"Ilovethis dilapidation!" said Wharton, pausing for a moment with his back against the door he had just shut. "Only it makes me long to take off my coat and practise some honest trade or other—plastering, or carpentering, or painting. What useless drones we upper classes are! Neither you nor I could mend that ceiling or patch this floor—to save our lives."
They were in the disused library. It was now the last room westwards of the garden front, but in reality it was part of the older house, and had been only adapted and re-built by that eighteenth-century Marcella whose money had been so gracefully and vainly lavished on giving dignity to her English husband's birthplace. The roof had been raised and domed to match the "Chinese room," at the expense of some small rooms on the upper floor; and the windows and doors had been suited to eighteenth-century taste. But the old books in the old latticed shelves which the Puritan founder of the family had bought in the days of the Long Parliament were still there; so were the chairs in which that worthy had sat to read a tract of Milton's or of Baxter's, or the table at which he had penned his letters to Hampden or Fairfax, or to his old friend—on the wrong side—Edmund Verney the standard-bearer. Only the worm-eaten shelves were dropping from their supports, and the books lay in mouldy confusion; the roofs had great holes and gaps, whence the laths hung dismally down, and bats came flitting in the dusk; and there were rotten places in the carpetless floor.
"I have tried my best," said Marcella, dolefully, stooping to look at a hole in the floor. "I got a bit of board and some nails, and tried to mend some of these places myself. But I only broke the rotten wood away; and papa was angry, and said I did more harm than good. I did get a carpenter to mend some of the chairs; but one doesn't know where to begin. I have cleaned and mended some of the books, but—"
She looked sadly round the musty, forlorn place.
"But not so well, I am afraid, as any second-hand bookseller's apprentice could have done it," said Wharton, shaking his head. "It's maddening to think what duffers we gentlefolks are!"
"Why do you harp on that?" said Marcella, quickly. She had been taking him over the house, and was in twenty minds again as to whether and how much she liked him.
"Because I have been reading some Board of Trade reports before breakfast," said Wharton, "on one or two of the Birmingham industries in particular. Goodness! what an amount of knowledge and skill and resource these fellows have that I go about calling the 'lower orders.' I wonder how long they are going to let me rule over them!"
"I suppose brain-power and education count for something still?" saidMarcella, half scornfully.
"I am greatly obliged to the world for thinking so," said Wharton with emphasis, "and for thinking so about the particular kind of brain-power I happen to possess, which is the point. The processes by which a Birmingham jeweller makes the wonderful things which we attribute to 'French taste' when we see them in the shops of the Rue de la Paix are, of course, mere imbecility—compared to my performances in Responsions. Lucky forme, at any rate, that the world has decided it so. I get a good time of it—and the Birmingham jeweller calls me 'sir.'"
"Oh! the skilled labour! that can take care of itself, and won't go on calling you 'sir' much longer. But what about the unskilled—the people here for instance—the villagers? We talk of their governing themselves; we wish it, and work for it. But which of usreallybelieves that they are fit for it, or that they are ever going to get along withoutourbrain-power?"
"No—poor souls!" said Wharton, with a peculiar vibrating emphasis. "'By their stripes we are healed, by their death we have lived.' Do you remember your Carlyle?"
They had entered one of the bays formed by the bookcases which on either side of the room projected from the wall at regular intervals, and were standing by one of the windows which looked out on the great avenue. Beside the window on either side hung a small portrait—in the one case of an elderly man in a wig, in the other of a young, dark-haired woman.
"Plenty in general, but nothing in particular," said Marcella, laughing."Quote."
He was leaning against the angle formed by the wall and the bookcase. The half-serious, half-provocative intensity of his blue eyes under the brow which drooped forward contrasted with the careless, well-appointed ease of his general attitude and dress.
"'Two men I honour, and no third,'" he said, quoting in a slightly dragging, vibrating voice: "'First, the toil-worn craftsman that with earth-made implement laboriously conquers the earth and makes her man's.—Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred.' Heavens! how the words swing! But it is great nonsense, you know, for you and me—Venturists—to be maundering like this. Charity—benevolence—that is all Carlyle is leading up to. He merely wants the cash nexus supplemented by a few good offices. But we want something much more unpleasant! 'Keep your subscriptions—hand over your dividends—turn out of your land—and go to work!' Nowadays society is trying to get out of doing whatwewant, by doing what Carlyle wanted."
"Doyou want it?" said Marcella.
"I don't know," he said, laughing. "It won't come in our time."
Her lip showed her scorn.
"That's what we all think. Meanwhile you will perhaps admit that a little charity greases the wheels."
"Youmust, because you are a woman; and women are made for charity—and aristocracy."
"Do you suppose you know so much about women?" she asked him, rather hotly. "I notice it is always the assumption of the people who make most mistakes."
"Oh! I know enough to steer by!" he said, smiling, with a little inclination of his curly head, as though to propitiate her. "How like you are to that portrait!"
Marcella started, and saw that he was pointing to the woman's portrait beside the window—looking from it to his hostess with a close considering eye.
"That was an ancestress of mine," she said coldly, "an Italian lady. She was rich and musical. Her money built these rooms along the garden, and these are her music books."
She showed him that the shelves against which she was leaning were full of old music.
"Italian!" he said, lifting his eyebrows. "Ah, that explains. Do you know—that you have all the qualities of a leader!"—and he moved away a yard from her, studying her—"mixed blood—one must always have that to fire and fuse the English paste—and then—but no! that won't do—I should offend you."
Her first instinct was one of annoyance—a wish to send him about his business, or rather to return him to her mother who would certainly keep him in order. Instead, however, she found herself saying, as she looked carelessly out of window—
"Oh! go on."
"Well, then"—he drew himself up suddenly and wheeled round upon her—"you have the gift of compromise. That is invaluable—that will take you far."
"Thank you!" she said. "Thank you! I know what that means—from aVenturist. You think me a mean insincere person!"
He started, then recovered himself and came to lean against the bookshelves beside her.
"I mean nothing of the sort," he said, in quite a different manner, with a sort of gentle and personal emphasis. "But—may I explain myself, Miss Boyce, in a room with a fire? I can see you shivering under your fur."
