Had he expressed himself too freely? Had he said anything too thick? He had forgotten the old boy! And stirring Bertie up with his foot, he murmured, ‘Forgot you did n’t know, sir. Bertie will explain.’

Thus called on, Bertie opened his lips a very little way, and fixing halfclosed eyes on his great-uncle, began.

‘Lady at the cottage — nice woman — Mr. Courtier knows her — old Milton goes there sometimes — rather late the other evening — these devils making the most of it — suggesting, you know — lose him the election. Rot!’

His last word was rich with resentment. Old Milton had been a flat to let the woman out with him on to the green, showing clearly where he had come from when he ran out to Courtier’s rescue. Old Milton was as steady as Time; but you could n’t play about with women who had no form that any one knew anything of, however promising they might look.

What was to be done, then? Window asked. Should Milton be wired for? A thing like this spread like wild-fire!

Sir William Shropton — a man not accustomed to underrate difficulties — was afraid that it was going to be difficult. Lord Harbinger wished to know what Mr. Courtier had done when he heard it in the afternoon? Severed his connection? Good! Spoken his mind? Good! Cursed the editor? D—d good! Where was Milton? At Valleys House? It might n’t be too late to wire to him. The thing ought to be stemmed at once.

Then, out of another silence came the words, —

' I am thinking of this poor lady.’

Turning a little abruptly toward that dry suave voice, and recovering the selfpossession which seldom deserted him, Harbinger murmured,—

‘Ah! yes. Quite so, sir; of course.’

IX

In the lesser withdrawing-room, used when there was so small a party, Mrs. Winlow had gone to the piano and was playing to herself. For Lady Casterley, Lady Valleys, and her two daughters had drawn together, as though united in face of this invading rumor.

It was curious testimony to Milton’s character that, no more here than in the dining-hall, was there any doubt of the integrity of his relations with Mrs. Noel. But whereas there the matter was confined to its electioneering aspect, here that aspect was already perceived to be only the fringe of its importance. The feminine mind, going with intuitive swiftness to the core of anything which affected their own males, had already grasped the fact that the rumor would, as it were, chain a man of Milton’s temper to this woman.

But they were walking on such a thin crust of facts, and there was so deep a quagmire of supposition beneath, that talk was almost painfully difficult. Never before perhaps had each of these four women realized so clearly how much Milton — that rather strange and unknown grandson, son, and brother — counted in the scheme of things. Their suppressed agitation was manifested in very different ways.

Lady Casterley, upright in her chair, showed it only by an added decision of speech, a continual restless movement of one hand, a thin line between her usually smooth brows.

Lady Valleys wore a puzzled look, as if she were a little surprised that she felt, serious.

Agatha looked frankly anxiousShe was in her quiet way a woman of much character, endowed with that natural piety which accepts without questioning the established order in life and religion. Essentially domestic, her thoughts and aspirations forever revolved round her husband and children, for whom no exertion that she could make was ever grudged. The world to her was home and family; and of all that she instinctively felt to be dangerous to this ideal, she had a real, if gently expressed, horror. People judged her a little quiet, dull, and narrow; they compared her to a hen forever clucking round her chicks. The streak of heroism that lay in her nature was not of the order which is patent. Her feeling about her brother’s situation was sincere, and was not to be changed or comforted. She saw him in danger of being damaged in the only sense in which she could conceive of a man — as a husband and a father. It was this that went to her heart, though her piety proclaimed to her also the peril of his soul; for she shared the High Church view of the indissolubility of marriage.

Barbara stood by the hearth, leaning her white shoulders against the carved marble, her hands behind her, looking down. Now and then her lips curled, her level brows twitched, a faint sigh came from her; sometimes a little smile broke out, and was instantly suppressed. She alone was silent—Youth criticizing Life; her judgment seemed to voice itself in the untroubled rise and fall of her young bosom, the impatience of her brows, the downward look of her blue eyes, full of a lazy, inextinguishable light.

‘If he weren’t such a queer boy!’ Lady Valleys sighed. ‘He’s quite capable of marrying her from sheer perversity.’

Lady Casterley gripped the gilded rails of her chair.

‘ Out of the question! ’ she exclaimed.

‘You have n’t seen her, my dear. A most unfortunately attractive creature — a really nice face.’

Agatha said quietly, —

* Mother, if she was divorced, I don’t think Eustace would.’

