Peter finally quartered himself upon a lonely farm in Worcestershire. The estate was large and wild, running down steep hills and banks to a brook and tiny falls of water. The family who owned it scraped a livelihood from odds and ends of country employment. They had some orchard, and pasture for half a dozen cows. But there was no arable, and they made up a yearly deficit by receiving visitors from the town.
Peter had the place to himself, and the peace of it was deeply refreshing. The house stood high, whence the shapely hills of the country were visible—Malvern hanging like a small cloud on the horizon. For many days he lay in the June sun, listening to the stir of leaves, watching with curiosity the lives of small creatures he could not name. In deepest luxury he sat day by day on a fallen trunk across the stream, grateful after the blazing descent of a broken hill for the cool shade of trees meeting overhead, watching a fish lying under the bank or rising to snap at a fly. Or he would be buried in grass, softly topped by the light wind, diverted after long, empty moments by the appearance of a rabbit or a bird not suspecting him. Peter dreamed away whole days, utterly vacant of thought, recording things. He counted the number of times a glossy black cow, munching beside him, masticated her food between each return of the cud. There was a horse which had brought his trunk to the house who always stood with his head thrust through a gap in the hedge. Peter watched the flies collect upon his eyelids, and waited lazily for the blink which regularly dispersed them in a tiny cloud. Peter, in reaction from the fruitless activity of his last months in London, rested and was pleased. It seemed as he lay upon the earth that the scent of the grass was life enough; that reality, humming in wings of the air, in the splashing of water, in noises of the cattle, was sufficient for his uninquiring day. He took an enormous pleasure in small material things—the spiriting of warm milk into the pail; the breath of an old dog as he stood, watchful and erect, in the cold morning; the slow, graceful sweeping of a scythe; the shining of the first star after sunset; the clipping of hot fingers into the brook; the odour of ham frizzling in the farmer's pan.
At night, with the curtains drawn, and by the light of an oil lamp whose smell was ever after associated in Peter's mind with these rustic days, he played with the books which Marbury had packed for him. Among them was Burton's Arabian Nights and Urquhart's Rabelais. Marbury had well chosen. Peter had never felt before the wonder of Rabelais. Here, alone with the beasts and with people whose lives were taken up with their feeding and breeding, Peter smelt in Rabelais the fresh dirt and sweat of the earth. He squarely received between his shoulders the hearty slap of a laughter broad as mankind. Rabelais was the evening chorus of his day in the fields. The voices of the hearty morning, the slow noon, and the quiet evening sounded between the lines where Grangousier warmed his great bulk by the fire and Gargantua thrived to enormous manhood.
It was only after many days that Peter looked into Burton. He wondered why Marbury should have included a book he knew only as a series of pretty tales. Then he found that beside his Rabelais upon the shelf was the greatest song of the flesh yet uttered.
After his first night with Burton, Peter flung wide his window to the air. A cat slunk cautiously into the garden and away. The farmer and his wife came out for a moment to read the sky, and stood in the light of the door. The old man lifted his face, and was moulded clearly in silhouette—a face beaten hard with weather, but untroubled after seventy years of appetites healthily satisfied. He was sagacious as befitted his high species; he had eaten and drunk for sixty-five years, and had bred of his kind. All this he had inevitably done as a creature with his spade in the earth and his hand heavy upon the inferior beasts.
Mere flesh and blood was good, and it endured. Peter's heart was pulsing now with a song older than an English farmer—a song of man who was tickled under an Eastern sun and laughed, who was pricked with absolute lust—who found his flesh not an obstacle between himself and heaven, but his heritage and expression.
Peter was not thinking. He idly looked and received a faint rain of impressions from the still night and from memories of a tale. A barrier of fresh earth mounted between him and his troubles of the year. He was content to rest and dream. He turned from the window, weary with air and sun, stretching his elbows in an agreeable yawn. He felt the clean flexion of the muscles of his arm. He stretched again, repeating a healthy pleasure, and yawned happily to bed.
Haymaking under a burning sun began on the following day, and Peter offered help to the farmer. The old man looked favourably at Peter's broad shoulders and friendly eyes. Then there were long back-breaking hours in the open field. Peter learned why there was leisure and grace in the movements of his companion, and tried to imitate, under pleasant chaff, the expert's artful economy of power.
Peter soon found in his new friend a surprising fund of wisdom painfully gathered. The farmer's knowledge was limited, but very sure. He had learned life for himself, with scraps inherited from his father and collected from his friends. His prejudices, even when absurd, were rooted in the earth. Peter felt he would exchange all his books for a blank mind where Nature could write in so firm a hand.
His wife brought cider and cheese to them in the field, and they sat under a hedge contemplating the morning's work in the pauses of a rough meal.
Plenty to do yet, said Peter, looking at the large field with a sense of labour to come.
Matter o' twenty-four hours.
The old man paused on the rim of his mug, and narrowed his eyes at the blue sky. "We can be gentle with the work. You'll find it pays to be gentle."
Peter drank gratefully at the cool cider.
Thirsty, sir? The old man filled Peter's mug and watched him drink it.
That's good liquor. Forty years she's brewed it. He jerked his thumb towards the house.
Your wife? asked Peter most politely.
Married forty years, nodded the old man. "It's well to marry when you're lusty. Nature's kind when you live natural, but, if you thwart her, she turns you a beast in the end. Married yourself?" he suddenly asked, surveying Peter as a likely young animal.
I'm only twenty-one, said Peter, with a shocked inflexion.
Not too young for marriage, grossly chuckled the old man. "There's many uneasy lads of your age and less would do well to be married. The devil tickles finely the members of a young lad."
Peter had heard these things discussed in a public hall, but the language had been decently scientific or medical. How vulgar and timid seemed these late evasions under the burning sun! Peter was ashamed not to be able frankly to meet an old man who talked clearly of nature without picking his words.
Peter sweated through the day, and in the evening sat happily tired at the window. His day's work had brought him nearer yet to the earth. The faint smell of the drying grass, and a dim line of the field where the green blade met the grey, was witness of a day well spent. Manual labour was delightful after lounging weeks of mental work with nothing to show. There was something ultimate and real about physical expenditure. Could anything in the world be finer than to be just a very sagacious animal?
A low, gurgling song—it seemed the voice of a woman—came and went among the trees of the garden. Then there was silence. Soon there were footsteps, and two figures appeared in the shadow of some bushes beside the gate which gave upon the lawn beneath him. The figures stood close, and a man's voice, pleading, alternated with low laughter in the tone which previously had been the tone of the song. At last the man moved forward, and the woman, still laughing, allowed herself to be kissed. As Peter drew instinctively back he heard her laughter muted by the man's lips. The incident stirred Peter more than he cared to acknowledge. He heard his heart beating, and saw his hand tremble on the sill.
He angrily shut the window, and, lighting the lamps, took down his books from the shelf. But the books would not hold his brain. The stifled laugh of the woman by the gate echoed there. He caught himself staring at the page, restless, feeling that the room oppressed him. It seemed that life was beating at the window, that the room in which he sat was unvisited, and that he was holding the visitor at bay.
He gave up all pretence of reading, and again let in the air. He stared into the garden, which now seemed the heart of the world. The figures by the gate had vanished, but Peter fancied he heard, from the dark, whiffs of talk, and breathing movements.
At last there were steps unmistakable, and the same low song Peter had first heard. This time the woman was alone. She carried a hat in her hand. She stood by the gate a moment, and pushed the pins into her hair. Then she came over the lawn into the light of the house window, walking free and lithe. She paused at the window and looked mischievously in upon the old couple below. Clearly she had come to surprise them. She opened the door upon them in a gleam of sly excitement. Peter saw with a renewed beating of the heart how full were the smiling lips he had heard stifled into silence. His mind threw back the girl, as she stood in the light, into the shadow of a man's embrace.
A clamour of greeting from below scattered his thoughts.
Why, if it isn't Bess! he heard the old man say. Then there was a hearty kissing, and the door was shut on a murmur of welcoming talk.
Peter lay long into the night, listening to the clatter of tongues over a meal below. Bess was clearly a favourite. When the kitchen door opened, and the family tramped to bed, he heard once more the low vibrating voice of the girl.
Good night, grandpa!
Then he heard the women above him in the attic, making up a bed. One of them came down, and the house dropped into silence save for the quiet movements of the girl upstairs.
Peter in the morning was early awake. He had asked the day before, as a fledged labourer, to take his breakfast with the farmer that they might begin early with the hay. He felt shy of the girl whose appearance had so disconcerted him the night before. But there was no one in the kitchen except the old man and his wife.
You heard us in the night, I reckon? said the old man over his mug of tea.
You had a visitor?
My son's first daughter. Come to lend a hand with the work. She's strong in the field—strong as a good man. You'll make a good pair, chuckled the old man. "We'll finish the ten acre to-day."
I'll have the start, anyway, said Peter, affectedly covering his tremors. He did not relish the idea of being second labourer to a girl who already had made him nervous.
The old man laughed in the unending way of people who enjoy one joke a day, but enjoy it well.
You'll not get the start o' Bess, he said at last. "She's milked this half-hour, and she'll a' dug taters for a week 'fore we're sweated."
They left the house and worked silently through the first half of the morning. Peter was silent, preoccupied with his strange terror of meeting the farmer's granddaughter. Yet, as they rested at noon, he was disappointed that she had not come. He had not found content in his labour.
Then, suddenly, he saw her coming over the field with a tray. At once he felt a panic to run or to disappear. He could feel his flesh burning beneath the sweat of his morning's work. He could not look directly at the girl, but in swift glances he embraced the swing and poise of her advance.
For a miserable moment Peter stood between his terror of the girl and his instinct to run and relieve her of the heavy tray. He felt himself—it seemed after hours of indecision that he did so—spring to his feet. He met her ten yards from the spot where they had sheltered under the hedge.
Let me, he said, taking the tray into his hands. He did not look at her, but knew she was smiling at his strange, polite way.
The young gentleman's in a mighty hurry to know you, Bess, said the farmer, amused at Peter's incredibly gallant behaviour.
He's a young gentleman, to be sure, said the girl in the low, even note which again stirred Peter to the bone. He felt her eyes surveying him, and in an agony of resolution looked her in the face.
