 Book 1, Chapter 10 of Marcella This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Paul Stevens. Marcella by Mrs Humphrey Ward Book 1, Chapter 10 Weren't you sitting nearer to the window? We were rather proud of our view at this time of year," said Miss Rayburn to Marcella, taking her visitor's jacket from her as she spoke and laying it aside. Lady Winterborne is late, but she will come, I am sure. She is very precise about engagements. Marcella moved her chair nearer to the great bow window and looked out over the sloping gardens of the court and the autumn splendour of the woods girdling them in on all sides. She held her head nervously erect, with not apparently much inclined to talk, and Miss Rayburn, who had resumed her knitting within a few paces of her guest, said to herself presently after a few minutes' conversation on the weather and the walk from Mella, difficult, decidedly difficult, and too much manner for a young girl, but the most picturesque creature I ever set eyes on. Lord Maxwell's sister was an excellent woman, the inquisitive, benevolent despot of all the Maxwell villages, and one of the soundest tories still left to a degenerate party and a changing time. Her brother and her great-nephew represented to her the flower of humankind. She had never been capable, and probably never would be capable, of quarrelling with either of them on any subject whatever. At the same time she had her rights with them. She was at any rate their natural guardian in those matters relating to humankind, where men are confessedly given to folly. She had accordingly kept a shrewd eye in Aldous's interest on all the young ladies of the neighbourhood for many years past, knew perfectly well all that he might have done, and sighed over all that he had so far left undone. At the present moment, in spite of the even good breeding with which she knitted and chattered beside Marcella, she was in truth consumed with curiosity, conjecture, and alarm on the subject of this mis-voice. Profoundly as they trusted each other, the Rayburns were not on the surface a communicative family. Her brother, nor Aldous, had so far bestowed any direct confidence upon her. But the course of affairs had, notwithstanding, aroused her very keenest attention. In the first place, as we know, the mistress of Maxwell Court had left Mellor and its new occupants unvisited. She had plainly understood it to be her brother's wish that she should do so. How, indeed, could you know the women without knowing Richard Boyce, which according to Lord Maxwell was impossible? And now it was Lord Maxwell who had suggested not only that after all it would be kind to call upon the poor things, who were heavily weighted enough already with Dick Boyce for husband and father, but that it would be a graceful act on his sister's part to ask the girl and her mother to luncheon. Dick Boyce, of course, must be made to keep his distance, but the resources of civilisation were perhaps not unequal to the task of discriminating if it were prudently set about. At any rate, Miss Rayburn gathered that she was expected to try, and instead of pressing her brother for explanations, she held her tongue, paid her call forthwith, and wrote her note. But although Aldous, thinking no doubt that he had been already sufficiently premature, had said nothing at all as to his own feelings to his great-aunt, she knew perfectly well that he had said a great deal on the subject of Miss Boyce and her mother to Lady Winterbourne, the only woman in the neighbourhood with whom he was ever really confidential. No woman, of course, in Miss Rayburn's position, and with Miss Rayburn's general interest in her kind, could have been ignorant for any appreciable number of days after the boy's arrival at Mella that they possessed a handsome daughter, of whom the hardens in particular gave striking but, as Miss Rayburn privately thought, by no means wholly attractive accounts. And now, after all these somewhat agitating preliminaries, here was the girl established in the court-drawing room, Aldous more nervous and preoccupied than she had ever seen him, and Lord Maxwell expressing a particular anxiety to return from his board meeting in good time for luncheon, to which he had especially desired that Lady Winterbourne should be bitten and no one else. It may well be supposed that Miss Rayburn was on the alert. As for Marcella, she was on her side keenly conscious of being observed, of having her way to make. Here she was alone among these formidable people whose acquaintance she had in a manner compelled. Well, what blame? What was to prevent her from doing the same thing again tomorrow? Her conscience was absolutely clear. If they were not ready to meet her, in the same spirit in which, through Miss Rayburn, she had approached them, she would know perfectly well how to protect herself. Above all, how to live out her life in the future without troubling them. Meanwhile, in spite of her dignity and those inward propitiations it from time to time demanded, she was, in her human vivid way, full of excitement and curiosity, she could hardly conceal as perfectly as she desired. Curiosity as to the Great House and the life in it, especially as to Older Rayburn's part therein. She knew very little indeed of the class to which, by birth, she belonged. Great Houses and Great People were strange to her. She brought her artists and students' eyes to look at them with. She was determined not to be dazzled or taken in by them. At the same time, as she glanced every now and then round the splendid room in which they sat, with its tudor ceiling, its fine pictures, its combination of every luxury with every refinement, she was distinctly conscious of a certain thrill, a romantic drawing towards the statelyness and power which it all implied, together with a proud and careless sense of equality, of kinship, so to speak, which she made light of but would not in reality have been without for the world. In birth and blood she had nothing to yield to the Rayburn's, so her mother assured her. If things were to be vulgarly measured, this fact too must come in. But they should not be vulgarly measured. She did not believe in class or wealth, not at all. Only, as her mother had told her, she must hold her head up, an inward temper which no doubt led to that excessive manner of which Miss Rayburn was meanwhile conscious. Where were the gentlemen? Marcella was beginning to resent and tire of the innumerable questions as to her likes and dislikes, her accomplishments, her friends, her opinions of Mella and the neighbourhood, which this knitting lady beside her poured out upon her so briskly, when to her great relief the door opened and a footman announced, Lady Winterbourne! A very tall, thin lady in black entered the room at the words. My dear, she said to Miss Rayburn, I am very late, but the roads are abominable and those horses Edward has just given me have to be taken such tiresome care of. I told the coachman next time he might wrap them in shawls and put them to bed and I should walk. You are quite capable of it, my dear, said Miss Rayburn, kissing her. We know you. Miss Boyce, Lady Winterbourne! Lady Winterbourne shook hands with a shy awkwardness which belied her height and stakeliness. As she sat down beside Miss Rayburn, the contrast between her and Lord Maxwell's sister were sufficiently striking. Miss Rayburn was short, inclined to be stout and to a certain gay profusion in her attire. Her cap was made of a bright silk handkerchief edged with lace, round her neck were hung a number of small trinkets on various gold chains. She abounded to in bracelets, most of which were clearly old-fashioned mementos of departed relatives or friends. Her dress was a cheerful red verging on crimson and her general air suggested energy, bustle and a good-humoured common sense. Lady Winterbourne, on the other hand, was not only dressed from head to foot in severe black without an ornament, her head and face belonged also to the same impression as of some strong and forcible study in black and white. The attitude was rigidly erect. The very dark eyes under the snowy and abundant hair had a trick of absent staring. In certain aspects the whole figure had a tragic, nay formidable dignity, from which one expected and sometimes got the tone and gesture of tragic acting. Yet at the same time mixed in therewith a curious strain of womanish, nay childish weakness, appealingness. Altogether a great lady and a personality, yet something else too, something ill-assured, timid in Congress, hard to be defined. I believe you have not been at men along, the newcomer asked, in a deep contral to her voice which she dragged a little. About seven weeks my father and mother had been there since May. You must, of course, think it a very interesting old place. Of course I do. I love it, said Marcella, disconcerted by the odd habit Lady Winterbourne had of fixing her eyes upon a person and then, as it were, forgetting what she had done with them. Oh, I haven't been there, Agnita, said the newcomer, turning after a pause to Miss Rayburn. Since that summer you remember that party when the Palmerstons came over, so long ago, twenty years. Marcella sat stiffly upright. Lady Winterbourne grew a little nervous and flurried. I don't think I ever saw your mother, Miss Boyce. I was much away from home about then. Oh, yes, I did once. The speaker stopped, a sudden red suffusing her pale cheeks. She had felt certain, somehow, at sight of Marcella, that she should say or do something untoward, and she had promptly justified her own pre-vision. The only time she had ever seen Miss Boyce had been in court on the last day of the famous trial in which Richard Boyce was concerned, when she had made out the wife sitting closely veiled as near to her husband as possible, waiting for the verdict. As she had already confided this reminiscence to Miss Rayburn, and had forgotten she had done so, both ladies had a moment of embarrassment. Mrs. Boyce, I am sorry to say, does not seem to be strong, said Miss Rayburn, bending over the heel of her stocking. I wish we could have had the pleasure of seeing her today. There was a pause. Lady Winterbourne's tragic eyes were once more considering Marcella. I hope you will come