Mrs. Boyce had received the news of the engagement with astonishment, but her after-acceptance of the situation had been marked by all her usual philosophy. Probably behind the philosophy there was much secret relief. Marcella was provided for. Not the fondest or most contriving mother could have done more for her than she had at one stroke done for herself. During the early autumn Mrs. Boyce had experienced some moments of sharp prevision as to what her future relations might be towards this strong and restless daughter, so determined to conquer a world her mother had renounced. Now all was clear, and a very shrewd observer could allow her mind to play freely with the ironies of the situation.
As to Aldous Raeburn, she had barely spoken to him before the day when Marcella announced the engagement, and the lover a few hours later had claimed her daughter at the mother's hands with an emotion to which Mrs. Boyce found her usual difficulty in responding. She had done her best, however, to be gracious and to mask her surprise that he should have proposed, that Lord Maxwell should have consented, and that Marcella should have so lightly fallen a victim. One surprise, however, had to be confessed, at least to herself. After her interview with her future son-in-law, Mrs. Boyce realised that for the first time for fifteen years she was likely to admit a new friend. The impression made upon him by her own singular personality had translated itself in feelings and language which, against her will as it were, established an understanding, an affinity. That she had involuntarily aroused in him the profoundest and most chivalrous pity was plain to her. Yet for the first time in her life she did not resent it; and Marcella watched her mother's attitude with a mixture of curiosity and relief.
Then followed talk of an early wedding, communications from Lord Maxwell to Mr. Boyce of a civil and formal kind, a good deal more notice from the "county," and finally this definite statement from Aldous Raeburn as to the settlement he proposed to make upon his wife, and the joint income which he and she would have immediately at their disposal.
Under all these growing and palpable evidences of Marcella's future wealth and position, Mrs. Boyce had shown her usual restless and ironic spirit. But of late, and especially to-day, restlessness had become oppression. While Marcella was so speedily to become the rich and independent woman, they themselves, Marcella's mother and father, were very poor, in difficulties even, and likely to remain so. She gathered from her husband's grumbling that the provision of a suitable trousseau for Marcella would tax his resources to their utmost. How long would it be before they were dipping in Marcella's purse? Mrs. Boyce's self-tormenting soul was possessed by one of those nightmares her pride had brought upon her in grim succession during these fifteen years. And this pride, strong towards all the world, was nowhere so strong or so indomitable, at this moment, as towards her own daughter. They were practically strangers to each other; and they jarred. To inquire where the fault lay would have seemed to Mrs. Boyce futile.
* * * * *
Darkness had come on fast, and Mrs. Boyce was in the act of ringing for lights when her husband entered.
"Where's Marcella?" he asked as he threw himself into a chair with the air of irritable fatigue which was now habitual to him.
"Only gone to take off her things and tell William about tea. She will be down directly."
"Does she know about that settlement?"
"Yes, I told her. She thought it generous, but not—I think—unsuitable.The world cannot be reformed on nothing."
"Reformed!—fiddlesticks!" said Mr. Boyce, angrily. "I never saw a girl with a head so full of nonsense in my life. Where does she get it from? Why did you let her go about in London with those people? She may be spoilt for good. Ten to one she'll make a laughing stock of herself and everybody belonging to her, before she's done."
"Well, that is Mr. Raeburn's affair. I think I should take him into account more than Marcella does, if I were she. But probably she knows best."
"Of course she does. He has lost his head; any one can see that. While she is in the room, he is like a man possessed. It doesn't sit well on that kind of fellow. It makes him ridiculous. I told him half the settlement would be ample. She would only spend the rest on nonsense."
"You told him that?"
"Yes, I did. Oh!"—with an angry look at her—"I suppose you thought I should want to sponge upon her? I am as much obliged to you as usual!"
A red spot rose in his wife's thin cheek. But she turned and answered him gently, so gently that he had the rare sensation of having triumphed over her. He allowed himself to be mollified, and she stood there over the fire, chatting with him for some time, a friendly natural note in her voice which was rare and, insensibly, soothed him like an opiate. She chatted about Marcella's trousseau gowns, detailing her own contrivances for economy; about the probable day of the wedding, the latest gossip of the election, and so on. He sat shading his eyes from the firelight, and now and then throwing in a word or two. The inmost soul of him was very piteous, harrowed often by a new dread—the dread of dying. The woman beside him held him in the hollow of her hand. In the long wrestle between her nature and his, she had conquered. His fear of her and his need of her had even come to supply the place of a dozen ethical instincts he was naturally without.
Some discomfort, probably physical, seemed at last to break up his moment of rest.
"Well, I tell you, I often wish it were the other man," he said, with some impatience. "Raeburn 's so d——d superior. I suppose I offended him by what I said of Marcella's whims, and the risk of letting her control so much money at her age, and with her ideas. You never saw such an air!—all very quiet, of course. He buttoned his coat and got up to go, as though I were no more worth considering than the table. Neither he nor his precious grandfather need alarm themselves: I shan't trouble them as a visitor. If I shock them, they bore me—so we're quits. Marcella'll have to come here if she wants to see her father. But owing to your charming system of keeping her away from us all her childhood, she's not likely to want."
"You mean Mr. Wharton by the other man?" said Mrs. Boyce, not defending herself or Aldous.
"Yes, of course. But he came on the scene just too late, worse luck! Why wouldn't he have done just as well? He's as mad as she—madder. He believes all the rubbish she does—talks suchrot, the people tell me, in his meetings. But then he's good company—he amuses you—you don't need to be on your p's and q's withhim. Why wouldn't she have taken up with him? As far as money goes they could have rubbed along.He'snot the man to starve when there are game-pies going. It's just bad luck."
Mrs. Boyce smiled a little.
"What there is to make you suppose that she would have inclined to him, I don't exactly see. She has been taken up with Mr. Raeburn, really, from the first week of her arrival here."
"Well, I dare say—there was no one else," said her husband, testily. "That's natural enough. It's just what I say. All I know is, Wharton shall be free to use this house just as he pleases during his canvassing, whatever the Raeburns may say."