He could only endure for a moment her steady, impudent gaze. Her lazy smile accented the challenge of her eyes. Peter was conscious only of her sex, and she knew it at their first meeting. In every look and motion of her face and body was provocation. Her appeal was not always conscious, but it was never silent. Peter saw now what had moved him as she stood in the light of the window the evening before with mischief in her eyes. Even then, though she had no thought of a lover, it was woman's mischief. He saw it now fronting him in the sun. He could hardly endure to meet it, yet it was vital and sweet.
They sat and talked of the work before them.
You've come in good time, Bess. 'Twill be a storm before the week ends, and we must get the ten acre carried.
She sat calmly munching bread and cheese, waiting to catch Peter in one of his stealthy glances.
Yes, grandpa, I've come in good time. Perhaps I knew you had a handsome young labourer.
How could she play among the messages that quickened in their eyes?
Peter angrily flushed, and she laughed. The old man chuckled, seeing nothing at all. He was not a part of their quick life.
The old man scythed steadily through the afternoon. Peter and the girl tossed the long ranks of hay, working alternate rows. He was never for a moment unaware of her presence. Starting from the extreme ends of the field, they regularly met in the centre. As the distance between them vanished, Peter became painfully excited, almost terrified. Though he seldom looked towards the girl, he somehow followed every swing of her brown arms. She invariably stopped her work as he approached, and Peter felt like a young animal whose points are numbered in the ring. He passed her three times, doggedly refusing to notice her. At the fourth encounter he shot at her a shyly resentful—almost sullen—protest. But the eyes he encountered were fixed on the strong muscles of his neck with a look—almost of greed—which staggered him. She knew he had read her, and she laughed as, in a tumult of pleasure, stung with shame, he turned swiftly away.
Good boy, she murmured under her breath. Peter angrily turned towards her, and found her eyes, lit with mockery, openly seducing him.
What do you mean? said Peter foolishly.
You're working fine, but you're not used to it.
I'm all right.
You're dripping with heat. She dropped her fork, and caught at her apron. It was a pretty apron, decorated with cherry-coloured ribbons.
Come here, she said.
Peter stared at her like a fascinated rabbit. She stepped towards him, and wiped the running sweat from his face and neck. He pettishly shook himself free. Laughing, she stood back and admired him. Then, with a little shrug, she turned away and went slowly down the field. Peter watched her for a moment, troubled but hopelessly caught in the ease and grace of her swinging arms. Her face, as she came to him, had seemed as delicately cool as when first she appeared from the house, though a fine dew had glistened in the curves of her throat. She was lovely and strong; yet Peter had for her a faint, persistent horror.
He felt when evening came, and the field was mown, a glad release, curiously dashed with regret. His room had about it the atmosphere of a sanctuary. He was grateful for the peace it held, yet it was also desolate. After supper he sat at the window, watching the hills fade into a violet sky. As the light softened he heard once again a low song from the orchard. Peter's heart started like a spurred horse. The song continued—the faint crooning, as it were, of a thoughtful bird—and at last it became intolerable. Peter shut down his window and opened a book upon the table near him. It was a volume of Burton left from last evening. It fell open easily at a page; and, as Peter lifted it in the dim light, he read the title of a frank and merry tale concerning the way of a woman with a boy less willing than she. Peter suddenly dashed down the book as though he had been stung. Flouting his eyes between the leaves of this tale was a fragment of cherry-coloured ribbon.
He went from the house into the warm air, and flung himself down on the cut grass. He felt as if he were being hunted. In vain he avoided the image of the girl who had challenged him. He shut his eyes, and she again stood clearly before him in the hot sun. He buried his ears in the cool grass, and he heard her low singing. Then, in a sudden surrender, he suppressed his shy terror, and in fancy looked at her as in the flesh he had not dared to look, tracing between himself and the sky the outline of her lips and throat.
How sultry it was, and still! The air was waiting oppressively for a storm. Peter felt himself in tune with the hanging thunder. He felt he would like to hear the running water of the brook. The pearly wreck of a sunset lighted him down the hill, and soon he was sitting in a chosen nook of the river, his ears refreshed by small noises of the stream.
The silence was deep, for there was not a breath in the valley. The trees seemed to be mildly brooding—sentient sad creatures waiting for the air. Once Peter heard the bracken stir; but the silence closed again over the faint sound, leaving the world waiting as for a signal.
It seemed as if Nature was standing there bidding the earth be still till the creature she had vowed to subdue was beaten down. Peter flung his thoughts to the blank silence of the place, and they returned, reverberating and enforced.
Suddenly a shot shivered the silence into quick echoes. Peter guessed the farmer was in the warren after rabbits. Thinking to meet him and get away from the intolerable obsession of the day, he started to climb the hill. The second shot rang out surprisingly near, and almost immediately a figure rose from a bush among the bracken. It was the farmer's granddaughter. He cried out in surprise, and the figure turned.
She greeted him with an inquiring lilt of the voice. Peter came awkwardly forward.
Did you hit? he asked, for talking's sake.
Two.
She leaned on the gate, hatefully smiling at him. Peter felt he must turn and run from her eyes, or that he must answer them.
He moved quickly towards her, but she did not stir. He gripped her by the arm, looked deliberately into her face, then bent and kissed her. She remained quite still, seeming merely to wait and to suffer. She neither retreated nor responded. Passion died utterly in Peter at the touch of her smiling lips. He stood away from her, brutal and chill.
You asked me to do that, he said.
Still she smiled, betraying no sign that anything had occurred.
You must help me to find the rabbits, she said, looking away at last towards the warren. "We're losing the light."
There was a suspicion of the fine lady in her manner, assumed to deride him. They hunted among the bracken. Peter found the dead rabbits, and they moved silently up the hill. At the garden gate they paused while he handed over his burden. Her face still kept the maddening expression of the moment when he had kissed her. But Peter's eyes now blazed back at her in wrath, and her look changed to one of slyly affected terror.
Are you going to kiss me again? she asked.
Not here, Peter roughly answered. "This is where you sing. I saw you here yesterday evening."
A look of angry suspicion flashed into her eyes and passed.
Men are very rude and sudden, she said.
Why do you sing in the dark?
I sing for company, she answered.
She passed through the gate; then turned, for a moment, hesitating:
You don't tell tales? she abruptly asked.
No.
The man you saw last night, she suggested.
I did not see him.
He will not come again. Not yet.
It is nothing to me, said Peter indifferently.
Indeed? she retorted. "I thought you asked why I sing in the dark."
Peter kept his eyes sullenly fixed on the ground, making no answer.
She shut the gate.
Do you really want to know why I sing in the dark?
Peter's silence covered a wish to kill this creature. There was a long silence; and when at last he looked up, her eyes were again mischievously playing him. On meeting his look of resentment and dislike, she inconsequently asked:
Have you found a piece of cherry-coloured ribbon?
Peter flung up his hands, and turned away into the garden. She had no need to see that he was cursing her in the shelter of the trees. She went towards the house crooning the song which was now intolerable to Peter.
It was arranged next morning at breakfast that Peter should work in the field with the farmer, and that his granddaughter should clear the remains of last year's crop of hay from the site of the stack into the loft. Peter was grateful for this division of their work; yet, again, he was strangely disappointed. Halfway through the morning, when he had done all he could for the farmer, he sat miserably in the shadow of the hedge, fighting a blind impulse to look for the girl whose presence he detested. Surely the hot sun was burning into his brain. He went towards the house, meeting on his way the farmer's wife.
I wonder if you'd tell Bess there's lunch waiting to be taken. I daren't leave the butter this half-hour.
Where shall I find her? Peter asked.
She's in the loft, to be sure.
Peter went slowly to the yard. He seemed to be two men—one lured by the echo of a song, the other hanging upon his feet, unwilling that he should move.
The last of the stack had disappeared into the loft, wisps of hay lying in a trail from the foot of the ladder. The yard was empty.
Peter paused at the ladder's foot. Then began slowly to climb.
She was resting in a far corner, and he did not see her till he had stepped from the ladder. Then he found himself looking down at her stretched at length upon piles of sweet hay. She had fallen asleep easily as a cat, and, unconscious of her pose, was freely beautiful. Her loveliness caught at Peter. Could she but lie asleep for ever, he could for ever watch. Sleep had smoothed from her features the impudent knowledge of her power. Her beauty now lay softly upon her, held in the pure curves of her throat.
Peter leaned breathlessly towards her, filling his eyes. Had he really feared this magic? Such loveliness as this his soul had caught at in scattered dreams, and now it fronted him, and he had feared to take it. Surely he had fancied that the smile of her perfect mouth was hateful, that her eyes, so beautifully lidded, had in their pride and gluttony dismayed him.
Peter dropped softly beside her. She seemed too like a fairy to be rudely touched. He delicately brushed her lips in a kiss scarcely to be felt. She started and sat upright, alert in every fibre.
Peter saw again the creature who had troubled him. He was looking into greedy pools where her lids had seemed as curtains to hide an intolerable purity.
You kissed me?
It was not you, Peter muttered.
Funny boy! How long have you been here?
I have come to say that lunch is waiting.
Peter. She sang the name in her low voice, as though she were trying the sound of it.
You kissed me, Peter. Tell me. How do I look, asleep?
Peter closed his eyes.
You are beautiful.
Even you can see that, she flashed.
Peter felt she was profaning her loveliness. He kept his eyes painfully closed. She looked at him, partly in anger, partly in contempt.
Good boy. So very good, she murmured.
As he opened his eyes, she dropped lightly towards him. In a flash she had taken his neck between her hands, and he felt her lips and teeth upon the muscles of his neck, where her eyes had rested when first he had read them.
Then she nestled there with a little purr.
Peter broke roughly away, and she laughed.
Good boy. She mocked him again from the ladder as she went down.
Peter waited with clenched hands till the trembling of the ladder had ceased. Then he looked into the yard. She had not yet disappeared. A young farmer had ridden into the drive, and was talking to her from his horse. She seemed to be deprecating his anger. They paused in their talk as Peter drew near them. The man was good-looking, with honest eyes. But he looked at Peter with angry suspicion, carefully searching his face, as though he desired to remember him if they should meet again.
That afternoon Peter left the farm and walked into the country. Thunder echoed among the hills, seeming the voice of his trouble. He was humiliated by the lure of a woman he disliked and feared. He vehemently told himself that he would break away. But he continually felt the strong tug of her sex. He shook under the pressure of her mouth, his neck yet bitten with that strange caress. He shunned the memory, yet returned to it, thrilling with an excitement, sweet even as it stung him.
