"I dare say," exclaimed Marcella, her colour rising again. "I never can see how we Socialists are to succeed. But how can any one _rejoice_ in it? How can any one _wish_ that the present state of things should go on? Oh! the horrors one sees in London. And down here, the cottages, and the starvation wages, and the ridiculous worship of game, and then, of course, the poaching--"
Miss Raeburn pushed back her chair with a sharp noise. But her brother was still peeling his pear, and no one else moved. Why did he let such talk go on? It was too unseemly.
Lord Maxwell only laughed. "My dear young lady," he said, much amused, "are you even in the frame of mind to make a hero of a poacher?
Disillusion lies that way!--it does indeed. Why--Aldous!--I have been hearing such tales from Westall this morning. I stopped at Corbett"s farm a minute or two on the way home, and met Westall at the gate coming out. He says he and his men are being harried to death round about Tudley End by a gang of men that come, he thinks, from Oxford, a driving gang with a gig, who come at night or in the early morning--the smartest rascals out, impossible to catch. But he says he thinks he will soon have his hand on the local accomplice--a Mellor man--a man named Hurd: not one of our labourers, I think."
"Hurd!" cried Marcella, in dismay. "Oh no, it _can"t_ be--impossible!"
Lord Maxwell looked at her in astonishment.
"Do you know any Hurds? I am afraid your father will find that Mellor is a bad place for poaching."
"If it is, it is because they are so starved and miserable," said Marcella, trying hard to speak coolly, but excited almost beyond bounds by the conversation and all that it implied. "And the Hurds--I don"t believe it a bit! But if it were true--oh! they have been in such straits--they were out of work most of last winter; they are out of work now, No one _could_ grudge them. I told you about them, didn"t I?" she said, suddenly glancing at Aldous. "I was going to ask you to-day, if you could help them?" Her prophetess air had altogether left her. She felt ready to cry; and nothing could have been more womanish than her tone.
He bent across to her. Miss Raeburn, invaded by a new and intolerable sense of calamity, could have beaten him for what she read in his shining eyes, and in the flush on his usually pale cheek.
"Is he still out of work?" he said. "And you are unhappy about it? But I am sure we can find him work: I am just now planning improvements at the north end of the park. We can take him on; I am certain of it. You must give me his full name and address."
"And let him beware of Westall," said Lord Maxwell, kindly. "Give him a hint, Miss Boyce, and n.o.body will rake up bygones. There is nothing I dislike so much as rows about the shooting. All the keepers know that."
"And of course," said Miss Raeburn, coldly, "if the family are in real distress there are plenty of people at hand to a.s.sist them. The man need not steal."
"Oh, charity!" cried Marcella, her lip curling.
"A worse crime than poaching, you think," said Lord Maxwell, laughing.
"Well, these are big subjects. I confess, after my morning with the lunatics, I am half inclined, like Horace Walpole, to think everything serious ridiculous. At any rate shall we see what light a cup of coffee throws upon it? Agneta, shall we adjourn?"
CHAPTER XI.
Lord Maxwell closed the drawing-room door behind Aldous and Marcella.
Aldous had proposed to take their guest to see the picture gallery, which was on the first floor, and had found her willing.
The old man came back to the two other women, running his hand nervously through his shock of white hair--a gesture which Miss Raeburn well knew to show some disturbance of mind.
"I should like to have your opinion of that young lady," he said deliberately, taking a chair immediately in front of them.
"I like her," said Lady Winterbourne, instantly. "Of course she is crude and extravagant, and does not know quite what she may say. But all that will improve. I like her, and shall make friends with her."
Miss Raeburn threw up her hands in angry amazement.
"Most forward, conceited, and ill-mannered," she said with energy. "I am certain she has no proper principles, and as to what her religious views may be, I dread to think of them! If _that_ is a specimen of the girls of the present day--"
"My dear," interrupted Lord Maxwell, laying a hand on her knee, "Lady Winterbourne is an old friend, a very old friend. I think we may be frank before her, and I don"t wish you to say things you may regret.
Aldous has made up his mind to get that girl to marry him, if he can."
Lady Winterbourne was silent, having in fact been forewarned by that odd little interview with Aldous in her own drawing-room, when he had suddenly asked her to call on Mrs. Boyce. But she looked at Miss Raeburn. That lady took up her knitting, laid it down again, resumed it, then broke out--
"How did it come about? Where have they been meeting?"