‘There’s that, certainly,’ murmured Lady Valleys. ‘Hope for the best.’

‘H’m!’ muttered Lady Casterley; ‘don’t you even know that?’

‘The vicar,’ murmured Lady Valleys, ‘ says it was she who divorced her husband, but he’s very charitable; it may be as Agatha hopes.’

‘I detest vagueness. Why does n’t some one ask the woman?’

‘You shall come with me, Granny dear, and ask her yourself; you will do it so nicely.’

Lady Casterley looked up at the audacious speaker.

‘H’mph!’ she said. ‘We shall see.’

Something struggled with the autocratic criticism of her eyes. No more than the rest of the world could she help indulging Barbara. As one who believed in the divinity of her order, she liked this splendid child. She liked, and even admired — though admiration was not what she excelled in — that warm joy in life, as of some great nymph, parting the waves with bare limbs, tossing from her the foam of breakers. She felt that in her, rather than in the sweet and good Agatha, the patrician spirit was housed.

There were points to Agatha, earnestness and high principle; but something morally a little narrow and overAnglican slightly offended the practical, this-worldly temper of Lady Casterley. It was a weakness, and she disliked weakness. Barbara would never skirmish with moral doubts or matters of form, such as were not really essential to aristocracy. She might indeed err too much the other way from sheer high spirits. As the impudent child had said, ‘If people had no pasts, they would have no futures.’ And Lady Casterley could not bear people without futures. She was ambitious; not with the vulgar ambition of one who had risen from nothing, but with the higher passion of one on the top, who meant to stay there.

‘And where have you been meeting this — er — anonymous creature? ’ she asked.

Barbara came from the hearth, and bending down beside Lady Casterley’s chair, seemed to envelop her completely.

‘I’m all right, Granny; she could n’t corrupt me.’

Lady Casterley’s small carved-steel face peered out from that warmth, wearing a look of disapproving pleasure.

‘ I know your wiles!' she said. ‘ Come now! ’

‘Well, I see her about. She’s nice to look at. We always have a talk.’

Again with that hurried quietness Agatha said,—

‘ My dear Babs, I do think you ought to wait.’

‘ My dear angel, why? Who cares if she’s had four husbands?’

Agatha bit her lips, and Lady Valleys laughed.

‘You really are a terror, Babs,’ she murmured.

The sound of Mrs. Winlow’s music ceased, the men were coming in; instantly the faces of the four women changed. They seemed to don an outer garment, as though making ready for a game. The talk at once became a swift, incessant tossing of semi-jesting nothings. It glanced from the War Scare — Winlow had it very specially that this would be over in a week — to Brabrook’s speech, in progress at that very moment, of which Harbinger provided an imitation. It sped to Winlow’s flight — to Andrew Grant’s articles in The Parthenon — to the caricature of Lord Harbinger in The Cackler, inscribed ‘The New Tory —L-rd H-rb-ng-r bringing Social Reform beneath the notice of his friends,’ which depicted him introducing a naked baby to a number of coroneted old women. Thence to a semi-nude dancer, and how some one had said she wore too many clothes; thence to the Bill for Universal Assurance; then back to the War Scare. Then to the last book of a great French writer; and once more to Winlow’s flight.

Not one of these subjects, except perhaps Winlow’s flight, was without its intellectual value, or its spiritual significance; but the talk, interspersed with personal gossip, skimmed lightly from surface to surface, as though each talker were thinking, ‘If once I admit that anything has depth, I shall seem in real earnest, and if I seem in real earnest — Good God! ’

Courtier was not present; he had gone straight to his room after dinner. And suddenly in that queer, half-hypnotized way in which talk falls on the absent member of a group, it fastened on him.

Lord Dennis, at the far end of the room, studying a portfolio of engravings, felt a touch on his cheek, and conscious of a certain fragrance, said without turning his head,—

‘Well, Babs?’

Receiving no answer, he looked up.

There indeed stood Barbara, biting her under lip.

‘What is it, my dear?’

‘Don’t you hate sneering behind people’s backs?’

There had always been good comradeship between these two, since the days when Barbara, a goldenhaired child, astride of a gray pony, had been his morning companion in the Row all through the season. His riding days were past; he had now no out-door pursuit but fishing, which he followed with the extraordinary persistence and tranquillity of a straightforward nature, which feels the mysterious finger of old age laid across it. Though she was no longer his companion, he still had a habit of expecting her confidences, and of listening to them gravely.