and see me, she said at last, abruptly, and Miss Boyce, too. The voice was very soft and refined, though so deep, and Marcella, looking up, was suddenly magnetized. Yes, I will, she said, all her face melting into sensitive life. Mama won't go anywhere, but I will come, if you will ask me. Will you come next Tuesday? said Lady Winterbourne quickly. Come to tea, and I will drive you back. Mr. Rayburn told me about you. He says you read a great deal. The solemnity of the last words, the fixiness of the tragic look, were not to be resisted. Marcella laughed out, and both ladies simultaneously thought her extraordinarily radiant and handsome. How can he know? Why, I have hardly talked about books to him at all. Well, here he comes, said Lady Winterbourne, smiling suddenly, so I can ask him. But I'm sure he did say so. It was now Marcella's turn to colour. Oldess Rayburn crossed the room, greeted Lady Winterbourne, and the next moment she felt her hand in his. You did tell me, Oldess, didn't you? said Lady Winterbourne, that Miss Boyce was a great reader. The speaker had known Oldess Rayburn as a boy, and was moreover a sort of cousin, which explained the Christian name. Oldess smiled. I said I thought Miss Boyce was like you and me, and had a weakness that way, Lady Winterbourne, but I won't be cross-examined. I don't think I am a great reader, said Marcella bluntly. At least I read a great deal, but I hardly ever read a book through. I haven't patience. You want to get at everything so quickly, said Miss Rayburn, looking up sharply. I suppose so, said Marcella. There seems to be always a hundred things tearing one different ways, and no time for any of them. Yes, when one is young one feels like that, said Lady Winterbourne, sighing. When one is old one accepts one's limitations. When I was twenty I never thought that I should still be an ignorant and discontented woman at nearly seventy. It is because you are so young still, Lady Winterbourne, that you feel so, said oldest, laughing at her, as one does at an old friend. Why, you are younger than any of us. I feel all brushed and stirred up, a boy at school again, after I have been to see you. Well, I don't know what you mean, I'm sure, said Lady Winterbourne, sighing again. Then she looked at the pair beside her, at the alert brightness in the man's strong and quiet face as he sat stooping forward, with his hands upon his knees, hardly able to keep his eyes for an instant from the dark apparition beside him. But the girls evident shyness and pride. My dear, she said, turning suddenly to Miss Rayburn, have you heard what a monstrosity Alice has produced this time in the way of a baby? It was born with four teeth. Miss Rayburn's astonishment fitted the provocation, and the two old friends fell into a gossip on the subject of Lady Winterbourne's numerous family, which was clearly meant for a tet-a-tet. Will you come and look at our tapestry, said oldest to his neighbour, after a few nothings had passed between them as to the weather and her walk from Mella? I think you would admire it, and I'm afraid my grandfather will be a few minutes yet. He hoped to get home earlier than this, but his board meeting was very long and important, and has kept him an unconscionable time. Marcella rose, and they moved together towards the south end of the room, where a famous piece of Italian renaissance tapestry entirely filled the wall from side to side. How beautiful, cried the girl, her eyes filling with delight! What a delicious thing to live with! And indeed it was the most adorable medley of forms, tints, suggestions, of gods and goddesses, nymphs and shepherds, standing in flowery grass under fruit-laden trees, and raised about with roses. Both colour and subject were of fairyland. The golds and browns and pinks of it, the greens and ivory whites, had been mellowed and purled and warmed by age, into a most glowing, delicate and fanciful beauty. It was Italy at the great moment, subtle, rich, exuberant. Oldus enjoyed her pleasure. I thought you would like it. I hoped you would. It has been my special delight since I was a child, when my mother first routed it out of a garret. I'm not sure that I don't in my heart prefer it to any of the pictures. The flowers, said Marcella, absorbed in it. Look at them! The irises, the cyclomans, the lilies! It reminds one of the dreams one used to have when one was small, of what it would be like to have flowers enough. I was at school, you know, in a part of England, where one seemed always cheated out of them. We walked two and two along the straight roads, and I found one here and one there, but such a beggarly wretched few for all one's trouble. I used to hate the hard, dry soil, and to console myself by imagining countries where the flowers grew like this. Yes, just like this, in a golden pink and blue mass, so that one might thrust one's hands in and gather and gather till one was really satisfied. That is the worst of being at school when you were poor. You'll never get enough of anything. One day it's flowers, but the next day it is pudding, and the next, frocks. Her eye was sparkling, her tongue loosened. Not only was it pleasant to feel herself beside him, enwrapped in such an atmosphere of admiration and deference, but the artistic, sensitive cord in her had been struck, and vibrated happily. Well, only wait till May, and the cow slips in your own fields will make up to you, he said, smiling at her. But now I have been wondering to myself in my room upstairs what you would like to see. There are a good many treasures in this house, and you will care for them because you are an artist. But you shall not be bored with them. You shall see what and as much as you like. You had about a quarter of an hour's talk with my aunt, did you not? He asked, in a quite different tone. So all the time while she and Miss Rayburn had been making acquaintance, he had known that she was in the house, and he had kept away for his own purposes. Marcella felt a colour she could not restrain, leap into her cheek. Miss Rayburn was very kind, she said, with a return of shyness, which passed, however, the next moment by reaction into her usual daring. Yes, she was very kind, but all the same she doesn't like me. I don't think she is going to like me. I am not her sort. Have you been talking socialism to her? He asked her, smiling. No, not yet. Not yet, she said emphatically. But I am dreadfully uncertain. I can't always hold my tongue. I am afraid you will be sorry you took me up. Are you so aggressive? But Aunt Neeta is so mild she wouldn't hurt a fly. She mothers everyone in the house and out of it. The only people she is hard upon are the little servant-girls, who will wear feathers in their hats. There, cried Marcella indignantly, why shouldn't they wear feathers in their hats? It is their form of beauty, their tapestry. But if one can't have both feathers and boots, he asked her humbly, a twinkle in his grey eye. If one hasn't boots, one may catch a cold and die of it, which is, after all, worse than going featherless. But why can't they have feathers and boots? It is because you, we, have got too much. You have the tapestry and the pictures, she turned and looked round the room, and this wonderful house and the park. Oh, no, I think it is Miss Rayburn has too many feathers. Perhaps it is, he admitted, in a different tone. His look changing and saddening as though some habitual struggle of thought were recalled to him. You see, I am in a difficulty. I want to show you our feathers. I think they would please you. And you make me ashamed of them. How absurd, cried Marcella, when I told you how I liked the schoolchildren bobbing to me. They laughed, and then oldest looked round with a start. Ah, here is my grandfather. Then he stood back, watching the look with which Lord Maxwell, after greeting Lady Winterburn, approached Miss Boyce. He saw the old man's somewhat formal approach, the sudden kindle in the blue eyes, which marked the first effect of Marcella's form and presence. The bow, the stately shake of the hand. The lover, hearing his own heart beat, realized that his beautiful lady had so far done well. You must let me say that I see a decided likeness in you to your grandfather," said Lord Maxwell, when they were all seated at lunch, Marcella on his left hand opposite to Lady Winterburn. He was one of my dearest friends. I am afraid I don't know much about him," said Marcella, rather bluntly. Except what I have got out of old letters. I never saw him that I remember. Lord Maxwell left the subject, of course, at once, but showed a great wish to talk to her and make her talk. He had pleasant things to say about Mella and its past, which could be said without offence. And some conversation about the Boyce Monuments in Mella Church led to a discussion of the part played by the different local families in the Civil Wars, in which it seemed to oldest that his grandfather tried in various shrewd and courteous ways to make Marcella feel at ease with herself and her race, accepted, as it were, of right into the local brotherhood, and so to soothe and heal those bruised feelings he could not but divine. The girl carried herself a little loftily, answering with an independence and freedom beyond her age and born of her London life. She was not in the least abashed or shy, yet it was clear that Lord Maxwell's first impressions were favourable. Older's caught every now and then his quick, judging look, sweeping over her, and instantly withdrawn, comparing, as the grandson very well knew, every point and tone and gesture, with some inner ideal of what a Rayburn's wife should be. It was a dreamlike the whole scene was to oldest, yet how exquisitely real. The room with its carved and gilt cedarwood panels, its van dykes, its tall windows opening on the park, the autumn sun flooding the golden purple fruit on the table, and sparkling on the glass and silver, the figures of his aunt and lady Winterbourne, the moving servants and dominant of it all, interpreting it all for him and you, the dark, lithe creature beside his grandfather. So quick, sensitive, extravagant, so much a woman, yet to his lover's sense so utterly unlike any other woman he had ever seen. Every detail of it was charged to him with