He bent forward and poked the somewhat sluggish fire with a violence which hindered rather than helped it. Mrs. Boyce's smile had quite vanished. She perfectly understood all that was implied, whether in his instinctive dislike of Aldous Raeburn, or in his cordiality towards young Wharton.
After a minute's silence, he got up again and left the room, walking, as she observed, with difficulty. She stopped a minute or so in the same place after he had gone, turning her rings absently on her thin fingers. She was thinking of some remarks which Dr. Clarke, the excellent and experienced local doctor, had made to her on the occasion of his last visit. With all the force of her strong will she had set herself to disbelieve them. But they had had subtle effects already. Finally she too went upstairs, bidding Marcella, whom she met coming down, hurry William with the tea, as Mr. Wharton might arrive any moment.
* * * * *
Marcella saw the room shut up—the large, shabby, beautiful room—the lamps brought in, fresh wood thrown on the fire to make it blaze, and the tea-table set out. Then she sat herself down on a low chair by the fire, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped in front of her. Her black dress revealed her fine full throat and her white wrists, for she had an impatience of restraint anywhere, and wore frills and falls of black lace where other people would have followed the fashion in high collars and close wristbands. What must have struck any one with an observant eye, as she sat thus, thrown into beautiful light and shade by the blaze of the wood fire, was the massiveness of the head compared with the nervous delicacy of much of the face, the thinness of the wrist, and of the long and slender foot raised on the fender. It was perhaps the great thickness and full wave of the hair which gave the head its breadth; but the effect was singular, and would have been heavy but for the glow of the eyes, which balanced it.
She was thinking, as afiancéeshould, of Aldous and their marriage, which had been fixed for the end of February. Yet not apparently with any rapturous absorption. There was a great deal to plan, and her mind was full of business. Who was to look after her various village schemes while she and Lady Winterbourne were away in London? Mary Harden had hardly brains enough, dear little thing as she was. They must find some capable woman and pay her. The Cravens would tell her, of course, that she was on the high road to the most degrading ofrôles—therôleof Lady Bountiful. But there were Lady Bountifuls and Lady Bountifuls. And therôleitself was inevitable. It all depended upon how it was managed—in the interest of what ideas.
She must somehow renew her relations with the Cravens in town. It would certainly be in her power now to help them and their projects forward a little. Of course they would distrust her, but that she would get over.
All the time she was listening mechanically for the hall door bell, which, however, across the distances of the great rambling house it was not easy to hear. Their coming guest was not much in her mind. She tacitly assumed that her father would look after him. On the two or three occasions when they had met during the last three months, including his luncheon at Mellor on the day after her engagement, her thoughts had been too full to allow her to take much notice of him—picturesque and amusing as he seemed to be. Of late he had not been much in the neighbourhood. There had been a slack time for both candidates, which was now to give way to a fresh period of hard canvassing in view of the election which everybody expected at the end of February.
But Aldous was to bring Edward Hallin! That interested her. She felt an intense curiosity to see and know Hallin, coupled with a certain nervousness. The impression she might be able to make on him would be in some sense an earnest of her future.
Suddenly, something undefinable—a slight sound, a current of air—made her turn her head. To her amazement she saw a young man in the doorway looking at her with smiling eyes, and quietly drawing off his gloves.
She sprang up with a feeling of annoyance.
"Mr. Wharton!"
"Oh!—must you?"—he said, with a movement of one hand, as though to stop her. "Couldn't you stay like that? At first I thought there was nobody in the room. Your servant is grappling with my bags, which are as the sand of the sea for multitude, so I wandered in by myself. Then I saw you—and the fire—and the room. It was like a bit of music. It was mere wanton waste to interrupt it."
Marcella flushed, as she very stiffly shook hands with him.
"I did not hear the front door," she said coldly. "My mother will be here directly. May I give you some tea?"
"Thanks. No, I knew you did not hear me. That delighted me. It showed what charming things there are in the world that have no spectators! What adeliciousplace this is!—what a heavenly old place—especially in these half lights! There was a raw sun when I was here before, but now—"
He stood in front of the fire, looking round the great room, and at the few small lamps making their scanty light amid the flame-lit darkness. His hands were loosely crossed behind his back, and his boyish face, in its setting of curls, shone with content and self-possession.
"Well," said Marcella, bluntly, "I should prefer a little more light to live by. Perhaps, when you have fallen downstairs here in the dark as often as I have, you may too."
He laughed.
"But how much better, after all—don't you think so?—to have too little of anything than too much!"
He flung himself into a chair beside the tea-table, looking up with gay interrogation as Marcella handed him his cup. She was a good deal surprised by him. On the few occasions of their previous meetings, these bright eyes, and this pronounced manner, had been—at any rate as towards herself—much less free and evident. She began to recover the start he had given her, and to study him with a half-unwilling curiosity.
"Then Mellor will please you," she said drily, in answer to his remark, carrying her own tea meanwhile to a chair on the other side of the fire. "My father never bought anything—my father can't. I believe we have chairs enough to sit down upon—but we have no curtains to half the windows. Can I give you anything?"
For he had risen, and was looking over the tea-tray.
"Oh! but Imust," he said discontentedly. "Imusthave enough sugar in my tea!"
"I gave you more than the average," she said, with a sudden little leap of laughter, as she came to his aid. "Do all your principles break down like this? I was going to suggest that you might like some of that fire taken away?" And she pointed to the pile of blazing logs which now filled up the great chimney.
"That fire!" he said, shivering, and moving up to it. "Have you any idea what sort of a wind you keep up here on these hills on a night like this? And to think that in this weather, with a barometer that laughs in your face when you try to move it, I have three meetings to-morrow night!"
"When one loves the 'People,' with a large P," said Marcella, "one mustn't mind winds."
He flashed a smile at her, answering to the sparkle of her look, then applied himself to his tea and toasted bun again, with the dainty deliberation of one enjoying every sip and bite.