The thunder waited among the hills all that day. As the evening wore, and Peter, back at the farm, watched the summer lightning come and go, it seemed as though batteries were closing in from all points of the heaven. But the sky was still open to the stars, and there was no rain.
Peter stood with the farmer by the garden gate. He told Peter that the little hill where they united was mysteriously immune, in a tempest, from the water which deluged the valley.
As Peter, with his thoughts full of the farmer's granddaughter, listened to the farmer's tale of a dry storm which, with never a spot of rain, had fired the stack in the yard, it seemed as though, now and then, he could hear her low singing. It floated on the heavy air. Peter could scarcely tell whether it were really her voice or an echo in his tired brain. He strained his ears, between the pauses of the farmer's talk. The low note swelled and died.
The farmer moved into the house, and Peter could more connectedly listen. Now he heard it clearly, a faint persistent singing, implacably fascinating. To find that voice was above all things to be desired.
Peter listened, faint at heart with a struggle which suddenly seemed foolish. Pleasure caught at him. He saw her beautiful, as when she slept, the low notes of her voice breathed from lips that were neither mocking nor cruel. Her hands again crept upon his throat, and he did not draw away. He needed them.
Where should he find her? Peter went like a young animal, tracking through the dark. He paused, quietly alert; as he discovered that her murmuring came from the loft where he had found her sleeping. He climbed the ladder, and stepped into the darkness. The singing stopped, and he stood still while his eyes measured the place. At last he saw her almost at his feet. He dropped beside her without a word. She did not stir, but said as softly as though she feared to frighten him away:
So you have come to me?
Her voice was very gentle. It was the voice of the woman who had slept.
Peter could descry her now, half sitting against the hay. He perceived only the curve of her face and neck beautifully poised above him, for he had fallen at her feet.
I cannot see you, she said. "Are you still afraid and angry?"
She stooped over him, trying to read his face. She was very quiet. Her voice parted the still air as placidly as a dropped stone makes eddies in the water.
It seemed to offer him an endless comfort.
I had to come to you, he whispered.
She gathered him into her arms, and kissed him as softly as he had kissed her sleeping. Peter felt as though he were sinking. As she drew her cool hands across his forehead and took his face between them, he found her tender and compelling, and he leaned upon her bosom with the waters of pleasure closing above him.
But the girl had played too long with her passion. She had met him delicately, deliberately holding back her greed, enjoying the tumult in herself and the coming delight of throwing the barriers down. She bent to kiss Peter a second time, and Peter waited for the caress of her song made visible. But, even as she stooped, there came into her eyes a lust which the darkness covered.
Suddenly the veil was torn. A vivid flash of lightning lit her, and flickered away, snatched from cloud to cloud above them. For an instant Peter saw her eyes as she stooped to him. Then darkness blotted her out, and her mouth closed down upon him.
He struggled in her arms. She did not measure the strength of his revolt, but held him fast.
Kiss me, Peter.
The words were hot upon his cheek.
Peter put forth his whole strength, and she staggered away from him. There was a short silence. She had fallen back from the excess of his recoil. He saw her dimly rise from among the hay.
You beast!
The words hissed at him in the dark. Venomous anger was in her tone, and bitter contempt.
There was a silence in which their pulses could be heard. Then she spoke again.
Why did you come to me?
Peter could not answer. His soul was a battlefield between forces stronger than himself. She walked to the door, and Peter stared vacantly at her going. The next moment he was alone.
Why did you come to me?
The question beat at Peter's brain all through the dreadful night. Scarcely had he got back to his room than the storm burst from the four quarters with incredible light and clamour. But Peter's ears were deaf and his eyes were blind. He sat at his window, but heard neither the rain rushing in the valley below, nor the intolerable din in the sky above him where still the stars were clear.
Had he acted the green fool, or was he proved of a finer clay than he had allowed? He had drifted towards this girl to take her, obeying the blind motion of his blood. Then fiercely his whole being had revolted. He could not do this thing. Was his refusal a base fear of life? Had he denied his youth and the power of passion? He could not measure his deed. He now saw something fine, something consistent and strong in the girl he had refused. His own share of the story seemed only contemptible. It was even absurd. He had ineffectually played with forces beyond him.
Had he really thwarted and denied his nature? He asked it again and again. He had wanted the girl. He wanted her yet. But he could not take her with his whole soul. Therefore he could not take her at all. What was the meaning of this ugly riddle? Why was he monstrously drawn to a thing he could not do?
He denied with his whole soul that he lacked passion—the gift without which man is a creeping thing. His passion even now outplayed the lightning which forked and ran and fired the trees in the valley.
Thus Peter went wearily round his conduct of the last few hours, without advancing. Late in the night he packed to leave in the morning, and afterwards tried to sleep. But his tired brain trod the old circle of his thoughts—catching at his sleep with pale gleams of speculation, calling him into momentary consciousness, suffering him only briefly to forget.
In the morning he was flushed and uncertain. He shivered from time to time, though the storm had not lifted the summer heat. He had never felt so tired, and so utterly without strength or comfort.
Peter, finding the farmer and his wife at breakfast, told them he was leaving, and asked that his luggage should be taken to the station. The station was two miles from the house, and Peter started to walk. He had turned into the drive, and was passing the last of the farm buildings, when he ran upon two figures vehemently talking. Their voices troubled his miserable brooding; but he was hardly yet aware of their presence before his way was barred. He looked up from the ground and was confronted with a man visibly blazing with anger.
He looked aside for an explanation, and saw that the man had been talking with the farmer's granddaughter. She was watching them with expressionless eyes, but with a cold satisfaction hiding in the line of her mouth.
What does this mean? said Peter, making an attempt to pass.
He looked swiftly from one to the other, recognising his opponent as the man he had seen talking from his horse in the yard yesterday.
The man struck at Peter with his whip.
Peter caught the blow on his arm, and flung out his fists.
What's your quarrel with me? asked Peter.
Well you know it, said the man.
Peter turned to the farmer's granddaughter. She smiled at him, and he understood. He was filled with a desolating sense of the futility of resisting the event.
I've no quarrel with you, he drearily protested to the man, "why do you force it?"
It's late to talk of forcing.
Forcing? I don't understand.
Again Peter turned to the woman. Her metallic outfacing of his question flashed the truth at him.
He knows that you have insulted me.
The words came from her on a low malicious note.
Are you going to fight? the man blazed at him, flinging his weapon to the ground. "Or are you going to take that?" He pointed to the whip lying between them.
Peter flung off his coat. Standing in the sun, he felt weak and vague. He swayed a little. He felt he must get away from the intolerable heat. He looked into the shed beside them, and the man nodded.
They went in and faced each other upon a dusty floor of uneven stone. The girl sat on Peter's coat, indecently fascinated. The man looked grimly at Peter's strong arms and professional attitude. But Peter was faint and sick. He saw his fists before him as though they belonged to another—white and blurred. Dreamily he realised that a blow had started upon him out of the grey air. He met it with an instinctive guard; but he weakly smiled to feel something heavy and strong break through his arm like paper. Then everything was blotted out.
In a moment the man was kneeling beside him, astonished at the strange collapse of his opponent. Peter had gone down like a sack, striking his head on the stone floor. The man had hardly touched him. Indeed, he had himself nearly fallen with the impetus of a blow which had fallen upon the air.
He felt Peter's pulse and forehead, awed by his stillness and the stare of his eyes. The girl was now beside him.
Quick, she said. "Run to the house. We must get him to bed."
The man looked at her, hard and stern.
You're a bit too anxious, he said.
Can't you see? The boy's dying.
He looked implacably into her eyes.
Let the blackguard lie.
Fool!
She almost spat at him, with a gesture of impatient agony for Peter on the floor.
You've been lying to me, suddenly said the man.
She did not answer, but he persisted:
You told me——
He did not.
He lifted his hand to strike her. She did not flinch, but said quietly:
Who's the blackguard now?
He turned and walked swiftly from the shed. She heard him running to the house, and took Peter's head on her lap. His lips were moving. Compassion stirred in her—a sensual compassion, feeding upon her complete possession of Peter, helplessly at her pleasure.
The man returned with the farmer's cart, and Peter was taken to the house. A telegram was sent to Hamingburgh, and the local doctor was called. He said that Peter had had a stroke of the sun. He was in a raging fever. The farmer's granddaughter was occasionally left with him.
She sat for several hours beside the bed watching Peter's restless and feeble movements. Sometimes she heard him talking vaguely and softly, but for long she could catch no syllable of what he said. Again she was stirred with delicious pity. She put her hands upon his cheeks, and leaned over his stirring lips for a long hour. Then suddenly she began to hear what he was saying, piecing his broken words.
He was walking alone in a dark house. It was very dark and quite still except for the dripping of water into a cistern. Peter always returned to this dripping water. He was looking for someone, and he stood where she used to sleep. At last a strange name came to his tongue—endlessly repeated.
The listening girl drew away from him. She went to the window to get beyond range of his voice. She was empty and thwarted. The name pursued her and she turned back to the bed. Maddened by his repeated murmur, she felt as if she were fighting for a place in his mind. She put her hand upon his mouth, trying to still the name upon his lips. But she felt them moving under the touch of her fingers, with the syllables that shut her out.
She dropped on her knees beside him, becoming a part of his madness.
Here is the woman you want, she sang to him. Tears of vexation and jealousy—quick as a child's—started down her face.
Peter, boy, don't you remember? You came to me, and dropped in the hay. I sang to you in the dark, and you came.
But Peter stood in a dark house, muttering a name she had never heard. Now he was striking matches one after another, peering into the empty corners of a deserted room. Then he spoke of an attic with rafters, and again of the dripping water.
The girl looked into his vacant eyes.
Can't you see me, Peter?
It was someone else he saw: he talked now of her dusty frock and of a garden where he sat and waited.
The woman by the bed could not come between him and this lovely ghost. She strained Peter towards her, and put her face to his cheek.
No, Peter; it's me that is here. Can't you feel that I am holding you?
Her pressure started in him another disordered memory. He struggled against her, and raised himself upon an elbow. His eyes looked quite through her. He saw her in his brain, but he did not see her in the room before him. The girl shuddered to hear him struggling with a mirage of herself. He was back in the loft. At first she thought it was the sight of her visibly before him in the room that caused him to speak of her. She drew back, and with a shudder saw he was talking to the air.
You are not Miranda, he said, accusing the shape of his brain. "She smiled, but she did not smile like that."