a thousand new meanings, now oppressive, now delightful. For he was passing out of the first stage of passion, in which it is almost its own satisfaction, so new and enriching is it to the whole nature, into the second stage, the stage of anxiety, and credulity. Marcella, sitting there on his own ground, after all his planning, seemed to him not nearer but further from him. She was terribly on her dignity. Where was all that girlish abandonment gone, which she had shown him on that walk beside the gate? There had been a touch of it, a divine touch, before luncheon. How could he get her to herself again? Meanwhile, the conversation passed to the prevailing local topic, the badness of the harvest, the low prices of everything, the consequent depression among the farmers, and stagnation in the villages. I don't know what it to be done for the people this winter, said Lord Maxwell, without pauperising them, I mean. To give money is easy enough. Our grandfathers would have doled out coal and blankets and thought no more of it. We don't get through so easily. No, said Lady Winterbourne, sighing, it weighs one down. Last winter was a nightmare. The tales one heard and the faces one saw, though we seem to be always giving, and in the middle of it Edward would buy me a new set of sables. I begged him not, but he laughed at me. Well, my dear, said Miss Rayburn cheerfully, if nobody bought sables there'd be other poor people up in Russia, isn't it, or Hudson's Bay, badly off. One has to think of that. Oh, you needn't talk, Aldous. I know you say it's a fallacy. I call it common sense. She got, however, only a slight smile from Aldous, who had long ago left his great heart to work out her own economics. And, anyway, she saw that he was wholly absorbed from his seat beside Lady Winterbourne in watching Miss Boyce. It's precisely as Lord Maxwell says, replied Lady Winterbourne, that kind of thing used to satisfy everybody, and our grandmothers were very good women. I don't know why we, who give ourselves so much more trouble than they did, should carry these thorns about with us while they went free. She drew herself up, a cloud over her fine eyes. Miss Rayburn, looking round, was glad to see the servants had left the room. Miss Boyce thinks we are all in a very bad way, I'm sure. I have heard tales of Miss Boyce's opinions, said Lord Maxwell, smiling at her, with an old man's indulgence, as though provoking her to talk. Her slim fingers were nervously crumbling some bread beside her. Her head was drooped a little. At his challenge she looked up with a start. She was perfectly conscious of him, as both the great magnet on his native heath, and as the trained man of affairs condescending to a girl's fancies. But she had made up her mind not to be afraid. What tales have you heard? she asked him. You alarmists, you know, he said gallantly, waving her question. We can't afford a prophetess to the other side, just now. Miss Rayburn drew herself up with a sharp, dry look at Miss Boyce, which escaped everyone but Lady Winterbourne. Oh, I am not a radical, said Marcella, half scornfully. We socialists don't fight for either political party as such. We take what we can get out of both. So you call yourself a socialist, a real full-blown one. Lord Maxwell's pleasant tone masked the mood of a man who, after a morning of hard work, thinks himself entitled to some amusement at luncheon. Yes, I am a socialist, she said slowly, looking at him. At least I ought to be. I am in my conscience. But not in your judgment, he said, laughing. Isn't that the condition of most of us? No, not at all, she exclaimed, both her vanity and her enthusiasm roused by his manner. Both my judgment and my conscience make me a socialist. It's only one's wretched love for one's own little luxuries and precedences, the worst part of one, that makes me waver, makes me a traitor. The people I worked with in London would think me a traitor often, I know. And you really think that the world ought to be hatched over again and hatched different. That it ought to be if it could be. I think that things are intolerable as they are, she broke out after a pause. The London poor were bad enough. The country poor seemed to me worse. How can anyone believe that such serfdom and poverty, such mutilation of mind and body, were meant to go on forever? Lord Maxwell's brows lifted. But it certainly was no wonder that older should find those eyes of her superb. Can you really imagine, my dear young lady, he asked her mildly, that if all property were divided tomorrow the force of natural inequality would not have undone all the work the day after and given us back the poor. The newspaper cant of this remark, as the Cravens would have put it, brought a contemptuous look for an instant into the girl's face. She began to talk eagerly and cleverly, showing a very fair training in the catch words of the school and a good memory, as one uncomfortable person at the table soon perceived, for some of the leading arguments and illustrations of a book of adventurous essays which had lately been much read and talked of in London. Then, irritated more and more by Lord Maxwell's gentle attention and the interjections he threw in from time to time, she plunged into history, attacked the land-earning class, spoke of the statute of labourers, the law of settlement, the new poor law, and other great matters, the flow of glancing picturesque speech and all with the same utter oblivion so it seemed to her stiff, indignant hostess at the other end of the table of the manners and modesty proper to a young girl in a strange house, and that young girl Richard Boyce's daughter. Older struck in now and then, trying to soothe her by supporting her to a certain extent, and so divert the conversation. But Marcella was soon too excited to be managed, and she had her say, often, as far as language went, there could be no doubt of that. Ah, well, said Lord Maxwell, wincing at last under some of her phrases, in spite of his courteous Savoir fair. I see you are of the same opinion as a good man whose book I took up yesterday. The landlords of England have always shown a mean and malignant passion for profiting by the miseries of others. Well, oldest my boy, we are judged, you and I, no help for it. The man whose temper and rule had made the prosperity of a whole countryside for nearly forty years looked at his grandson with twinkling eyes. Miss Rayburn was speechless. Lady Winterbourne was absolutely staring at Marcella, a spot of red on each pale cheek. Then Marcella suddenly wavered, looked across at Oldus, and broke down. Of course you think me very ridiculous, she said, with a tremulous change of tone. I suppose I am, and I am as inconsistent as anybody, I hate myself for it. Very often when anybody talks to me on the other side, I am almost as much persuaded as I am by the socialists. They always told me in London I was the prey of the last speaker. But it can't make any difference to one's feeling. Nothing touches that. She turned to Lord Maxwell, half-appealing. It is when I go down from our house to the village, when I see the places the people live in, when one is comfortable in the carriage and one passes some woman in the rain, ragged and dirty and tired, trudging back from her work, when one realises that they have no rights when they come to be old, nothing to look to but charity, for which we, who have everything, expect them to be grateful. And when I know that every one of them has done more useful work in a year of their life than I shall ever do in the whole of mine, then I feel that the whole state of things is somehow wrong and topsy-turvy and wicked. Her voice rose a little. Every emphasis grew more passionate. And if I don't do something, the little such a person as I can to alter it before I die, I might as well never have lived. Everybody at the table started. Lord Maxwell looked at Miss Rayburn, his mouth twitching over the humour of his sister's dismay. Well, this was a forcible young woman. Was oldest the kind of man to be able to deal conveniently with such eyes, such emotions, such a personality? Suddenly, Lady Winterbourne's deep voice broke in. I never could say it half so well as that, Miss Boyce, but I agree with you. I may say that I have agreed with you all my life. The girl turned to her, grateful and quivering. At the same time, said Lady Winterbourne, relapsing with a long breath from tragic emphasis into a fluttering indecision equally characteristic. As you say, one is inconsistent. I was poor once before Edward came to the title, and I did not at all like it, not at all. And I don't wish my daughters to marry poor men. And what I should do without a maid or a carriage when I wanted it, I cannot imagine. Edward makes the most of these things. He tells me I have to choose between things as they are, and a graduated income tax which would leave nobody, not even the richest, more than four hundred a year. Just enough for one of those little houses on your station road, said Lord Maxwell, laughing at her. I think you might still have a maid. There you laugh, said Lady Winterbourne vehemently. The men do, but I tell you it is no laughing matter to feel that your heart and conscience have gone over to the enemy. You want to feel with your class, and you can't. Think of what used to happen in the old days. My grandmother, who was as good and kind a woman as ever lived, was driving home through our village one evening, and a man passed her, a labourer who was a little drunk and who did not take off his hat to her. She stopped, made her men get down, and had him put in the stocks there and then. The old stocks were still standing on the village green. Then she drove home to her dinner and said her prayers no doubt that night with more consciousness than usual of having done her duty. But if the power of the stocks still remained to us, my dear friend, and she laid her thin old woman's hands flashing with diamonds on Lord Maxwell's arm, we could no longer do it, you or I. We have lost the sense of right in our place and position. At least I find I have. In the old days, if there was a social disturbance, the upper class could put it down with a strong hand. So they would still, said Lord Maxwell, trylly. If there were