"No; but if only the People didn't live so far apart. Some murderous person wanted them to have only one neck. I want them to have only one ear. Only then unfortunately everybody would speak well—which would bring things round to dulness again. Does Mr. Raeburn make you think very bad things of me, Miss Boyce?"
He bent forward to her as he spoke, his blue eyes all candour and mirth.
Marcella started.
"How can he?" she said abruptly. "I am not a Conservative."
"Not a Conservative?" he said joyously. "Oh! but impossible! Does that mean that you ever read my poor little speeches?"
He pointed to the local newspaper, freshly cut, which lay on a table atMarcella's elbow.
"Sometimes—" said Marcella, embarrassed. "There is so little time."
In truth she had hardly given his candidature a thought since the day Aldous proposed to her. She had been far too much taken up with her own prospects, with Lady Winterbourne's friendship, and her village schemes.
He laughed.
"Of course there is. When is the great event to be?"
"I didn't mean that," said Marcella, stiffly. "Lady Winterbourne and I have been trying to start some village workshops. We have been working and talking, and writing, morning, noon, and night."
"Oh! I know—yes, I heard of it. And you really think anything is going to come out of finicking little schemes of that sort?"
His dry change of tone drew a quick look from her. The fresh-coloured face was transformed. In place of easy mirth and mischief, she read an acute and half contemptuous attention.
"I don't know what you mean," she said slowly, after a pause. "Or rather—I do know quite well. You told papa—didn't you?—and Mr. Raeburn says that you are a Socialist—not half-and-half, as all the world is, but the real thing? And of course you want great changes: you don't like anything that might strengthen the upper class with the people. But that is nonsense. You can't get the changes for a longlongtime. And, meanwhile, people must be clothed and fed and kept alive."
She lay back in her high-backed chair and looked at him defiantly. His lip twitched, but he kept his gravity.
"You would be much better employed in forming a branch of the Agricultural Union," he said decidedly. "What is the good of playing Lady Bountiful to a decayed industry? All that is childish; we wantthe means of revolution. The people who are for reform shouldn't waste money and time on fads."
"I understand all that," she said scornfully, her quick breath rising and falling. "Perhaps you don't know that I was a member of the Venturist Society in London? What you say doesn't sound very new to me!"
His seriousness disappeared in laughter. He hastily put down his cup and, stepping over to her, held out his hand.
"You a Venturist? So am I. Joy! Won't you shake hands with me, as comrades should? We are a very mixed set of people, you know, and between ourselves I don't know that we are coming to much. But we can make an alderman dream of the guillotine—that is always something. Oh! but now we can talk on quite a new footing!"
She had given him her hand for an instant, withdrawing it with shy rapidity, and he had thrown himself into a chair again, with his arms behind his head, and the air of one reflecting happily on a changed situation. "Quite a new footing," he repeated thoughtfully. "But it is—a little surprising. What does—what does Mr. Raeburn say to it?"
"Nothing! He cares just as much about the poor as you or I, please understand! He doesn't choose my way—but he won't interfere with it."
"Ah! that is like him—like Aldous."
Marcella started.
"You don't mind my calling him by his Christian name sometimes? It drops out. We used to meet as boys together at the Levens. The Levens are my cousins. He was a big boy, and I was a little one. But he didn't like me. You see—I was a little beast!"
His air of appealing candour could not have been more engaging.
"Yes, I fear I was a little beast. And he was, even then, and always, 'the good and beautiful.' You don't understand Greek, do you, Miss Boyce? But he was very good to me. I got into an awful scrape once. I let out a pair of eagle owls that used to be kept in the courtyard—Sir Charles loved them a great deal more than his babies—I let them out at night for pure wickedness, and they came to fearful ends in the park. I was to have been sent home next day, in the most unnecessary and penal hurry. But Aldous interposed—said he would look after me for the rest of the holidays."
"And then you tormented him?"
"Oh no!" he said with gentle complacency. "Oh no! I never torment anybody. But one must enjoy oneself you know; what else can one do? Then afterwards, when we were older—somehow I don't know—but we didn't get on. It is very sad—I wish he thought better of me."
The last words were said with a certain change of tone, and sitting up he laid the tips of his fingers together on his knees with a little plaintive air. Marcella's eyes danced with amusement, but she looked away from him to the fire, and would not answer.
"You don't help me out. You don't console me. It's unkind of-you. Don't you think it a melancholy fate to be always admiring the people who detest you?"
"Don't admire them!" she said merrily.
His eyebrows lifted. "That," he said drily, "is disloyal. I call—I call your ancestor over the mantelpiece"—he waved his hand towards a blackened portrait in front of him—"to witness, that I am all for admiring Mr. Raeburn, and you discourage it. Well, but now—now"—he drew his chair eagerly towards hers, the pose of a minute before thrown to the winds—"do let us understand each other a little more before people come. You know I have a labour newspaper?"
She nodded.
"You read it?"
"Is it theLabour Clarion? I take it in."
"Capital!" he cried. "Then I know now why I found a copy in the village here. You lent it to a man called Hurd?"
"I did."
"Whose wife worships you?—whose good angel you have been? Do I know something about you, or do I not? Well, now, are you satisfied with that paper? Can you suggest to me means of improving it? It wants some fresh blood, I think—I must find it? I bought the thing last year, in a moribund condition, with the old staff. Oh! we will certainly take counsel together about it—most certainly! But first—I have been boasting of knowing something about you—but I should like to ask—do you know anything about me?"
Both laughed. Then Marcella tried to be serious.
"Well—I—I believe—you have some land?"
"Eight!" he nodded—"I am a Lincolnshire landowner. I have about five thousand acres—enough to be tolerably poor on—and enough to play tricks with. I have a co-operative farm, for instance. At present I have lent them a goodish sum of money—and remitted them their first half-year's rent. Not so far a paying speculation. But it will do—some day. Meanwhile the estate wants money—and my plans and I want money—badly. I propose to make theLabour Clarionpay—if I can. That will give me more time for speaking and organising, for what concernsus—as Venturists—than the Bar."