For the frost still reigned supreme outside, and the white grass and trees threw chill reflected lights into the forsaken library. Marcella controlled a pulse of excitement that had begun to beat in her, admitted that it was certainly cold, and led the way through a side door to a little flagged parlour, belonging to the oldest portion of the house, where, however, a great log-fire was burning, and some chairs drawn up round it. She took one and let the fur wrap she had thrown about her for their promenade through the disused rooms drop from her shoulders. It lay about her in full brown folds, giving special dignity to her slim height and proud head. Wharton glancing about in his curious inquisitive way, now at the neglected pictures, now on the walls, now at the old oak chairs and chests, now at her, said to himself that she was a splendid and inspiring creature. She seemed to be on the verge of offence with him too, half the time, which was stimulating. She would have liked, he thought, to play the great lady with him already, as Aldous Raeburn's betrothed. But he had so far managed to keep her off that plane—and intended to go on doing so.
"Well, I meant this," he said, leaning against the old stone chimney and looking down upon her; "onlydon'tbe offended with me, please. You are a Socialist, and you are going—some day—to be Lady Maxwell. Those combinations are only possible to women. They can sustain them, because they are imaginative—not logical."
She flushed.
"And you," she said, breathing quickly, "are a Socialist and a landlord.What is the difference?"
He laughed.
"Ah! but I have no gift—I can't ride the two horses, as you will be able to—quite honestly. There's the difference. And the consequence is that with my own class I am an outcast—they all hate me. But you will have power as Lady Maxwell—and power as a Socialist—because you will give and take. Half your time you will act as Lady Maxwell should, the other half like a Venturist. And, as I said, it will give you power—a modified power. But men are less clever at that kind of thing."
"Do you mean to say," she asked him abruptly, "that you have given up the luxuries and opportunities of your class?"
He shifted his position a little.
"That is a different matter," he said after a moment. "We Socialists are all agreed, I think, that no man can be a Socialist by himself. Luxuries, for the present, are something personal, individual. It is only a man's 'public form' that matters. And there, as I said before, I have no gift!—I have not a relation or an old friend in the world that has not turned his back upon me—as you might see for yourself yesterday! My class has renounced me already—which, after all, is a weakness."
"So you pity yourself?" she said.
"By no means! We all choose the part in life that amuses us—that brings us mostthrill. I get most thrill out of throwing myself into the workmen's war—much more than I could ever get, you will admit, out of dancing attendance on my very respectable cousins. My mother taught me to see everything dramatically. We have no drama in England at the present moment worth a cent; so I amuse myself with this great tragi-comedy of the working-class movement. It stirs, pricks, interests me, from morning till night. I feel the great rough elemental passions in it, and it delights me to know that every day brings us nearer to some great outburst, to scenes and struggles at any rate that will make us all look alive. I am like a child with the best of its cake to come, but with plenty in hand already. Ah!—stay still a moment, Miss Boyce!"
To her amazement he stooped suddenly towards her; and she, looking down, saw that a corner of her light, black dress, which had been overhanging the low stone fender, was in flames, and that he was putting it out with his hands. She made a movement to rise, alarmed lest the flames should leap to her face—her hair. But he, releasing one hand for an instant from its task of twisting and rolling the skirt upon itself, held her heavily down.
"Don't move; I will have it out in a moment. You won't be burnt."
And in a second more she was looking at a ragged brown hole in her dress; and at him, standing, smiling, before the fire, and wrapping a handkerchief round some of the fingers of his left hand.
"You have burnt yourself, Mr. Wharton?"
"A little."
"I will go and get something—what would you like?"
"A little olive oil if you have some, and a bit of lint—but don't trouble yourself."
She flew to find her mother's maid, calling and searching on her way for Mrs. Boyce herself, but in vain. Mrs. Boyce had disappeared after breakfast, and was probably helping her husband to dress.
In a minute or so Marcella ran downstairs again, bearing various medicaments. She sped to the Stone Parlour, her cheek and eye glowing.
"Let me do it for you."
"If you please," said Wharton, meekly.
She did her best, but she was not skilful with her fingers, and this close contact with him somehow excited her.
"There," she said, laughing and releasing him. "Of course, if I were a work-girl I should have done it better. They are not going to be very bad, I think."
"What, the burns? Oh, no! They will have recovered, I am afraid, long before your dress."
"Oh, my dress! yes, it is deplorable. I will go and change it."
She turned to go, but she lingered instead, and said with an odd, introductory laugh:
"I believe you saved my life!"
"Well, I am glad I was here. You might have lost self-possession—evenyoumight, you know!—and then it would have been serious."
"Anyway"—her voice was still uncertain—"I might have been disfigured—disfigured for life!"
"I don't know why you should dwell upon it now it's done with," he declared, smiling.
"It would be strange, wouldn't it, if I took it quite for granted—all in the day's work?" She held out her hand: "I am grateful—please."
He bowed over it, laughing, again with that eighteenth-century air which might have become a Chevalier des Grieux.
"May I exact a reward?"
"Ask it."
"Will you take me down with you to your village? I know you are going. I must walk on afterwards and catch a midday train to Widrington. I have an appointment there at two o'clock. But perhaps you will introduce me to one or two of your poor people first?"
Marcella assented, went upstairs, changed her dress, and put on her walking things, more than half inclined all the time to press her mother to go with them. She was a little unstrung and tremulous, pursued by a feeling that she was somehow letting herself go, behaving disloyally and indecorously towards whom?—towards Aldous? But how, or why? She did not know. But there was a curious sense of lost bloom, lost dignity, combined with an odd wish that Mr. Wharton were not going away for the day. In the end, however, she left her mother undisturbed.
By the time they were half way to the village, Marcella's uncomfortable feelings had all passed away. Without knowing it, she was becoming too much absorbed in her companion to be self-critical, so long as they were together. It seemed to her, however, before they had gone more than a few hundred yards that he was taking advantage—presuming on what had happened. He offended her taste, her pride, her dignity, in a hundred ways, she discovered. At the same time it wasshewho was always on the defensive—protecting her dreams, her acts, her opinions, against the constant fire of his half-ironical questions, which seemed to leave her no time at all to carry the war into the enemy's country. He put her through a quick cross-examination about the village, its occupations, the incomes of the people, its local charities and institutions, what she hoped to do for it, what she would do if she could, what she thought itpossibleto do. She answered first reluctantly, then eagerly, her pride all alive to show that she was not merely ignorant and amateurish. But it was no good. In the end he made her feel as Antony Craven had constantly done—that she knew nothing exactly, that she had not mastered the conditions of any one of the social problems she was talking about; that not only was her reading of no account, but that she had not even managed toseethese people, to interpret their lives under her very eyes, with any large degree of insight.