violence, once let it come to any real attack on property, and you will see where all these socialist theories will be. And of course it will not be we, not the landowners or the capitalists, who will put it down. It will be the hundreds and thousands of people with something to lose. A few pounds and a joint stock mill, a house of their own built through a cooperative store, an acre or two of land stopped by their own savings. It is they, I am afraid, who will put Miss Boyce's friends down so far as they represent any real attack on property. And brutally too, I fear, if need be. I dare say, exclaimed Marcella, her colour rising again. I can never see how we socialists are to succeed. But how can anyone rejoice in it? How can anyone wish that the present state of things should go on? Oh, the horrors one sees in London, and down here the cottages and the starvation wages and the ridiculous worship of game, and then of course the poaching. Miss Rayburn pushed back her chair with a sharp noise, but her brother was still peeling his pear, and no one else moved. Why did he let such talk go on? It was too unseemly. Lord Maxwell only laughed. My dear young lady, he said, much amused. Are you even in the frame of mind to make a hero of a poacher? Disillusion lies that way. It does indeed. Why, oldest, I have been hearing such tales from Westall this morning. I stopped at Corbett's Farm a minute or two on the way home, and met Westall at the gate coming out. He says he and his men are being harried to death round about tuddly end, by a gang of men that come he thinks from Oxford, a driving gang with a gig, who come at night or in the early morning. The smartest rascals out, impossible to catch. But he says he thinks he will soon have his hand on the local accomplice, a meller man, a man named Hurd, not one of our labourers, I think. Hurd, cried Marcella in dismay. Oh, no, it can't be. Impossible. Lord Maxwell looked at her in astonishment. Do you know any Hurds? I'm afraid your father will find that meller is a bad place for poaching. If it is, it is because they are so starved and miserable, said Marcella, trying hard to speak coolly, but excited almost beyond bounds by the conversation and all that it implied. And the Hurds, I don't believe it a bit. But if it were true, oh, they have been in such straights. They were out of work most of last winter. They are out of work now. No one could grudge them. I told you about them, didn't I? She said, suddenly glancing at olders. I was going to ask you today if you could help them. Her prophetess, Air, had altogether left her. She felt ready to cry, and nothing could have been more womanish than her tone. He bent across to her. Miss Rayburn, invaded by a new and intolerable sense of calamity, could have beaten him for what she read in his shining eyes, and in the flush on his usually pale cheek. Is he still out of work? he said. And you are unhappy about it. But I'm sure we can find him work. I'm just now planning improvements at the north end of the park. We can take him on. I am certain of it. You must give me his full name and address. And let him beware of Westall, said Lord Maxwell kindly. Give him a hint, Miss Boyce, and nobody will rake up bygones. There is nothing I dislike so much as rouse about the shooting. All the keepers know that. And of course, said Miss Rayburn, coldly, if the family are in real distress there are plenty of people at hand to assist them. The man need not steal. Oh, charity, cried Marcella, her lip curling. A worse crime than poaching, you think, said Lord Maxwell, laughing. Well, these are big subjects. I confess after my morning with the lunatics I am half inclined, like Horace Walpole, to think everything serious, ridiculous. At any rate, shall we see what lighter cup of coffee throws upon it? Agnita, shall we adjourn? End of Book 1, Chapter 10 Book 1, Chapter 11 of Marcella. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Paul Stevens Marcella by Mrs. Humphrey Ward Book 1, Chapter 11 Lord Maxwell closed the drawing-room door behind Oldus and Marcella. Oldus had proposed to take their guest to see the picture gallery, which was on the first floor, and had found her willing. The old man came back to the two other women, running his hands nervously through his shock of white hair, a gesture which Miss Rayburn well knew to show some disturbance of mind. I should like to have your opinion of that young lady," he said deliberately, taking a chair immediately in front of them. I like her," said Lady Winterbourne instantly. Of course she is crude and extravagant, and does not know quite what she may say, but all that will improve. I like her, and shall make friends with her. Miss Rayburn threw up her hands in angry amazement. Most forward, conceited, and ill-mannered, she said with energy. I am certain she has no proper principles, and as to what her religious views may be, I dread to think of them. If that is a specimen of the girls of the present day, my dear," interrupted Lord Maxwell, laying a hand on her knee, Lady Winterbourne is an old friend, a very old friend. I think we may be frank before her, and I don't wish you to say things you may regret. Oldus has made up his mind to get that girl to marry him, if he can. Lady Winterbourne was silent, having in fact been forewarned by that odd little interview with Oldus in her own drawing-room, when he had suddenly asked her to call on Miss Boyce. But she looked at Miss Rayburn. That lady took up her knitting, laid it down again, resumed it, then broke out. How did it come about? Where have they been meeting? At the hardens, mostly. He seems to have been struck from the beginning, and now there is no question as to his determination. But she may not have him. He professes to be still entirely in the dark. Oh! cried Miss Rayburn, with a scornful shrug meant to express all possible incredulity. Then she began to knit fast and furiously, and presently said in great agitation. What can he be thinking of? She is very handsome, of course, but then her words failed her. When Oldus remembers his mother, how can he, undisciplined, why she laid down the Lordy you, Henry, as though you had nothing to do but to take your opinions from a chit-of-a-girl like her? Oh! no, no! I really can't. You must give me time. And her father, that is grace and trouble of it, I tell you, Henry, it will bring misfortune. Lord Maxwell was much troubled. Certainly he should have talked to Agnita beforehand. But the fact was that he had his cowardice, like other men, and he had been trusting to the girl herself, to this beauty he heard so much of, to soften the first shock of the matter to the present mistress of the court. We will hope not, Agnita, he said gravely, we will hope not. But you must remember Oldus is no boy. I cannot coerce him. I see the difficulties, and I have put them before him. But I am more favourably struck with the girl than you are. And anyway, if it comes about, we must make the best of it. Miss Rayburn made no answer, her heel, her needle shaking. Lady Winterbourne was very sorry for her two old friends. Wait a little, she said, laying her hand lightly on Miss Rayburn's. No doubt with her opinions she felt specially drawn to assert herself today. One can imagine it very well of a girl and a generous girl in her position. You will see other sides of her. I am sure you will. And you would never, you could never, make a breach with Oldus. We must all remember, said Lord Maxwell, getting up and beginning to walk up and down beside them. But Oldus is in no way dependent upon me. He has his own resources. He could leave us to-morrow. Dependent on me. It is the other way, I think, Agnita. Don't you? He stopped and looked at her, and she returned his look in spite of herself. A tear dropped on her stocking, which she hastily brushed away. Come now, said Lord Maxwell, seating himself. Let us talk it over rationally. Don't go, Lady Winterbourne. Why they may be settling it at this moment, cried Miss Rayburn, half choked and feeling as though the skies were impious not to fall. No, no, he said, smiling. Not yet, I think. But let us prepare ourselves. Meanwhile, the cause of all this agitation was sitting languidly in a great chair, in the picture gallery upstairs, with Aldous beside her. She had taken off her big hat as though it oppressed her, and her black head lay against a corner of the chair in fine contrast to its mellowed golds and crimsons. Opposite to her were two famous Holbein portraits, at which she looked from time to time as though attracted to them in spite of herself, by some trained sense which could not be silenced. But she was not communicative, and Aldous was anxious. Do you think I was rude to your grandfather? She asked him at last, abruptly, cutting dead short some information she had stiffly asked him for just before, as to the date of the gallery and its collection. Rude, he said, startled, not at all. Not in the least. Do you suppose we are made of such brittle stuff, we poor landowners, that we can't stand an argument now and then? Your aunt thought I was rude, she said, unheeding. But a house like this excites me. And with a little reckless gesture she turned her head over her shoulder and looked down the gallery. A Velasquez was beside her, a great Titian over the way, a priceless Rembrandt beside it. On her right hand stood a chair of carved steel presented by a German town to a German emperor, which had not its equal in Europe. The brocade draping the deep windows in front of her had been specially made to grace a state visit to the house of Charles II. At Mella, she went on, we are old and tumbled down. The rain comes in, there are no shutters to the big hall, and we can't afford to put them. We can't afford even to have the pictures cleaned. I can pity the house and nurse it as I do the village. But here, and looking about her, she gave a significant shrug. What, our feathers again, he said, laughing. But consider, even you allow the time to come, there must be a transition time. And clearly, till the state is ready to take over the historical houses in their contents, the present nominal owners of them are bound, if they can, to take care of them. Otherwise the state will be some day defrauded. She could not be