Seeing it for the first time, Courtier said:
“Fine thing – that! Only wants a soul.”
Miltoun nodded:
“Sit down,” he said.
Courtier sat down.
There followed one of those silences in which men whose spirits, though different, have a certain bigness in common – can say so much to one another:
At last Miltoun spoke:
“I have been living in the clouds, it seems. You are her oldest friend. The immediate question is how to make it easiest for her in face of this miserable rumour!”
Not even Courtier himself could have put such whip-lash sting into the word ‘miserable.’
He answered:
“Oh! take no notice of that. Let them stew in their own juice. She won’t care.”
Miltoun listened, not moving a muscle of his face.
“Your friends here,” went on Courtier with a touch of contempt, “seem in a flutter. Don’t let them do anything, don’t let them say a word. Treat the thing as it deserves to be treated. It’ll die.”
Miltoun, however, smiled.
“I’m not sure,” he said, “that the consequences will be as you think, but I shall do as you say.”
“As for your candidature, any man with a spark of generosity in his soul will rally to you because of it.”
“Possibly,” said Miltoun. “It will lose me the election, for all that.”
Then, dimly conscious that their last words had revealed the difference of their temperaments and creeds, they stared at one another.
“No,” said Courtier, “I never will believe that people can be so mean!”
“Until they are.”
“Anyway, though we get at it in different ways, we agree.”
Miltoun leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece, and shading his face with his hand, said:
“You know her story. Is there any way out of that, for her?”
On Courtier’s face was the look which so often came when he was speaking for one of his lost causes – as if the fumes from a fire in his heart had mounted to his head.
“Only the way,” he answered calmly, “that I should take if I were you.”
“And that?”
“The law into your own hands.”
Miltoun unshaded his face. His gaze seemed to have to travel from an immense distance before it reached Courtier. He answered:
“Yes, I thought you would say that.”
CHAPTER XVII
When everything, that night, was quiet, Barbara, her hair hanging loose outside her dressing gown, slipped from her room into the dim corridor. With bare feet thrust into fur-crowned slippers which made no noise, she stole along looking at door after door. Through a long Gothic window, uncurtained, the mild moonlight was coming. She stopped just where that moonlight fell, and tapped. There came no answer. She opened the door a little way, and said:
“Are you asleep, Eusty?”
There still came no answer, and she went in.
The curtains were drawn, but a chink of moonlight peering through fell on the bed. This was empty. Barbara stood uncertain, listening. In the heart of that darkness there seemed to be, not sound, but, as it were, the muffled soul of sound, a sort of strange vibration, like that of a flame noiselessly licking the air. She put her hand to her heart, which beat as though it would leap through the thin silk covering. From what corner of the room was that mute tremor coming? Stealing to the window, she parted the curtains, and stared back into the shadows. There, on the far side, lying on the floor with his arms pressed tightly round his head and his face to the wall, was Miltoun. Barbara let fall the curtains, and stood breathless, with such a queer sensation in her breast as she had never felt; a sense of something outraged-of scarred pride. It was gone at once, in a rush of pity. She stepped forward quickly in the darkness, was visited by fear, and stopped. He had seemed absolutely himself all the evening. A little more talkative, perhaps, a little more caustic than usual. And now to find him like this! There was no great share of reverence in Barbara, but what little she possessed had always been kept for her eldest brother. He had impressed her, from a child, with his aloofness, and she had been proud of kissing him because he never seemed to let anybody else do so. Those caresses, no doubt, had the savour of conquest; his face had been the undiscovered land for her lips. She loved him as one loves that which ministers to one’s pride; had for him, too, a touch of motherly protection, as for a doll that does not get on too well with the other dolls; and withal a little unaccustomed awe.