Especially was he merciless to all the Lady Bountiful pose, which meant so much to her imagination—not in words so much as in manner. He let her see that all the doling and shepherding and advising that still pleased her fancy looked to him the merest temporary palliative, and irretrievably tainted, even at that, with some vulgar feeling or other. All that the well-to-do could do for the poor under the present state of society was but a niggardly quit-rent; as for any relation of "superior" and "inferior" in the business, or of any social desert attaching to these precious efforts of the upper class to daub the gaps in the ruinous social edifice for which they were themselves responsible, he did not attempt to conceal his scorn. If you did not do these things, so much the worse for you when the working class came to its own; if you did do them, the burden of debt was hardly diminished, and the rope was still left on your neck.
Now Marcella herself had on one or two occasions taken a malicious pleasure in flaunting these doctrines, or some of them, under Miss Raeburn's eyes. But somehow, as applied to herself, they were disagreeable. Each of us is to himself a "special case"; and she saw the other side. Hence a constant soreness of feeling; a constant recalling of the argument to the personal point of view; and through it all a curious growth of intimacy, a rubbing away of barriers. She had felt herself of no account before, intellectually, in Aldous's company, as we know. But then how involuntary on his part, and how counter-balanced by that passionate idealism of his love, which glorified every pretty impulse in her to the noblest proportions! Under Wharton's Socratic method, she was conscious at times of the most wild and womanish desires, worthy of her childhood—to cry, to go into a passion!—and when they came to the village, and every human creature, old and young, dropped its obsequious curtsey as they passed, she could first have beaten them for so degrading her, and the next moment felt a feverish pleasure in thus parading her petty power before a man who in his doctrinaire pedantry had no sense of poetry, or of the dear old natural relations of country life.
They went first to Mrs. Jellison's, to whom Marcella wished to unfold her workshop scheme.
"Don't let me keep you," she said to Wharton coldly, as they neared the cottage; "I know you have to catch your train."
Wharton consulted his watch. He had to be at a local station some two miles off within an hour.
"Oh! I have time," he said. "Do take me in, Miss Boyce. I have made acquaintance with these people so far, as my constituents—now show them to me as your subjects. Besides, I am an observer. I 'collect' peasants. They are my study."
"They are not my subjects, but my friends," she said with the same stiffness.
They found Mrs. Jellison having her dinner. The lively old woman was sitting close against her bit of fire, on her left a small deal table which held her cold potatoes and cold bacon; on her right a tiny window and window-sill whereon lay her coil of "plait" and the simple straw-splitting machine she had just been working. When Marcella had taken the only other chair the hovel contained, nothing else remained for Wharton but to flatten himself as closely against the door as he might.
"I'm sorry I can't bid yer take a cheer," said Mrs. Jellison to him, "but what yer han't got yer can't give, so I don't trouble my head about nothink."
Wharton applauded her with easy politeness, and then gave himself, with folded arms, to examining the cottage while Marcella talked. It might be ten feet broad, he thought, by six feet in one part and eight feet in another. The roof was within little more than an inch of his head. The stairway in the corner was falling to pieces; he wondered how the woman got up safely to her bed at night; custom, he supposed, can make even old bones agile.
Meanwhile Marcella was unfolding the project of the straw-plaiting workshop that she and Lady Winterbourne were about to start. Mrs. Jellison put on her spectacles apparently that she might hear the better, pushed away her dinner in spite of her visitors' civilities, and listened with a bright and beady eye.
"An' yer agoin' to pay me one a sixpence a score, where I now gets ninepence. And I'll not have to tramp it into town no more—you'll send a man round. And who is agoin' to pay me, miss, if you'll excuse me asking?"
"Lady Winterbourne and I," said Marcella, smiling. "We're going to employ this village and two others, and make as good business of it as we can. But we're going to begin by giving the workers better wages, and in time we hope to teach them the higher kinds of work."
"Lor'!" said Mrs. Jellison. "But I'm not one o' them as kin do with changes." She took up her plait and looked at it thoughtfully. "Eighteen-pence a score. It wor that rate when I wor a girl. An' it ha' been dibble—dibble—iver sense; a penny off here, an' a penny off there, an' a hard job to keep a bite ov anythink in your mouth."
"Then I may put down your name among our workers, Mrs. Jellison?" saidMarcella, rising and smiling down upon her.
"Oh, lor', no; I niver said that," said Mrs. Jellison, hastily. "I don't hold wi' shilly-shallyin' wi' yer means o' livin'. I've took my plait to Jimmy Gedge—'im an' 'is son, fust shop on yer right hand when yer git into town—twenty-five year, summer and winter—me an' three other women, as give me a penny a journey for takin' theirs. If I wor to go messin' about wi' Jimmy Gedge, Lor' bless yer, I should 'ear ov it—oh! I shoulden sleep o' nights for thinkin' o' how Jimmy ud serve me out when I wor least egspectin' ov it. He's a queer un. No, miss, thank yer kindly; but I think I'll bide."
Marcella, amazed, began to argue a little, to expound the many attractions of the new scheme. Greatly to her annoyance, Wharton came forward to her help, guaranteeing the solvency and permanence of her new partnership in glib and pleasant phrase, wherein her angry fancy suspected at once the note of irony. But Mrs. Jellison held firm, embroidering her negative, indeed, with her usual cheerful chatter, but sticking to it all the same. At last there was no way of saving dignity but to talk of something else and go—above all, to talk of something else before going, lest the would-be benefactor should be thought a petty tyrant.
"Oh, Johnnie?—thank yer, miss—'e's an owdacious young villain as iver I seed—butclever—lor', you'd need 'ave eyes in yer back to look after'im. An'coaxin'! ''Aven't yer brought me no sweeties, Gran'ma?' 'No, my dear,' says I. 'But if you was tolook, Gran'ma—in both your pockets, Gran'ma—iv you was to letmelook?' It's a sharp un Isabella, she don't 'old wi' sweet-stuff, she says, sich a pack o' nonsense. She'd stuff herself sick when she wor 'is age. Why shouldn'teebe happy, same as her? There ain't much to make a child 'appy inthat'ouse. Westall, ee's that mad about them poachers over Tudley End; ee's like a wild bull at 'ome. I told Isabella ee'd come to knockin' ov her aboutsomeday, though ee did speak so oily when ee wor a courtin'. Now she knows as I kin see a thing or two," said Mrs. Jellison, significantly. Her manner, Wharton noticed, kept always the same gay philosophy, whatever subject turned up.
"Why, that's an old story—that Tudley End business—" said Marcella, rising. "I should have thought Westall might have got over it by now."
