“I said: What is the use of our being what we are, if we can’t love whom we like?”
“Love!” said Lady Casterley; “I was talking of marriage.”
“I am glad you admit the distinction, Granny dear.”
“You are pleased to be sarcastic,” said Lady Casterley. “Listen to me! It’s the greatest nonsense to suppose that people in our caste are free to do as they please. The sooner you realize that, the better, Babs. I am talking to you seriously. The preservation of our position as a class depends on our observing certain decencies. What do you imagine would happen to the Royal Family if they were allowed to marry as they liked? All this marrying with Gaiety girls, and American money, and people with pasts, and writers, and so forth, is most damaging. There’s far too much of it, and it ought to be stopped. It may be tolerated for a few cranks, or silly young men, and these new women, but for Eustace – ” Lady Casterley paused again, and her fingers pinched Barbara’s arm, “or for you – there’s only one sort of marriage possible. As for Eustace, I shall speak to this good lady, and see that he doesn’t get entangled further.”
Absorbed in the intensity of her purpose, she did not observe a peculiar little smile playing round Barbara’s lips.
“You had better speak to Nature, too, Granny!”
Lady Casterley stopped short, and looked up in her granddaughter’s face.
“Now what do you mean by that?” she said “Tell me!”
But noticing that Barbara’s lips had closed tightly, she gave her arm a hard – if unintentional-pinch, and walked on.
CHAPTER XII
Lady Casterley’s rather malicious diagnosis of Audrey Noel was correct. The unencumbered woman was up and in her garden when Barbara and her grandmother appeared at the Wicket gate; but being near the lime-tree at the far end she did not hear the rapid colloquy which passed between them.
“You are going to be good, Granny?”
“As to that – it will depend.”
“You promised.”
“H’m!”
Lady Casterley could not possibly have provided herself with a better introduction than Barbara, whom Mrs. Noel never met without the sheer pleasure felt by a sympathetic woman when she sees embodied in someone else that ‘joy in life’ which Fate has not permitted to herself.
She came forward with her head a little on one side, a trick of hers not at all affected, and stood waiting.
The unembarrassed Barbara began at once:
“We’ve just had an encounter with a bull. This is my grandmother, Lady Casterley.”
The little old lady’s demeanour, confronted with this very pretty face and figure was a thought less autocratic and abrupt than usual. Her shrewd eyes saw at once that she had no common adventuress to deal with. She was woman of the world enough, too, to know that ‘birth’ was not what it had been in her young days, that even money was rather rococo, and that good looks, manners, and a knowledge of literature, art, and music (and this woman looked like one of that sort), were often considered socially more valuable. She was therefore both wary and affable.
“How do you do?” she said. “I have heard of you. May we sit down for a minute in your garden? The bull was a wretch!”
But even in speaking, she was uneasily conscious that Mrs. Noel’s clear eyes were seeing very well what she had come for. The look in them indeed was almost cynical; and in spite of her sympathetic murmurs, she did not somehow seem to believe in the bull. This was disconcerting. Why had Barbara condescended to mention the wretched brute? And she decided to take him by the horns.
“Babs,” she said, “go to the Inn and order me a ‘fly.’ I shall drive back, I feel very shaky,” and, as Mrs. Noel offered to send her maid, she added:
“No, no, my granddaughter will go.”
Barbara having departed with a quizzical look, Lady Casterley patted the rustic seat, and said:
“Do come and sit down, I want to talk to you:”
Mrs. Noel obeyed. And at once Lady Casterley perceived that “she had a most difficult task before her. She had not expected a woman with whom one could take no liberties. Those clear dark eyes, and that soft, perfectly graceful manner – to a person so ‘sympathetic’ one should be able to say anything, and – one couldn’t! It was awkward. And suddenly she noticed that Mrs. Noel was sitting perfectly upright, as upright – more upright, than she was herself. A bad, sign – a very bad sign! Taking out her handkerchief, she put it to her lips.
“I suppose you think,” she said, “that we were not chased by a bull.”
“I am sure you were.”
“Indeed! Ah! But I’ve something else to talk to you about.”
Mrs. Noel’s face quivered back, as a flower might when it was going to be plucked; and again Lady Casterley put her handkerchief to her lips. This time she rubbed them hard. There was nothing to come off; to do so, therefore, was a satisfaction.
“I am an old woman,” she said, “and you mustn’t mind what I say.”
Mrs. Noel did not answer, but looked straight at her visitor; to whom it seemed suddenly that this was another person. What was it about that face, staring at her! In a weird way it reminded her of a child that one had hurt – with those great eyes and that soft hair, and the mouth thin, in a line, all of a sudden. And as if it had been jerked out of her, she said:
“I don’t want to hurt you, my dear. It’s about my grandson, of course.”