Dared she now plunge in on this private agony? Could she have borne that anyone should see herself thus prostrate? He had not heard her, and she tried to regain the door. But a board creaked; she heard him move, and flinging away her fears, said: “It’s me! Babs!” and dropped on her knees beside him. If it had not been so pitch dark she could never have done that. She tried at once to take his head into her arms, but could not see it, and succeeded indifferently. She could but stroke his arm continually, wondering whether he would hate her ever afterwards, and blessing the darkness, which made it all seem as though it were not happening, yet so much more poignant than if it had happened. Suddenly she felt him slip away from her, and getting up, stole out. After the darkness of that room, the corridor seemed full of grey filmy light, as though dream-spiders had joined the walls with their cobwebs, in which innumerable white moths, so tiny that they could not be seen, were struggling. Small eerie noises crept about. A sudden frightened longing for warmth, and light, and colour came to Barbara. She fled back to her room. But she could not sleep. That terrible mute unseen vibration in the unlighted room-like the noiseless licking of a flame at bland air; the touch of Miltoun’s hand, hot as fire against her cheek and neck; the whole tremulous dark episode, possessed her through and through. Thus had the wayward force of Love chosen to manifest itself to her in all its wistful violence. At this fiat sight of the red flower of passion her cheeks burned; up and down her, between the cool sheets, little hot cruel shivers ran; she lay, wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling. She thought, of the woman whom he so loved, and wondered if she too were lying sleepless, flung down on a bare floor, trying to cool her forehead and lips against a cold wall.
Not for hours did she fall asleep, and then dreamed of running desperately through fields full of tall spiky asphodel-like flowers, and behind her was running herself.
In the morning she dreaded to go down. Could she meet Miltoun now that she knew of the passion in him, and he knew that she knew it? She had her breakfast brought upstairs. Before she had finished Miltoun himself came in. He looked more than usually self-contained, not to say ironic, and only remarked: “If you’re going to ride you might take this note for me over to old Haliday at Wippincott.” By his coming she knew that he was saying all he ever meant to say about that dark incident. And sympathizing completely with a reticence which she herself felt to be the only possible way out for both of them, Barbara looked at him gratefully, took the note and said: “All right!”
Then, after glancing once or twice round the room, Miltoun went away.
He left her restless, divested of the cloak ‘of course,’ in a strange mood of questioning, ready as it were for the sight of the magpie wings of Life, and to hear their quick flutterings. Talk jarred on her that morning, with its sameness and attachment to the facts of the present and the future, its essential concern with the world as it was-she avoided all companionship on her ride. She wanted to be told of things that were not, yet might be, to peep behind the curtain, and see the very spirit of mortal happenings escaped from prison. And this was all so unusual with Barbara, whose body was too perfect, too sanely governed by the flow of her blood not to revel in the moment and the things thereof. She knew it was unusual. After her ride she avoided lunch, and walked out into the lanes. But about two o’clock, feeling very hungry, she went into a farmhouse, and asked for milk. There, in the kitchen, like young jackdaws in a row with their mouths a little open, were the three farm boys, seated on a bench gripped to the alcove of the great fire-way, munching bread and cheese. Above their heads a gun was hung, trigger upwards, and two hams were mellowing in the smoke. At the feet of a black-haired girl, who was slicing onions, lay a sheep dog of tremendous age, with nose stretched out on paws, and in his little blue eyes a gleam of approaching immortality. They all stared at, Barbara. And one of the boys, whose face had the delightful look of him who loses all sense of other things in what he is seeing at the moment, smiled, and continued smiling, with sheer pleasure. Barbara drank her milk, and wandered out again; passing through a gate at the bottom of a steep, rocky tor, she sat down on a sun-warmed stone. The sunlight fell greedily on her here, like an invisible swift hand touching her all over, and specially caressing her throat and face. A very gentle wind, which dived over the tor tops into the young fern; stole down at her, spiced with the fern sap. All was warmth and peace, and only the cuckoos on the far thorn trees – as though stationed by the Wistful Master himself – were there to disturb her heart: But all the sweetness and piping of the day did not soothe