"But bless yer, ee says it's goin' on as lively as iver. Ee says ee knows they're set on grabbin' the birds t'other side the estate, over beyond Mellor way—ee's got wind of it—an' ee's watchin' night an' day to see they don't do him no bad turnthismonth, bekase o' the big shoot they allus has in January. An' lor', ee do speak drefful bad o'soomfolks," said Mrs. Jellison, with an amused expression. "You know some on 'em, miss, don't yer?" And the old woman, who had begun toying with her potatoes, slanted her fork over her shoulder so as to point towards the Hurds' cottage, whereof the snow-laden roof could be seen conspicuously through the little lattice beside her, making sly eyes the while at her visitor.
"I don't believe a word of it," said Marcella, impatiently. "Hurd has been in good work since October, and has no need to poach. Westall has a down on him. You may tell him I think so, if you like."
"That I will," said Mrs. Jellison, cheerfully, opening the door for them. "There's nobody makes 'im 'ear the trëuth, nobbut me. Ilovesnaggin' ov 'im, ee's that masterful. But ee don't masterme!"
"A gay old thing," said Wharton as they shut the gate behind them. "How she does enjoy the human spectacle. And obstinate too. But you will find the younger ones more amenable."
"Of course," said Marcella, with dignity. "I have a great many names already. The old people are always difficult. But Mrs. Jellison will come round."
"Are you going in here?"
"Please."
Wharton knocked at the Hurds' door, and Mrs. Hurd opened.
The cottage was thick with smoke. The chimney only drew when the door was left open. But the wind to-day was so bitter that mother and children preferred the smoke to the draught. Marcella soon made out the poor little bronchitic boy, sitting coughing by the fire, and Mrs. Hurd busied with some washing. She introduced Wharton, who, as before, stood for some time, hat in hand, studying the cottage. Marcella was perfectly conscious of it, and a blush rose to her cheek while she talked to Mrs. Hurd. For both this and Mrs. Jellison's hovel were her father's property and somewhat highly rented.
Minta Hurd said eagerly that she would join the new straw-plaiting, and went on to throw out a number of hurried, half-coherent remarks about the state of the trade past and present, leaning meanwhile against the table and endlessly drying her hands on the towel she had taken up when her visitors came in.
Her manner was often nervous and flighty in these days. She never looked happy; but Marcella put it down to health or natural querulousness of character. Yet both she and the children were clearly better nourished, except Willie, in whom the tubercular tendency was fast gaining on the child's strength.
Altogether Marcella was proud of her work, and her eager interest in this little knot of people whose lives she had shaped was more possessive than ever. Hurd, indeed, was often silent and secretive; but she put down her difficulties with him to our odious system of class differences, against which in her own way she was struggling. One thing delighted her—that he seemed to take more and more interest in the labour questions she discussed with him, and in that fervid, exuberant literature she provided him with. Moreover, he now went to all Mr. Wharton's meetings that were held within reasonable distance of Mellor; and, as she said to Aldous with a little laugh, which, however, was not unsweet,hehad found her man work—shehad robbed his candidate of a vote.
Wharton listened a while to her talk with Minta, smiled a little, unperceived of Marcella, at the young mother's docilities of manner and phrase; then turned his attention to the little hunched and coughing object by the fire.
"Are you very bad, little man?"
The white-faced child looked up, a dreary look, revealing a patient, melancholy soul. He tried to answer, but coughed instead.
Wharton, moving towards him, saw a bit of ragged white paper lying on the ground, which had been torn from a grocery parcel.
"Would you like something to amuse you a bit—Ugh! this smoke! Come round here, it won't catch us so much.Now, then, what do you say to a doggie,—two doggies?"
The child stared, let himself be lifted on the stranger's knee, and did his very utmost to stop coughing. But when he had succeeded his quick panting breaths still shook his tiny frame and Wharton's knee.
"Hm—Give him two months or thereabouts!" thought Wharton. "What a beastly hole!—one room up, and one down, like the other, only a shade larger. Damp, insanitary, cold—bad water, bad drainage, I'll be bound—bad everything. That girl may well try her little best. And I go making up to that man Boyce! What for? Old spites?—new spites?—which?—or both!"
Meanwhile his rapid skilful fingers were tearing, pinching, and shaping; and in a very few minutes there, upon his free knee, stood the most enticing doggie of pinched paper, a hound in full course, with long ears and stretching legs.
The child gazed at it with ravishment, put out a weird hand, touched it, stroked it, and then, as he looked back at Wharton, the most exquisite smile dawned in his saucer-blue eyes.
"What? did you like it, grasshopper?" cried Wharton, enchanted by the beauty of the look, his own colour mounting. "Then you shall have another."
And he twisted and turned his piece of fresh paper, till there, beside the first, stood a second fairy animal—a greyhound this time, with arching neck and sharp long nose.
"There's two on 'em at Westall's!" cried the child, hoarsely, clutching at his treasures in an ecstasy.
Mrs. Hurd, at the other end of the cottage, started as she heard the name. Marcella noticed it; and with her eager sympathetic look began at once to talk of Hurd and the works at the Court. She understood they were doing grand things, and that the work would last all the winter. Minta answered hurriedly and with a curious choice of phrases. "Oh! he didn't have nothing to say against it." Mr. Brown, the steward, seemed satisfied. All that she said was somehow irrelevant; and, to Marcella's annoyance, plaintive as usual. Wharton, with the boy inside his arm, turned his head an instant to listen.
Marcella, having thought of repeating, without names, some of Mrs. Jellison's gossip, then shrank from it. He had promised her, she thought to herself with a proud delicacy; and she was not going to treat the word of a working man as different from anybody else's.
So she fastened her cloak again, which she had thrown open in the stifling air of the cottage, and turned both to call her companion and give a smile or two to the sick boy.
But, as she did so, she stood amazed at the spectacle of Wharton and the child. Then, moving up to them, she perceived the menagerie—for it had grown to one—on Wharton's knee.
"You didn't guess I had such tricks," he said, smiling.
"But they are so good—so artistic!" She took up a little galloping horse he had just fashioned and wondered at it.
"A great-aunt taught me—she was a genius—I follow her at a long distance. Will you let me go, young man? You may keep all of them."
But the child, with a sudden contraction of the brow, flung a tiny stick-like arm round his neck, pressing hard, and looking at him. There was a red spot in each wasted cheek, and his eyes were wide and happy. Wharton returned the look with one of quiet scrutiny—the scrutiny of the doctor or the philosopher. On Marcella's quick sense the contrast of the two heads impressed itself—the delicate youth of Wharton's with its clustering curls—the sunken contours and the helpless suffering of the other. Then Wharton kissed the little fellow, put his animals carefully on to a chair beside him, and set him down.
