CHAPTER II.
"Well, Marcella, have you and Lady Winterbourne arranged your classes?"
Mrs. Boyce was stooping over a piece of needlework beside a window in the Mellor drawing-room, trying to catch the rapidly failing light. It was one of the last days of December. Marcella had just come in from the village rather early, for they were expecting a visitor to arrive about tea time, and had thrown herself, tired, into a chair near her mother.
"We have got about ten or eleven of the younger women to join; none of the old ones will come," said Marcella. "Lady Winterbourne has heard of a capital teacher from Dunstable, and we hope to get started next week. There is money enough to pay wages for three months."
In spite of her fatigue, her eye was bright and restless. The energy of thought and action from which she had just emerged still breathed from every limb and feature.
"Where have you got the money?"
"Mr. Raeburn has managed it," said Marcella, briefly.
Mrs. Boyce gave a slight shrug of the shoulders.
"And afterwards—what is to become of your product?"
"There is a London shop Lady Winterbourne knows will take what we make if it turns out well. Of course, we don't expect to pay our way."
Marcella gave her explanations with a certain stiffness of self-defence. She and Lady Winterbourne had evolved a scheme for reviving and improving the local industry of straw-plaiting, which after years of decay seemed now on the brink of final disappearance. The village women who could at present earn a few pence a week by the coarser kinds of work were to be instructed, not only in the finer and better paid sorts, but also in the making up of the plait when done, and the "blocking" of hats and bonnets—processes hitherto carried on exclusively at one or two large local centres.
"You don't expect to pay your way?" repeated Mrs. Boyce. "What, never?"
"Well, we shall give twelve to fourteen shillings a week wages. We shall find the materials, and the room—and prices are very low, the whole trade depressed."
Mrs. Boyce laughed.
"I see. How many workers do you expect to get together?"
"Oh! eventually, about two hundred in the three villages. It will regenerate the whole life!" said Marcella, a sudden ray from the inner warmth escaping her, against her will.
Mrs. Boyce smiled again, and turned her work so as to see it better.
"Does Aldous understand what you are letting him in for?"
Marcella flushed.
"Perfectly. It is 'ransom'—that's all."
"And he is ready to take your view of it?"
"Oh, he thinks us economically unsound, of course," said Marcella, impatiently. "So we are. All care for the human being under the present state of things is economically unsound. But he likes it no more than I do."
"Well, lucky for you he has a long purse," said Mrs. Boyce, lightly. "But I gather, Marcella, you don't insist upon his spending it all on straw-plaiting. He told me yesterday he had taken the Hertford Street house."
"We shall live quite simply," said Marcella, quickly.
"What, no carriage?"
Marcella hesitated.
"A carriage saves time. And if one goes about much, it does not cost so much more than cabs."
"So you mean to go about much? Lady Winterbourne talks to me of presenting you in May."
"That's Miss Raeburn," cried Marcella. "She says I must, and all the family would be scandalised if I didn't go. But you can't imagine—"
She stopped and took off her hat, pushing the hair back from her forehead. A look of worry and excitement had replaced the radiant glow of her first resting moments.
"That you like it?" said Mrs. Boyce, bluntly. "Well, I don't know. Most young women like pretty gowns, and great functions, and prominent positions. I don't call you an ascetic, Marcella."
Marcella winced.
"One has to fit oneself to circumstances," she said proudly. "One may hate the circumstances, but one can't escape them."
"Oh, I don't think you will hate your circumstances, my dear! You would be very foolish if you did. Have you heard finally how much the settlement is to be?"
"No," said Marcella, shortly. "I have not asked papa, nor anybody."
"It was only settled this morning. Your father told me hurriedly as he went out. You are to have two thousand a year of your own."
The tone was dry, and the speaker's look as she turned towards her daughter had in it a curious hostility; but Marcella did not notice her mother's manner.
"It is too much," she said in a low voice.
She had thrown back her head against the chair in which she sat, and her half-troubled eyes were wandering over the darkening expanse of lawn and avenue.