But she had moved away from him, over to the window.

It was one of those nights, dark yet gleaming, when there seems a flying malice in the heavens; when the white stars, and the black clouds about them, are like eyes frowning and flashing down at men with purposed malevolence. The trees, even, had caught this spirit; so that those great dumb sighing creatures had more than their wonted look of life. But one, a dark spire-like cypress, planted three hundred and fifty years ago, whose tall form incarnated the very spirit of tradition, neither swayed nor soughed like the others. From her, too close-fibred, too resisting, to admit the breath of nature, only a dry rustle came. Still almost exotic, in spite of her centuries of sojourn, and now brought to life by the eyes of the night, she seemed almost terrifying, in her narrow, spearlike austerity, as though something had dried and died within her.

Barbara turned from the window; and Lord Dennis, looking at her curiously, said, —

‘What’s the matter, Babs?’

‘We can’t do anything in our lives, it seems to me, but play at taking risks!’

‘I don’t think I quite understand, my dear.’

‘Look at Mr. Courtier!’ muttered Barbara. ‘His life’s so much freer, so much more risky altogether, than any of our men-folk lead!’

‘Let me see,’ said Lord Dennis; ‘what has he done? I’m not up with these things.’

‘Oh! I dare say not very much; but it’s all neck or nothing. But what does anything matter to Harbinger, for instance? If his Social Reform comes to nothing, he’ll still be Harbinger, with thirty thousand a year.’

‘ But surely,’ murmured Lord Dennis, ‘the young man is in earnest?’

Barbara shrugged; a strap slipped a little off one white shoulder.

‘It’s all play; and he knows it is — you can tell that from his voice. He can’t help its not mattering, of course; and he knows that too.’

‘Old Magnificat’ looked up at her.

‘I have heard that he’s after you, Babs; is that true?’

‘He has n’t caught me yet.’

‘Will he?’

Barbara’s answerwas another shrug; and, for all their statuesque beauty, the movement of her shoulders was like the shrug of a little girl in her pinafore.

‘And this Mr. Courtier,’ said Lord Dennis slyly; ‘are you after him, Babs? ’

‘I’m after everything; didn’t you know that, dear?’

‘In reason, my child,’ said ‘Old Magnificat’ dryly.

‘ In reason, of course — like poor Eusty!’

The voice of Lord Harbinger interrupted them.

‘Will you sing that particular song I like, Lady Babs?’

His gallant, easy face and figure, in the type commonly known as Norman, wore an air as nearly approaching reverence as was ever to be seen there. In truth, the way he looked at Barbara was rather touching.

They moved away together. Lord Dennis, gazing after that magnificent young couple,stroked his beard gravely.

X

Milton’s sudden journey to London had been undertaken in pursuance of a resolve slowly forming from the moment he met Mrs. Noel in the stoneflagged passage of Burracombe Farm. If she would have him — and since last evening he believed she would — he intended to marry her.

It has been said that except for one lapse his life had been austere, but this is not to assert that he had no capacity for passion. The contrary was the case. That flame which had been so jealously guarded, had flared up within him the moment his spirit was touched by the spirit of this woman. She was the incarnation of all that he desired. Her hair, her eyes, her form, the tiny tuck or dimple at the corner of her mouth just where a child places its finger; her way of moving, a sort of unconscious swaying or yielding to the air; the tone of her voice, which seemed to come not so much from her own happiness as from an innate wish to make others happy; and that natural, if not robust, intelligence, which belongs to the very sympathetic, and is rarely found in women of great ambitions or enthusiasms — all these things had twined themselves round his heart. He not only dreamed of her and wanted her, but he believed in her. She filled his thoughts as one who could never do wrong, as one who, though a wife, would remain a mistress, and though a mistress, would always be the companion of his spirit.

It has been said that no one spoke or gossiped about women in Milton’s presence, and the tale of her divorce was present to his mind simply in the form of a conviction that she was an injured woman. He had only once alluded to it, soon after he first saw her, in answer to the speech of a lady staying at the Court: ‘Oh, yes, I remember her case perfectly. She was the poor woman who — ' ‘Did not, I am certain, Lady Bonington.’

The tone of Milton’s voice had made some one laugh uneasily; the subject was changed.