They walked along the snowy street again, in a different relation to each other. Marcella had been touched and charmed, and Wharton teased her no more. As they reached the door of the almshouse where the old Pattons lived, she said to him: "I think I had rather go in here by myself, please. I have some things to give them—old Patton has been very ill this last week—but I know what you think of doles—and I know too what you think, what you must think, of my father's cottages. It makes me feel a hypocrite; yet I must do these things; we are different, you and I—I am sure you will miss your train!"
But there was no antagonism, only painful feeling in her softened look.
Wharton put out his hand.
"Yes, it is time for me to go. You say I make you feel a hypocrite! I wonder whether you have any idea what you make me feel? Do you imagine I should dare to say the things I have said except to one of theélite? Would it be worth my while, as a social reformer? Are you not vowed to great destinies? When one comes across one of the tools of the future, must one not try to sharpen it, out of one's poor resources, in spite of manners?"
Marcella, stirred—abashed—fascinated—let him press her hand. Then he walked rapidly away towards the station, a faint smile twitching at his lip.
"An inexperienced girl," he said to himself, composedly.
Before she went home, Marcella turned into the little rectory garden to see if she could find Mary Harden for a minute or two. The intimacy between them was such that she generally found entrance to the house by going round to a garden door and knocking or calling. The house was very small, and Mary's little sitting-room was close to this door.
Her knock brought Mary instantly.
"Oh! come in. You won't mind. We were just at dinner. Charles is going away directly. Do stay and talk to me a bit."
Marcella hesitated, but at last went in. The meals at the rectory distressed her—the brother and sister showed the marks of them. To-day she found their usual fare carefully and prettily arranged on a spotless table; some bread, cheese, and boiled rice—nothing else. Nor did they allow themselves any fire for meals. Marcella, sitting beside them in her fur, did not feel the cold, but Mary was clearly shivering under her shawl. They eat meat twice a week, and in the afternoon Mary lit the sitting-room fire. In the morning she contented herself with the kitchen, where, as she cooked for many sick folk, and had only a girl of fourteen whom she was training to help her with the housework, she had generally much to do.
The Rector did not stay long after her arrival. He had a distant visit to pay to a dying child, and hurried off so as to be home, if possible, before dark. Marcella admired him, but did not feel that she understood him more as they were better acquainted. He was slight and young, and not very clever; but a certain inexpugnable dignity surrounded him, which, real as it was, sometimes irritated Marcella. It sat oddly on his round face—boyish still, in spite of its pinched and anxious look—but there it was, not to be ignored. Marcella thought him a Conservative, and very backward and ignorant in his political and social opinions. But she was perfectly conscious that she must also think him a saint; and that the deepest things in him were probably not for her.
Mr. Harden said a few words to her now as to her straw-plaiting scheme, which had his warmest sympathy—Marcella contrasted his tone gratefully with that of Wharton, and once more fell happily in love with her own ideas—then he went off, leaving the two girls together.
"Have you seen Mrs. Hurd this morning?" said Mary.
"Yes, Willie seems very bad."
Mary assented.
"The doctor says he will hardly get through the winter, especially if this weather goes on. But the greatest excitement of the village just now—do you know?—is the quarrel between Hurd and Westall. Somebody told Charles yesterday that they never meet without threatening each other. Since the covers at Tudley End were raided, Westall seems to have quite lost his head. He declares Hurd knew all about that, and that he is hand and glove with the same gang still. He vows he will catch him out, and Hurd told the man who told Charles that if Westall bullies him any more he will put a knife into him. And Charles says that Hurd is not a bit like he was. He used to be such a patient, silent creature. Now—"
"He has woke up to a few more ideas and a little more life than he had, that's all," said Marcella, impatiently. "He poached last winter, and small blame to him. But since he got work at the Court in November—is it likely? He knows that he was suspected; and what could be his interest now, after a hard day's work, to go out again at night, and run the risk of falling into Westall's clutches, when he doesn't want either the food or the money?"
"I don't know," said Mary, shaking her head. "Charles says, if they once do it, they hardly ever leave it off altogether. It's the excitement and amusement of it."
"He promised me," said Marcella, proudly.
"They promise Charles all sorts of things," said Mary, slyly; "but they don't keep to them."
Warmly grateful as both she and the Rector had been from the beginning to Marcella for the passionate interest she took in the place and the people, the sister was sometimes now a trifle jealous—divinely jealous—for her brother. Marcella's unbounded confidence in her own power and right over Mellor, her growing tendency to ignore anybody else's right or power, sometimes set Mary aflame, for Charles's sake, heartily and humbly as she admired her beautiful friend.
"I shall speak to Mr. Raeburn about it," said Marcella.
She never called him "Aldous" to anybody—a stiffness which jarred a little upon the gentle, sentimental Mary.
"I saw you pass," she said, "from one of the top windows. He was with you, wasn't he?"
A slight colour sprang to her sallow cheek, a light to her eyes. Most wonderful, most interesting was this engagement to Mary, who—strange to think!—had almost brought it about. Mr. Raeburn was to her one of the best and noblest of men, and she felt quite simply, and with a sort of Christian trembling for him, the romance of his great position. Was Marcella happy, was she proud of him, as she ought to be? Mary was often puzzled by her.
"Oh no!" said Marcella, with a little laugh. "That wasn't Mr. Raeburn. I don't know where your eyes were, Mary. That was Mr. Wharton, who is staying with us. He has gone on to a meeting at Widrington."
Mary's face fell.
"Charles says Mr. Wharton's influence in the village is very bad," she said quickly. "He makes everybody discontented; sets everybody by the ears; and, after all, what can he do for anybody?"
"But that's just what he wants to do—to make them discontented," cried Marcella. "Then, if they vote for him, that's the first practical step towards improving their life."
"But it won't give them more wages or keep them out of the public house," said Mary, bewildered. She came of a homely middle-class stock, accustomed to a small range of thinking, and a high standard of doing. Marcella's political opinions were an amazement, and on the whole a scandal to her. She preferred generally to give them a wide berth.
Marcella did not reply. It was not worth while to talk to Mary on these topics. But Mary stuck to the subject a moment longer.
"You can't want him to get in, though?" she said in a puzzled voice, as she led the way to the little sitting-room across the passage, and took her workbasket out of the cupboard. "It was only the week before last Mr. Raeburn was speaking at the schoolroom for Mr. Dodgson. You weren't there, Marcella?"