The girl could no longer endure it. She went from the room, and, till Mrs. Paragon came, the farmer's wife sat beside him.
Mrs. Paragon arrived late in the afternoon. Peter could not be made to perceive her, and a physician was sent for from London.
Mrs. Paragon sat with Peter through the night, stifling her fear. His talk perplexed her in the extreme. The empty house where he wandered became as real to her as the room in which she sat. He had gone there to find Miranda, and this it was that so grieved and puzzled his mother. Peter had never once spoken of Miranda since the night he had arranged to go to London for the first time. She did not think he had of late thought of Miranda. Had he been eating his heart in secret?
The farmer's granddaughter waited upon Mrs. Paragon through the night. They talked only of his condition, but Mrs. Paragon noted her extreme interest in the patient.
Towards the morning they were together by the bedside. Peter had begun again to talk, and Mrs. Paragon suddenly saw the girl shrink away. Then almost immediately she turned and left the room.
Mrs. Paragon bent to listen. Peter was treading again the weary round of his thoughts of the preceding day. After a few moments his mother's face became very thoughtful.
When in the morning the girl brought her some breakfast, she said to her quietly:
How long have you been here?
Two days. Already the girl knew she was detected.
What has happened to my son?
How am I to know better than the doctor? she countered.
You know very well indeed.
He is nothing to me.
Mrs. Paragon inexorably faced her:
How could you be so wicked? she said in a low voice.
What do you mean?
You are not surprised when I talk to you of my son, and you have been here only two days.
Peter's mother stood like marble. The girl saw she was open to be read. Her pride was broken.
Do not send me away, she pleaded. "I must know whether he lives or dies."
What right have you to know?
The girl was silent, and Mrs. Paragon shivered. She hardly dared be made sure.
Has my son belonged to you?
No.
The girl hated to confess it, but quickly used it as a plea:
Now will you let me stay? she entreated.
Mrs. Paragon turned coldly away.
Please go, she commanded.
The girl was struck into a hopeless humility.
I will not trouble him again, she pleaded.
I myself shall see to that.
Mrs. Paragon spoke calmly, and did not stir. Peter lay on the bed safely in her shadow.
The girl looked her farewell at him and passed out.
The specialist from London arrived before noon. He at once took a cheerful view. After listening to the local doctor's account of Peter's night, and examining the patient himself, he relieved Mrs. Paragon of her fears.
What's the boy been doing? he asked, after deciding there was nothing to keep him in Worcestershire. "This might well be mistaken for a touch of the sun," he said, smiling at the local man, "but it's not quite so simple. It looks as if he'd been trying to put himself straight with things, and not quite succeeded. He's suffering from acute mental excitement, but he's a healthy youngster and his temperature's falling. He won't talk any more."
There's a thing that rather puzzles me, doctor, Mrs. Paragon hesitated.
Well?
My son has been troubled, greatly troubled, by someone here, but most of his talk was about someone else.
I don't quite understand.
He has talked of a girl I thought he had forgotten. At least I did not think she had lately been in his mind.
Very likely not, Mrs. Paragon. The mind's not at all a simple thing. Usually in cases like this the memories which come uppermost are things forgotten. We call it the subconscious self. This girl your son has been talking about—probably he does not know that he remembers her. Perhaps—of course I don't know all the circumstances—he has not thought of her for years. But evidently she is a vital memory. She is sleeping in his mind. Pardon my running on like this, the doctor concluded, smiling, "but you look interested."
I think I understand.
Is that all you want to know?
You are sure he is quite safe?
There's nothing to be anxious about. He only wants well nursing.
The doctor paused and looked keenly at Mrs. Paragon.
You are very proud of him, he suggested.
Prouder to-day than ever.
He looks quite a splendid fellow. Send for me if anything goes seriously wrong.
Mrs. Paragon now sat happily with Peter, for he grew continually calmer, and she felt he was safe. A proud content sank deep into her heart as she put together the story of these last days. She pondered also the doctor's words, and wondered whether Peter had consciously called Miranda to his help. Or did she lurk as a secret angel under the surface of his life?
Forty-eight hours later Peter woke from a long sleep, and found his mother beside him. He did not stir, but just accepted her. He felt too weak to talk, and, taking some food, went immediately to sleep again.
Next time he woke Mrs. Paragon was not in the room, the farmer's wife having taken charge for a moment. Peter raised himself on one elbow, wondering to feel himself so weak.
How long have I been like this? he asked. "I feel as if I'd been in bed for a year."
You're all right now, lad. You've been too much in the hot sun and got a touch o' fever.
Peter looked round the room.
Didn't I see my mother here? he asked.
You did, to be sure. We sent for her when you were took with the heat. It was Bess that found you, lying in the road.
Peter remembered now how and where he had fallen.
Mrs. Paragon came in at that moment, and the farmer's wife greeted her.
The lad's awake, and talking like a Christian.
Mrs. Paragon came and kissed him, the farmer's wife softly leaving them together. Peter looked tranquilly at his mother.
I'm afraid I've frightened you, he said at last.
Only for a little while, she reassured him.
What time is it? I mean, how long have you been here?
Only three days.
It feels like a hundred years, said Peter. "As if it had all happened to someone else. There was a girl here, mother. Where is she now?"
She has gone away.
Peter sank peacefully back. After a while his mother said to him:
Have you been grieving for anyone, Peter, during these last years?
Grieving? Peter was making diagrams of the cracks and stains on the ceiling.
You've been talking, Peter.
What have I been talking about? he idly inquired.
You've been talking about your troubles.
I haven't any troubles. Peter turned from the ceiling to his mother's face, feeling how pleasant it was to see her there.
You've been talking about someone who troubled you, Mrs. Paragon persisted.
But, mother, he objected, "you tell me she has gone away."
There is no one else?
No one at all.
Peter lived deliciously for a week with his mother in the shaded room. He never seemed to have felt so happy. His mind was content to be idle. When he was tired of collecting into groups the roses on the wall-paper, or watching for hours the blue square of the window across which once or twice in a day a bird would fly, he would ask his mother to read to him old tales of Ainsworth and Marryat. He affected an imperious self-indulgence.
It was decided at last that Peter was strong enough for the journey home. Cordial thanks and farewells were exchanged with the farmer and his wife. Peter even left a kind message for the farmer's granddaughter, who had fled for fear of infection. He no longer thought of her as one who could trouble him.
Peter soon picked up his strength at Hamingburgh. Three weeks passed and he thought of returning to London. Then came a letter from Marbury.
His uncle had applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, and Marbury was to stand at once in a contested by-election. He lightly but cordially asked Peter to come and stay with him through the fight and meet some of the distinguished people it would draw into the constituency.
Peter eagerly accepted. Next day he met Marbury at York, leaving the train to avoid a tedious slow journey of forty miles.
Lord Haversham's principal seat was at Highbury Towers, a lonely house on the edge of a moor. The nearest town was ten miles away.
It was a fortress of civilisation planted in a wilderness. In a bad winter, with snow lying deep, it was sometimes cut off for days from the world outside.
There's something impudent about the place, said Marbury, as the car rushed over the moors. "It flies in the face of Nature. The Towers is the most comfortable home in England, and it is in a desert."
A very beautiful desert, said Peter. He was feasting on the superb line of a moor-end, red with the heather.
You must see it in the winter. I went through last election with my uncle. It was December, and we did well if we managed to keep half our appointments.
Tell me about your uncle.
He's dying, Peter. Marbury conveyed this as a simple fact. He did not intend an effect.
You mean that he's very ill, suggested Peter.
I mean that he's dying. The doctors give him six months or a year in Egypt. Here they allow him till the autumn.
When is he going away?
He isn't going away, answered Marbury. "He thinks it worth while to die at home." Again Marbury spoke without insisting in the least on the heroic implication of his words.
But six months of life and the sun, protested Peter.
Six months is not long. We have lived at Highbury for a thousand years. Besides, my uncle wants things to go smoothly when he dies. He is posting me up in the estate—all the small traditional things.
Marbury talked of these things with a curious tranquillity. He simply recorded them. He fell very silent; and at the journey's end looked with interest at the large old house at which they had arrived.
Marbury took Peter upstairs to a room beside his own, and left to dress quickly for dinner. He would come back for Peter and show him the way down. When Peter was ready, he stood for a few minutes at the window. He looked on to a terrace and a garden which ended abruptly and fell suddenly to the moor. At the end of the terrace, magnificently poised and fronting desolation, was the copy of a famous statue by a contemporary sculptor, audaciously asserting the triumph of art—the figure of a naked youth superbly defiant.
Soon Marbury joined Peter at the window and put a hand affectionately on his shoulder.
That's what I mean, he said, following Peter's look towards the statue in silhouette against the moor, "when I say that this place seems to fly in Nature's face. He's insolent, don't you think? He's looking over thirty miles of moor—not a house between himself and the open sea. In the winter the snow piles up against him, and storms bang into him from the German Ocean. He is the last exquisite word of the twentieth century asserting our mastery over all that."
Marbury waved his arm towards the open moor, and laughed an apology:
He usually works me up like that. Let's have some dinner.
They went down, and Peter was made acquainted with many people whose names he tried to remember. His mind was whirling with impressions, unable to settle upon anything definite till, at dinner, he had had time to recover from a sensation of being too much honoured. This sensation had invaded him at being introduced by Marbury to an exquisite young woman.
Peter, he said, "this is my sister. Look after him, Mary, and tell him who everybody is."
Then Marbury had disappeared, leaving Peter shyly rising to her light chatter.
The house is packed, and there are beds at the home-farm, she said as they sat to the table. "Everybody is rushing to help Antony."
Antony? Peter echoed in a puzzled way.
Don't you know his name? she asked, looking towards Marbury.
I'm afraid not, Peter confessed.
But he called you Peter.
Everybody calls me Peter.
Why does everybody do that?
I don't know. Everybody does.
Peter was beginning to enjoy himself. Lady Mary smiled into his frank eyes, liking the direct way in which they looked at her.
They paused as Haversham came in to dinner. His empty chair always stood at the head of the table. Sometimes he was unable at the last moment to come down, but he never allowed anyone to wait or to inquire.
Peter looked at him with interest. He was yet at the prime, but grey and frail. His features were proud and delicate, his voice gravely penetrating. He was too far from Peter for his conversation to be heard, but he talked with lit face and a frequent smile. Sometimes, however, he fell silent, and Peter thought he detected the strained inward look of one struggling with physical pain.