"The Bar?" she said, a little mystified, but following every word with a fascinated attention.
"I made myself a barrister three years ago, to please my mother. She thought I should do better in Parliament—if ever I got in. Did you ever hear of my mother?"
There was no escaping these frank, smiling questions.
"No," said Marcella, honestly.
"Well, ask Lord Maxwell," he said, laughing. "He and she came across each other once or twice, when he was Home Secretary years ago, and she was wild about some woman's grievance or other. She always maintains that she got the better of him—no doubt he was left with a different impression. Well—my mother—most people thought her mad—perhaps she was—but then somehow—I loved her!"
He was still smiling, but at the last words a charming vibration crept into the words, and his eyes sought her with a young open demand for sympathy.
"Is that so rare?" she asked him, half laughing—instinctively defending her own feeling lest it should be snatched from her by any make-believe.
"Yes—as we loved each other—it is rare. My father died when I was ten. She would not send me to school, and I was always in her pocket—I shared all her interests. She was a wild woman—but shelived, as not one person in twenty lives."
Then he sighed. Marcella was too shy to imitate his readiness to ask questions. But she supposed that his mother must be dead—indeed, now vaguely remembered to have heard as much.
There was a little silence.
"Please tell me," she said suddenly, "why do you attack my straw-plaiting? Is a co-operative farm any less of a stopgap?"
Instantly his face changed. He drew up his chair again beside her, as gay and keen-eyed as before.
"I can't argue it out now. There is so much to say. But do listen! I have a meeting in the village here next week to preach land nationalisation. We mean to try and form a branch of the Labourers' Union. Will you come?"
Marcella hesitated.
"I think so," she said slowly.
There was a pause. Then she raised her eyes and found his fixed upon her. A sudden sympathy—of youth, excitement, pleasure—seemed to rise between them. She had a quick impression of lightness, grace; of an open brow set in curls; of a look more intimate, inquisitive, commanding, than any she had yet met.
"May I speak to you, miss?" said a voice at the door.
Marcella rose hastily. Her mother's maid was standing there.
She hurried across the room.
"What is the matter, Deacon?"
"Your mother says, miss," said the maid, retreating into the hall, "I am to tell you she can't come down. Your father is ill, and she has sent for Dr. Clarke. But you are please not to go up. Will you give the gentlemen their tea, and she will come down before they go, if she can."
Marcella had turned pale.
"Mayn't I go, Deacon? What is it?"
"It's a bad fit of pain, your mother says, miss. Nothing can be done till the doctor comes. She beggedparticularthat you wouldn't go up, miss. She doesn't want any one put out."
At the same moment there was a ring at the outer door.
"Oh, there is Aldous," cried Marcella, with relief, and she ran out into the hall to meet him.
Aldous advanced into the inner hall at sight of Marcella, leaving his companions behind in the vestibule taking off their coats. Marcella ran to him.
"Papa is ill!" she said to him hastily. "Mamma has sent for Dr. Clarke. She won't let me go up, and wants us to take no notice and have tea without her."
"I am so sorry! Can we do anything? The dogcart is here with a fast horse. If your messenger went on foot—"
"Oh, no! they are sure to have sent the boy on the pony. I don't know why, but I have had a presentiment for a long time past that papa was going to be ill."
She looked white and excited. She had turned back to the drawing-room, forgetting the other guests, he walking beside her. As they passed along the dim hall, Aldous had her hand close in his, and when they passed under an archway at the further end he stooped suddenly in the shadows and kissed the hand. Touch—kiss—had the clinging, the intensity of passion.
They were the expression of all that had lain vibrating at the man's inmost heart during the dark drive, while he had been chatting with his two companions.
"My darling! I hope not. Would you rather not see strangers? Shall I send Hallin and young Leven away? They would understand at once."
"Oh, no! Mr. Wharton is here anyway—staying. Where is Mr. Hallin? I had forgotten him."
Aldous turned and called. Mr. Hallin and young Frank Leven, divining something unusual, were looking at the pictures in the hall.
Edward Hallin came up and took Marcella's offered hand. Each looked at the other with a special attention and interest. "She holds my friend's life in her hands—is she worthy of it?" was naturally the question hanging suspended in the man's judgment. The girl's manner was proud and shy, the manner of one anxious to please, yet already, perhaps, on the defensive.
Aldous explained the position of affairs, and Hallin expressed his sympathy. He had a singularly attractive voice, the voice indeed of the orator, which can adapt itself with equal charm and strength to the most various needs and to any pitch. As he spoke, Marcella was conscious of a sudden impression that she already knew him and could be herself with him at once.
"Oh, I say," broke in young Leven, who was standing behind; "don't you be bothered with us, Miss Boyce. Just send us back at once. I'm awfully sorry!"
"No; you are to come in!" she said, smiling through her pallor, which was beginning to pass away, and putting out her hand to him—the young Eton and Oxford athlete, just home for his Christmas vacation, was a great favourite with her—"You must come and have tea and cheer me up by telling me all the things you have killed this week. Is there anything left alive? You had come down to the fieldfares, you know, last Tuesday."
He followed her, laughing and protesting, and she led the way to the drawing-room. But as her fingers were on the handle she once more caught sight of the maid, Deacon, standing on the stairs, and ran to speak to her.
"He is better," she said, coming back with a face of glad relief. "The attack seems to be passing off. Mamma can't come down, but she begs that we will all enjoy ourselves."
"We'll endeavour," said young Leven, rubbing his hands, "by the help of tea. Miss Boyce, will you please tell Aldous and Mr. Hallin not to talk politics when they're taking me out to a party. They should fight a man of their own size. I'm all limp and trampled on, and want you to protect me."
The group moved, laughing and talking, into the drawing-room.
"Jiminy!" said Leven, stopping short behind Aldous, who was alone conscious of the lad's indignant astonishment; "what the deuce ishedoing here?"