"No," said Marcella, shortly. "I thought you knew perfectly well, Mary, that Mr. Raeburn and I don't agree politically. Certainly, I hope Mr. Wharton will get in!"
Mary opened her eyes in wonderment. She stared at Marcella, forgetting the sock she had just slipped over her left hand, and the darning needle in her right.
Marcella laughed.
"I know you think that two people who are going to be married ought to say ditto to each other in everything. Don't you—you dear old goose?"
She came and stood beside Mary, a stately and beautiful creature in her loosened furs. She stroked Mary's straight sandy hair back from her forehead. Mary looked up at her with a thrill, nay, a passionate throb of envy—soon suppressed.
"I think," she said steadily, "it is very strange—that love should oppose and disagree with what it loves."
Marcella went restlessly towards the fire and began to examine the things on the mantelpiece.
"Can't people agree to differ, you sentimentalist? Can't they respect each other, without echoing each other on every subject?"
"Respect!" cried Mary, with a sudden scorn, which was startling from a creature so soft.
"There, she could tear me in pieces!" said Marcella, laughing, though her lip was not steady. "I wonder what you would be like, Mary, if you were engaged."
Mary ran her needle in and out with lightning speed for a second or two, then she said almost under her breath—
"I shouldn't be engaged unless I were in love. And if I were in love, why, I would go anywhere—do anything—believe anything—ifhetold me!"
"Believe anything?—Mary—you wouldn't!"
"I don't mean as to religion," said Mary, hastily. "But everything else—I would give it all up!—governing one's self, thinking for one's self. He should do it, and I wouldblesshim!"
She looked up crimson, drawing a very long breath, as though from some deep centre of painful, passionate feeling. It was Marcella's turn to stare. Never had Mary so revealed herself before.
"Did you ever love any one like that, Mary?" she asked quickly.
Mary dropped her head again over her work and did not answer immediately.
"Do you see—" she said at last, with a change of tone, "do you see that we have got our invitation?"
Marcella, about to give the rein to an eager curiosity Mary's manner had excited in her, felt herself pulled up sharply. When she chose, this little meek creature could put on the same unapproachableness as her brother. Marcella submitted.
"Yes, I see," she said, taking up a card on the mantelpiece. "It will be a great crush. I suppose you know. They have asked the whole county, it seems to me."
The card bore an invitation in Miss Raeburn's name for the Rector and his sister to a dance at Maxwell Court—the date given was the twenty-fifth of January.
"What fun!" said Mary, her eye sparkling. "You needn't suppose that I know enough of balls to be particular. I have only been to one before in my life—ever. That was at Cheltenham. An aunt took me—I didn't dance. There were hardly any men, but I enjoyed it."
"Well, you shall dance this time," said Marcella, "for I will make Mr.Raeburn introduce you."
"Nonsense, you won't have any time to think about me. You will be the queen—everybody will want to speak to you. I shall sit in a corner and look at you—that will be enough for me."
Marcella went up to her quickly and kissed her, then she said, still holding her—
"I know you think I ought to be very happy, Mary!"
"I should think I do!" said Mary, with astonished emphasis, when the voice paused—"I should think I do!"
"Iamhappy—and I want to make him happy. But there are so many things, so many different aims and motives, that complicate life, that puzzle one. One doesn't know how much to give of one's self, to each—"
She stood with her hand on Mary's shoulder, looking away towards the window and the snowy garden, her brow frowning and distressed.
"Well, I don't understand," said Mary, after a pause. "As I said before, it seems to me so plain and easy—to be in love, and give one's selfall—to that. But you are so much cleverer than I, Marcella, you know so much more. That makes the difference. I can't be like you. Perhaps I don't want to be!"—and she laughed. "But I can admire you and love you, and think about you. There, now, tell me what you are going to wear?"
"White satin, and Mr. Raeburn wants me to wear some pearls he is going to give me, some old pearls of his mother's. I believe I shall find them at Mellor when I get back."
There was little girlish pleasure in the tone. It was as though Marcella thought her friend would be more interested in her bit of news than she was herself, and was handing it on to her to please her.
"Isn't there a superstition against doing that—before you're married?" said Mary, doubtfully.
"As if I should mind if there was! But I don't believe there is, or Miss Raeburn would have heard of it. She's a mass of such things. Well! I hope I shall behave myself to please her at this function. There are not many things I do to her satisfaction; it's a mercy we're not going to live with her. Lord Maxwell is a dear; but she and I would never get on. Every way of thinking she has, rubs me up the wrong way; and as for her view of me, I am just a tare sown among her wheat. Perhaps she is right enough!"
Marcella leant her cheek pensively on one hand, and with the other played with the things on the mantelpiece.
Mary looked at her, and then half smiled, half sighed.
"I think it is a very good thing you are to be married soon," she said, with her little air of wisdom, which offended nobody. "Then you'll know your own mind. When is it to be?"
"The end of February—after the election."
"Two months," mused Mary.
"Time enough to throw it all up in, you think?" said Marcella, recklessly, putting on her gloves for departure. "Perhaps you'll be pleased to hear that Iamgoing to a meeting of Mr. Raeburn's next week?"
"Iamglad. You ought to go to them all."
"Really, Mary! How am I to lift you out of this squaw theory of matrimony? Allow me to inform you that the following evening I am going to one of Mr. Wharton's—here in the schoolroom!"
She enjoyed her friend's disapproval.
"By yourself, Marcella? It isn't seemly!"
"I shall take a maid. Mr. Wharton is going to tell us how the people can—get the land, and how, when they have got it, all the money that used to go in rent will go in taking off taxes and making life comfortable for the poor." She looked at Mary with a teasing smile.
"Oh! I dare say he will make his stealing sound very pretty," said Mary, with unwonted scorn, as she opened the front door for her friend.
Marcella flashed out.
"I know you are a saint, Mary," she said, turning back on the path outside to deliver her last shaft. "I am often not so sure whether you are a Christian!"
Then she hurried off without another word, leaving the flushed and shaken Mary to ponder this strange dictum.
* * * * *
Marcella was just turning into the straight drive which led past the church on the left to Mellor House, when she heard footsteps behind her, and, looking round, she saw Edward Hallin.
"Will you give me some lunch, Miss Boyce, in return for a message? I am here instead of Aldous, who is very sorry for himself, and will be over later. I am to tell you that he went down to the station to meet a certain box. The box did not come, but will come this afternoon; so he waits for it, and will bring it over."