"At the Hardens mostly. He seems to have been struck from the beginning, and now there is no question as to his determination. But she may not have him; he professes to be still entirely in the dark."
"Oh!" cried Miss Raeburn, with a scornful shrug, meant to express all possible incredulity. Then she began to knit fast and furiously, and presently said in great agitation,--
"What can he be thinking of? She is very handsome, of course, but--"
then her words failed her. "When Aldous remembers his mother, how can he?--undisciplined! self-willed! Why, she laid down the law to _you_, Henry, as though you had nothing to do but to take your opinions from a chit of a girl like her. Oh! no, no; I really can"t; you must give me time. And her father--the disgrace and trouble of it! I tell you, Henry, it will bring misfortune!"
Lord Maxwell was much troubled. Certainly he should have talked to Agneta beforehand. But the fact was he had his cowardice, like other men, and he had been trusting to the girl herself, to this beauty he heard so much of, to soften the first shock of the matter to the present mistress of the Court.
"We will hope not, Agneta," he said gravely. "We will hope not. But you must remember Aldous is no boy. I cannot coerce him. I see the difficulties, and I have put them before him. But I am more favourably struck with the girl than you are. And anyway, if it comes about, we must make the best of it."
Miss Raeburn made no answer, but pretended to set her heel, her needles shaking. Lady Winterbourne was very sorry for her two old friends.
"Wait a little," she said, laying her hand lightly on Miss Raeburn"s.
"No doubt with her opinions she felt specially drawn to a.s.sert herself to-day. One can imagine it very well of a girl, and a generous girl in her position. You will see other sides of her, I am sure you will. And you would never--you could never--make a breach with Aldous."
"We must all remember," said Lord Maxwell, getting up and beginning to walk up and down beside them, "that Aldous is in no way dependent upon me. He has his own resources. He could leave us to-morrow. Dependent on me! It is the other way, I think, Agneta--don"t you?"
He stopped and looked at her, and she returned his look in spite of herself. A tear dropped on her stocking which she hastily brushed away.
"Come, now," said Lord Maxwell, seating himself; "let us talk it over rationally. Don"t go, Lady Winterbourne."
"Why, they may be settling it at this moment," cried Miss Raeburn, half-choked, and feeling as though "the skies were impious not to fall."
"No, no!" he said smiling. "Not yet, I think. But let us prepare ourselves."
Meanwhile the cause of all this agitation was sitting languidly in a great Louis Quinze chair in the picture gallery upstairs, with Aldous beside her. She had taken off her big hat as though it oppressed her, and her black head lay against a corner of the chair in fine contrast to its mellowed golds and crimsons. Opposite to her were two famous Holbein portraits, at which she looked from time to time as though attracted to them in spite of herself, by some trained sense which could not be silenced. But she was not communicative, and Aldous was anxious.
"Do you think I was rude to your grandfather?" she asked him at last abruptly, cutting dead short some information she had stiffly asked him for just before, as to the date of the gallery and its collection.
"Rude!" he said startled. "Not at all. Not in the least. Do you suppose we are made of such brittle stuff, we poor landowners, that we can"t stand an argument now and then?"
"Your aunt thought I was rude," she said unheeding. "I think I was. But a house like this excites me." And with a little reckless gesture she turned her head over her shoulder and looked down the gallery. A Velasquez was beside her; a great t.i.tian over the way; a priceless Rembrandt beside it. On her right hand stood a chair of carved steel, presented by a German town to a German emperor, which, had not its equal in Europe; the brocade draping the deep windows in front of her had been specially made to grace a state visit to the house of Charles II.
"At Mellor," she went on, "we are old and tumble-down. The rain comes in; there are no shutters to the big hall, and we can"t afford to put them--we can"t afford even to have the pictures cleaned. I can pity the house and nurse it, as I do the village. But here--"
And looking about her, she gave a significant shrug.
"What--our feathers again!" he said laughing. "But consider. Even you allow that Socialism cannot begin to-morrow. There must be a transition time, and clearly till the State is ready to take over the historical houses and their contents, the present nominal owners of them are bound, if they can, to take care of them. Otherwise the State will be some day defrauded."
She could not be insensible to the charm of his manner towards her.
There was in it, no doubt, the natural force and weight of the man older and better informed than his companion, and amused every now and then by her extravagance. But even her irritable pride could not take offence.
For the intellectual dissent she felt at bottom was tempered by a moral sympathy of which the gentleness and warmth touched and moved her in spite of herself. And now that they were alone he could express himself.