Part 42 (2/2)
”It may well go deeper than Muriel, and still not go very deep.”
”And yet the time was when Muriel Hunt was thought quite deep enough,”
he said sadly, still looking in his mother's eyes--but she only continued:--
”Never doubt for a moment, dear, that Laura's welfare and yours are dearer to me than life. You are very weary; I see it in your eyes. Have you been to your apartment? Clark will show you.” She kissed his brow and departed.
CHAPTER XXVI
IN WHICH DAVID THRYNG ADJUSTS HIS LIFE TO NEW CONDITIONS
David stood where his mother had left him, dazed, hurt, sad. He was desperately minded to leave all and flee back to the hills--back to the life he had left in Canada. He saw the clear, true look of Ca.s.sandra's eyes meeting his. His heart called for her; his soul cried out within him. He felt like one launched on an irresistible current which was sweeping him ever nearer to a maelstrom wherein he was inevitably to be swallowed up.
He perceived that to his mother the established order of things there in her little island was sacred--an arrangement to be still further upheld and solidified. She had suddenly become a part of a great system, intrusted with a care for its maintenance and stability, as one of its guardians. Before, it had mattered little to her, for she was not of it.
Now it was very different.
Slowly David followed Clark to his own apartments. He had been given those of the old lord, his uncle. Everything about him was dark, ma.s.sive, and rich, but without grace. His bags and boxes had been unpacked and his dinner suit laid in readiness, and Clark stood stiffly awaiting orders.
”Will you have a shave, my lord?”
The man's manner jarred on him. It was obsequious, and he hated it. Yet it was only the custom. Clark was simple-hearted and kindly, filling his little place in the upholding of the system of which he was a part; had his manner been different, a shade more familiar, David would have resented it and ordered him out,--but of this David was not conscious.
In spite of his scruples, he was born and bred an aristocrat.
”No--a--I'll shave myself.” Still the man waited, and, taking up David's coat, flicked a particle of dust from the collar. ”I don't want anything. You may go.”
”Thank you.” Clark melted quietly out of the apartment.
”Thanks me for being rude to him,” thought David, irritably; ”I shall take pleasure in being rude to him. My G.o.d! What a farce life is over here! The whole thing is a farce.”
He shaved himself and cut his chin, and when he appeared later with a patch of court-plaster thereon, Clark commented to himself on ”his lords.h.i.+p's” inability to do the shaving properly.
As David thought over his mother's words--her outlook on life--his sister's idle aims--the companions.h.i.+ps she must have and the kind of talk to which she must listen--he grew more and more annoyed. He contrasted it all with the past. His mother, who had been so n.o.ble and fine, seemed to have lost individuality, to have become only a segment of a circle which it was henceforth to be her highest care to keep intact. Laura must become a part of the same sacred ring, and he, too, must join hands with those who formed it and make it his duty to keep others out.
There were also other circles guarded and protected by this one--circles within circles--each smaller and more exclusive than the last. The object of the huge game of life over here seemed to be to keep the great ma.s.s of those whom they regarded as commonalty out of any one of the circles, while striving individually each to climb into the one next above, and more contracted. The most maddening thing of all was to find his grave, dignified mother drawn in and made a partaker in this meaningless strife.
Still essentially an outsider, David could look with larger vision--the far-seeing vision of the western land, the hilltops and the dividing sea,--and to him now the circles seemed verily the concentric rings of the maelstrom into which events were hurrying him. Would he be able to rise from the swirling flotsam and ride free?
The deeper philosophy underlying it all he as yet but vaguely understood; that the highest good for all could only be maintained by stability in the commonwealth; as the tremendous rock foundations of the earth are a support for the growth thereon of all perfection, all grace and beauty; that the concentric rings, when rightly understood, should become a means of purification--of reward for true worth--of power for n.o.blest service, and not for personal ambition and the unmolested gratification of vicious tastes.
David did not as yet know that his clear-seeing wife could help him to the attainment of his greatest possibilities, right here where he feared to bring her--the wife of whom he dare not tell his mother. Blinded by the world's estimates which he still had sense enough to despise, he did not know that the key to its deepest secrets lay in her heart, nor that of the two, her heritage of the large spirit and the inward-seeing eye direct to the Creator's meanings was the greater heritage.
Lady Thryng found it possible to have a few words with the lawyer before David appeared, and impressed upon him the necessity of interesting her son in this new field by showing him avenues for power and work.
”I don't quite understand the boy,” she said. ”After seeing the world and going his own way, I really thought he would outgrow that sort of moody sentimentalism, but it seems to be returning. He is quixotic enough to turn away from everything here and go back to Canada, unless you can awaken his interest.”
”I see, I see,” said the lawyer.
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