Part 18 (2/2)

”What can you find to write about?” she said wondering. ”I thought n.o.body wrote letters nowadays, only notes. Is it books, or people?”

”Both, when it pleases us!” How soon, oh! ye favouring G.o.ds, might he reveal to her the part she herself played in those closely covered sheets? ”But he writes to me on social matters chiefly. His whole heart, as you probably know, is in certain experiments and reforms in which he sometimes asks me to help him.”

Marcella opened her eyes. These were new lights. She began to recall all that she had heard of young Hallin's position in the Labour movement; his personal magnetism and prestige; his power as a speaker. Her Socialist friends, she remembered, thought him in the way--a force, but a dangerous one. He was for the follies of compromise--could not be got to disavow the principle of private property, while ready to go great lengths in certain directions towards collective action and corporate control. The ”stalwarts” of _her_ sect would have none of him as a leader, while admitting his charm as a human being--a charm she remembered to have heard discussed with some anxiety among her Venturist friends. But for ordinary people he went far enough. Her father, she remembered, had dubbed him an ”Anarchist” in connection with the terms he had been able to secure for the Nottingham strikers, as reported in the newspapers. It astonished her to come across the man again as Mr.

Raeburn's friend.

They talked about Hallin a little, and about Aldous's Cambridge acquaintance with him. Then Marcella, still nervous, went to look at the bookshelves, and found herself in front of that working collection of books on economics which Aldous kept in his own room under his hand, by way of guide to the very fine special collection he was gradually making in the library downstairs.

Here again were surprises for her. Aldous had never made the smallest claim to special knowledge on all those subjects she had so often insisted on making him discuss. He had been always tentative and diffident, deferential even so far as her own opinions were concerned.

And here already was the library of a student. All the books she had ever read or heard discussed were here--and as few among many. The condition of them, moreover, the signs of close and careful reading she noticed in them, as she took them out, abashed her: _she_ had never learnt to read in this way. It was her first contact with an exact and arduous culture. She thought of how she had instructed Lord Maxwell at luncheon. No doubt he shared his grandson's interests. Her cheek burned anew; this time because it seemed to her that she had been ridiculous.

”I don't know why you never told me you took a particular interest in these subjects,” she said suddenly, turning round upon him resentfully--she had just laid down, of all things, a volume of Venturist essays. ”You must have thought I talked a great deal of nonsense at luncheon.”

”Why!--I have always been delighted to find you cared for such things and took an interest in them. How few women do!” he said quite simply, opening his eyes. ”Do you know these three pamphlets? They were privately printed, and are very rare.”

He took out a book and showed it to her as one does to a comrade and equal--as he might have done to Edward Hallin. But something was jarred in her--conscience or self-esteem--and she could not recover her sense of heroines.h.i.+p. She answered absently, and when he returned the book to the shelf she said that it was time for her to go, and would he kindly ask for her maid, who was to walk with her?

”I will ring for her directly,” he said. ”But you will let me take you home?” Then he added hurriedly, ”I have some business this afternoon with a man who lives in your direction.”

She a.s.sented a little stiffly--but with an inward thrill. His words and manner seemed suddenly to make the situation unmistakable. Among the books it had been for the moment obscured.

He rang for his own servant, and gave directions about the maid. Then they went downstairs that Marcella might say good-bye.

Miss Raeburn bade her guest farewell, with a dignity which her small person could sometimes a.s.sume, not unbecomingly. Lady Winterbourne held the girl's hand a little, looked her out of countenance, and insisted on her promising again to come to Winterbourne Park the following Tuesday.

Then Lord Maxwell, with old-fas.h.i.+oned politeness, made Marcella take his arm through the hall.

”You must come and see us again,” he said smiling; ”though we are such belated old Tories, we are not so bad as we sound.”

And under cover of his mild banter he fixed a penetrating attentive look upon her. Flushed and embarra.s.sed! Had it indeed been done already? or would Aldous settle it on this walk? To judge from his manner and hers, the thing was going with rapidity. Well, well, there was nothing for it but to hope for the best.

On their way through the hall she stopped him, her hand still in his arm. Aldous was in front, at the door, looking for a light shawl she had brought with her.

”I should like to thank you,” she said shyly, ”about the Hurds. It will be very kind of you and Mr. Raeburn to find them work.”

Lord Maxwell was pleased; and with the usual unfair advantage of beauty her eyes and curving lips gave her little advance a charm infinitely beyond what any plainer woman could have commanded.

”Oh, don't thank me!” he said cheerily. ”Thank Aldous. He does all that kind of thing. And if in your good works you want any help we can give, ask it, my dear young lady. My old comrade's grand-daughter will always find friends in this house.”

Lord Maxwell would have been very much astonished to hear himself making this speech six weeks before. As it was, he handed her over gallantly to Aldous, and stood on the steps looking after them in a stir of mind not unnoted by the confidential butler who held the door open behind him.

Would Aldous insist on carrying his wife off to the dower house on the other side of the estate? or would they be content to stay in the old place with the old people? And if so, how were that girl and his sister to get on? As for himself, he was of a naturally optimist temper, and ever since the night of his first interview with Aldous on the subject, he had been more and more inclining to take a cheerful view. He liked to see a young creature of such evident character and cleverness holding opinions and lines of her own. It was infinitely better than mere nonent.i.ty. Of course, she was now extravagant and foolish, perhaps vain too. But that would mend with time--mend, above all, with her position as Aldous's wife. Aldous was a strong man--how strong, Lord Maxwell suspected that this impetuous young lady hardly knew. No, he thought the family might be trusted to cope with her when once they got her among them. And she would certainly be an ornament to the old house.

Her father of course was, and would be, the real difficulty, and the blight which had descended on the once honoured name. But a man so conscious of many kinds of power as Lord Maxwell could not feel much doubt as to his own and his grandson's competence to keep so poor a specimen of humanity as Richard Boyce in his place. How wretchedly ill, how feeble, both in body and soul, the fellow had looked when he and Winterbourne met him!

The white-haired owner of the Court walked back slowly to his library, his hands in his pockets, his head bent in cogitation. Impossible to settle to the various important political letters lying on his table, and bearing all of them on that approaching crisis in the spring which must put Lord Maxwell and his friends in power. He was over seventy, but his old blood quickened within him as he thought of those two on this golden afternoon, among the beech woods. How late Aldous had left all these experiences! His grandfather, by twenty, could have shown him the way.

Meanwhile the two in question were walking along the edge of the hill rampart overlooking the plain, with the road on one side of them, and the falling beech woods on the other. They were on a woodland path, just within the trees, sheltered, and to all intents and purposes alone. The maid, with leisurely discretion, was following far behind them on the high road.

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