All divorce was against his sentiment, but in a blurred way he admitted that there were cases where divorce was unavoidable. He was not a man to ask for confidences, or expect them to be given him. He himself had never confided his spiritual struggles to any living creature; and the unspiritual struggle had little interest for Milton. He was ready at any moment to stake his life on the perfection of the idol he had set up in his soul, as simply and straightforwardly as he would have placed his body in front of her to shield her from harm.

The same fanaticism which looked on his passion as a flower by itself, entirely apart from its suitability to the social garden, was also the driving force which sent him up to London to declare his intention to his father before he spoke to Mrs. Noel. The thing should be done simply, and in right order. For he had that kind of moral courage found in those who live retired wdthin the shell of their own aspirations. It was not perhaps so much act - ive moral courage as indifference to what, others thought or did, coming from his inbred resistance to the appreciation of what they felt.

That peculiar smile of the old Tudor Cardinal, which had in it invincible self-reliance, and a sort of spiritual sneer, played over his face when he thought of his father’s reception of the coming news; and very soon he ceased to think of it at all, burying himself in the work he had brought with him for the journey. For he had in high degree the faculty, so essential to public life, of switching off his whole attention from one subject to another.

On arriving at Paddington he drove straight to Valleys House.

This enormous dwelling, with its pillared portico, seemed to wear an air of faint surprise that, at the height of the season, it was not more inhabited. Three servants relieved Milton of his litt le luggage; and having washed, and learned that his father would be dining in, he went for a walk, taking his way toward his rooms in the Temple. His long figure, somewhat carelessly garbed, attracted the usual attention, of which he was as usual unaware.

He strolled along the Strand, meditating deeply. He was thinking of a London, an England, different from this flatulent hurly-burly, this omnium gatherum, this great discordant symphony of sharps and flats. A London, an England, kempt and self-respecting; swept and garnished of slums and plutocrats, advertisement and jerrybuilding, of sensationalism, vulgarity, vice, and unemployment. An England where each man should know his place, and never change it, but serve in it loyally in his own caste. Where every man, from nobleman to laborer, should be an oligarch by faith, and a gentleman by practice. An England so steel-bright and efficient that the very sight should suffice to impose peace. An England whose soul should be stoical, and fine with the stoicism and fineness of each soul amongst her many million souls; where the town should have its creed and the country its creed, and there should be contentment and no complaining in her streets.

And as he walked down the Strand, a little ragged boy cheeped out between his legs, —

‘Blooclee discoveree in a Bank — Grite sensytion! Pi—er!'

Milton paid no heed to that saying: yet, with it, the wind that blows where man lives, the careless, wonderful, unordered wind, had dispersed his austere and ordered vision. Great was that wind —the myriad aspirations of men and women, the praying of the uncounted multitudes to the goddess of Sensation — of Chance, and Change, A flowing from heart to heart, from lip to lip, as in spring the wistful air wanders through a wood, imparting to every bush and tree the secrets of fresh life, the passionate resolve to grow, and become — no matter what! A sighing, as eternal as the old murmuring of the sea, as little to be hushed, as prone to swell into sudden roaring!

Milton held on through the traffic, not looking overmuch at the present forms of the thousands he passed, but seeing with the eyes of faith the forms he desired to see. Near St. Paul’s he stopped in front of an old book-shop. His grave, pallid, not unhandsome face was well known to William Rimall, its small proprietor, who at once brought out his latest acquisition — a More’s Utopia. That particular edition (he assured Milton) was quite unprocurable — he had never sold but one other copy, which had been literally crumbling away. This copy was in even better condition. If not used, it might last another twenty years — a genuine book, a bargain. There was n’t so much movement in More as there had been two years back.

Milton opened the tome, and a little book-louse who had been sleeping on the word ‘Tranibore,’ began to make its way slowly toward the very centre of the volume.

‘ I see it’s genuine,’ he said.

‘It’s not to read, my lord,’ the little man warned him. ‘Hardly safe to turn the pages. As I was saying — I’ve not had a better piece this year. I have n’t really!’

‘Shrewd old dreamer,’said Milton; ‘the Socialists haven’t got beyond him, even now.’

The little man’s eyes blinked, as though apologizing.

‘ Well,’ he said, ‘ I suppose he ivas one of them. I forget if your lordship’s very strong on politics?’

Milton smiled.

‘I want to see an England, Rimall, something like the England of More’s dream. But my machinery will be different. I shall begin at the top.’

The little man nodded.

‘Quite so, quite so,’ he said; ‘we shall come to that, I dare say.’

‘We must, Rimall.’