You don't know Uncle Eustace? said Lady Mary, following Peter's look.
Not yet.
He will do you good.
Antony was telling me about him on the way down.
They talked through dinner of indifferent things. The accent of conscious culture which Peter now cordially hated was missing. Yet the talk was alive—happily vivid and agreeable. No one seemed anxious to make an effort or to press home a conviction. Nor was Peter aware of words anxiously picked. He was unable yet to name his impression. He only knew that he talked more frankly of small things than he had talked before.
He noticed in a series of pleasant discoveries how beautiful was the setting of their talk. Lord Haversham had at Highbury brought the art of fine living to perfection. He had filled the place with costly things, without anywhere suggesting unreasonable luxury. Highbury Towers grew upon the visitor. Even as a guest began to wonder why he never seemed to have dined so well and been less brutally aware of it, he perceived that the glass he fingered was lovely and rare, that it consonantly set off the china bowl which neighboured it, and the ancient candlesticks to left and right. Haversham had always held that true luxury was not insistent, and he was never so disappointed as when his guest broke into a compliment of a particular object. Had it perfectly agreed, fitting its environment, the mood of the conversation, the temperament of the party for which it was designed, it would, he urged, have passed unnoticed. It would have made its effect without directly speaking.
Peter was filled with an adventurous sense of novelty. He had not met people quite like these before. What was it which so clearly distinguished this company from any he had yet frequented? Clearly it was not their manners. Opposite Peter was a peer who took most of his soup indirectly by way of a long moustache, who wisely sat with his napkin well tucked in at the neck. His face reminded Peter of the farmer with whom he had lately laboured in the field; his talk was mostly of dogs, his vocabulary limited and racy. Yet he quite obviously went with the silver, whereas Peter could think of a dozen men he knew—men who had not only learned to feed with discretion, but had read all the most refined literature in three or four languages, and could talk like people in a stage drawing-room—who quite obviously would have jarred.
Peter comfortably surrendered to the charm of an atmosphere quietly genial and free. The machinery alone of this new life pleased and fascinated. He felt that a beautifully ordered system had taken charge of him, that henceforth he had only to suffer himself to be moved comfortably through the day, that life was now a series of artfully arranged opportunities for free expression in suitable surroundings. This feeling had first invaded him as at York he had seen his baggage mysteriously vanishing, by no act of his own, into a strange car which started off even as he himself was being wrapped in warm rugs for the race to Highbury. It was confirmed later, when, reaching his room with Marbury, he had found the things which had so swiftly vanished at York faultlessly spread for his evening wear. Peter was rapidly putting forth roots in this new soil. Every moment some unexpected thing appeared, to be at once included in his total impression of a new life, to become part of the common round.
There was nothing snobbish in Peter's delight. He already desired to know these people better. But he was not in the least aware of anything which could be described as a social aspiration. He liked his new friends because they were new; and because they behaved differently from any he had as yet encountered. They were continually surprising him in small ways. More particularly he was startled by the intimacy and freedom of their talk. Their conversation was innocent of periphrasis and free from uncomfortable reserve. Peter had heard nothing like it since he had talked with the old farmer under the hedge of his seven acre field.
When the men were alone, Marbury called Peter to the head of the table and introduced him to his uncle. Peter looked with an ardent respect at one who already had touched his imagination.
I've heard of you, said Lord Haversham as Peter felt for a chair. "You're the man who forcibly removed the Lord Chamberlain's trousers."
It wasn't the Lord Chamberlain, said Peter nervously.
Lord Haversham turned to Marbury: "I'm sure you told me it was a protest against the censorship of stage plays."
That, Uncle, was another small affair.
Then whose were the trousers? persisted Haversham.
They belonged to a Junior Prior, said miserable Peter.
What was the protest this time?
Equality of treatment under the law, suggested Marbury. "But you're making Peter uncomfortable. He doesn't like to remember that he was once a man of ideas."
Haversham looked meditatively at Peter: "It must be splendid to believe so thoroughly in an idea that you are ready to remove the trousers of a Junior Prior."
I was drunk, said Peter bluntly.
Does that also explain the Lord Chamberlain? asked Haversham, beginning to be interested.
No, said Peter. "Then I was only a fool."
I don't believe a word of it. Lord Haversham turned to Marbury: "Why does he say these things?"
Peter is a bad case, Uncle. He runs all his ideas to death, and sickens at sight of the corpse. I read Peter two years ago. He was born young.
I'm afraid he'll very soon exhaust Highbury, said Lord Haversham, smiling.
No, blurted Peter.
We haven't any ideas, said Haversham quaintly. "We grow on the soil here, labourers and landlords. Tony," he went on, putting his hand affectionately on Marbury's arm, "is almost perfectly the Radical's notion of a stupid squire. You never think, do you, Tony? You're just choked full of prejudices you can't explain. I'm ashamed of you, Tony. You remind me so perfectly of the sort of fool I was myself thirty years ago."
Lord Haversham looked at his nephew. There was a beautiful tenderness in his address. Almost as he spoke, an expression of great pain came into his eyes.
I must leave you now, he said. "We will talk again."
He quietly slipped from the room, and the conversation was broken up.
Peter, in the later solitude of his room, sat meditating at length upon his evening. He could not yet define what he liked in Marbury's friends, but he felt his personal need of it. He lacked the frank nature and ease, the lightness and dexterity of these people. He trod too heavily, delivering his sentiments with a weight which was out of keeping. He felt he must get out of the habit—a habit which did not express or become him—of taking too seriously the frequent appeal for his views on this or that. What, after all, were these views that had always mattered so much? He saw his late companions at dinner as merry figures seated about a pool, idly throwing in pebbles to keep the water agreeably astir. Conversation, it seemed, was not something to be captured and led. It was an agreeable adventure in which the universe was sociably explored. The final word, which Peter so frequently was tempted to deliver, should never be spoken, for, after the final word, what more could decently be said?
The next morning Peter was early in the breakfast room. Only Lady Mary was there. She was looking for weather at the window.
Let me get you some breakfast, said Peter, after they had greeted.
Not for the world, she answered, lifting lids at a side table. "I love breakfast. It's the only time when food seems to matter. I wouldn't think of letting anybody choose my breakfast."
There, at any rate, we agree, said Peter.
Do you like breakfast, too?
It's an Oxford habit.
Then you haven't given up Oxford altogether? said Lady Mary, speaking as one who had heard something.
Do you know all about me, like everybody else?
Peter groaned.
Of course. You don't know how famous you are. Everybody knows you were sent down from Gamaliel for being a Socialist.
I am not a Socialist, Peter hotly protested.
Lady Mary's eyes were full of mischief: "You must have been sent down for being something."
I'm nothing at all, said Peter.
Are you quite sure?
The silliest person alive is more than a label.
Peter cursed himself. He had again delivered an apothegm. Why must he always be so heavily serious? Lady Mary was openly smiling.
I'm afraid we're all going to be very silly at Highbury during the next few days. We've simply got to label ourselves for Antony's sake.
Tories, said Peter, trying to be nice, "are exceptions."
You mean that Tories don't count?
I really don't mean that, said Peter, genuinely grieved.
Then I'm afraid you don't mean anything at all.
Lady Mary was clearly amused. Peter miserably looked at her, looked at his plate, and then heard himself say:
Why am I such a solemn ass?
Who says that?
I say it myself, said Peter.
Lady Mary looked swiftly at his ingenuous face, in which exaggerated abasement struggled with a hope that she would reassure him. Her amusement was curiously shot with affection.
You oughtn't to have told me this so soon, she said, smiling at him in the friendliest way. "You see I don't yet know you well enough to contradict you. It would be rude."
Let me get you another sausage, said Peter, feeling a little better.
As he brought her the food he saw her more familiarly. Last night in her amazing dress she had seemed fragile and elaborate—all woman and social creature. But this morning he saw just a friendly girl, plainly suited in brown tweed, accessible and soothing. Now he really saw what she was like. He discreetly admired her hair and expressive eyes, her slender features and delicate complexion. She spoke on a clear note, level and quiet, suggesting that her ideas and feelings were regular and securely in leash. The music of her voice was vibrant but very sure. It declared a perfect balance, the voice of a woman who would not suffer to appear in any of her personal tones or gestures anything which could not beautifully be expressed.
At this point Marbury came into the room. Peter was bringing Lady Mary her sausage with the grave intentness of someone specially elected.
Hullo, Mary. Hullo, Peter. You seem to be eating well.
Yes, said Lady Mary. "This is my third sausage."
What does Peter say?
I've at last met someone who takes breakfast seriously.
I take everything seriously, said Peter, returning into gloom.
You needn't be so unhappy about it, said Marbury. "One good thing about an election is that it makes one realise the importance of being earnest. Even the local paper becomes an immensely serious thing."
Marbury settled to his breakfast, shook out the Highbury Gazette, and was absorbed. Soon he was smiling.
What is it, Tony? asked Lady Mary, eating an apple.
Listen to this, said Marbury. "It's one of Jordan's speeches."
Who's Jordan? Peter interrupted.
My opponent, said Marbury. "He seems to be dangerous. He knows how to appeal to the people. He has just bought a house and some acres in the constituency, and he tells the Yorkshiremen that he's a farmer, with a stake in the county.
'Gentlemen,' he says, according to this report, 'you may perhaps be inclined to ask what this Mr. Jordan, a town-bred man and a stranger, knows about the land and the people on the land. Well, gentlemen, I'm a farmer myself—in a small way. (Cheers.) I have a hundred or so acres of good Yorkshire soil. (Cheers.) I have twenty head of cattle, some sheep and poultry, and only this morning I was admiring three fine stacks of hay built by the honest labour of your fellow townsmen. (Loud Cheers.) Gentlemen, I have come to live among you. (A great outburst of cheering, many of the audience rising and waving their hats.)'
Is this what you call politics from within? Peter scornfully interrupted.
Now, Peter, don't despise the amusements of the people. They like to be governed in this way. I shall have to see the bailiff.
I'm passing the home-farm, said Lady Mary. "I'll send him to you."
When she had gone, Marbury looked with amusement at Peter, chafing up and down the hearth-rug.
Peter, he said, "compose yourself. The others will be coming down to breakfast."
Why do you want the bailiff? Peter curtly inquired.
I'm thinking out a little light banter for Jordan. I want to know whether we can do better than twenty head of cattle and three fine stacks of hay.