her. In truth, she could not have said what was the matter, except that she felt so discontented, and as it were empty of all but a sort of aching impatience with – what exactly she could not say. She had that rather dreadful feeling of something slipping by which she could not catch. It was so new to her to feel like that – for no girl was less given to moods and repinings. And all the time a sort of contempt for this soft and almost sentimental feeling made her tighten her lips and frown. She felt distrustful and sarcastic towards a mood so utterly subversive of that fetich ‘Hardness,’ to the unconscious worship of which she had been brought up. To stand no sentiment or nonsense either in herself or others was the first article of faith; not to slop-over anywhere. So that to feel as she did was almost horrible to Barbara. Yet she could not get rid of the sensation. With sudden recklessness she tried giving herself up to it entirely. Undoing the scarf at her throat, she let the air play on her bared neck, and stretched out her arms as if to hug the wind to her; then, with a sigh, she got up, and walked on. And now she began thinking of ‘Anonyma’; turning her position over and over. The idea that anyone young and beautiful should thus be clipped off in her life, roused her impatient indignation. Let them try it with her! They would soon see! For all her cultivated ‘hardness,’ Barbara really hated anything to suffer. It seemed to her unnatural. She never went to that hospital where Lady Valleys had a ward, nor to their summer camp for crippled children, nor to help in their annual concert for sweated workers, without a feeling of such vehement pity that it was like being seized by the throat: Once, when she had been singing to them, the rows of wan, pinched faces below had been too much for her; she had broken down, forgotten her words, lost memory of the tune, and just ended her performance with a smile, worth more perhaps to her audience than those lost verses. She never came away from such sights and places without a feeling of revolt amounting almost to rage; and she only continued to go because she dimly knew that it was expected of her not to turn her back on such things, in her section of Society.
But it was not this feeling which made her stop before Mrs. Noel’s cottage; nor was it curiosity. It was a quite simple desire to squeeze her hand.
‘Anonyma’ seemed taking her trouble as only those women who are no good at self-assertion can take things – doing exactly as she would have done if nothing had happened; a little paler than usual, with lips pressed rather tightly together.
They neither of them spoke at first, but stood looking, not at each other’s faces, but at each other’s breasts. At last Barbara stepped forward impulsively and kissed her.
After that, like two children who kiss first, and then make acquaintance, they stood apart, silent, faintly smiling. It had been given and returned in real sweetness and comradeship, that kiss, for a sign of womanhood making face against the world; but now that it was over, both felt a little awkward. Would that kiss have been given if Fate had been auspicious? Was it not proof of misery? So Mrs. Noel’s smile seemed saying, and Barbara’s smile unwillingly admitted. Perceiving that if they talked it could only be about the most ordinary things, they began speaking of music, flowers, and the queerness of bees’ legs. But all the time, Barbara, though seemingly unconscious, was noting with her smiling eyes, the tiny movement’s, by which one woman can tell what is passing in another. She saw a little quiver tighten the corner of the lips, the eyes suddenly grow large and dark, the thin blouse desperately rise and fall. And her fancy, quickened by last night’s memory, saw this woman giving herself up to the memory of love in her thoughts. At this sight she felt a little of that impatience which the conquering feel for the passive, and perhaps just a touch of jealousy.
Whatever Miltoun decided, that would this woman accept! Such resignation, while it simplified things, offended the part of Barbara which rebelled against all inaction, all dictation, even from her favourite brother. She said suddenly:
“Are you going to do nothing? Aren’t you going to try and free yourself? If I were in your position, I would never rest till I’d made them free me.”
But Mrs. Noel did not answer; and sweeping her glance from that crown of soft dark hair, down the soft white figure, to the very feet, Barbara cried:
“I believe you are a fatalist.”
Soon after that, not knowing what more to say, she went away. But walking home across the fields, where full summer was swinging on the delicious air and there was now no bull but only red cows to crop short the ‘milk-maids’ and buttercups, she suffered from this strange revelation of the strength of softness and passivity – as though she had seen in the white figure of ‘Anonyma,’ and heard in her voice something from beyond, symbolic, inconceivable, yet real.