insensible to the charm of his manner towards her. There was in it, no doubt, the natural force and weight of the man older and better informed than his companion, and amused by her extravagance. But even her irritable pride could not take offence. For the intellectual descent she felt at bottom was tempered by a moral sympathy of which the gentleness and warmth touched and moved her in spite of herself. And now that they were alone he could express himself. So long as they had been in company he had seemed to her, as often before, shy, hesitating and ineffective. But with the disappearance of spectators who represented to him, no doubt, the harassing claim of the critical judgment all was freer, more assured, more natural. She lent her chin on her hand considering his plea. Supposing you live long enough to see the state take it, shall you be able to reconcile yourself to it, or shall you feel it a wrong and go out a rebel? A delightful smile was beginning to dance in the dark eyes. She was recovering the tension of her talk with Lord Maxwell. All must depend, you see, on the conditions, on how you and your friends are going to manage the transition. You may persuade me conceivably or you may eject me with violence. Oh no, she interposed quickly. There will be no violence. Only we shall gradually reduce your wages. Of course we can't do without leaders. We don't want to do away with the captains of any industry, agricultural or manufacturing. Only we think you overpaid. You must be content with the less. Don't linger out the process," he said, laughing. Otherwise it will be painful. The people who are condemned to live in these houses before the commune takes to them, while your graduated land and income taxes are slowly starving them out, will have a bad time of it. Well, it will be your first bad time. Think of the labourer now with five children of school age on twelve shillings a week. Think of the sweated women in London. Ah, think of them," he said in a different tone. No," said Marcella, springing up. Don't let's think of them. I get to believe the whole thing opposed in myself and other people. Let's go back to the pictures. Do you think Titian sweated his drapery men, paid them starvation rates, and grew rich on their labour? Very likely. All the same, that blue woman, she pointed to a bending Magdalene, will be a joy to all time. They wandered through the gallery, and she was now all curiosity, pleasure and intelligent interest, as though she had thrown off an oppression. Then they emerged into the upper corridor, answering to the corridor of the antiques below. This also was hung with pictures, principally family portraits of the Second Order, dating back to the Tudors, a fine series of berobed and bejeweled personages, wherein clothes predominated and character was unimportant. Marcella's eye was glancing along the brilliant colour of the wall, taking rapid note of dueled necks surmounting stiff, embroidered dresses, of the whiteness of lace ruffs, or the lovelocks and gleaming satin of the Caroline beauties, when it suddenly occurred to her, I shall be their successor. This is already potentially mine. In a few months, if I please, I shall be walking this house as mistress, its future mistress at any rate. She was conscious of a quickening in the blood, a momentary blurring of the vision, a whirlwind of fancies swept across her. She thought of herself as the young P.R.S., Lord Maxwell after all was over seventy, her own white neck blazing with diamonds, the historic jewels of a great family, her will making law in this splendid house, in the great domain surrounding it. What power! What a position! What a romance! She, the out at Elbow's Marcella, the Socialist, the friend of the people. What new lines of social action and endeavour she might strike out. Miss Rayburn should not stop her. She caressed the thought of the scandals in store for that lady. Only it annoyed her that her dream of large things should be constantly crossed by this foolish delight, making her feet dance in this mere prospect of satin gowns and fine jewels, of young and fated beauty holding its brilliant court. If she made such a marriage, it should be, it must be, on public grounds. Her friends must have no right to blame her. Then she stole a glance at the tall, quiet gentleman beside her, a man to be proud of from the beginning, and surely to be very fond of in time. He would always be my friend, she thought. I could lead him. He is very clever one can see and knows a great deal, but he admires what I like. His position hampers him, but I could help him to get beyond it. We might show the way to many. Will you come and see this room here? he said, stopping suddenly, yet with a certain hesitation in the voice. It is my own sitting-room. There are one or two portraits I should like to show you if you would let me. She followed him with a rosy cheek, and they were presently standing in front of the portrait of his mother. He spoke of his recollections of his parents, quietly and simply, yet she felt through every nerve that he was not the man to speak of such things, to anybody in whom he did not feel a very strong and peculiar interest. As he was talking, a rush of liking towards him came across her. How good he was! How affectionate beneath his reserve! A woman might securely trust him with her future. So with every minute she grew softer, her eyes gentler, and with each step and word he seemed to himself to be carried deeper into the current of joy. Intoxication was mounting within him, as her slim, warm youth moved and breathed beside him, and it was natural that he should read her changing behaviour for something other than it was. A man of his type asks for no advance from the woman. The woman he loves does not make them. But at the same time he has a natural self-esteem and believes readily in his power to win the return he is certain he will deserve. And this, she said, moving restlessly towards his table and taking up the photograph of Edward Hallinn, ah, that is the greatest friend I have in the world, but I'm sure you know the name. Mr. Hallinn, Edward Hallinn. She paused, bewildered. What? The Mr. Hallinn? That was Edward Hallinn who settled the Nottingham Strike last month, who lectured so much in the East End and in the North. The same. We are old college friends. I owe him much and in all his excitement he does not forget old friends. There, you see, and he opened a blotting book and pointed smilingly to some closely written sheets lying within it, is my last letter to him. I often write two of those in the week and he to me. We don't agree on a number of things, but that doesn't matter. What can you find to write about? There are many notes. Is it books or people? Both, when it pleases us. How soon, oh ye favouring gods, might he reveal to her the part she herself played in those closely covered sheets? But he writes to me on social matters, chiefly. His whole heart, as you probably know, is in certain experiments and reforms in which he sometimes asks me to help him. Marcella opened her eyes. These were new lights. She began to recall all that she had heard of young Halyn's position in the labour movement. His personal magnetism and prestige, his power as a speaker. Her socialist friends, she remembered, thought him in the way, a force, but a dangerous one. He was for the follies of compromise, could not be got to disavow the principle of private property, while ready to go great lengths in certain directions towards collective action and corporate control. The stalwarts of her sect would have none of him as a leader, while admitting his charm as a human being. A charm she remembered to have heard discussed with some anxiety among her venturist friends. But for ordinary people he went far enough. Her father, she remembered, had dubbed him an anarchist in connection with the terms he had been able to secure for the Nottingham Strikers, as reported in the newspapers. It astonished her to come across the man again as Mr Rayburn's friend. They talked about Halyn a little and about Oldus' Cambridge acquaintance with him. Then Marcella, still nervous, went to look at the bookshelves and found herself in front of that working collection of books on economics, which Oldus kept in his own room under his hand, by way of guide to the very fine special collection he was gradually making in the library downstairs. Here again were surprises for her. Oldus had never made the smallest claim to special knowledge on all those subjects she has so often insisted on making him discuss. He had always been tentative and diffident, deferential even, so far as her own opinions were concerned. And here already was the library of a student. All the books she had ever read or heard discussed were here and as few among many. The condition of them, moreover, the signs of close and careful reading she noticed in them, as she took them out, abashed her. She had never learnt to read in this way. In her first contact with an exact and arduous culture she thought of how she had instructed Lord Maxwell at luncheon. No doubt he shared his grandson's interests. Her cheek burned anew. This time because it seemed to her that she had been ridiculous. I don't know why you never told me you took a particular interest in these subjects, she said suddenly turning round upon him resentfully. She had just laid down of all things a volume of essays. You must have thought I talked a great deal of nonsense at luncheon. Why, I have always been delighted to find you cared for such things and took an interest in them. How few women do, he said quite simply, opening his eyes. Do you know these three pamphlets? They were privately printed and are very rare. He took out a book and showed it to her as one does to a comrade and equal as he might have done to Edward Hallinn. But something was jarred in her, conscience or self-esteem, and she could not recover her sense of heroine-ship. She answered absently, and when he returned the book to the shelf she said that it was time for her to go and would he kindly ask for her maid who was to walk with her. I will ring for her directly, he said, but you will let me take you home. Then he added hurriedly, I have some business this afternoon with a man who lives