But Mrs. Noel made neither sign nor motion; and the feeling of irritation which so rapidly attacks the old when confronted by the unexpected, came to Lady Casterley’s aid.
“His name,” she said, “is being coupled with yours in a way that’s doing him a great deal of harm. You don’t wish to injure him, I’m sure.”
Mrs. Noel shook her head, and Lady Casterley went on:
“I don’t know what they’re not saying since the evening your friend Mr. Courtier hurt his knee. Miltoun has been most unwise. You had not perhaps realized that.”
Mrs. Noel’s answer was bitterly distinct:
“I didn’t know anyone was sufficiently interested in my doings.”
Lady Casterley suffered a gesture of exasperation to escape her.
“Good heavens!” she said; “every common person is interested in a woman whose position is anomalous. Living alone as you do, and not a widow, you’re fair game for everybody, especially in the country.”
Mrs. Noel’s sidelong glance, very clear and cynical, seemed to say: “Even for you.”
“I am not entitled to ask your story,” Lady Casterley went on, “but if you make mysteries you must expect the worst interpretation put on them. My grandson is a man of the highest principle; he does not see things with the eyes of the world, and that should have made you doubly careful not to compromise him, especially at a time like this.”
Mrs. Noel smiled. This smile startled Lady Casterley; it seemed, by concealing everything, to reveal depths of strength and subtlety. Would the woman never show her hand? And she said abruptly:
“Anything serious, of course, is out of the question.”
“Quite.”
That word, which of all others seemed the right one, was spoken so that Lady Casterley did not know in the least what it meant. Though occasionally employing irony, she detested it in others. No woman should be allowed to use it as a weapon! But in these days, when they were so foolish as to want votes, one never knew what women would be at. This particular woman, however, did not look like one of that sort. She was feminine – very feminine – the sort of creature that spoiled men by being too nice to them. And though she had come determined to find out all about everything and put an end to it, she saw Barbara re-entering the wicket gate with considerable relief.
“I am ready to walk home now,” she said. And getting up from the rustic seat, she made Mrs. Noel a satirical little bow.
“Thank you for letting me rest. Give me your arm, child.”
Barbara gave her arm, and over her shoulder threw a swift smile at Mrs. Noel, who did not answer it, but stood looking quietly after them, her eyes immensely dark and large.
Out in the lane Lady Casterley walked on, very silent, digesting her emotions.
“What about the ‘fly,’ Granny?”
“What ‘fly’?”
“The one you told me to order.”
“You don’t mean to say that you took me seriously?”
“No,” said Barbara.
“Ha!”
They proceeded some little way farther before Lady Casterley said suddenly:
“She is deep.”
“And dark,” said Barbara. “I am afraid you were not good!”
Lady Casterley glanced upwards.
“I detest this habit,” she said, “amongst you young people, of taking nothing seriously. Not even bulls,” she added, with a grim smile.
Barbara threw back her head and sighed.
“Nor ‘flys,” she said.
Lady Casterley saw that she had closed her eyes and opened her lips. And she thought:
“She’s a very beautiful girl. I had no idea she was so beautiful – but too big!” And she added aloud:
“Shut your mouth! You will get one down!”
They spoke no more till they had entered the avenue; then Lady Casterley said sharply:
“Who is this coming down the drive?”
“Mr. Courtier, I think.”
“What does he mean by it, with that leg?”
“He is coming to talk to you, Granny.”
Lady Casterley stopped short.
“You are a cat,” she said; “a sly cat. Now mind, Babs, I won’t have it!”
“No, darling,” murmured Barbara; “you shan’t have it – I’ll take him off your hands.”
“What does your mother mean,” stammered Lady Casterley, “letting you grow up like this! You’re as bad as she was at your age!”
“Worse!” said Barbara. “I dreamed last night that I could fly!”
“If you try that,” said Lady Casterley grimly, “you’ll soon come to grief. Good-morning, sir; you ought to be in bed!”
Courtier raised his hat.
“Surely it is not for me to be where you are not!” And he added gloomily: “The war scare’s dead!”
“Ah!” said Lady Casterley: “your occupation’s gone then. You’ll go back to London now, I suppose.” Looking suddenly at Barbara she saw that the girl’s eyes were half-closed, and that she was smiling; it seemed to Lady Casterley too or was it fancy? – that she shook her head.