Marcella flushed, smiled, and said she understood. Hallin moved on beside her, evidently glad of the opportunity of a talk with her.
"We are all going together to the Gairsley meeting next week, aren't we?I am so glad you are coming. Aldous will do his best."
There was something very winning in his tone to her. It implied both his old and peculiar friendship for Aldous, and his eager wish to find a new friend in her—to adopt her into their comradeship. Something very winning, too, in his whole personality—in the loosely knit, nervous figure, the irregular charm of feature, the benignant eyes and brow—even in the suggestions of physical delicacy, cheerfully concealed, yet none the less evident. The whole balance of Marcella's temper changed in some sort as she talked to him. She found herself wanting to please, instead of wanting to conquer, to make an effect.
"You have just come from the village, I think?" said Hallin. "Aldous tells me you take a great interest in the people?"
He looked at her kindly, the look of one who saw all his fellow-creatures nobly, as it were, and to their best advantage.
"One may take an interest," she said, in a dissatisfied voice, poking at the snow crystals on the road before her with the thorn-stick she carried, "but one can do so little. And I don't know anything; not even what I want myself."
"No; one can do next to nothing. And systems and theories don't matter, or, at least, very little. Yet, when you and Aldous are together, there will be more chance ofdoing, for you than for most. You will be two happy and powerful people! His power will be doubled by happiness; I have always known that."
Marcella was seized with shyness, looked away, and did not know what to answer. At last she said abruptly—her head still turned to the woods on her left—
"Are you sure he is going to be happy?"
"Shall I produce his letter to me?" he said, bantering—"or letters? For I knew a great deal about you before October 5" (their engagement-day), "and suspected what was going to happen long before Aldous did. No; after all, no! Those letters are my last bit of the old friendship. But the new began that same day," he hastened to add, smiling: "It may be richer than the old; I don't know. It depends on you."
"I don't think—I am a very satisfactory friend," said Marcella, still awkward, and speaking with difficulty.
"Well, let me find out, won't you? I don't think Aldous would call me exacting. I believe he would give me a decent character, though I tease him a good deal. You must let me tell you sometime what he did for me—what he was to me—at Cambridge? I shall always feel sorry for Aldous's wife that she did not know him at college."
A shock went through Marcella at the word—that tremendous word—wife.As Hallin said it, there was something intolerable in the claim it made!
"I should like you to tell me," she said faintly. Then she added, with more energy and a sudden advance of friendliness, "But you really must come in and rest. Aldous told me he thought the walk from the Court was too much for you. Shall we take this short way?"
And she opened a little gate leading to a door at the side of the house through the Cedar Garden. The narrow path only admitted of single file, and Hallin followed her, admiring her tall youth and the fine black and white of her head and cheek as she turned every now and then to speak to him. He realised more vividly than before the rare, exciting elements of her beauty, and the truth in Aldous's comparison of her to one of the tall women in a Florentine fresco. But he felt himself a good deal baffled by her, all the same. In some ways, so far as any man who is not the lover can understand such things, he understood why Aldous had fallen in love with her; in others, she bore no relation whatever to the woman his thoughts had been shaping all these years as his friend's fit and natural wife.
Luncheon passed as easily as any meal could be expected to do, of which Mr. Boyce was partial president. During the preceding month or two he had definitely assumed the character of an invalid, although to inexperienced eyes like Marcella's there did not seem to be very much the matter. But, whatever the facts might be, Mr. Boyce's adroit use of them had made a great difference to his position in his own household. His wife's sarcastic freedom of manner was less apparent; and he was obviously less in awe of her. Meanwhile he was as sore as ever towards the Raeburns, and no more inclined to take any particular pleasure in Marcella's prospects, or to make himself agreeable towards his future son-in-law. He and Mrs. Boyce had been formally asked in Miss Raeburn's best hand to the Court ball, but he had at once snappishly announced his intention of staying at home. Marcella sometimes looked back with astonishment to his eagerness for social notice when they first came to Mellor. Clearly the rising irritability of illness had made it doubly unpleasant to him to owe all that he was likely to get on that score to his own daughter; and, moreover, he had learnt to occupy himself more continuously on his own land and with his own affairs.
As to the state of the village, neither Marcella's entreaties nor reproaches had any effect upon him. When it appeared certain that he would be summoned for some specially flagrant piece of neglect he would spend a few shillings on repairs; otherwise not a farthing. All that filial softening towards him of which Marcella had been conscious in the early autumn had died away in her. She said to herself now plainly and bitterly that it was a misfortune to belong to him; and she would have pitied her mother most heartily if her mother had ever allowed her the smallest expression of such a feeling. As it was, she was left to wonder and chafe at her mother's new-born mildness.
In the drawing-room, after luncheon, Hallin came up to Marcella in a corner, and, smiling, drew from his pocket a folded sheet of foolscap.
"I made Aldous give me his speech to show you, before to-morrow night," he said. "He would hardly let me take it, said it was stupid, and that you would not agree with it. But I wanted you to see how he does these things. He speaks now, on an average, two or three times a week. Each time, even for an audience of a score or two of village folk, he writes out what he has to say. Then he speaks it entirely without notes. In this way, though he has not much natural gift, he is making himself gradually an effective and practical speaker. The danger with him, of course, is lest he should be over-subtle and over-critical—not simple and popular enough."
Marcella took the paper half unwillingly and glanced over it in silence.
"You are sorry he is a Tory, is that it?" he said to her, but in a lower voice, and sitting down beside her.
Mrs. Boyce, just catching the words from where she sat with her work, at the further side of the room, looked up with a double wonder—wonder at Marcella's folly, wonder still more at the deference with which men like Aldous Raeburn and Hallin treated her. It was inevitable, of course—youth and beauty rule the world. But the mother, under no spell herself, and of keen, cool wit, resented the intellectual confusion, the lowering of standards involved.
"I suppose so," said Marcella, stupidly, in answer to Hallin's question, fidgeting the papers under her hand. Then his curious confessor's gift, his quiet questioning look with its sensitive human interest to all before him, told upon her.
"I am sorry he does not look further ahead, to the great changes that must come," she added hurriedly. "This is all about details, palliatives. I want him to be more impatient."
"Great political changes you mean?"
She nodded; then added—
"But only for the sake, of course, of great social changes to come after."
He pondered a moment.
"Aldous has never believed ingreatchanges coming suddenly. He constantly looks upon me as rash in the thingsIadopt and believe in. But for the contriving, unceasing effort of every day to make that part of the social machine in which a man finds himself work better and more equitably, I have never seen Aldous's equal—for the steady passion, the persistence, of it."