For there on the rug, with his back to the fire, stood Wharton, surveying the party with his usual smilingaplomb.
"Mr. Hallin, do you know Mr. Wharton?" said Marcella.
"Mr. Wharton and I have met several times on public platforms," said Hallin, holding out his hand, which Wharton took with effusion. Aldous greeted him with the impassive manner, the "three finger" manner, which was with him an inheritance—though not from his grandfather—and did not contribute to his popularity in the neighbourhood. As for young Leven, he barely nodded to the Radical candidate, and threw himself into a chair as far from the fire as possible.
"Frank and I have met before to-day!" said Wharton, laughing.
"Yes, I've been trying to undo some of your mischief," said the boy, bluntly. "I found him, Miss Boyce, haranguing a lot of men at the dinner-hour at Tudley End—one of our villages, you know—cramming them like anything—all about the game laws, and our misdeeds—my father's, of course."
Wharton raised a protesting hand.
"Oh—all very well! Of course it was us you meant! Well, when he'd driven off, I got up on a cart and hadmysay. I asked them whether they didn't all come out at our big shoots, and whether they didn't have almost as much fun as we did—why! the schoolmaster and the postman come to ask to carry cartridges, and everybody turns out, down to the cripples!—whether they didn't have rabbits given them all the year round; whether half of them hadn't brothers and sons employed somehow about the game, well-paid, and well-treated; whether any man-jack of them would be a ha'porth better off if there were no game; whether many of them wouldn't be worse off; and whether England wouldn't be a beastly dull place to live in, if people like him"—he pointed to Wharton—"had the governing of it! And I brought 'em all round too. I got them cheering and laughing. Oh! I can tell you old Dodgson'll have to take me on. He says he'll ask me to speak for him at several places. I'm not half bad, I declare I'm not."
"I thought they gave you a holiday task at Eton," observed Wharton, blandly.
The lad coloured hotly, then bethought himself—radiant:—
"I left Eton last half, as of course you know quite well. But if it had only been last Christmas instead of this, wouldn't I have scored—by Jove! They gave us a beastlyessayinstead of a book.Demagogues!' I sat up all night, and screwed out a page and a half. I'd have known something about itnow."
And as he stood beside the tea-table, waiting for Marcella to entrust some tea to him for distribution, he turned and made a profound bow to his candidate cousin.
Everybody joined in the laugh, led by Wharton. Then there was a general drawing up of chairs, and Marcella applied herself to making tea, helped by Aldous. Wharton alone remained standing before the fire, observant and apart.
Hallin, whose health at this moment made all exertion, even a drive, something of a burden, sat a little away from the tea-table, resting, and glad to be silent. Yet all the time he was observing the girl presiding and the man beside her—his friend, her lover. The moment had a peculiar, perhaps a melancholy interest for him. So close had been the bond between himself and Aldous, that the lover's communication of his engagement had evoked in the friend that sense—poignant, inevitable—which in the realm of the affections always waits on something done and finished,—a leaf turned, a chapter closed. "That sad word, Joy!" Hallin was alone and ill when Raeburn's letter reached him, and through the following day and night he was haunted by Landor's phrase, long familiar and significant to him. His letter to his friend, and the letter to Miss Boyce for which Raeburn had asked him, had cost him an invalid's contribution of sleep and ease. The girl's answer had seemed to him constrained and young, though touched here and there with a certain fineness and largeness of phrase, which, if it was to be taken as an index of character, no doubt threw light upon the matter so far as Aldous was concerned.
Her beauty, of which he had heard much, now that he was face to face with it, was certainly striking enough—all the more because of its immaturity, the subtlety and uncertainty of its promise.Immaturity—uncertainty—these words returned upon him as he observed her manner with its occasional awkwardness, the awkwardness which goes with power not yet fully explored or mastered by its possessor. How Aldous hung upon her, following every movement, anticipating every want! After a while Hallin found himself half-inclined to Mr. Boyce's view, that men of Raeburn's type are never seen to advantage in this stage—this queer topsy-turvy stage—of first passion. He felt a certain impatience, a certain jealousy for his friend's dignity. It seemed to him too, every now and then, that she—the girl—was teased by all this absorption, this deference. He was conscious of watching for something in her that did not appear; and a first prescience of things anxious or untoward stirred in his quick sense.
"You may all say what you like," said Marcella, suddenly, putting down her cup, and letting her hand drop for emphasis on her knee; "but you will never persuade me that game-preserving doesn't make life in the country much more difficult, and the difference between classes much wider and bitterer, than they need be."
The remark cut across some rattling talk of Frank Leven's, who was in the first flush of the sportsman's ardour, and, though by no means without parts, could at the present moment apply his mind to little else than killing of one kind or another, unless it were to the chances of keeping his odious cousin out of Parliament.
Leven stared. Miss Boyce's speech seemed to him to have no sort ofà propos. Aldous looked down upon her as he stood beside her, smiling.
"I wish you didn't trouble yourself so much about it," he said.
"How can I help it?" she answered quickly; and then flushed, like one who has drawn attention indiscreetly to their own personal situation.
"Trouble herself!" echoed young Leven. "Now, look here Miss Boyce, will you come for a walk with me? I'll convince you, as I convinced those fellows over there. I know I could, and you won't give me the chance; it's too bad."
"Oh, you!" she said, with a little shrug; "what do you know about it? One might as well consult a gambler about gambling when he is in the middle of his first rush of luck. I have ten times more right to an opinion than you have. I can keep my head cool, and notice a hundred things thatyouwould never see. I come fresh into your country life, and the first thing that strikes me is that the whole machinery of law and order seems to exist for nothing in the world but to protect your pheasants! There are policemen—to catch poachers; there are magistrates—to try them. To judge from the newspapers, at least, they have nothing else to do. And ifyoufollow your sporting instincts, you are a very fine fellow, and everybody admires you. But if a shoemaker's son in Mellor follows his, he is a villain and a thief, and the policeman and the magistrate make for him at once."