CHAPTER XIII
Thanks to Lady Valleys, a patroness of birds, no owl was ever shot on the Monkland Court estate, and those soft-flying spirits of the dusk hooted and hunted, to the great benefit of all except the creeping voles. By every farm, cottage, and field, they passed invisible, quartering the dark air. Their voyages of discovery stretched up on to the moor as far as the wild stone man, whose origin their wisdom perhaps knew. Round Audrey Noel’s cottage they were as thick as thieves, for they had just there two habitations in a long, old, holly-grown wall, and almost seemed to be guarding the mistress of that thatched dwelling – so numerous were their fluttering rushes, so tenderly prolonged their soft sentinel callings. Now that the weather was really warm, so that joy of life was in the voles, they found those succulent creatures of an extraordinarily pleasant flavour, and on them each pair was bringing up a family of exceptionally fine little owls, very solemn, with big heads, bright large eyes, and wings as yet only able to fly downwards. There was scarcely any hour from noon of the day (for some of them had horns) to the small sweet hours when no one heard them, that they forgot to salute the very large, quiet, wingless owl whom they could espy moving about by day above their mouse-runs, or preening her white and sometimes blue and sometimes grey feathers morning and evening in a large square hole high up in the front wall. And they could not understand at all why no swift depredating graces nor any habit of long soft hooting belonged to that lady-bird.
On the evening of the day when she received that early morning call, as soon as dusk had fallen, wrapped in a long thin cloak, with black lace over her dark hair, Audrey Noel herself fluttered out into the lanes, as if to join the grave winged hunters of the invisible night. Those far, continual sounds, not stilled in the country till long after the sun dies, had but just ceased from haunting the air, where the late May-scent clung as close as fragrance clings to a woman’s robe. There was just the barking of a dog, the boom of migrating chafers, the song of the stream, and of the owls, to proclaim the beating in the heart of this sweet Night. Nor was there any light by which Night’s face could be seen; it was hidden, anonymous; so that when a lamp in a cottage threw a blink over the opposite bank, it was as if some wandering painter had wrought a picture of stones and leaves on the black air, framed it in purple, and left it hanging. Yet, if it could only have been come at, the Night was as full of emotion as this woman who wandered, shrinking away against the banks if anyone passed, stopping to cool her hot face with the dew on the ferns, walking swiftly to console her warm heart. Anonymous Night seeking for a symbol could have found none better than this errant figure, to express its hidden longings, the fluttering, unseen rushes of its dark wings, and all its secret passion of revolt against its own anonymity…
At Monkland Court, save for little Ann, the morning passed but dumbly, everyone feeling that something must be done, and no one knowing what. At lunch, the only allusion to the situation had been Harbinger’s inquiry:
“When does Miltoun return?”
He had wired, it seemed, to say that he was motoring down that night.
“The sooner the better,” Sir William murmured: “we’ve still a fortnight.”
But all had felt from the tone in which he spoke these words, how serious was the position in the eyes of that experienced campaigner.
What with the collapse of the war scare, and this canard about Mrs. Noel, there was indeed cause for alarm.
The afternoon post brought a letter from Lord Valleys marked Express.
Lady Valleys opened it with a slight grimace, which deepened as she read. Her handsome, florid face wore an expression of sadness seldom seen there. There was, in fact, more than a touch of dignity in her reception of the unpalatable news.
“Eustace declares his intention of marrying this Mrs. Noel” – so ran her husband’s letter – “I know, unfortunately, of no way in which I can prevent him. If you can discover legitimate means of dissuasion, it would be well to use them. My dear, it’s the very devil.”
It was the very devil! For, if Miltoun had already made up his mind to marry her, without knowledge of the malicious rumour, what would not be his determination now? And the woman of the world rose up in Lady Valleys. This marriage must not come off. It was contrary to almost every instinct of one who was practical not only by character, but by habit of life and training. Her warm and full-blooded nature had a sneaking sympathy with love and pleasure, and had she not been practical, she might have found this side of her a serious drawback to the main tenor of a life so much in view of the public eye. Her consciousness of this danger in her own case made her extremely alive to the risks of an undesirable connection – especially if it were a marriage – to any public man. At the same time the mother-heart in her was stirred. Eustace had never been so deep in her affection as Bertie, still he was her first-born; and in face of news which meant that he was lost to her – for this must indeed be ‘the marriage of two minds’ (or whatever that quotation was) – she felt strangely jealous of a woman, who had won her son’s love, when she herself had never won it. The aching of this jealousy gave her face for a moment almost a spiritual expression, then passed away into impatience. Why should he marry her? Things could be arranged. People spoke of it already as an illicit relationship; well then, let people have what they had invented. If the worst came to the worst, this was not the only constituency in England; and a dissolution could not be far off. Better anything than a marriage which would handicap him all his life! But would it be so great a handicap? After all, beauty counted for much! If only her story were not too conspicuous! But what was her story? Not to know it was absurd! That was the worst of people who were not in Society, it was so difficult to find out! And there rose in her that almost brutal resentment, which ferments very rapidly in those who from their youth up have been hedged round with the belief that they and they alone are the whole of the world. In this mood Lady Valleys passed the letter to her daughters. They read, and in turn handed it to Bertie, who in silence returned it to his mother.