I suggest, said Peter, massively sarcastic, "that you make out a list of your hens and pigs and send it round the constituency."
Marbury considered this. "That, Peter, is an idea. I'll talk it over with the agent."
Peter flung up his hands in the gesture Marbury loved in him and always knew how to provoke.
It's all damn nonsense, said Peter shortly.
Jordan calls it democracy.
Politics! Peter exclaimed, with his nose in the air.
I've told you before, Peter, not to despise politics. It's ignorant. We'll go into the garden.
They walked on the terrace and found Haversham in the portable hut where he usually spent the day. He had been ordered by the doctors to live out of doors. Here he wrote letters, interviewed his tenants, and ordered the affairs of his estate and fortune. He was seldom alone, unless he wished it, for his friends treasured every moment they were able to spend with him.
Peter and Marbury paused at the open side of the hut, turned, as always, towards the sun. Marbury, before they reached Lord Haversham, had time to tell Peter that his uncle did not like his health to be talked about.
What is the programme? Haversham asked as they came up.
Eight meetings to-day, Uncle.
Haversham tapped the paper he was holding:
You've seen Jordan's latest?
We were talking about it, said Marbury.
What are you going to do? asked Haversham.
Peter suggests we should post the constituency with a schedule of your stock on the home-farm.
Peter glowered at Marbury, but a moment after felt amiably foolish under Haversham's kind inspection.
You don't expect me to believe that, Tony, said Haversham. "But, seriously, don't let your agent do anything of the kind. He'll probably suggest it."
I wonder.
It wouldn't do. If you were a Radical like Jordan you could tell them you owned the whole constituency. In a Radical it would show good faith and a likeliness to look after local interests. But in a Tory it is bribery and coercion. Your leaflet would be published in the London Radical papers—Another Instance of Tory Intimidation.
You see, Peter, said Marbury, "we shall have to be tactful."
Why notice the speech at all? asked Peter.
Because we are electioneering, said Marbury. "We're not here for fun. My enemy has sent out a leaflet: 'Vote for Jordan, the farmer, and the farmer's friend'—the implication, of course, being that I am neither a farmer nor a farmer's friend. It's much more important in an agricultural constituency to destroy this delicate suggestion than to prove that there is an absolute need for a Navy Bill next session of over sixty millions."
Yes, objected Peter, "but the whole thing is so ridiculous."
Haversham sighed: "That's what makes public life so hard. It is especially hard for our people. There's nothing we dread more than losing touch with our sense of humour. But these sacrifices are necessary. These sixty millions have to be raised, and only Antony will raise them."
You see, Peter, Marbury interposed, "the sense of duty is not yet extinct. Please look less incredulous. Then we'll go and talk to the farmers."
Why do you take me? Peter grunted. "Why not take someone who really understands?"
I have set my mind on taking you, said Marbury finally. "But you must be less critical. You will hear me say some obvious things. Please understand that I am quite honestly accepting a public duty, and don't look as if you were infinitely wiser and better, because you are not."
Peter felt the sincerity of this appeal. He turned impulsively to Haversham.
Antony—Peter used the name with shy pleasure—"has a way of putting me in the wrong."
Haversham smiled: "I'm sure you are excellent for one another," he said. "It does Antony good to realise that he is elderly for his years."
A servant came from the house and announced that the bailiff was waiting for Marbury. Peter was left for a time with his host, who drew him to talk easily of the days at Gamaliel and in town. Peter tried to explain how in suburban London he had failed to realise his hopes.
Perhaps, Haversham suggested, "you put the intellectual average too high?"
It wasn't that, said Peter eagerly. "I hope I haven't seemed too clever or anything of that kind. But somehow I was never comfortable. The more intelligence I found, the less I liked it."
You felt, in fact, rather like a modern statesman measuring the results of popular education. He realises that he has educated the crowd just enough to be taken in by a smart electioneer. Happily there is wisdom still in Sandhaven. Our people will vote for Antony because they like him. They know he feels rightly about things. Jordan's cleverness doesn't appeal to them. He doesn't know the difference between a swede and a turnip.
Then the seat is safe? concluded Peter.
Haversham smiled.
Not altogether, he said. "I got in last election by five hundred. There are some miners in the west corner, and there is a harbour at Sandhaven. The Government Whip has obscurely implied that votes for Jordan will be votes for the harbour. The harbour badly wants doing up."
But that is corruption.
I'm afraid not, corrected Haversham. "It is politics."
Marbury joined them from the house, telling Peter to be ready for a rush over the moors. In half an hour they started alone, provided for the day. The meetings were appointed in small villages near Sandhaven, where they would spend the night.
The ordered luxury of Highbury gave to their plunge into the wilderness a keener pleasure. Peter was free to enjoy the spacious loveliness of the moors—to enjoy it at ease in the best possible way. The contours of the country here were gradual and vast, but the speed at which they ran defeated monotony. The line of the greater banks shifted perpetually as they flew. Their colour came and went, changing at every mile the palette of the spread gorse and heather. Peter's joy was complete when from a high point of the moors he discovered the sea alive with the sun.
The meetings began at noon with an informal handshaking of farmers in a tiny market-town not far from Sandhaven. They continued through the day in schoolhouses, lamplit as darkness fell, and they ended at Sandhaven in an orthodox demonstration, with a chairman and a union Jack and the local committee importantly throned on a large platform. Except at this final meeting Marbury talked quite simply to the electors. Already he knew the majority of them personally. He was aware of their circumstances, family history, the troubles of their farming, their prejudices and characters. He knew the local jokes—who had made rather a better bargain with his horse than the purchaser, who, under feminine pressure, had lately turned from chapel to church. Peter marvelled through the day at the prodigious industry implied in Marbury's knowledge, confessed to be yet imperfect, of the estate to which he was succeeding. Peter admired, too, the perfection of Marbury's manner. He never condescended. Nor was he familiar in the way of a candidate seeking to be popular. He talked with his own people, in whom he was interested, for whom he had a right to care. Neither in himself nor in his tenants to be was there any of that uneasy pride of place which spoils a community whose members are busily asserting their rank. Marbury behaved, without self-consciousness, as part of a traditional system. He was met in the same way by men as yet untouched with the snobbery of labour.
Only at Sandhaven, where there was a strong opposition, did Marbury adopt the political or platform manner. Here he was called upon to explain to his audience why he considered that a personal landlord was better for agriculture than the local council. To Peter this seemed ludicrously unnecessary after what he had seen that day in the villages.
Towards the close of the meeting in Sandhaven, when questions were being asked, Peter, from the platform, saw Marbury's agent speak to a member of the audience. Marbury saw it too.
He realises I've shirked Jordan, the farmer's friend, he whispered to Peter.
The man whom the agent had prompted now rose and addressed Marbury:
Will Lord Marbury tell us what title Mr. Jordan has to call himself the farmer's friend?
Marbury rose, and picked a cutting of Jordan's speech from the table.
He read aloud the passages Peter had heard at breakfast, and deftly played with them. Peter admired the ease with which Mr. Jordan's pretensions as a farmer were justly measured without any assumption in Marbury of superiority or rural snobbisme. His speech was pointed throughout with hearty laughter and cheers. It effectually countered the speech of his opponent, but it gave no handle anywhere for a charge that Marbury desired to use his position as an argument for his return.
Peter, said Marbury, as they were leaving the platform, "you will hear that speech of mine forty times, in forty moods and tenses, during the next ten days. Please don't imagine that I enjoy it. But you saw the agent. He would not let me escape, even for twenty-four hours. He knows how important it is."
Over a late supper at the hotel, Peter shared with Marbury his impressions of the day.
Frankly, he said, "I admired you most of the time."
Beginning to think better of politics?
Politics don't seem to count much in this election.
Platform politics don't. The people here are only just discovering them. I hear, by the way, that the Government Whips have arranged a debauch for next week. They're sending down Wenderby. My agent, who despises me, is frightened.
Your agent ought to be jolly well pleased with you, said Peter indignantly.
He is not, Marbury asserted. "He thinks I'm too refined. He wants me to tell the people I'm going to inherit seventy thousand acres. He tells me not to cut marble with a razor. He wants it coarse."
They slept at Sandhaven, working back to Highbury on the following day. It was comparatively an easy journey, and they were back at Highbury in time for dinner.
Peter drifted shyly towards Lady Mary, and again was next to her.
This is lucky, she said as they sat down. "You can tell me about Antony's meetings."
I'm afraid I don't know the difference between a bad meeting and a good one, said Peter. "But Antony was pleased."
Have you been speaking? she asked.
No.
Why not?
What could I say? objected Peter.
Antony tells me you are quite an orator.
But this is different, Peter pleaded.
Why is it different?
Well, you see, I can talk when I really believe in things and have a lot to say.
Don't you believe in Antony? asked Lady Mary. She was determined not to let him off.
Yes, Peter admitted.
Then why not talk about him?
But what about politics? Peter objected.
Haven't you any politics?
They all seem to be going, said Peter dismally. "Things aren't so simple as I thought."
One thing is simple enough, said Lady Mary, looking serenely at Peter. "Antony is a better man for Sandhaven than Mr. Jordan."
I'm sure he is, Peter gladly agreed.
Very well then. You must speak for Antony.
Why do you insist? asked Peter, hoping for a compliment.
Because, said Lady Mary, resolved to disappoint him, "it will be good for Antony. It doesn't matter what you say. Our farmers will look at your honest face. Then they will measure your strong back. Then they will believe you are as good a man as themselves, especially if you halt a little in your speech. Antony is too fluent; and he is not sufficiently robust."
During the next few weeks Peter drifted rapidly into being a Tory. He soon talked himself into a conviction that Marbury must win for national as well as personal reasons. Moreover, in his encounter with the miners of the western end of the constituency, he had an opportunity of measuring the evil effect upon clouded minds of the simple demagogy practised on the other side. Peter provoked more than one riot by the contempt with which he challenged the cheap phrases whereby Mr. Jordan's electioneers were campaigning against squires and men of property. Fresh from a contemplation of Haversham's quiet heroism and devoted industry, he was amazed at the success with which English landlords were presented as conspirators against humanity. He was even more amazed at the impudent assurance with which their opponents, relying almost entirely upon popular text-books, raised a whirlwind of prejudice in favour of replacing men like Haversham by a committee of tradesmen. Arrived from these hot meetings in the West, Peter would stand beside his window and look upon a stream of visitors waiting upon Haversham. Already Haversham was told by the doctors to be ready for the end, and he was now deep in a last review of the estate.