"He said he wished you to feel perfectly free to live your own life, and to follow out your own projects. Oh, for a person of projects, my dear, it is not so much. You will do well to husband it. Keep it for yourself. Get what you want out of it: not what other people want."
Again Marcella's attention missed the note of agitation in her mother's sharp manner. A soft look—a look of compunction—passed across her face. Mrs. Boyce began to put her working things away, finding it too dark to do any more.
"By the way," said the mother, suddenly, "I suppose you will be going over to help him in his canvassing this next few weeks? Your father says the election will be certainly in February."
Marcella moved uneasily.
"He knows," she said at last, "that I don't agree with him in so many things. He is so full of this Peasant Proprietors Bill. And I hate peasant properties. They are nothing but a step backwards."
Mrs. Boyce lifted her eyebrows.
"That's unlucky. He tells me it is likely to be his chief work in the new Parliament. Isn't it, on the whole, probable that he knows more about the country than you do, Marcella?"
Marcella sat up with sudden energy and gathered her walking things together.
"It isn't knowledge that's the question, mamma; it's the principle of the thing. I mayn't know anything, but the people whom I follow know. There are the two sides of thought—the two ways of looking at things. I warned Aldous when he asked me to marry him which I belonged to. And he accepted it."
Mrs. Boyce's thin fine mouth curled a little.
"So you suppose that Aldous had his wits about him on that great occasion as much as you had?"
Marcella first started, then quivered with nervous indignation.
"Mother," she said, "I can't bear it. It's not the first time that you have talked as though I had taken some unfair advantage—made an unworthy bargain. It is too hard too. Other people may think what they like, but that you—"
Her voice failed her, and the tears came into her eyes. She was tired and over-excited, and the contrast between the atmosphere of flattery and consideration which surrounded her in Aldous's company, in the village, or at the Winterbournes, and this tone which her mother so often took with her when they were alone, was at the moment hardly to be endured.
Mrs. Boyce looked up more gravely.
"You misunderstand me, my dear," she said quietly. "I allow myself to wonder at you a little, but I think no hard things of you ever. I believe you like Aldous."
"Really, mamma!" cried Marcella, half hysterically.
Mrs. Boyce had by now rolled up her work and shut her workbasket.
"If you are going to take off your things," she said, "please tell
William that there will be six or seven at tea. You said, I think, that
Mr. Raeburn was going to bring Mr. Hallin?"
"Yes, and Frank Leven is coming. When will Mr. Wharton be here?"
"Oh, in ten minutes or so, if his train is punctual. I hear your father just coming in."
Marcella went away, and Mrs. Boyce was left a few minutes alone. Her thin hands lay idle a moment on her lap, and leaning towards the window beside her, she looked out an instant into the snowy twilight. Her mind was full of its usual calm scorn for those—her daughter included—who supposed that the human lot was to be mended by a rise in weekly wages, or that suffering has any necessary dependence on the amount of commodities of which a man disposes. What hardship is there in starving and scrubbing and toiling? Had she ever seen a labourer's wife scrubbing her cottage floor without envy, without moral thirst? Is it these things that kill, or any of the great simple griefs and burdens? Doth man live by bread alone? The whole language of social and charitable enthusiasm often raised in her a kind of exasperation.
So Marcella would be rich, excessively rich, even now. Outside the amount settled upon her, the figures of Aldous Raeburn's present income, irrespective of the inheritance which would come to him on his grandfather's death, were a good deal beyond what even Mr. Boyce—upon whom the daily spectacle of the Maxwell wealth exercised a certain angering effect—had supposed.
Mrs. Boyce had received the news of the engagement with astonishment, but her after-acceptance of the situation had been marked by all her usual philosophy. Probably behind the philosophy there was much secret relief. Marcella was provided for. Not the fondest or most contriving mother could have done more for her than she had at one stroke done for herself. During the early autumn Mrs. Boyce had experienced some moments of sharp prevision as to what her future relations might be towards this strong and restless daughter, so determined to conquer a world her mother had renounced. Now all was clear, and a very shrewd observer could allow her mind to play freely with the ironies of the situation.