in your direction. She assented a little stiffly, but with an inward thrill. His words and manner seemed suddenly to make the situation unmistakable. Among the books it had been for the moment obscured. He rang for his own servant and gave directions about the maid. Then they went downstairs that Marcella might say good-bye. Miss Rayburn bade her guest farewell with a dignity which her small person could sometimes assume, not unbecomingly. Lady Winterbourne held the girl's hand a little, looked her out of countenance and insisted on her promising again to come to Winterbourne Park the following Tuesday. Then Lord Maxwell, with old-fashioned politeness, made Marcella take his arm through the hall. You must come and see us again, he said, smiling. Though we are such belated old Tories we are not so bad as we sound. And under cover of his mild banter he fixed a penetrating, attentive look upon her. Flushed and embarrassed, he had been done already or would Aldous settle it on this walk? To judge from his manner and hers the thing was going with rapidity. Well, well, there was nothing for it but to hope for the best. On their way through the hall she stopped him, her hand still in his arm. Aldous was in front at the door looking for a light shawl she had brought with her. I should like to thank you, she said shyly, about the herds. I would be kind of you and Mr. Raban to find them work. Lord Maxwell was pleased and with the usual unfair advantage of beauty her eyes and curving lips gave her little advance a charm infinitely beyond what any plainer woman could have commanded. Oh, don't thank me, he said cheerfully. Thank Aldous. He does all that kind of thing. And if in your good work she want any help we can give, ask it, my dear young lady. Would you please find friends in this house? Lord Maxwell would have been very much astonished to hear himself making this speech six weeks before. As it was he handed her over gallantly to Aldous and stood on the steps looking after them in a stir of mind not unnoted by the confidential butler who held the door open behind him. Would Aldous insist on carrying his wife off to the Dower House on the other side of the estate to stay in the old place with the old people? And if so, how would that girl and his sister to get on? As for himself he was of a naturally optimist temper and ever since the night of his first interview with Aldous on the subject he had been more and more inclined to take a cheerful view. He liked to see a young creature of such evident character and cleverness holding opinions and lines of her own. It was infinitely better than mere non-entity. Of course she was now extravagant and foolish, perhaps vain too but that would mend with time mend above all with her position as Aldous's wife. Aldous was a strong man, house-strong, Lord Maxwell suspected that this impetuous young lady hardly knew. No, he thought the family might be trusted to cope with her when once they got her amongst them and she would certainly be an ornament to the old house. Her father, of course, was and would be the real difficulty and the blight which had descended on the once honoured name. But a man so conscious of many kinds of power as Lord Maxwell could not feel much doubt as to his own and his grandson's competence to keep so poor a specimen of humanity as Richard Boyce in his place. How wretchedly ill, how feeble, both in body and soul, the fellow had looked when he and Winterbourne met him. The white-haired owner of the court walked back slowly to his library, his hands in his pockets, his head bent in cogitation, impossible to settle to the various important political letters lying on his table, and bearing all of them on that approaching crisis in the spring which must put Lord Maxwell and his friends in power. He was over seventy, but his old blood quickened within him as he thought of those in this golden afternoon among the beech-woods. How late Olders had left all these experiences. His grandfather by twenty could have shown him the way. Meanwhile the two in question were walking along the edge of the hill rampart overlooking the plain, with the road on one side of them and the falling beech-woods on the other. They were on a woodland path just within the trees, sheltered and to all intents and purposes the maid with leisurely discretion was following far behind them on the high road. Marcella, who felt at moments as though she could hardly breathe, by reason of a certain chew-melt of nerve was yet apparently bent on maintaining a conversation without breaks. As they diverged from the road into the woodpath, she plunged into the subject of her companion's election prospects. How many meetings did he find that he must hold in the month? How many meetings did he regard as his principal strongholds? She was told that certain villages which she named were certain to go radical, whatever might be the Tory promises. As to a well-known Conservative League which was very strong in the country and to which all the great ladies, including Lady Winterbourne, belonged, was he actually going to demean himself by accepting its support? How was it possible to defend the bribery, buns and beers by which it won its corrupting way? All together a quick fire of questions, remarks and sallies, which Oldus met and parried as best he might, comforting himself all the time by thought of those deeper and lonelier parts of the wood which lay before them. At last she dropped out, half laughing, half defiant, words which arrested him. Well, I shall know what the other side thinks of their prospects very soon. Mr. Wharton is coming to lunch with us tomorrow. Harry Wharton, he said, astonished. But Mr. Boyce is not supporting him. Your father, I think, is Conservative. One of Dick Boyce's first acts as owner of Mella, when social rehabilitation had still looked probable to him, had been to send a contribution to the funds of the League of Forsaid, so that Oldus had public and conspicuous grounds for his remark. Need one measure everything by politics? She asked him a little disdainfully. Maint one even feed a radical? He winced visibly a moment. Touched in his philosopher's pride. You remind me, he said, laughing and reddening, and justly that an election perverts all one's standards and besmirches all one's morals. Then I suppose Mr. Wharton is an old friend. Papa never saw him before last week, she said carelessly. Now he talks of asking him to stay some time, and says that although he won't vote for him, he hopes that he will make a good fight. Rayburn's brow contracted in a puzzled frown. He will make an excellent fight, he said rather shortly. Dodgson hardly hopes to get in. Harry Wharton is a most taking speaker, a very clever fellow, and sticks at nothing in the way of promises. Ah, you will find him interesting, Miss Boyce. He has a cooperative farm on his Lincolnshire property. Last year he started a labour paper, which I believe you read. I have heard you quote it. He believes in all that you hope for, great increase in local government and communal control, the land for the people, graduated income tax, the extinction of landlord and capitalist as soon as may be. He talks with great eloquence and ability. In our villages, I find he is making way every week. The people think his manner is perfect. He has a waywion, said an old labourer to me last week. If he were to co-the wild birds, I do believe, Mr. Rayburn, they'd come to one. Like him, said Marcella, a daring smile dancing on the dark face she turned to him. One can hear it in every word you say. He hesitated, trying even at the moment that an impulse of jealous alarm which astonished himself had taken possession of him to find the moderate and measured phrase. I have known him from a boy, he said. He is a connection of the leavens and used to always be there in the old days. He is very brilliant and very gifted. Your butt must be very bad, she threw in. It is so long in coming. Then I will say, whatever opening it gives you, he replied with spirit, that I admire him without respecting him. Who ever thought otherwise of a clever opponent, she cried. It is the stock formula. The remark stung. All the more because Aldous was perfectly conscious that there was much truth in her implied charge of prejudice. He had never been very capable of seeing this particular man in the dry light of reason and was certainly less so than before, since it had been revealed to him that Wharton and Mr. Boyce's daughter were to be brought, before long, into close neighbourhood. I am sorry that I seem to use such a Pharisee, he said, turning upon her a look which had both pain and excitement in it. She was silent and they walked on a few yards without speaking. The wood had thickened around them. The high road was no longer visible. No sound of wheels or footsteps reached them. The sun struck freely through the beech trees already half-beared, whitening the grey trunks at intervals to an arrowy distinctness and majesty, or kindling the slopes of red and freshly fallen leaves below into great patches of light and flame. Through the stems, as always, the girdling blues of the plain and in their faces a gay and buoyant breeze, speaking rather of spring than autumn. Robins, yellow autumn's nightingales, sang in the hedge to their right. In the pores between them sun, wind, birds made their charm felt. Nature, perpetual chorus as she is to man, stole in, urging, wooing, defining. Oldus' heart leapt to the spur of a sudden resolve. Instinctively she turned to him at the same moment as he to her, giving his look she paled a little. Do you guess at all why it hurts me to jar with you? he said, finding his words in a rush he did not know how. Why every syllable of yours matters to me. It is because I have hopes, dreams, which have become my life. If you could accept this, this feeling, this devotion which has grown up in me, if you could trust yourself to me you should have no cause I think ever to think me hard or narrow towards any person any enthusiasm for which you had sympathy. May I say to you all that is in my mind or am I presuming? She looked away from him crimson again a great wave of exaltation boundless, intoxicating swept through her. Then it was checked by a nobler feeling a quick, penitent