Only half a dozen people knew that this was a grand inquest and farewell, but many of the men with whom Haversham spoke realised they would not see him again. Their affection appeared in a solicitude clumsily expressed, but Haversham encouraged no sentiment, and with easy simplicity checked in his visitors any dwelling upon their personal loss.
Peter especially remembered the last time he sat in the small hut. Instinctively he avoided the thing that filled his mind. Not a word was spoken to suggest that Haversham was an invalid. When Peter came to recall their conversation, he realised that he had talked exclusively of himself under Haversham's quiet prompting. He still saw the interested smile, lighting the face of his host—now brilliant with fever and eloquent with the gesture of his spirit. Long afterwards, Peter shamefully realised how this man, already in the shadow of death, had, in perfect sincerity, bent as from the clouds to encourage his young egoism and to listen.
A few days later, Peter attended a mass meeting of Marbury's opponents. It was Wenderby's meeting, held in the western corner of the constituency, in contempt of landowners. Peter knew nothing of Wenderby beyond his public reputation. He saw in Wenderby only the brass and swagger which, for political purposes, he chose to affect. Peter was deceived. Wenderby was a politician of exquisite finesse, playing the political bruiser partly out of genuine love for his country, partly from a deeply calculated personal ambition. His speech in this by-election well illustrated the intricacy of modern politics under their superficial simplicity. Ostensibly it denounced all Tories and pleaded for economy in naval expenditure. Actually it was Wenderby's cover for a set campaign for extorting as much money out of his own party for the Service as he dared.
Wenderby's position in Marbury's constituency was every way a snare for the politically innocent. He was a friend of Haversham, and usually a guest at Highbury. But, as he wrote to Haversham, to stay at Highbury in the present crisis would perhaps be regarded as a breach of political decency. Peter, seeing in Wenderby the public enemy of a nobleman whose hospitality the speaker had himself enjoyed, could not contain his rage. Wenderby's rhetorical periods were launched with deadly effect at a simmering audience.
At the close of the meeting, Peter, red with anger, rose to ask whether certain remarks concerning the landlords of England were intended to have a personal and local application. Wenderby, seeing he had only to do with a youngster who had lost his temper, smoothly evaded him. Peter sprang to his feet:
Sir— he began.
Immediately there were shouts of "Order!" and "Turn him out!" Peter obstinately stood.
I insist, he shouted, "that my question be answered. An infamous insinuation——"
At this point Peter was choked by half a dozen dirty hands grabbing from all quarters at his neck. He was thrust gasping and struggling from the hall—his coat in ribbons. His battered hat and collar were derisively thrown after him, as he bitterly explained to the police that he was not drunk and disorderly.
Peter showed himself that night to Marbury and stormily told his tale. Marbury, to his mortification, only laughed.
What is amusing you? asked Peter, very short and stony.
Everything.
For example?
I don't know where to begin. First, you were shouting at the wrong man. Wenderby is the favourite godson of Uncle Eustace. He's the only man we can trust.
But he's on the other side.
In a way he is.
He will lose you the seat.
Perhaps. This by-election is only an incident. Wenderby's speech to-night was one of a series. Unfortunately it happens to lie in our constituency. Wenderby has to manage his own people.
Peter flung up his hands. "I don't understand these politics."
Marbury looked affectionately at Peter. Peter had met Marbury going to his room. He was without a collar, and he looked forlorn. Marbury put a hand on his arm:
Wenderby shall apologise, he said gravely. "He's a charming fellow, and he is very fond of young people."
Lady Mary, fresh from canvassing, shared a late supper with Marbury and Peter. She joined with her brother to wring from Peter a full account of his adventure. Peter began sorely, but at last detected in Lady Mary an unconfessed approval. Clearly she liked him for his protest. He even dared to think that she admired. Peter was gradually more happy, and soon was enjoying his escapade. He even displayed, in mock heroism, the large blue marks upon his neck.
Later, in his room, Peter found in the events of the day a consecration of his devotion to Eustace Haversham. Unessential incidents fell away, and he was glad of his protest—mistaken though it seemed, and ridiculous.
Next day was Sunday, and meetings were suspended. The house was very quiet, and Haversham was not in his usual place. Marbury told Peter he might not again come down.
After dinner, Peter slipped on to the terrace and faced the shadowy moor, lifting his head to a faint breeze from the sea. He stood beside the bronze figure he had so often admired. Before him was the wilderness, but civilisation was behind in the murmured voices from the drawing-room and those harsher cries Peter had lately heard from men made selfish and bitter.
Surely it was well that this triumphant figure should brave the desert, and that in its shadow a beautiful life should be passing. It flung out the challenge of art and wisdom. It was a consummation for which millions worked, and now it confidently stood, as though aware of what it had cost, resolved that it was well worth the price. Peter wondered whether it were justified.
His dreaming was broken. Lady Mary rustled beside him.
You have found this place? she said after a silence. They watched the superb silhouette of the statue fading as the light emptied rapidly from the sky.
I am wondering whether he is worth while? said Peter, waving his hand at the figure between them.
What is your riddle?
He has cost a thousand lives.
You are talking like a Socialist, said Lady Mary curtly.
Peter felt in her a coldness that passed. She was looking over the moors as though she followed the blind eyes of the naked boy. Her attitude suggested that she, too, was part of this challenge. Her dress, conveying to Peter an impression of complicated and finished art, fell away from her shoulders as, with head flung back, she filled her eyes with the beauty of earth and sky. She interpreted in radiant life the cold metal of the statue. Civilisation was justified in her, or it could not be justified.
Have you never any doubt? said Peter, wistfully impulsive.
Lady Mary turned slowly from the moor. Her calm eyes swept over him.
Doubt? she echoed.
Do you never wonder whether all this—Peter made one of the large gestures of his mother—"is worth the noise and the dirt over there? Have you no doubt at all?"
How is it possible to doubt? she calmly responded. She stood proudly facing him. But she read perplexity in his face and, as it seemed to Peter, she stooped to him.
Don't you see, she almost pleaded, "that either we must believe in ourselves or make way; and we do believe. I believe in all this"—she faintly parodied Peter's large gesture—"and I believe in myself."
There was a pause, and it was Lady Mary who spoke again. Almost it seemed that she wanted to make her point.
You, at any rate, she urged him, "have learned to believe a little." She looked towards the hut on the terrace, and Peter followed her thoughts.
The trees stirred a moment, and laughter came from the open room. But these two heard only the voice of Eustace Haversham, and saw his lighted features vivid in memory. The last colour of the sunset was full upon her as she faced her uncle's empty place. Its emptiness to-night was an omen of the eternal emptiness to come. Her mouth quivered, and tears shone suddenly under her lids as she turned again to Peter.
I believe he is worth the whole world, she said, and her voice broke.
Her tears seemed to remove every barrier. Peter saw in her eyes an appeal for an equal faith. She felt the drops on her cheek, and turned away into the shadow.
I, too, believe, Peter deeply whispered.
Then he noticed how her hand lay unprotected upon the pedestal of the statue, vaguely delicate upon the hard metal.
He impulsively bent and touched it with his lips. She did not start or cry out, but turned again slowly towards him. She read in his eyes faith merely and dedication.
I am glad you did that, she said in a level voice.
Then they went, as by consent, towards the lighted windows of the drawing-room.
Next morning, ten days before polling day at Sandhaven, Peter was summoned away by telegram to Hamingburgh. His uncle had suddenly been stricken seriously ill. Peter bade his friends a quick farewell and caught the first train from York.
When Peter found his uncle stretched helplessly in bed with all the ceremony about him of an urgent case, he reproached himself for having thought of him so little during his years of health. He had taken his uncle for granted as the sanguine and gracious benefactor. It had not occurred to him to probe the motives of his uncle's affection, or to ask whether he was making him an adequate return.
Now it was too late. When Peter arrived in Hamingburgh his uncle was already unconscious, and he did not recover sufficiently to recognise his nephew. A sudden seizure ended with a rush of blood to the brain; and Peter was left heir to a personal estate of over ￡90,000. Peter had to be content with his mother's assurance that his uncle died with entire faith in his nephew's ability to spend a fortune.
The next weeks passed in ending all connection with Hamingburgh, which Peter now found intolerable, and in preparing for life in London commensurate with his new ideas. He took rooms for himself and his mother in Curzon Street, to be made ready for the autumn season.
We will have everything very beautiful, and we will have only what is necessary, he told his mother as they talked things over in their flat at Golder's Green. "Of course we must sell all this stuff."
He waved his hands in an inclusive gesture toward the chairs and tables. Mrs. Paragon mildly looked about her.
But, Peter, I thought you liked all this pretty furniture.
It's modern, said Peter briefly. "There is no such thing as modern furniture. Ask Marbury."
He came and sat on the arm of his mother's chair.
I must get Marbury to help. I want to see you talking to Lady Mary over a tea-table by the Brother's Adam.
Peter, this is the third time to-day you have mentioned Lord Marbury's sister.
Naturally, mother. This is polling day at Highbury. I've been wondering how things are going.
A few days later Marbury came to town and took his seat as member for Sandhaven. Peter secured him for the following evening, and they all three dined together at the flat in Golder's Green. Marbury was called upon for advice as to Curzon Street.
Peter, he said, "this is a new phase. Don't encourage him, Mrs. Paragon. He wasn't intended for an exquisite. He's too robust."
He does not need encouraging, said Mrs. Paragon. She had calmly accepted Peter's new enthusiasm, and now only wondered how long it would endure.
Peter has already sold all our furniture, she added by way of information. "It will disappear at the end of the week."
What are you going to do in the meantime? asked Marbury, exchanging an intelligible smile with Mrs. Paragon.
Mrs. Paragon quietly answered him, unaware of the irony which lurked in her undisturbed acceptance of the inevitable.
Peter says that no one stays in London during these next months. He says we must go to the North of Scotland.
What are you going to do there? asked Marbury.
Peter is going to fish, said Mrs. Paragon.
When the time came Mrs. Paragon discovered that her part in the holiday in North Britain was to attend Peter during long happy days in lonely places where Peter mysteriously dangled in lakes and rivers. She dreamed away the time beside the basket of food and shared with Peter pleasant meals under the sky, quickened with his lively account of the morning's work.