"But I don't steal his chickens!" cried the lad, choking with arguments and exasperation; "and why should he steal my pheasants? I paid for the eggs, I paid for the hens to sit on 'em, I paid for the coops to rear them in, I paid the men to watch them, I paid for the barley to feed them with: why is he to be allowed to take my property, and I am to be sent to jail if I take his?"
"Property!" said Marcella, scornfully. "You can't settle everything nowadays by that big word. We are coming to put the public good before property. If the nation should decide to curtail your 'right,' as you call it, in the general interest, it will do it, and you will be left to scream."
She had flung her arm round the back of her chair, and all her lithe young frame was tense with an eagerness, nay, an excitement, which drew Hallin's attention. It was more than was warranted by the conversation, he thought.
"Well, if you think the abolition of game preserving would be popular in the country, Miss Boyce, I'm certain you make a precious mistake," cried Leven. "Why, even you don't think it would be, do you, Mr. Hallin?" he said, appealing at random in his disgust.
"I don't know," said Hallin, with his quiet smile. "I rather think, on the whole, it would be. The farmers put up with it, but a great many of them don't like it. Things are mended since the Ground Game Act, but there are a good many grievances still left."
"I should think there are!" said Marcella, eagerly, bending forward to him. "I was talking to one of our farmers the other day whose land goes up to the edge of Lord Winterbourne's woods. 'Theydon't keep their pheasants, miss,' he said. 'Ido. I and my corn. If I didn't send a man up half-past five in the morning, when the ears begin to fill, there'd be nothing left forus.' 'Why don't you complain to the agent?' I said. 'Complain! Lor' bless you, miss, you may complain till you're black in the face. I've allus found—an' I've been here, man and boy, thirty-two year—as howWinterbournes generally best it.'There you have the whole thing in a nutshell. It's a tyranny—a tyranny of the rich."
Flushed and sarcastic, she looked at Frank Leven; but Hallin had an uncomfortable feeling that the sarcasm was not all meant for him. Aldous was sitting with his hands on his knees, and his head bent forward a little. Once, as the talk ran on, Hallin saw him raise his grey eyes to the girl beside him, who certainly did not notice it, and was not thinking of him. There was a curious pain and perplexity in the expression, but something else too—a hunger, a dependence, a yearning, that for an instant gripped the friend's heart.
"Well, I know Aldous doesn't agree with you, Miss Boyce," cried Leven, looking about him in his indignation for some argument that should be final. "You don't, do you, Aldous? You don't think the country would be the better, if we could do away with game to-morrow?"
"No more than I think it would be the better," said Aldous, quietly, "if we could do away with gold-plate and false hair to-morrow. There would be too many hungry goldsmiths and wig-makers on the streets."
Marcella turned to him, half defiant, half softened.
"Of course, your point lies into-morrow,"she said. "I accept that. We can't carry reform by starving innocent people. But the question is, what are we to work towards? Mayn't we regard the game laws as one of the obvious crying abuses to be attacked first—in the great campaign!—the campaign which is to bring liberty and self-respect back to the country districts, and make the labourer feel himself as much of a man as the squire?"
"What a head! What an attitude!" thought Hallin, half repelled, half fascinated. "But a girl that can talk politics—hostile politics—to her lover, and mean them too—or am I inexperienced?—and is it merely that she is so much interested in him that she wants to be quarrelling with him?"
Aldous looked up. "I am notsure," he said, answering her. "That is always my difficulty, you know," and he smiled at her. "Game preserving is not to me personally an attractive form of private property, but it seems to me bound up with other forms, and I want to see where the attack is going to lead me. But I would protect your farmer—mind!—as zealously as you."
Hallin caught the impatient quiver of the girl's lip. The tea had just been taken away, and Marcella had gone to sit upon an old sofa near the fire, whither Aldous had followed her. Wharton, who had so far said nothing, had left his post of observation on the hearth-rug, and was sitting under the lamp balancing a paper-knife with great attention on two fingers. In the half light Hallin by chance saw a movement of Raeburn's hand towards Marcella's, which lay hidden among the folds of her dress—quick resistance on her part, then acquiescence. He felt a sudden pleasure in his friend's small triumph.
"Aldous and I have worn these things threadbare many a time," he said, addressing his hostess. "You don't know how kind he is to my dreams. I am no sportsman and have no landowning relations, so he ought to bid me hold my tongue. But he lets me rave. To me the simple fact is thatgame preserving creates crime. Agricultural life is naturally simpler—might be, it always seems to me, so much more easily moralised and fraternised than the industrial form. And you split it up and poison it all by the emphasis laid on this class pleasure. It is a natural pleasure, you say. Perhaps it is—the survival, perhaps, of some primitive instinct in our northern blood—but, if so, why should it be impossible for the rich to share it with the poor? I have little plans—dreams. I throw them out sometimes to catch Aldous, but he hardly rises to them!"
"Oh! Isay," broke in Frank Leven, who could really bear it no longer. "Now look here, Miss Boyce,—what do you think Mr. Hallin wants? It is just sheer lunacy—it really is—though I know I'm impertinent, and he's a great man. But I do declare he wants Aldous to give up a big common there is—oh! over beyond Girtstone, down in the plain—on Lord Maxwell's estate, and make alabourers'shoot of it! Now, I ask you! And he vows he doesn't see why they shouldn't rear pheasants if they choose to club and pay for it. Well, I will say that much for him, Aldous didn't see his way tothat, though he isn't the kind of ConservativeIwant to see in Parliament by a long way. Besides, it's such stuff! They say sport brutalisesus, and then they want to go and contaminate the labourer. But we won't take the responsibility. We've got our own vices, and we'll stick to them; we're used to them; but we won't hand them on: we'd scorn the action."
The flushed young barbarian, driven to bay, was not to be resisted. Marcella laughed heartily, and Hallin laid an affectionate hand on the boy's shoulder, patting him as though he were a restive horse.