sense of his nobleness. You don't know me, she said hurriedly you think you do but I am all odds and ends I should annoy, moaned, disappoint you his quiet grey eyes flamed. Come and sit down here on these dry roots he said, taking already joyous command of her we shall be undisturbed I have so much to say she obeyed trembling she felt no passion but the strong thrill of something momentous and irreparable with a swelling pride pride in such homage from such a man. He led her a few steps down the slope found a place for her against a sheltering trunk and threw himself down beside her as he looked up at the picture she made amid the autumn branches at her bent head her shy moved look her white hand lying ungloved on her black dress happiness overcame him he took her hand found she did not resist drew it to him and clasping it in both his bent his brow, his lips upon it it shook in his hold but she was passive the mixture of emotion and self-control she showed touched him deeply in his chivalrous modesty he asked for nothing else dreamt of nothing more half an hour later they were still in the same spot there had been much talk between them most of it earnest she was quite gay broken especially by her smiles her teasing mood however had passed away she was instead composed and dignified like one conscious that life had opened before her to great issues yet she had flinched often before that quiet tone of eager joy in which she had described his first impressions of her his surprise at finding in her ideals revolts passions quite unknown to him so far in the women of his own class naturally he suppressed perhaps he had even forgotten the critical amusement and irritation she had often excited in him he remembered he spoke only of sympathy, delight, pleasure of his sense as it were of slaking some long felt moral thirst at the well of her fresh feeling so she had attracted him first by a certain strangeness and daring by what she said now and above all by what you are he broke out suddenly moved out of his even speech oh it is too much to believe to dream of put your hand in mine and say again that it is really true that we too are to go forward together that you will be always there to inspire to help and as she gave him the hand she must also let him in this first tremor of a pure passion take the kiss which was now his that she should flush and draw away from him as she did seemed to him the most natural thing in the world and the most maidenly then as their talk wandered on bit by bit he gave her all his confidence and she had felt herself honoured in receiving it she understood now at least something a first fraction of that inner life masked so well beneath his quiet English capacity and unassuming manner spoken of his Cambridge years of his friend of the desire of his heart to make his landowner's power and position contribute something towards that new and better social order which he too, like Halin though more faintly and intermittently believed to be approaching the difficulties of any really new departure were tremendous he saw them more plainly and more anxiously than Halin yet he believed that he had thought to form on his grandfather's large estate and to some useful work as one of a group of like-minded men in Parliament she must have often thought him careless and apathetic towards his great trust but he was not so not careless but paralysed often by intellectual difficulty by the claims of conflicting truths she too explained herself most freely most frankly she would have nothing on her conscience she will say of course she said with sudden nervous abruptness that I am marrying you for wealth and position and in a sense I shall be no, don't stop me I should not marry you if I did not like you but you can give me you have great opportunities I tell you frankly I should enjoy them and use them oh, do think well before you do it I shall never be a meek dependent wife a woman to my mind is bound to cherish her own individuality married or not married have you thought that I may often think it right to do things you disagree with that may scandalize your relations you shall be free, he said steadily I have thought of it all then there is my father she said turning her head away he is ill, he wants pity, affection I will accept no bond that forces me to disown him pity and affection are to me the most sacred things in the world he said kissing her hand gently be content be at rest, my beautiful lady there was again silence full of thought on her side of heavenly happiness on his the sun had sunk almost to the verge of the plane the wind had freshened we must go home she said springing up Taylor must have got there an hour ago mother will be anxious and I must I must tell them I will leave you at the gate he suggested as they walked briskly you will ask your father will you not if I may see him tonight after dinner the trees thinned again in front of them and the path curved inward to the front suddenly a man walking on the road diverged into the path and came towards them he was swinging a stick and humming his head was uncovered and his light chestnut curls were blown about his forehead by the wind Marcella looking up at the sound of the steps had a sudden impression of something young and radiant and Aldous stopped with an exclamation the newcomer perceived them and at sight of Aldous smiled and approached holding out his hand why Rayburn I seem to have missed you twenty times a day this last fortnight we have been always on each other's tracks without meeting yet I think if we had met we could have kept our tempers Miss Boyce I think you do not know Mr. Wharton said Aldous stiffly may I introduce you the young man's blue eyes all alert and curious at the mention of Marcella's name ran over the girl's face and form then he bowed with a certain charming exaggeration like an eighteenth century bow with his hand upon his heart and turned back with them a step or two towards the road end of book one chapter 11 book two chapter one of Marcella this is a Librivox recording all Librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Librivox.org recording by Paul Stevens Marcella by Mrs. Humphrey Ward book two chapter one book two a woman has enough to govern wisely her own demeanors, passions and divisions chapter one on a certain night in the December following the engagement of Marcella Boyce to Aldous Rayburn the woods and fields of Mella and all the bare rampart of chalk down which divides the Buckinghamshire plain from the forest upland of the Chilterns lay steeped in moonlight and in the silence which belongs to intense frost winter had set in before the leaf had fallen from the last oaks already there had been a fortnight or so of severe cold with hardly any snow the pastures were delicately white the ditches and the wet furrows in the ploughed land the ponds on Mella Common and the stagnant pool in the midst of the village whence it drew its main water supply were frozen hard but the ploughed chalkland itself lay a dull grey besides the glitter of the pastures and the woods under the bright sun of the days dropped their rhyme only to pass once more with the deadly cold of the night under the fantastic empire of the frost every day the veil of morning mist rose lightly from the woods uncurtaining the wintry spectacle and melting into the brilliant azure of an unflexed sky every night the moon rose without a breath of wind without a cloud and all the branchwork of the trees where they stood in the open fields they reflected clean and sharp on the whiteened ground the bitter cold stole into the cottages marking the olden feeble with the touch of Azrael while without in the field solitudes burdened beast cowered benumbed and starving in whole and roosting place how still it was this midnight on the fringe of the woods two men sitting concealed amongst some bushes at the edge of Mr. Boyce's largest cover and bent upon a common errand hardly spoke to each other so strange and depressive was the silence one was Jim Hurd the other was a labourer a son of old pattern of the arms houses himself a man of nearly sixty with a small wizened face showing sharp and white tonight under his slouched hat they looked out over a shallow cup of treeless land to a further bound of wooded hill ending towards the north in a bare bluff of down shining steep under the moon they were in shadow and so was most of the wide dip of land before them but through a gap to their right beyond the wood the moon beams poured and the farms nestling under the opposite ridge were moving along it and the bald beacon hill in which it broke to the plane were all in radiant light not a stir of life anywhere Hurd put up his hand to his ear and leaning forward listened intently suddenly a vibration a dull thumping sound in the soil of the bank immediately beside him he started dropping his hand and stooping Lady Azir to the ground he asked the bag, said to his companion drawing himself upright you can hear him turning and creeping as plain as anything now then you take these and go to other side he handed over a bundle of rabbit nets pattern crawling on hands and knees climbed over the low overgrown bank on which the hedge stood into the precincts of the wood itself the state of the hedge leaving the cover practically open and defenseless along its whole boundary showed plainly enough that it belonged to the Mellor estate but the field beyond was Lord Maxwell's Hurd applied himself to netting the holes on his own side pushing the brambles and undergrowth aside with the sure hand of one who had already reconnoitred the ground then he crept over to pattern to see that all was right on the other side came back and went for the ferrets of whom he had four in a closely tied bag a quarter of an hour of intense excitement followed in all five rabbits bolted three on Hurd's side, two on Patton's it was all the two men could do to secure their prey, manage the ferrets and keep a watch on the holes Hurd's great hands now fixing the pegs that held the nets now dealing death to the entangled rabbit whose neck he broke in an instant by a turn of the thumb, now winding up the line that held the ferret, seemed to be everywhere at last the ferret laid up the string attached to him having either