CHAPTER XVIII
Lord Valleys, relieved from official pressure by subsidence of the war scare, had returned for a long week-end. To say that he had been intensely relieved by the news that Mrs. Noel was not free, would be to put it mildly. Though not old-fashioned, like his mother-in-law, in regard to the mixing of the castes, prepared to admit that exclusiveness was out of date, to pass over with a shrug and a laugh those numerous alliances by which his order were renewing the sinews of war, and indeed in his capacity of an expert, often pointing out the dangers of too much in-breeding – yet he had a peculiar personal feeling about his own family, and was perhaps a little extra sensitive because of Agatha; for Shropton, though a good fellow, and extremely wealthy, was only a third baronet, and had originally been made of iron. It was inadvisable to go outside the inner circle where there was no material necessity for so doing. He had not done it himself. Moreover there was a sentiment about these things!
On the morning after his arrival, visiting the kennels before breakfast, he stood chatting with his head man, and caressing the wet noses of his two favourite pointers, – with something of the feeling of a boy let out of school. Those pleasant creatures, cowering and quivering with pride against his legs, and turning up at him their yellow Chinese eyes, gave him that sense of warmth and comfort which visits men in the presence of their hobbies. With this particular pair, inbred to the uttermost, he had successfully surmounted a great risk. It was now touch and go whether he dared venture on one more cross to the original strain, in the hope of eliminating the last clinging of liver colour. It was a gamble – and it was just that which rendered it so vastly interesting.
A small voice diverted his attention; he looked round and saw little Ann. She had been in bed when he arrived the night before, and he was therefore the newest thing about.
She carried in her arms a guinea-pig, and began at once:
“Grandpapa, Granny wants you. She’s on the terrace; she’s talking to Mr. Courtier. I like him – he’s a kind man. If I put my guinea-pig down, will they bite it? Poor darling – they shan’t! Isn’t it a darling!”
Lord Valleys, twirling his moustache, regarded the guinea-pig without favour; he had rather a dislike for all senseless kinds of beasts.
Pressing the guinea-pig between her hands, as it might be a concertina, little Ann jigged it gently above the pointers, who, wrinkling horribly their long noses, gazed upwards, fascinated.
“Poor darlings, they want it – don’t they? Grandpapa.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think the next puppies will be spotted quite all over?”
Continuing to twirl his moustache, Lord Valleys answered:
“I think it is not improbable, Ann.”
“Why do you like them spotted like that? Oh! they’re kissing Sambo – I must go!”
Lord Valleys followed her, his eyebrows a little raised.
As he approached the terrace his wife came, towards him. Her colour was, deeper than usual, and she had the look, higher and more resolute, peculiar to her when she had been opposed. In truth she had just been through a passage of arms with Courtier, who, as the first revealer of Mrs. Noel’s situation, had become entitled to a certain confidence on this subject. It had arisen from what she had intended as a perfectly natural and not unkind remark, to the effect that all the trouble had come from Mrs. Noel not having made her position clear to Miltoun from the first.
He had at once grown very red.
“It’s easy, Lady Valleys, for those who have never been in the position of a lonely woman, to blame her.”
Unaccustomed to be withstood, she had looked at him intently:
“I am the last person to be hard on a woman for conventional reasons. But I think it showed lack of character.”
Courtier’s reply had been almost rude.
“Plants are not equally robust, Lady Valleys. Some, as we know, are actually sensitive.”
She had retorted with decision
“If you like to so dignify the simpler word ‘weak’”
He had become very rigid at that, biting deeply into his moustache.
“What crimes are not committed under the sanctity of that creed ‘survival of the fittest,’ which suits the book of all you fortunate people so well!”
Priding herself on her restraint, Lady Valleys answered:
“Ah! we must talk that out. On the face of them your words sound a little unphilosophic, don’t they?”
He had looked straight at her with a queer, unpleasant smile; and she had felt at once disturbed and angry. It was all very well to pet and even to admire these original sort of men, but there were limits. Remembering, however, that he was her guest, she had only said:
“Perhaps after all we had better not talk it out;” and moving away, she heard him answer: “In any case, I’m certain Audrey Noel never wilfully kept your son in the dark; she’s much too proud.”