News came once into their wilderness when Eustace Haversham died. In the letters Peter exchanged with Marbury and his sister he learned that the end had come at the close of a happy day in the sun, with people arriving and departing upon the terrace at Highbury. Haversham had smilingly received the congratulations of his friends upon his better health; then, with a look in his eyes showing that he at any rate knew better, he had died as the light fell from the bronze figure fronting the moor.
In long hours upon loch and river Peter sometimes thought of Lady Mary and their last meeting. He thought of her less as a woman than a lovely symbol of the life he was now called to lead. She stood in his eye, radiant and proud, thrown into relief by a mutter of poverty and ill-will. She was for Peter the supreme achievement of the time. The cool touch of her hand on his lips raised in him no remembered rapture. It had been not a personal caress but an act of worship, for which he could imagine no other possible expression. She charmed him, and made him afraid. The delicate play of her mind was intimately enjoyed by Peter in retrospect when he was able to realise the indulgence with which she had met his blundering.
Peter remembered his father and his years of revolt without misgiving for the way he now seemed to be taking. These memories enforced him towards all for which Lady Mary now stood. He so clearly had been wrong.
Early in September Peter and his mother returned to London. Peter, fearing to be bantered, furnished the rooms in Curzon Street without advice. The season was just beginning when they took possession.
Peter soon read in the fashionable intelligence that Lord Haversham—Marbury had shed the younger title—had come to town for the autumn session. He also saw that Wenderby had been staying at Highbury as the guest of Lady Mary and her brother. This displeased Peter. He would not surrender his animosity against Wenderby, or admit that he was mistaken. He owed this to himself in justification of his outbreak during the election. Now that he read Wenderby's name beside the name of Lady Mary, Peter was surprised to find how much he distrusted the man. He threw down the paper in a small passion.
Why, Peter, said Mrs. Paragon, "what's the matter?"
Nothing, mother.
Mrs. Paragon tried another way of approach.
What's the news this morning? she lightly inquired.
Lord Haversham has come to town.
With Lady Mary? Mrs. Paragon quickly asked.
Yes, said Peter. "Also with Lord Wenderby." He kicked the newspaper and went to the window.
I see, said Peter's mother.
Perhaps Mrs. Paragon was right, and Peter was really jealous. Wenderby clearly belonged to the party which had arrived in town. He knew the language. He did not make heroically foolish scenes at a public meeting. Probably he had never incurred the laughter of Lady Mary. She did not make allowances for him, or look at him with protection in her eyes, or take an interest in him as someone from a strange world. Wenderby knew all that Peter had yet to learn.
Peter himself was worried to account for his ill humour, and even came to the point of asking himself the question which his mother had already answered. He decided that he was not personally jealous. Rather he was jealous of the privilege and experience which made Wenderby at home and at ease in the world which Peter desired to enjoy. Haversham had told him that Wenderby was a charming fellow. Peter wondered whether he would ever be a charming fellow; and, in a fit of misgiving, began to exhaust the possibilities of self-contempt. He had had a glimpse of the beautiful life; but suppose he were not worthy to enter. Suppose Haversham could not be the friend of a young colt who had nothing in the world to fit him for an agreeable part in the social comedy. Suppose he would never again come into touch with exquisite creatures like Lady Mary. Suppose he were doomed to follow the witty pageant of London life (which now was a Paradise in Peter's fancy) only through the columns of the fashionable intelligence. Suppose it were his destiny henceforth to hear of Lady Mary only when she happened to be entertaining Wenderby.
Peter was chewing this bitter cud at his mother's tea-table in Curzon Street when his man-servant (Peter, to his mother's dismay, had insisted on a man-servant) announced the figures of his meditation by name. Peter rose in a whirl, and before he had possession of his mind Haversham and Wenderby were taking tea with Mrs. Paragon. Mrs. Paragon received her guests with monumental calm, answered their inquiries after her holiday in Scotland with a quiet precision which suggested an irony of which really she was quite incapable, and wondered meanwhile why Peter was less talkative than a meeting with his best friend seemed to require.
Peter, said Haversham at last, "you seem depressed."
Not at all. Peter was the more laconic because he was suffering a quiet, persistent scrutiny from Wenderby.
This, said Wenderby, "is surely not the sanguine young man who brought me to judgment."
You remember that? asked Peter briefly.
I have come to apologise, Wenderby explained.
I told you he should apologise, said Haversham.
Isn't that for me to do? asked Peter.
I don't think so, Wenderby smiled. "You lost your collar and were nearly strangled."
I would do it again, said Peter cheerfully.
I admit the provocation, agreed Wenderby. He was quite unruffled by the vibrant conviction of Peter's voice.
You must make allowances, Peter, put in Haversham. "It was a misfortune for all of us. That speech might have lost me the seat. Wenderby always puts public interest before personal feeling."
The speech was a great success, said Wenderby. "It did not lose the seat, but it won the Cabinet. I have wrung out fifty-seven millions. The Tories could hardly have done better."
No politics, protested Haversham. "Peter doesn't understand."
How is Lady Mary? asked Peter suddenly.
Haversham's phrase about "personal feeling" had stuck in his mind.
Wenderby glanced keenly at Peter, so keenly that Peter at once felt his question had touched a nerve.
You must come and see for yourself, said Haversham. "We're moving into Arlington Street and Mary is being worried with decorators. She has even interviewed a plumber. I suggest that you look in at the Ballet to-night and encourage her."
How shall I encourage her? Peter gloomily asked.
You are young, Peter, and youth is infectious.
I wish I could catch it, said Wenderby; and Peter detected envy.
Shortly after they had left Peter made ready for Covent Garden. His master-thought was to get into touch with the life which at Highbury had so urgently attracted him. An encounter with Lady Mary would be the touchstone of his claim to be socially accepted. Also Peter knew that Wenderby would be there. He had seen in Wenderby the faintest gesture of annoyance when Haversham had mentioned the Ballet. Peter was sensitive to the least indication in Wenderby of a special interest in Lady Mary. Already there was a mutual faint dislike. Peter resented the keen appraisement of Wenderby's searching eyes. He felt the rapid working of a trained and subtle mind busily estimating his value. Wenderby, for his part, detected in Peter a wilful energy which, as a politician, he abhorred.
Mrs. Paragon preferred not to accompany Peter. He dined alone with her, and she found him clouded and cold. Afterwards he picked his way by cab to the Opera House, sitting bolt upright with a vague presage of complications to ensue. He joined the happy few carried to pleasure through the shining streets. Summer lingered wherever a foothold was offered to the green. It was warm, with cool air soft as the hum of the London traffic. But Peter's senses were shut to his position of ease. He was restive still under the penetrating eyes of Wenderby. He felt as if he were going into an arena. More than one woman turned in the crush of cars at Covent Garden to look at Peter's vivid, ingenuous face as he sat erect, frowning a little, staring blindly ahead. He was not actually thinking. Curious faint emotions came and went. His consciousness was ruled by a shimmering figure, infinite in grace and promise; but it rested under the threat of a cloud, which now was seen to grow dark and then to vanish.
A little later Peter found Lady Mary with his glasses; Wenderby stood beside her in the box. She saw Peter almost as his glasses were levelled, and leaned eagerly forward to greet him. Wenderby looked like one interrupted, and Peter could see how thoughtful he suddenly became. Then the lights were lowered.
When Peter, in the interval between the first and second ballet, entered the box of Lady Mary he formally embarked upon his career as a social figure.
Wenderby was Lady Mary's companion of the evening, for he sat securely beside her as Peter came. But she was radiantly pleased to welcome Peter, and even seemed anxious to exaggerate her pleasure.
The two men were vividly contrasted. Peter stood for youth—resilient, athletic, and eager. Wenderby as perfectly expressed the wisdom, tolerance, and disillusion of one who already had lived. He had just successfully finished a hard campaign in the country, and he was tired. The lines of his forehead were deeper to-night than he knew.
Lady Mary's cordial reception scattered Peter's vague misgiving. It restored to him the woman who, on the terrace at Highbury, had accepted his worship, thanked him, and understood.
Your mother isn't here? she said, as Peter found a chair.
I could not persuade her.
I must know her at once. Antony is quite positive about it.
Antony is right, said Peter. "She is wonderful."
Lord Wenderby is more fortunate than I am. He has seen her already.
I'm afraid of her, said Wenderby. "She has that sort of silence which spoils my best conversation."
You mustn't allow Lord Wenderby to frighten you. Peter paused, and added quite simply: "You will love my mother."
I must meet her at once; but I cannot go out to-morrow. Will you bring her to me at Arlington Street?
Peter at this was entirely happy. How could he have doubted that his precious intimacy with Lady Mary would be broken. Talking thus of his mother, she invited him to come closer yet. Peter wondered if Wenderby had ever seen her tears. She passed through her hands a string of pearls that hung about her neck, and Peter saw in them the frozen symbol of drops more precious. His eyes, as this conceit came into his mind, rested upon the stones as they fell through her fingers. He did not know he was looking at the hand he had kissed. Lady Mary drew it behind her fan.
You like my pearls? she said abruptly.
Peter started a little.
They are very beautiful, but you do not need them, he said bluntly.
The crudity of his compliment was more effective than the most artful flattery. Wenderby looked wistfully at the two young faces, conscious that between them youth was singing. Peter's adoration was plainly written, and Lady Mary received it with a delicate flush of colour and a perceptible nervousness. Wenderby had never before seen her in the least perturbed.
He hastily turned the conversation, commenting on the ballet they had just seen—a ballet of lust and blood. It had stepped from the pages of Sir Richard Burton, barbaric in colour and music—frankly sadistic.
This, he said, indicating the rows of brilliant and respectable people who had watched it, "is a feast indeed for the cynical. How many of these people realise what they have seen? How horrified they would be if you told them in plain English what they have just heard in plain music!"
You are a musician? Peter asked politely.
Enough of a musician to know that even Sir Richard Burton never spoke plainer than this Russian fellow. It seems to me quite extraordinary that civilised people are able to sit serenely beside one another in a public place and hear things which they would blush to read in a private room.
It was strange that this ballet should recall a chapter almost forgotten. Peter, looking at Lady Mary, saw again a cherry-coloured ribbon folded between the leaves of her brother's book. Peter knew she had not touched that old fever. He could not think of her as kindling him in that savage way. He saw himself forever humbly repeating the caress of adoration.
Peter left at the end of the interval, fearing too eagerly to force himself. It was enough that he was to see Lady Mary again on the following day.