And Milton turned the page.

The little man’s face quivered.

‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that book’s quite strong enough for you, my lord, with your taste for reading. Now I ’ve a most curious old volume here — on Chinese temples. It’s rare — but not too old. You can peruse it thoroughly. It’s what I call a book to browse on — just suit your taste. Funny principle they built those things on,’ he added, opening the volume at an engraving, ‘in layers. We don’t build like that in England.’

Milton looked up sharply; the little man’s face wore no signs of understanding.

‘Unfortunately we don’t, Rimall,’ he said; ‘we ought to and we shall. I’ll take this book.’ Placing his finger on the print of the pagoda, he added, ‘A good symbol.’

The little bookseller’s eyes strayed down the temple to the secret pricemark.

‘ Exactly, my lord,’ he said; ‘ I thought it’d be your fancy. The price to you will be twenty-seven and six.’

Milton, pocketing the book, walked out. He made his way into the Temple, left the book at his chambers, and passed on to the bank of Mother Thames. The sun was loving her passionately that afternoon; he had kissed her into warmth and light and color. And all the buildings along her banks, as far as the towers at Westminster, seemed to be smiling. It was a great sight for the eyes of a lover. And another vision came haunting Milton, of a soft-eyed woman with a low voice, bending amongst her flowers. Nothing would be complete without her; no work would bear fruit; no scheme could have full meaning.

Lord Valleys greeted his son at dinner with good-fellowship and a faint surprise.

‘Day off, my dear fellow? Or have you come up to hear Brabrook pitch into us? There’s no longer any doubt

— no trouble this time, thank God!’

And he eyed Milton with that clear

gray stare of his, so cool, level, and curious. Now, what sort of bird is this

— it seemed saying. Certainly not the partridge I should have expected from his breeding!

Milton’s answer, ‘I came up to tell you something, sir,’ riveted his father’s stare for a second longer than was quite urbane.

It would not be true to say Lord Valleys was afraid of his son. Fear was not one of his emotions, but he certainly regarded him with a respectful curiosity that bordered on uneasiness. The oligarchic temper of Milton’s mind and political convictions almost shocked one who knew both by temperament and experience how to wait in front! This instruction he had frequently had occasion to give his jockeys when he believed his horses could best get home first in that way. And it was an instruction he longed to give his son. He himself had ‘waited in front’ for over fifty years, and he knew it to be the best way of insuring that he would never be compelled to alter this admirable policy — for something in Lord Valleys’s character made him fear that, in real emergency, he would exert himself to the point of the gravest discomfort sooner than be left behind.

A fellow like young Harbinger, of course, he understood — versatile, ‘full of beans,’ as he expressed it to himself in his more confidential moments, who had imbibed the new wine (very intoxicating it was) of desire for social reform. He would have to be given his head a little, but there would be no difficulty with him, he would never ‘run out,’ — light, handy build of horse that only required steadying at the corners. He would want to hear himself talk, and be let feel that he was doing something.

All very well, and quite intelligible; but when it came to Milton (and Lord Valleys felt this to be no mere paternal fancy), it was a very different business. His son had a way of forcing things to their conclusions which was dangerous, and reminded him of his mother-in-law. He was a baby in public affairs, of course, as yet; but as soon as he once got going, the intensity of his convictions, together with his position and real gift,—not of the gab, like Harbinger’s, but of restrained, biting oratory, —was sure to bring him to the front with a bound in the present state of parties.

And what were those convictions? Lord Valleys had tried to understand them, but up to the present he had failed. And this did not surprise him exactly, since, as he often said, political convictions were not, as they appeared on the surface, the outcome of reason, but merely symptoms of temperament. And he could not understand because he could not sympathize with any attitude toward public affairs that was not essentially level, attached to all the plain, common-sense factors of the case. Yet he could not fairly be called a temporizer, for deep down in him there was undoubtedly a vein of obstinate, fundamental loyalty to the traditions of a caste which prized high spirit above everything. But Milton was altogether too much the ‘pukka’ aristocrat. He was no better than a Socialist, with his confounded way of seeing things all cut and dried; his ideas of forcing reform down people’s throats and holding it there with the iron hand! With his way, too, of acting on his principles! Why! he even admitted that he acted on his principles! This thought always struck a very discordant note in Lord Valleys’s breast. It was almost indecent; worse — ridiculous!