Though rude, she could not help liking the way he stuck up for this woman; and she threw back at him the words:
“You and I, Mr. Courtier, must have a good fight some day!”
She went towards her husband conscious of the rather pleasurable sensation which combat always roused in her.
These two were very good comrades. Theirs had been a love match, and making due allowance for human nature beset by opportunity, had remained, throughout, a solid and efficient alliance. Taking, as they both did, such prominent parts in public and social matters, the time they spent together was limited, but productive of mutual benefit and reinforcement. They had not yet had an opportunity of discussing their son’s affair; and, slipping her hand through his arm, Lady Valleys drew him away from the house.
“I want to talk to you about Miltoun, Geoff.”
“H’m!” said Lord Valleys; “yes. The boy’s looking worn. Good thing when this election’s over.”
“If he’s beaten and hasn’t something new and serious to concentrate himself on, he’ll fret his heart out over that woman.”
Lord Valleys meditated a little before replying.
“I don’t think that, Gertrude. He’s got plenty of spirit.”
“Of course! But it’s a real passion. And, you know, he’s not like most boys, who’ll take what they can.”
She said this rather wistfully.
“I’m sorry for the woman,” mused Lord Valleys; “I really am.”
“They say this rumour’s done a lot of harm.”
“Our influence is strong enough to survive that.”
“It’ll be a squeak; I wish I knew what he was going to do. Will you ask him?”
“You’re clearly the person to speak to him,” replied Lord Valleys. “I’m no hand at that sort of thing.”
But Lady Valleys, with genuine discomfort, murmured:
“My dear, I’m so nervous with Eustace. When he puts on that smile of his I’m done for, at once.”
“This is obviously a woman’s business; nobody like a mother.”
“If it were only one of the others,” muttered Lady Valleys: “Eustace has that queer way of making you feel lumpy.”
Lord Valleys looked at her askance. He had that kind of critical fastidiousness which a word will rouse into activity. Was she lumpy? The idea had never struck him.
“Well, I’ll do it, if I must,” sighed Lady Valleys.
When after breakfast she entered Miltoun’s ‘den,’ he was buckling on his spurs preparatory, to riding out to some of the remoter villages. Under the mask of the Apache chief, Bertie was standing, more inscrutable and neat than ever, in a perfectly tied cravatte, perfectly cut riding breeches, and boots worn and polished till a sooty glow shone through their natural russet. Not specially dandified in his usual dress, Bertie Caradoc would almost sooner have died than disgrace a horse. His eyes, the sharper because they had only half the space of the ordinary eye to glance from, at once took in the fact that his mother wished to be alone with ‘old Miltoun,’ and he discreetly left the room.
That which disconcerted all who had dealings with Miltoun was the discovery made soon or late, that they could not be sure how anything would strike him. In his mind, as in his face, there was a certain regularity, and then – impossible to say exactly where – it would, shoot off and twist round a corner. This was the legacy no doubt of the hard-bitten individuality, which had brought to the front so many of his ancestors; for in Miltoun was the blood not only of the Caradocs and Fitz-Harolds, but of most other prominent families in the kingdom, all of whom, in those ages before money made the man, must have had a forbear conspicuous by reason of qualities, not always fine, but always poignant.
And now, though Lady Valleys had the audacity of her physique, and was not customarily abashed, she began by speaking of politics, hoping her son would give her an opening. But he gave her none, and she grew nervous. At last, summoning all her coolness, she said:
“I’m dreadfully sorry about this affair, dear boy. Your father told me of your talk with him. Try not to take it too hard.”
Miltoun did not answer, and silence being that which Lady Valleys habitually most dreaded, she took refuge in further speech, outlining for her son the whole episode as she saw it from her point of view, and ending with these words:
“Surely it’s not worth it.”
Miltoun heard her with his peculiar look, as of a man peering through a vizor. Then smiling, he said:
“Thank you;” and opened the door.
Lady Valleys, without quite knowing whether he intended her to do so, indeed without quite knowing anything at the moment, passed out, and Miltoun closed the door behind her.
Ten minutes later he and Bertie were seen riding down the drive.