But to-night all this cumbering consciousness, all these self-made doubts and worries, had for the moment dropped clean away! A transfigured man it was that lingered at the old spot—a man once more young, divining with enchantment the approach of passion, feeling at last through all his being the ecstasy of a self-surrender, long missed, long hungered for.
Six weeks was it since he had first seen her—this tall, straight, Marcella Boyce? He shut his eyes impatiently against the disturbing golds and purples of the sunset, and tried to see her again as she had walked beside him across the church fields, in that thin black dress, with, the shadow of the hat across her brow and eyes—the small white teeth flashing as she talked and smiled, the hand so ready with its gesture, so restless, so alive! What a presence—how absorbing, troubling, preoccupying! No one in her company could forget her—nay, could fail to observe her. What ease and daring, and yet no hardness with it—rather deep on deep of womanly weakness, softness, passion, beneath it all!
How straight she had flung her questions at him!—her most awkward embarrassing questions. What other woman would have dared such candour—unless perhaps as a stroke of fine art—he had known women indeed who could have done it so. But where could be the art, the policy, he asked himself indignantly, in the sudden outburst of a young girl pleading with her companion's sense of truth and good feeling in behalf of those nearest to her?
As to her dilemma itself, in his excitement he thought of it with nothing but the purest pleasure! She had let him see that she did not expect him to be able to do much for her, though she was ready to believe him her friend. Ah well—he drew a long breath. For once, Raeburn, strange compound that he was of the man of rank and the philosopher, remembered his own social power and position with an exultant satisfaction. No doubt Dick Boyce had misbehaved himself badly—the strength of Lord Maxwell's feeling was sufficient proof thereof. No doubt the "county," as Raeburn himself knew, in some detail, were disposed to leave Mellor Park severely alone. What of that? Was it for nothing that the Maxwells had been for generations at the head of the "county," i.e. of that circle of neighbouring families connected by the ties of ancestral friendship, or of intermarriage, on whom in this purely agricultural and rural district the social pleasure and comfort of Miss Boyce and her mother must depend?
He, like Marcella, did not believe that Richard Boyce's offences were of the quite unpardonable order; although, owing to a certain absent and preoccupied temper, he had never yet taken the trouble to enquire into them in detail. As to any real restoration of cordiality between the owner of Mellor and his father's old friends and connections, that of course was not to be looked for; but there should be decent social recognition, and—in the case of Mrs. Boyce and her daughter—there should be homage and warm welcome, simply because she wished it, and it was absurd she should not have it! Raeburn, whose mind was ordinarily destitute of the most elementary capacity for social intrigue, began to plot in detail how it should be done. He relied first upon winning his grandfather—his popular distinguished grandfather, whose lightest word had weight in Brookshire. And then, he himself had two or three women friends in the county—not more, for women had not occupied much place in his thoughts till now. But they were good friends, and, from the social point of view, important. He would set them to work at once. These things should be chiefly managed by women.
But no patronage! She would never bear that, the glancing proud creature. She must guess, indeed, let him tread as delicately as he might, that he and others were at work for her. But oh! she should be softly handled; as far as he could achieve it, she should, in a very little while, live and breathe compassed with warm airs of good-will and consideration.
He felt himself happy, amazingly happy, that at the very beginning of his love, it should thus be open to him, in these trivial, foolish ways, to please and befriend her. Her social dilemma and discomfort one moment, indeed, made him sore for her; the next, they were a kind of joy, since it was they gave him this opportunity to put out a strong right arm.
Everything about her at this moment was divine and lovely to him; all the qualities of her rich uneven youth which she had shown in their short intercourse—her rashness, her impulsiveness, her generosity. Let her but trust herself to him, and she should try her social experiments as she pleased—she should plan Utopias, and he would be her hodman to build them. The man perplexed with too much thinking remembered the girl's innocent, ignorant readiness to stamp the world's stuff anew after the forms of her own pitying thought, with a positive thirst of sympathy. The deep poetry and ideality at the root of him under all the weight of intellectual and critical debate leapt towards her. He thought of the rapid talk she had poured out upon him, after their compact of friendship, in their walk back to the church, of her enthusiasm for her Socialist friends and their ideals—with a momentary madness of self-suppression and tender humility. In reality, a man like Aldous Raeburn is born to be the judge and touchstone of natures like Marcella Boyce. But the illusion of passion may deal as disturbingly with moral rank as with social.
It was his first love. Years before, in the vacation before he went to college, his boyish mind had been crossed, by a fancy for a pretty cousin a little older than himself, who had been very kind indeed to Lord Maxwell's heir. But then came Cambridge, the flow of a new mental life, his friendship for Edward Hallin, and the beginnings of a moral storm and stress. When he and the cousin next met, he was quite cold to her. She seemed to him a pretty piece of millinery, endowed with a trick of parrot phrases. She, on her part, thought him detestable; she married shortly afterwards, and often spoke to her husband in private of her "escape" from that queer fellow Aldous Raeburn.
Since then he had known plenty of pretty and charming women, both in London and in the country, and had made friends with some of them in his quiet serious way. But none of them had roused in him even a passing thrill of passion. He had despised himself for it; had told himself again and again that he was but half a man—
Ah! he had done himself injustice—he had done himself injustice!
His heart was light as air. When at last the sound of a clock striking in the plain roused him with a start, and he sprang up from the heap of stones where he had been sitting in the dusk, he bent down a moment to give a gay caress to his dog, and then trudged off briskly home, whistling under the emerging stars.
CHAPTER VI.
By the time, however, that Aldous Raeburn came within sight of the windows of Maxwell Court his first exaltation had sobered down. The lover had fallen, for the time, into the background, and the capable, serious man of thirty, with a considerable experience of the world behind him, was perfectly conscious that there were many difficulties in his path. He could not induce his grandfather to move in the matter of Richard Boyce without a statement of his own feelings and aims. Nor would he have avoided frankness if he could. On every ground it was his grandfather's due. The Raeburns were reserved towards the rest of the world, but amongst themselves there had always been a fine tradition of mutual trust; and Lord Maxwell amply deserved that at this particular moment his grandson should maintain it.
But Raeburn could not and did not flatter himself that his grandfather would, to begin with, receive his news even with toleration. The grim satisfaction with which that note about the shooting had been despatched, was very clear in the grandson's memory. At the same time it said much for the history of those long years during which the old man and his heir had been left to console each other for the terrible bereavements which had thrown them together, that Aldous Raeburn never for an instant feared the kind of violent outburst and opposition that other men in similar circumstances might have looked forward to. The just living of a life-time makes a man incapable of any mere selfish handling of another's interests—a fact on which the bystander may reckon.
It was quite dark by the time he entered the large open-roofed hall of the Court.
"Is his lordship in?" he asked of a passing footman.
"Yes, sir—in the library. He has been asking for you, sir."
Aldous turned to the right along the fine