The fact was, the dear fellow had unfortunately a deeper habit of thought than was wanted in politics — dangerous— very! Experience might do something for him! And out of his own long experience the Earl of Valleys tried hard to recollect any politician whom practice had left untouched. He could not think of a single one. But somehow this gave him little comfort; and, above a piece of late asparagus, his steady eyes sought his son’s. What had he come up to tell him?

The phrase was ominous; he could not recollect Milton’s ever having told him anything. For though a really kind and indulgent father, he had — like so many men occupied with public and other lives — a little acquired toward his offspring the look and manner: Is this mine? Of his four children, Barbara alone he claimed with conviction; he admired her, and, being a man who savored life, he was unable to love much except where he admired. But, the last person in the world to hustle any man or force a confidence, he waited to hear his son’s news, without betraying his uneasiness.

Milton seemed in no hurry. He described Courtier’s adventure, which tickled Lord Valleys a good deal.

Ordeal by red pepper! Should n’t have thought them equal to it. So you’ve got him at Monkland now? Is Harbinger still with you?’

‘Yes. I don’t think Harbinger has much stamina.’

‘Politically?’

Milton nodded.

‘I rather resent his being on our side — I don’t think he does us any good. You’ve seen that cartoon, I suppose? it cuts pretty deep. I could n’t recognize you amongst the old women, sir.’

Lord Valleys smiled impersonally.

‘Very clever thing,’ he said. ‘By the way, I shall win the Eclipse, I think.’

And thus, spasmodically, the conversation ran till the last servant had left the room.

Then Milton, without any preparation, looked straight at his father and said, —

‘I want to marry Mrs. Noel, sir.’

Lord Valleys received the shot with exactly the same expression as that with which he was accustomed to watch his horses beaten. Then he raised his wine-glass to his lips, and set it down again untouched. This was the only sign he gave of interest or discomfiture.

‘Is n’t this rather sudden?’

Milton answered, ‘I’ve wanted to from the moment I first saw her.’

Lord Valleys, almost as good a judge of a man and a situation as of a horse or a pointer dog, leaned back in his chair, and said with faint sarcasm,—

‘My dear fellow, it’s good of you to have told me this. But, to be quite frank, it’s a piece of news I would rather not have heard.’

A dusky flush burned slowly up in Milton’s cheeks. He had underrated his father; the man had coolness and courage in a crisis.

‘What is your objection, sir?’

And suddenly he noticed that a wafer in Lord Valleys’s hand was quivering. This brought into his eyes no look of compunction, but such a smouldering gaze as t he old Tudor churchman might have bent on his adversary who showed sign of weakness. Lord Valleys, too, noticed the quivering of that wafer, and ate it.

‘We are men of the world,’ he said.

Milton answered, ‘I am not.’

Showing his first sign of impatience, Lord Valleys rapped out,—

‘So be it! I am.’

‘Yes?’ said Milton.

‘Eustace!’

Nursing one knee, Milton faced that appeal without the faintest movement. His eyes continued to burn into his father’s face.

A tremor passed over Lord Valleys’s heart. What intensity of feeling there was in the fellow, that he could look like this at the first breath of opposition!

He reached out and took up a cigarbox; held it. absently toward his son, then drew it. quickly back.

‘I forgot,’ he said; ‘you don’t.’

And lighting a cigar, he smoked gravely, looking straight, before him, a furrow between his brows. He spoke at last.

‘She looks like a lady. I know nothing else about her.’

The smile deepened round Milton’s mouth, cruel in its contempt.

‘Why should you want to know anything else?’

Lord Valleys shrugged; his philosophy had hardened.

‘I understood,’ he said coldly, ‘that there was a matter of divorce. I thought you took the Church’s view on this subject.’

‘She has not. done wrong,’ said Milton.

‘You know her story, then?’

‘No.’

Lord Valleys raised his brows, in irony and a sort of admiration.

‘Chivalry the better part of discretion, eh?’

‘You don’t, I think, understand the kind of feeling I have for Mrs. Noel,’ Milton answered. ‘ It does not come into your scheme of things. It is the only feeling, however, with which I should care to marry, and I am not likely to feel it for any one again.’

Lord Valleys felt once more that uncanny sense of insecurity. Was this true? And suddenly he felt: Yes, it is true! The face before him was the face of one who would burn in his own fire sooner than depart from his standards.

‘I can say no more at the moment,’ he muttered. And he got up from the table.

(To be continued.)