As to Aldous Raeburn, she had barely spoken to him before the day when Marcella announced the engagement, and the lover a few hours later had claimed her daughter at the mother's hands with an emotion to which Mrs. Boyce found her usual difficulty in responding. She had done her best, however, to be gracious and to mask her surprise that he should have proposed, that Lord Maxwell should have consented, and that Marcella should have so lightly fallen a victim. One surprise, however, had to be confessed, at least to herself. After her interview with her future son-in-law, Mrs. Boyce realised that for the first time for fifteen years she was likely to admit a new friend. The impression made upon him by her own singular personality had translated itself in feelings and language which, against her will as it were, established an understanding, an affinity. That she had involuntarily aroused in him the profoundest and most chivalrous pity was plain to her. Yet for the first time in her life she did not resent it; and Marcella watched her mother's attitude with a mixture of curiosity and relief.
Then followed talk of an early wedding, communications from Lord Maxwell to Mr. Boyce of a civil and formal kind, a good deal more notice from the "county," and finally this definite statement from Aldous Raeburn as to the settlement he proposed to make upon his wife, and the joint income which he and she would have immediately at their disposal.
Under all these growing and palpable evidences of Marcella's future wealth and position, Mrs. Boyce had shown her usual restless and ironic spirit. But of late, and especially to-day, restlessness had become oppression. While Marcella was so speedily to become the rich and independent woman, they themselves, Marcella's mother and father, were very poor, in difficulties even, and likely to remain so. She gathered from her husband's grumbling that the provision of a suitable trousseau for Marcella would tax his resources to their utmost. How long would it be before they were dipping in Marcella's purse? Mrs. Boyce's self-tormenting soul was possessed by one of those nightmares her pride had brought upon her in grim succession during these fifteen years. And this pride, strong towards all the world, was nowhere so strong or so indomitable, at this moment, as towards her own daughter. They were practically strangers to each other; and they jarred. To inquire where the fault lay would have seemed to Mrs. Boyce futile.
* * * * *
Darkness had come on fast, and Mrs. Boyce was in the act of ringing for lights when her husband entered.
"Where's Marcella?" he asked as he threw himself into a chair with the air of irritable fatigue which was now habitual to him.
"Only gone to take off her things and tell William about tea. She will be down directly."
"Does she know about that settlement?"
"Yes, I told her. She thought it generous, but not—I think—unsuitable.
The world cannot be reformed on nothing."
"Reformed!—fiddlesticks!" said Mr. Boyce, angrily. "I never saw a girl with a head so full of nonsense in my life. Where does she get it from? Why did you let her go about in London with those people? She may be spoilt for good. Ten to one she'll make a laughing stock of herself and everybody belonging to her, before she's done."
"Well, that is Mr. Raeburn's affair. I think I should take him into account more than Marcella does, if I were she. But probably she knows best."
"Of course she does. He has lost his head; any one can see that. While she is in the room, he is like a man possessed. It doesn't sit well on that kind of fellow. It makes him ridiculous. I told him half the settlement would be ample. She would only spend the rest on nonsense."
"You told him that?"
"Yes, I did. Oh!"—with an angry look at her—"I suppose you thought I should want to sponge upon her? I am as much obliged to you as usual!"
A red spot rose in his wife's thin cheek. But she turned and answered him gently, so gently that he had the rare sensation of having triumphed over her. He allowed himself to be mollified, and she stood there over the fire, chatting with him for some time, a friendly natural note in her voice which was rare and, insensibly, soothed him like an opiate. She chatted about Marcella's trousseau gowns, detailing her own contrivances for economy; about the probable day of the wedding, the latest gossip of the election, and so on. He sat shading his eyes from the firelight, and now and then throwing in a word or two. The inmost soul of him was very piteous, harrowed often by a new dread—the dread of dying. The woman beside him held him in the hollow of her hand. In the long wrestle between her nature and his, she had conquered. His fear of her and his need of her had even come to supply the place of a dozen ethical instincts he was naturally without.
Some discomfort, probably physical, seemed at last to break up his moment of rest.