But that evening, in the billiard-room, having manoeuvred to get him to herself, Barbara said to Courtier:
“I wonder if you will answer me a question, Mr. Courtier?”
“If I may, and can.”
Her low-cut dress was of yew-green, with, little threads of flame-colour, matching her hair, so that there was about her a splendour of darkness and whiteness and gold, almost dazzling; and she stood very still, leaning back against the lighter green of the billiard-table, grasping its edge so tightly that the smooth strong backs of her hands quivered.
“We have just heard that Miltoun is going to ask Mrs. Noel to marry him. People are never mysterious, are they, without good reason? I wanted you to tell me – who is she?”
“I don’t think I quite grasp the situation,” murmured Courtier. “You said – to marry him?”
Seeing that she had put out her hand, as if begging for the truth, he added: “How can your brother marry her – she’s married!”
“Oh!”
“I’d no idea you didn’t know that much.”
“We thought there was a divorce.”
The expression of which mention has been made – that peculiar white-hot sardonically jolly look – visited Courtier’s face at once. “Hoist with their own petard! The usual thing. Let a pretty woman live alone – the tongues of men will do the rest.”
“It was not so bad as that,” said Barbara dryly; “they said she had divorced her husband.”
Caught out thus characteristically riding past the hounds Courtier bit his lips.
“You had better hear the story now. Her father was a country parson, and a friend of my father’s; so that I’ve known her from a child. Stephen Lees Noel was his curate. It was a ‘snap’ marriage – she was only twenty, and had met hardly any men. Her father was ill and wanted to see her settled before he died. Well, she found out almost directly, like a good many other people, that she’d made an utter mistake.”
Barbara came a little closer.
“What was the man like?”
“Not bad in his way, but one of those narrow, conscientious pig-headed fellows who make the most trying kind of husband – bone egoistic. A parson of that type has no chance at all. Every mortal thing he has to do or say helps him to develop his worst points. The wife of a man like that’s no better than a slave. She began to show the strain of it at last; though she’s the sort who goes on till she snaps. It took him four years to realize. Then, the question was, what were they to do? He’s a very High Churchman, with all their feeling about marriage; but luckily his pride was wounded. Anyway, they separated two years ago; and there she is, left high and dry. People say it was her fault. She ought to have known her own mind – at twenty! She ought to have held on and hidden it up somehow. Confound their thick-skinned charitable souls, what do they know of how a sensitive woman suffers? Forgive me, Lady Barbara – I get hot over this.” He was silent; then seeing her eyes fixed on him, went on: “Her mother died when she was born, her father soon after her marriage. She’s enough money of her own, luckily, to live on quietly. As for him, he changed his parish and runs one somewhere in the Midlands. One’s sorry for the poor devil, too, of course! They never see each other; and, so far as I know, they don’t correspond. That, Lady Barbara, is the simple history.”
Barbara, said, “Thank you,” and turned away; and he heard her mutter: “What a shame!”
But he could not tell whether it was Mrs. Noel’s fate, or the husband’s fate, or the thought of Miltoun that had moved her to those words.
She puzzled him by her self-possession, so almost hard, her way of refusing to show feeling.’ Yet what a woman she would make if the drying curse of high-caste life were not allowed to stereotype and shrivel her! If enthusiasm were suffered to penetrate and fertilize her soul! She reminded him of a great tawny lily. He had a vision of her, as that flower, floating, freed of roots and the mould of its cultivated soil, in the liberty of the impartial air. What a passionate and noble thing she might become! What radiance and perfume she would exhale! A spirit Fleur-de-Lys! Sister to all the noble flowers of light that inhabited the wind!
Leaning in the deep embrasure of his window, he looked at anonymous Night. He could hear the owls hoot, and feel a heart beating out there somewhere in the darkness, but there came no answer to his wondering. Would she – this great tawny lily of a girl – ever become unconscious of her environment, not in manner merely, but in the very soul, so that she might be just a woman, breathing, suffering, loving, and rejoicing with the poet soul of all mankind? Would she ever be capable of riding out with the little company of big hearts, naked of advantage? Courtier had not been inside a church for twenty years, having long felt that he must not enter the mosques of his country without putting off the shoes of freedom, but he read the Bible, considering it a very great poem. And the old words came haunting him: ‘Verily I say unto you, It is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.’ And now, looking into the Night, whose darkness seemed to hold the answer to all secrets, he tried to read the riddle of this girl’s future, with which there seemed so interwoven that larger enigma, how far the spirit can free itself, in this life, from the matter that encompasseth.
The Night whispered suddenly, and low down, as if rising from the sea, came the moon, dropping a wan robe of light till she gleamed out nude against the sky-curtain. Night was no longer anonymous. There in the dusky garden the statue of Diana formed slowly before his eyes, and behind her – as it were, her temple – rose the tall spire of the cypress tree.