"Yes, I remember I was puzzled as to the details of Hallin's scheme," said Aldous, his mouth twitching. "I wanted to know who was to pay for the licences; how game enough for the number of applicants was to be got without preserving; and how men earning twelve or fourteen shillings a week were to pay a keeper. Then I asked a clergyman who has a living near this common what he thought would be the end of it. 'Well,' he said, 'the first day they'd shoot every animal on the place; the second day they'd shoot each other. Universal carnage—I should say that would be about the end of it.' These were trifles, of course—details."
Hallin shook his head serenely.
"I still maintain," he said, "that a little practical ingenuity might have found a way."
"And I will support you," said Wharton, laying down the paper-knife and bending over to Hallin, "with good reason. For three years and a few months just such an idea as you describe has been carried out on my own estate, and it has not worked badly at all."
"There!" cried Marcella. "There! I knew something could be done, if there was a will. I have always felt it."
She half turned to Aldous, then bent forward instead as though listening eagerly for what more Wharton might say, her face all alive, and eloquent.
"Of course, there was nothing to shoot!" exclaimed Frank Leven.
"On the contrary," said Wharton, smiling, "we are in the middle of a famous partridge country."
"How your neighbours must dote on you!" cried the boy. But Wharton took no notice.
"And my father preserved strictly," he went on. "It is quite a simple story. When I inherited, three years ago, I thought the whole thing detestable, and determined I wouldn't be responsible for keeping it up. So I called the estate together—farmers and labourers—and we worked out a plan. There are keepers, but they are the estate servants, not mine. Everybody has his turn according to the rules—I and my friends along with the rest. Not everybody can shoot every year, but everybody gets his chance, and, moreover, a certain percentage of all the game killed is public property, and is distributed every year according to a regular order."
"Who pays the keepers?" interrupted Leven.
"I do," said Wharton, smiling again. "Mayn't I—for the present—do what I will with mine own? I return in their wages some of my ill-gotten gains as a landowner. It is all makeshift, of course."
"I understand!" exclaimed Marcella, nodding to him—"you could not be aVenturist and keep up game-preserving?"
Wharton met her bright eye with a half deprecating, reserved air.
"You are right, of course," he said drily. "For a Socialist to be letting his keepers run in a man earning twelve shillings a week for knocking over a rabbit would have been a little strong. No one can be consistent in my position—in any landowner's position—it is impossible; still, thank Heaven, one can deal with the most glaring matters. As Mr. Raeburn said, however, all this game business is, of course, a mere incident of the general land and property system, as you will hear me expound when you come to that meeting you promised me to honour."
He stooped forward, scanning her with smiling deference. Marcella felt the man's hand that held her own suddenly tighten an instant. Then Aldous released her, and rising walked towards the fire.
"You'renotgoing to one of his meetings, Miss Boyce!" cried Frank, in angry incredulity.
Marcella hesitated an instant, half angry with Wharton. Then she reddened and threw back her dark head with the passionate gesture Hallin had already noticed as characteristic.
"Mayn't I go where I belong?" she said—"where my convictions lead me?"
There was a moment's awkward silence. Then Hallin got up.
"Miss Boyce, may we see the house? Aldous has told me much of it."
* * * * *
Presently, in the midst of their straggling progress through the half-furnished rooms of the garden front, preceded by the shy footman carrying a lamp, which served for little more than to make darkness visible, Marcella found herself left behind with Aldous. As soon as she felt that they were alone, she realised a jar between herself and him. His manner was much as usual, but there was an underlying effort and difficulty which her sensitiveness caught at once. A sudden wave of girlish trouble—remorse—swept over her. In her impulsiveness she moved close to him as they were passing through her mother's little sitting-room, and put her hand on his arm.
"I don't think I was nice just now," she said, stammering. "I didn't mean it. I seem to be always driven into opposition—into a feeling of war—when you are so good to me—so much too good to me!"
Aldous had turned at her first word. With a long breath, as it were of unspeakable relief, he caught her in his arms vehemently, passionately. So far she had been very shrinking and maidenly with him in their solitary moments, and he had been all delicate chivalry and respect, tasting to the full the exquisiteness of each fresh advance towards intimacy, towards lover's privilege, adoring her, perhaps, all the more for her reserve, her sudden flights, and stiffenings. But to-night he asked no leave, and in her astonishment she was almost passive.
"Oh, do let me go!" she cried at last, trying to disengage herself completely.
"No!" he said with emphasis, still holding her hand firmly. "Come and sit down here. They will look after themselves."
He put her, whether she would or no, into an arm-chair and knelt beside her.
"Did you think it was hardly kind," he said with a quiver of voice he could not repress, "to let me hear for the first time, in public, that you had promised to go to one of that man's meetings after refusing again and again to come to any of mine?"
"Do you want to forbid me to go?" she said quickly. There was a feeling in her which would have been almost relieved, for the moment, if he had said yes.
"By no means," he said steadily. "That was not our compact. But—guess for yourself what I want! Do you think"—he paused a moment—"do you think I put nothing of myself into my public life—into these meetings among the people who have known me from a boy? Do you think it is all a convention—that my feeling, my conscience, remain outside? You can't think that! But if not, how can I bear to live what is to be so large a part of my life out of your ken and sight? I know—I know—you warned me amply—you can't agree with me. But there is much besides intellectual agreement possible—much that would help and teach us both—if only we are together—not separated—not holding aloof—"
He stopped, watching all the changes of her face. She was gulfed in a deep wave of half-repentant feeling, remembering all his generosity, his forbearance, his devotion.
"When are you speaking next?" she half whispered. In the dim light her softened pose, the gentle sudden relaxation of every line, were an intoxication.
"Next week—Friday—at Gairsly. Hallin and Aunt Neta are coming."
"Will Miss Raeburn take me?"
His grey eyes shone upon her, and he kissed her hand.
"Mr. Hallin won't speak for you!" she said, after the silence, with a return of mischief.