"Well, I tell you, I often wish it were the other man," he said, with some impatience. "Raeburn 's so d——d superior. I suppose I offended him by what I said of Marcella's whims, and the risk of letting her control so much money at her age, and with her ideas. You never saw such an air!—all very quiet, of course. He buttoned his coat and got up to go, as though I were no more worth considering than the table. Neither he nor his precious grandfather need alarm themselves: I shan't trouble them as a visitor. If I shock them, they bore me—so we're quits. Marcella'll have to come here if she wants to see her father. But owing to your charming system of keeping her away from us all her childhood, she's not likely to want."
"You mean Mr. Wharton by the other man?" said Mrs. Boyce, not defending herself or Aldous.
"Yes, of course. But he came on the scene just too late, worse luck! Why wouldn't he have done just as well? He's as mad as she—madder. He believes all the rubbish she does—talks such rot, the people tell me, in his meetings. But then he's good company—he amuses you—you don't need to be on your p's and q's with him. Why wouldn't she have taken up with him? As far as money goes they could have rubbed along. He's not the man to starve when there are game-pies going. It's just bad luck."
Mrs. Boyce smiled a little.
"What there is to make you suppose that she would have inclined to him, I don't exactly see. She has been taken up with Mr. Raeburn, really, from the first week of her arrival here."
"Well, I dare say—there was no one else," said her husband, testily. "That's natural enough. It's just what I say. All I know is, Wharton shall be free to use this house just as he pleases during his canvassing, whatever the Raeburns may say."
He bent forward and poked the somewhat sluggish fire with a violence which hindered rather than helped it. Mrs. Boyce's smile had quite vanished. She perfectly understood all that was implied, whether in his instinctive dislike of Aldous Raeburn, or in his cordiality towards young Wharton.
After a minute's silence, he got up again and left the room, walking, as she observed, with difficulty. She stopped a minute or so in the same place after he had gone, turning her rings absently on her thin fingers. She was thinking of some remarks which Dr. Clarke, the excellent and experienced local doctor, had made to her on the occasion of his last visit. With all the force of her strong will she had set herself to disbelieve them. But they had had subtle effects already. Finally she too went upstairs, bidding Marcella, whom she met coming down, hurry William with the tea, as Mr. Wharton might arrive any moment.
* * * * *
Marcella saw the room shut up—the large, shabby, beautiful room—the lamps brought in, fresh wood thrown on the fire to make it blaze, and the tea-table set out. Then she sat herself down on a low chair by the fire, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped in front of her. Her black dress revealed her fine full throat and her white wrists, for she had an impatience of restraint anywhere, and wore frills and falls of black lace where other people would have followed the fashion in high collars and close wristbands. What must have struck any one with an observant eye, as she sat thus, thrown into beautiful light and shade by the blaze of the wood fire, was the massiveness of the head compared with the nervous delicacy of much of the face, the thinness of the wrist, and of the long and slender foot raised on the fender. It was perhaps the great thickness and full wave of the hair which gave the head its breadth; but the effect was singular, and would have been heavy but for the glow of the eyes, which balanced it.
She was thinking, as a fiancée should, of Aldous and their marriage, which had been fixed for the end of February. Yet not apparently with any rapturous absorption. There was a great deal to plan, and her mind was full of business. Who was to look after her various village schemes while she and Lady Winterbourne were away in London? Mary Harden had hardly brains enough, dear little thing as she was. They must find some capable woman and pay her. The Cravens would tell her, of course, that she was on the high road to the most degrading of rôles—the rôle of Lady Bountiful. But there were Lady Bountifuls and Lady Bountifuls. And the rôle itself was inevitable. It all depended upon how it was managed—in the interest of what ideas.
She must somehow renew her relations with the Cravens in town. It would certainly be in her power now to help them and their projects forward a little. Of course they would distrust her, but that she would get over.