She looked up. His pale face had taken to itself glow and fire; his eyes were full of strenuous, nay, severe expression. Her foolish pride rebelled a little.
"Of course, I haven't seen much of that yet," she said slowly.
His look for a moment was indignant, incredulous, then melted into a charming eagerness.
"But you will! naturally you will!—see everything. I hug myself sometimes now for pure pleasure that some one besides his grandfather and I will know what Aldous is and does. Oh! the people on the estate know; his neighbours are beginning to know; and now that he is going into Parliament, the country will know some day, if work and high intelligence have the power I believe. But I am impatient! In the first place—I may say it to you, Miss Boyce!—I want Aldous to come out of thatmannerof his to strangers, which is the only bit of the true Tory in him;youcan get rid of it, no one else can—How long shall I give you?—And in the next, I want the world not to be wasting itself on baser stuff when it might be praising Aldous!"
"Does he mean Mr. Wharton?" thought Marcella, quickly. "But this world—our world—hates him and runs him down."
But she had no time to answer, for the door opened to admit Aldous, flushed and bright-eyed, looking round the room immediately for her, and bearing a parcel in his left hand.
"Does she love him at all?" thought Hallin, with a nervous stiffening of all his lithe frame, as he walked away to talk to Mrs. Boyce, "or, in spite of all her fine talk, is she just marrying him for his money and position!"
Meanwhile, Aldous had drawn Marcella into the Stone Parlour and was standing by the fire with his arm covetously round her.
"I have lost two hours with you I might have had, just because a tiresome man missed his train. Make up for it by liking these pretty things a little, for my sake and my mother's."
He opened the jeweller's case, took out the fine old pearls—necklace and bracelets—it contained, and put them into her hand. They were his first considerable gift to her, and had been chosen for association's sake, seeing that his mother had also worn them before her marriage.
She flushed first of all with a natural pleasure, the girl delighting in her gaud. Then she allowed herself to be kissed, which was, indeed, inevitable. Finally she turned them over and over in her hands; and he began to be puzzled by her.
"They are much too good for me. I don't know whether you ought to give me such precious things. I am dreadfully careless and forgetful. Mamma always says so."
"I shall want you to wear them so often that you won't have a chance of forgetting them," he said gaily.
"Will you? Will you want me to wear them so often?" she asked, in an odd voice. "Anyway, I should like to have just these, and nothing else. I am glad that we know nobody, and have no friends, and that I shall have so few presents. You won't give me many jewels, will you?" she said suddenly, insistently, turning to him. "I shouldn't know what to do with them. I used to have a magpie's wish for them; and now—I don't know, but they don't give me pleasure. Not these, of course—not these!" she added hurriedly, taking them up and beginning to fasten the bracelets on her wrists.
Aldous looked perplexed.
"My darling!" he said, half laughing, and in the tone of the apologist, "You know wehavesuch a lot of things. And I am afraid my grandfather will want to give them all to you. Need one think so much about it? It isn't as though they had to be bought fresh. They go with pretty gowns, don't they, and other people like to see them?"
"No, but it's what they imply—the wealth—thehavingso much while other people want so much. Things begin to oppress me so!" she broke out, instinctively moving away from him that she might express herself with more energy. "I like luxuries so desperately, and when I get them I seem to myself now the vulgarest creature alive, who has no right to an opinion or an enthusiasm, or anything else worth having. You must not let me like them—you must help me not to care about them!"
Raeburn's eye as he looked at her was tenderness itself. He could of course neither mock her, nor put what she said aside. This question she had raised, this most thorny of all the personal questions of the present—the ethical relation of the individual to the World's Fair and its vanities—was, as it happened, a question far more sternly and robustly real to him than it was to her. Every word in his few sentences, as they stood talking by the fire, bore on it for a practised ear the signs of a long wrestle of the heart.
But to Marcella it sounded tame; her ear was haunted by the fragments of another tune which she seemed to be perpetually trying to recall and piece together. Aldous's slow minor made her impatient.
He turned presently to ask her what she had been doing with her morning—asking her with a certain precision, and observing her attentively. She replied that she had been showing Mr. Wharton the house, that he had walked down with her to the village, and was gone to a meeting at Widrington. Then she remarked that he was very good company, and very clever, but dreadfully sure of his own opinion. Finally she laughed, and said drily:
"There will be no putting him down all the same. I haven't told anybody yet, but he saved my life this morning."
Aldous caught her wrists.
"Saved your life! Dear—What do you mean?"
She explained, giving the little incident all—perhaps more than—its dramatic due. He listened with evident annoyance, and stood pondering when she came to an end.
"So I shall be expected to take quite a different view of him henceforward?" he inquired at last, looking round at her, with a very forced smile.
"I am sure I don't know that it matters to him what view anybody takes of him," she cried, flushing. "He certainly takes the frankest views of other people, and expresses them."
And while she played with the pearls in their box she gave a vivid account of her morning's talk with the Radical candidate for West Brookshire, and of their village expedition.
There was a certain relief in describing the scorn with which her acts and ideals had been treated; and, underneath, a woman's curiosity as to how Aldous would take it.
"I don't know what business he had to express himself so frankly," said Aldous, turning to the fire and carefully putting it together. "He hardly knows you—it was, I think, an impertinence."
He stood upright, with his back to the hearth, a strong, capable, frowning Englishman, very much on his dignity. Such a moment must surely have become him in the eyes of a girl that loved him. Marcella proved restive under it.
"No; it's very natural," she protested quickly. "When people are so much in earnest they don't stop to think about impertinence! I never met any one who dug up one's thoughts by the roots as he does."
Aldous was startled by her flush, her sudden attitude of opposition. His intermittent lack of readiness overtook him, and there was an awkward silence. Then, pulling himself together with a strong hand, he left the subject and began to talk of her straw-plaiting scheme, of the Gairsley meeting, and of Hallin. But in the middle Marcella unexpectedly said:
"I wish you would tell me, seriously, what reasons you have for not liking Mr. Wharton?—other than politics, I mean?"
Her black eyes fixed him with a keen insistence.
He was silent a moment with surprise; then he said:
"I had rather not rake up old scores."
She shrugged her shoulders, and he was roused to come and put his arm round her again, she shrinking and turning her reddened face away.
"Dearest," he said, "you shall put me in charity with all the world. But the worst of it is," he added, half laughing, "that I don't see how I am to help disliking him doubly henceforward for having had the luck to put that fire out instead of me!"