"Don't be so sure! He has given me untold help in the drafting of my Bill. If I didn't call myself a Conservative, he would vote for me to-morrow. That's the absurdity of it. Do you know, I hear them coming back?"
"One thing," she said hastily, drawing him towards her, and then holding him back, as though shrinking always from the feeling she could so readily evoke. "I must say it; you oughtn't to give me so much money, it is too much. Suppose I use it for things you don't like?"
"You won't," he said gaily.
She tried to push the subject further, but he would not have it.
"I am all for free discussion," he said in the same tone; "but sometimes debate must be stifled. I am going to stifle it!"
And stooping, he kissed her, lightly, tremulously. His manner showed her once more what she was to him—how sacred, how beloved. First it touched and shook her; then she sprang up with a sudden disagreeable sense of moral disadvantage—inferiority—coming she knew not whence, and undoing for the moment all that buoyant consciousness of playing the magnanimous, disinterested part which had possessed her throughout the talk in the drawing-room.
The others reappeared, headed by their lamp: Wharton first, scanning the two who had lingered behind, with his curious eyes, so blue and brilliant under the white forehead and the curls.
"We have been making the wildest shots at your ancestors, Miss Boyce," he said. "Frank professed to know everything about the pictures, and turned out to know nothing. I shall ask for some special coaching to-morrow morning. May I engage you—ten o'clock?"
Marcella made some evasive answer, and they all sauntered back to the drawing-room.
"Shall you be at work to-morrow, Raeburn?" said Wharton.
"Probably," said Aldous drily. Marcella, struck by the tone, looked back, and caught an expression and bearing which were as yet new to her in the speaker. She supposed they represented the haughtiness natural in the man of birth and power towards the intruder, who is also the opponent.
Instantly the combative critical mood returned upon her, and the impulse to assert herself by protecting Wharton. His manner throughout the talk in the drawing-room had been, she declared to herself, excellent—modest, and self-restrained, comparing curiously with the boyish egotism and self-abandonment he had shown in theirtête-à-tête.
* * * * *
"Why, there is Mr. Boyce," exclaimed Wharton, hurrying forward as they entered the drawing-room.
There, indeed, on the sofa was the master of the house, more ghastly black and white than ever, and prepared to claim to the utmost the tragic pre-eminence of illness. He shook hands coldly with Aldous, who asked after his health with the kindly brevity natural to the man who wants no effusions for himself in public or personal matters, and concludes therefore that other people desire none.
"Youarebetter, papa?" said Marcella, taking his hand.
"Certainly, my dear—better for morphia. Don't talk of me. I have got my death warrant, but I hope I can take it quietly. Evelyn, Ispeciallyasked to have that thin cushion brought down from my dressing-room. It is strange that no one pays any attention to my wants."
Mrs. Boyce, almost as white, Marcella now saw, as her husband, moved forward from the fire, where she had been speaking to Hallin, took a cushion from a chair near, exactly similar to the one he missed, and changed his position a little.
"It is just the feather's weight of change that makes the difference, isn't it?" said Wharton, softly, sitting down beside the invalid.
Mr. Boyce turned a mollified countenance upon the speaker, and being now free from pain, gave himself up to the amusement of hearing his guest talk. Wharton devoted himself, employing all his best arts.
"Dr. Clarke is not anxious about him," Mrs. Boyce said in a low voice to Marcella as they moved away. "He does not think the attack will return for a long while, and he has given me the means of stopping it if it does come back."
"How tired you look!" said Aldous, coming up to them, and speaking in the same undertone. "Will you not let Marcella take you to rest?"
He was always deeply, unreasonably touched by any sign of stoicism, of defied suffering in women. Mrs. Boyce had proved it many times already. On the present occasion she put his sympathy by, but she lingered to talk with him. Hallin from a distance noticed first of all her tall thinness and fairness, and her wonderful dignity of carriage; then the cordiality of her manner to her future son-in-law. Marcella stood by listening, her young shoulders somewhat stiffly set. Her consciousness of her mother's respect and admiration for the man she was to marry was, oddly enough, never altogether pleasant to her. It brought with it a certain discomfort, a certain wish to argue things out.
Hallin and Aldous parted with Frank Leven at Mellor gate, and turned homeward together under a starry heaven already whitening to the coming moon.
"Do you know that man Wharton is getting an extraordinary hold upon the London working men?" said Hallin. "I have heard him tell that story of the game-preserving before. He was speaking for one of the Radical candidates at Hackney, and I happened to be there. It brought down the house. Therôleof your Socialist aristocrat, of your land-nationalising landlord, is a very telling one."
"And comparatively easy," said Aldous, "when you know that neitherSocialism nor land-nationalisation will come in your time!"
"Oh! so you think him altogether a windbag?"
Aldous hesitated and laughed.
"I have certainly no reason to suspect him of principles. His conscience as a boy was of pretty elastic stuff."
"You may be unfair to him," said Hallin, quickly. Then, after a pause:"How long is he staying at Mellor?"
"About a week, I believe," said Aldous, shortly. "Mr. Boyce has taken a fancy to him."
They walked on in silence, and then Aldous turned to his friend in distress.
"You know, Hallin, this wind is much too cold for you. You are the most wilful of men. Why would you walk?"
"Hold your tongue, sir, and listen to me. I think your Marcella is beautiful, and as interesting as she is beautiful. There!"
Aldous started, then turned a grateful face upon him.
"You must get to know her well," he said, but with some constraint.
"Of course. I wonder," said Hallin, musing, "whom she has got hold of among the Venturists. Shall you persuade her to come out of that, do you think, Aldous?"
"No!" said Raeburn, cheerfully. "Her sympathies and convictions go with them."
Then, as they passed through the village, he began to talk of quite other things—college friends, a recent volume of philosophical essays, and so on. Hallin, accustomed and jealously accustomed as he was to be the one person in the world with whom Raeburn talked freely, would not to-night have done or said anything to force a strong man's reserve. But his own mind was full of anxiety.