All the time she was listening mechanically for the hall door bell, which, however, across the distances of the great rambling house it was not easy to hear. Their coming guest was not much in her mind. She tacitly assumed that her father would look after him. On the two or three occasions when they had met during the last three months, including his luncheon at Mellor on the day after her engagement, her thoughts had been too full to allow her to take much notice of him—picturesque and amusing as he seemed to be. Of late he had not been much in the neighbourhood. There had been a slack time for both candidates, which was now to give way to a fresh period of hard canvassing in view of the election which everybody expected at the end of February.
But Aldous was to bring Edward Hallin! That interested her. She felt an intense curiosity to see and know Hallin, coupled with a certain nervousness. The impression she might be able to make on him would be in some sense an earnest of her future.
Suddenly, something undefinable—a slight sound, a current of air—made her turn her head. To her amazement she saw a young man in the doorway looking at her with smiling eyes, and quietly drawing off his gloves.
She sprang up with a feeling of annoyance.
"Mr. Wharton!"
"Oh!—must you?"—he said, with a movement of one hand, as though to stop her. "Couldn't you stay like that? At first I thought there was nobody in the room. Your servant is grappling with my bags, which are as the sand of the sea for multitude, so I wandered in by myself. Then I saw you—and the fire—and the room. It was like a bit of music. It was mere wanton waste to interrupt it."
Marcella flushed, as she very stiffly shook hands with him.
"I did not hear the front door," she said coldly. "My mother will be here directly. May I give you some tea?"
"Thanks. No, I knew you did not hear me. That delighted me. It showed what charming things there are in the world that have no spectators! What a delicious place this is!—what a heavenly old place—especially in these half lights! There was a raw sun when I was here before, but now—"
He stood in front of the fire, looking round the great room, and at the few small lamps making their scanty light amid the flame-lit darkness. His hands were loosely crossed behind his back, and his boyish face, in its setting of curls, shone with content and self-possession.
"Well," said Marcella, bluntly, "I should prefer a little more light to live by. Perhaps, when you have fallen downstairs here in the dark as often as I have, you may too."
He laughed.
"But how much better, after all—don't you think so?—to have too little of anything than too much!"
He flung himself into a chair beside the tea-table, looking up with gay interrogation as Marcella handed him his cup. She was a good deal surprised by him. On the few occasions of their previous meetings, these bright eyes, and this pronounced manner, had been—at any rate as towards herself—much less free and evident. She began to recover the start he had given her, and to study him with a half-unwilling curiosity.
"Then Mellor will please you," she said drily, in answer to his remark, carrying her own tea meanwhile to a chair on the other side of the fire. "My father never bought anything—my father can't. I believe we have chairs enough to sit down upon—but we have no curtains to half the windows. Can I give you anything?"
For he had risen, and was looking over the tea-tray.
"Oh! but I must," he said discontentedly. "I must have enough sugar in my tea!"
"I gave you more than the average," she said, with a sudden little leap of laughter, as she came to his aid. "Do all your principles break down like this? I was going to suggest that you might like some of that fire taken away?" And she pointed to the pile of blazing logs which now filled up the great chimney.
"That fire!" he said, shivering, and moving up to it. "Have you any idea what sort of a wind you keep up here on these hills on a night like this? And to think that in this weather, with a barometer that laughs in your face when you try to move it, I have three meetings to-morrow night!"
"When one loves the 'People,' with a large P," said Marcella, "one mustn't mind winds."
He flashed a smile at her, answering to the sparkle of her look, then applied himself to his tea and toasted bun again, with the dainty deliberation of one enjoying every sip and bite.
"No; but if only the People didn't live so far apart. Some murderous person wanted them to have only one neck. I want them to have only one ear. Only then unfortunately everybody would speak well—which would bring things round to dulness again. Does Mr. Raeburn make you think very bad things of me, Miss Boyce?"
He bent forward to her as he spoke, his blue eyes all candour and mirth.
Marcella started.
"How can he?" she said abruptly. "I am not a Conservative."
"Not a Conservative?" he said joyously. "Oh! but impossible! Does that mean that you ever read my poor little speeches?"
He pointed to the local newspaper, freshly cut, which lay on a table at
Marcella's elbow.
"Sometimes—" said Marcella, embarrassed. "There is so little time."
In truth she had hardly given his candidature a thought since the day Aldous proposed to her. She had been far too much taken up with her own prospects, with Lady Winterbourne's friendship, and her village schemes.
He laughed.
"Of course there is. When is the great event to be?"
"I didn't mean that," said Marcella, stiffly. "Lady Winterbourne and I have been trying to start some village workshops. We have been working and talking, and writing, morning, noon, and night."
"Oh! I know—yes, I heard of it. And you really think anything is going to come out of finicking little schemes of that sort?"
His dry change of tone drew a quick look from her. The fresh-coloured face was transformed. In place of easy mirth and mischief, she read an acute and half contemptuous attention.
"I don't know what you mean," she said slowly, after a pause. "Or rather—I do know quite well. You told papa—didn't you?—and Mr. Raeburn says that you are a Socialist—not half-and-half, as all the world is, but the real thing? And of course you want great changes: you don't like anything that might strengthen the upper class with the people. But that is nonsense. You can't get the changes for a long long time. And, meanwhile, people must be clothed and fed and kept alive."
She lay back in her high-backed chair and looked at him defiantly. His lip twitched, but he kept his gravity.
"You would be much better employed in forming a branch of the Agricultural Union," he said decidedly. "What is the good of playing Lady Bountiful to a decayed industry? All that is childish; we want the means of revolution. The people who are for reform shouldn't waste money and time on fads."
"I understand all that," she said scornfully, her quick breath rising and falling. "Perhaps you don't know that I was a member of the Venturist Society in London? What you say doesn't sound very new to me!"
His seriousness disappeared in laughter. He hastily put down his cup and, stepping over to her, held out his hand.
"You a Venturist? So am I. Joy! Won't you shake hands with me, as comrades should? We are a very mixed set of people, you know, and between ourselves I don't know that we are coming to much. But we can make an alderman dream of the guillotine—that is always something. Oh! but now we can talk on quite a new footing!"
She had given him her hand for an instant, withdrawing it with shy rapidity, and he had thrown himself into a chair again, with his arms behind his head, and the air of one reflecting happily on a changed situation. "Quite a new footing," he repeated thoughtfully. "But it is—a little surprising. What does—what does Mr. Raeburn say to it?"
"Nothing! He cares just as much about the poor as you or I, please understand! He doesn't choose my way—but he won't interfere with it."
"Ah! that is like him—like Aldous."
Marcella started.
"You don't mind my calling him by his Christian name sometimes? It drops out. We used to meet as boys together at the Levens. The Levens are my cousins. He was a big boy, and I was a little one. But he didn't like me. You see—I was a little beast!"
His air of appealing candour could not have been more engaging.
"Yes, I fear I was a little beast. And he was, even then, and always, 'the good and beautiful.' You don't understand Greek, do you, Miss Boyce? But he was very good to me. I got into an awful scrape once. I let out a pair of eagle owls that used to be kept in the courtyard—Sir Charles loved them a great deal more than his babies—I let them out at night for pure wickedness, and they came to fearful ends in the park. I was to have been sent home next day, in the most unnecessary and penal hurry. But Aldous interposed—said he would look after me for the rest of the holidays."
"And then you tormented him?"
"Oh no!" he said with gentle complacency. "Oh no! I never torment anybody. But one must enjoy oneself you know; what else can one do? Then afterwards, when we were older—somehow I don't know—but we didn't get on. It is very sad—I wish he thought better of me."
The last words were said with a certain change of tone, and sitting up he laid the tips of his fingers together on his knees with a little plaintive air. Marcella's eyes danced with amusement, but she looked away from him to the fire, and would not answer.
"You don't help me out. You don't console me. It's unkind of-you. Don't you think it a melancholy fate to be always admiring the people who detest you?"
"Don't admire them!" she said merrily.
His eyebrows lifted. "That," he said drily, "is disloyal. I call—I call your ancestor over the mantelpiece"—he waved his hand towards a blackened portrait in front of him—"to witness, that I am all for admiring Mr. Raeburn, and you discourage it. Well, but now—now"—he drew his chair eagerly towards hers, the pose of a minute before thrown to the winds—"do let us understand each other a little more before people come. You know I have a labour newspaper?"
She nodded.
"You read it?"
"Is it the Labour Clarion? I take it in."
"Capital!" he cried. "Then I know now why I found a copy in the village here. You lent it to a man called Hurd?"
"I did."
"Whose wife worships you?—whose good angel you have been? Do I know something about you, or do I not? Well, now, are you satisfied with that paper? Can you suggest to me means of improving it? It wants some fresh blood, I think—I must find it? I bought the thing last year, in a moribund condition, with the old staff. Oh! we will certainly take counsel together about it—most certainly! But first—I have been boasting of knowing something about you—but I should like to ask—do you know anything about me?"
Both laughed. Then Marcella tried to be serious.
"Well—I—I believe—you have some land?"
"Eight!" he nodded—"I am a Lincolnshire landowner. I have about five thousand acres—enough to be tolerably poor on—and enough to play tricks with. I have a co-operative farm, for instance. At present I have lent them a goodish sum of money—and remitted them their first half-year's rent. Not so far a paying speculation. But it will do—some day. Meanwhile the estate wants money—and my plans and I want money—badly. I propose to make the Labour Clarion pay—if I can. That will give me more time for speaking and organising, for what concerns us—as Venturists—than the Bar."
"The Bar?" she said, a little mystified, but following every word with a fascinated attention.
"I made myself a barrister three years ago, to please my mother. She thought I should do better in Parliament—if ever I got in. Did you ever hear of my mother?"
There was no escaping these frank, smiling questions.
"No," said Marcella, honestly.
"Well, ask Lord Maxwell," he said, laughing. "He and she came across each other once or twice, when he was Home Secretary years ago, and she was wild about some woman's grievance or other. She always maintains that she got the better of him—no doubt he was left with a different impression. Well—my mother—most people thought her mad—perhaps she was—but then somehow—I loved her!"
He was still smiling, but at the last words a charming vibration crept into the words, and his eyes sought her with a young open demand for sympathy.
"Is that so rare?" she asked him, half laughing—instinctively defending her own feeling lest it should be snatched from her by any make-believe.
"Yes—as we loved each other—it is rare. My father died when I was ten. She would not send me to school, and I was always in her pocket—I shared all her interests. She was a wild woman—but she lived, as not one person in twenty lives."
Then he sighed. Marcella was too shy to imitate his readiness to ask questions. But she supposed that his mother must be dead—indeed, now vaguely remembered to have heard as much.
There was a little silence.
"Please tell me," she said suddenly, "why do you attack my straw-plaiting? Is a co-operative farm any less of a stopgap?"
Instantly his face changed. He drew up his chair again beside her, as gay and keen-eyed as before.
"I can't argue it out now. There is so much to say. But do listen! I have a meeting in the village here next week to preach land nationalisation. We mean to try and form a branch of the Labourers' Union. Will you come?"
Marcella hesitated.
"I think so," she said slowly.
There was a pause. Then she raised her eyes and found his fixed upon her. A sudden sympathy—of youth, excitement, pleasure—seemed to rise between them. She had a quick impression of lightness, grace; of an open brow set in curls; of a look more intimate, inquisitive, commanding, than any she had yet met.
"May I speak to you, miss?" said a voice at the door.
Marcella rose hastily. Her mother's maid was standing there.
She hurried across the room.
"What is the matter, Deacon?"
"Your mother says, miss," said the maid, retreating into the hall, "I am to tell you she can't come down. Your father is ill, and she has sent for Dr. Clarke. But you are please not to go up. Will you give the gentlemen their tea, and she will come down before they go, if she can."
Marcella had turned pale.
"Mayn't I go, Deacon? What is it?"
"It's a bad fit of pain, your mother says, miss. Nothing can be done till the doctor comes. She begged particular that you wouldn't go up, miss. She doesn't want any one put out."
At the same moment there was a ring at the outer door.
"Oh, there is Aldous," cried Marcella, with relief, and she ran out into the hall to meet him.