slipped or broken greatly to the disgust of the men who did not want to be driven either to dig, which made a noise and took time, or to lose their animal the rabbits made no more sign and it was tolerably evident that they had got as much as they would likely to get out of that particular berry Hurd thrust his arm deep into the hole where he had put the ferret there a summer in the way he declared at last most likely a deaden, give me the spade he dug away at the mouth of the hole, making as little noise as possible and tried again eerie bee, he cried, clutching at something, drew it out, exclaimed in disgust flung it away and pounced upon a rabbit which on the removal of the obstacle followed like a flash pursued by the lost ferret Hurd caught the rabbit by the neck held it by main force and killed it then put the ferret into his pocket lawfully said, wiping his brow they do come sudden what he had pulled out was a dead cat a wretched poor Sue on some happy hunter got itself wedged in the hole and so perished there miserably he and Patton stooped over it wondering then Hurd walked some paces along the bank looking warily out to the right of him across the open country all the time he threw the poor, malodorous thing far into the wood and returned the two men licked their pipes under the shelter of the bushes and rested a bit well hidden but able to see out through a break in the bit of thicket six on them said Hurd looking at the stark creatures beside him I'd be too done to try another berry I'll set a snare or two and be off home Patton puffed silently he was wondering whether Hurd would give him one rabbit or two Hurd had both plant and skill and Patton would have been glad enough to come for one still he was a plaintive man with a perpetual grievance and had already made up his mind that Hurd would treat him shabbily tonight in spite of many past demonstrations that his companion was on the whole of a liberal disposition you've been out working a day's work already he said presently he himself was out at work like half the village and had been presented by his wife with boiled suede for supper but he knew that Hurd had been taken on at the works at the court where the new drive was being made and a piece of ornamental water enlarged and improved mainly for the sake of giving employment in bad times he Patton and some of his mates had tried to get a job there but the steward had turned them back the men off the estate had first claim and there was not room for all of them yet Hurd had been taken on which had sent people talking Hurd nodded and said nothing he was not disposed to be communicative on the subject of his employment at the court I let be true that she be going to marry Mr. Rayburn Patton jerked his head towards the right where above a sloping hedge the chimneys of Mellor and the tops of the Mellor cedars some two or three fields away showed distinct against the deep blue night Hurd nodded again and smoked diligently Patton, nettled by this parsimony of speech made the inward comment that his companion was a deepon the village was perfectly aware of the particular friendship shown by Miss Boyce to the Hurds he was goaded into trying a more stinging topic Westall were bragging last night at Braswell's Braswell was the landlord of the green man at Mellor he said as though they'd taken you on at the court but that didn't prevent him knowing as he was a bad lot he said he had his eye on you he had warned you twice last year that's a lie, said Hurd removing his pipe and instant and putting it back again Patton looked more cheerful well he spoke cruel he was certainly said as you could tell a thing or two about them covered at the end if the truth were known you were always a loafer and a loafer you'd be you might go still into Miss Boyce he said but you wouldn't do no honest work he said not if you could help it that's what he said devil, said Hurd between his teeth with a quick lift of water between his teeth with a quick lift of all his great misshapen chest he took his pipe out of his mouth rammed it down fiercely with his thumb and put it in his pocket look out, exclaimed Patton with a start a whistle clear and distinct from the opposite side of the hollow then a man's figure black and motionless an instant on the whiten down with a black speck beside it lastly another figure higher up along the hill in quick motion towards the first with other specks behind it the poachers instantly understood that it was Westall whose particular beat lay in this part of the estate signalling to his night watcher Charlie Dines that the two men would be on them in no time it was the work of a few seconds to have faced as far as possible the traces of their raid to drag some thick and trailing brambles which hung near over the mouth of the hole where they had been digging to catch up the ferrets in game and to bid Hurd's lurcher to come to heal the two men crawled up the ditch with their burdens as far away to leave it as they could get from the track by which the keepers would cross the field the ditch was deeply overgrown and when the approaching voices warned them to lie close they crouched under a dense stick of brambles and overhanging bushes afraid of nothing but the noses of the keepers' dogs dogs and men however passed unsuspecting old still said Hurd checking Patton's first attempt to move he'll be back again most like it's his dodge and sure enough in twenty minutes or so the men reappeared they retraced their steps from the further corner of the field where some preserves of Lord Maxwell's approached very closely to the big mellow wood and came back again along the diagonal path within fifty yards or so of the men in the ditch in the stillness the poachers could hear Westwell's harsh and pre-remptory voice giving some orders to his underling or calling to the dogs who had scattered a little in the stubble Hurd's own dog quivered beside him once or twice then steps and voices faded into the distance and all was safe the poachers crept out grinning and watched the keepers progress along the hill face till they disappeared into the Maxwell woods E. B. Sold again blast him said Hurd with a note of quite disproportionate exaltation on his queer cracked voice now I'll set them snares but you better get home Patton took the hint gave a grunt of thanks as his companion handed him two rabbits which he stowed away in the capacious woods of his poachers' coat and slouched off home by his sheltered and roundabout away as possible Hurd left to himself stowed his nets and other apparatus in a hidden crevice of the bank and strolled along to set his snares in three hair-runs well known to him round the further side of the wood then he waited impatiently for the striking of the clock in Miller Church the cold was bitter but his night's work was not over yet and he had had very good reasons for getting rid of Patton almost immediately the bell rang out the echo rolling round the bend of the hills and the frosty silence half past twelve Hurd scrambled over the ditch pushed his way through the dilapidated hedge and began to climb the ascent of the wood the outskirts of it were filled with the thin mixed growth of sapling and underwood but the high centre of it was crowned by a grove of full-grown beaches through which the moon now at its height was playing freely as Hurd crumbled upwards amid the dead leaves just freshly strewn as though in yearly festival about the polished shrunks such infinite grace and strength in the linework of the branches branches not bent into gnarled and unexpected fantasies like those of the oak but gathered into every conceivable harmony of upward curb and sweep rising altogether black against the silvery light each tree related to and completing its neighbour as though the whole wood so finely rounded on itself and to the hill was the exception of a master artist but Hurd saw nothing of this as he plunged through the leaves he was thinking that it was extremely likely a man would be on the lookout for him tonight under the big beaches a man with some business to propose to him a few words dropped in his ear at a certain public house the night before had seemed to him to mean this and he had accordingly sent pattern out of the way but when he got to the top of the hill no one was to be seen or heard and he sat him down on a fallen log and wait a while he had no sooner however taken his seat than he shifted it uneasily turning himself round so as to look in the other direction for in front of him as he was first placed there was a gap in the trees and over the lower wood plainly visible and challenging attention rose the dark mass of Mella house and the sight of Mella suggested reflections just now that were not particularly agreeable to Jim Hurd he had just been poaching Mr Boyce's without any sort of scruple but the thought of Miss Boyce was not pleasant to him when he was out on these nightly raids why had she meddled he bore her a queer sort of grudge for it he had just settled down to the bit of cobbling which together with his wife's plate served him for a blind and was full of a secret excitement as to various plans he had in hand for doing west door combining a maximum of gain for the winter with a maximum of safety Miss Boyce walked in radiant with the news that there was employment for him at the court on the new works whenever he liked to go and ask for it and then she had given him an odd look and I was to pass you on a message from Lord Maxwell, Hurd she had said you tell him to keep out of Westerl's way for the future and bygones shall be bygones now I'm not going to ask what that means if you've been breaking some of our landlord's law I'm not going to say I'm shocked I'd alter the law tomorrow if I could you know I would but I do say you're a fool if you go on with it now you've got good work for the winter you must please remember your wife and children and there he had sat like a log staring at her both he and Minter not knowing where to look or how to speak then at last his wife had broken out crying oh Miss, we should have starved and Miss Boyce had stopped her in a moment catching her by the hand didn't she know it did she preach to them only Hurd must promise not to do it any more for his wife's sake and he, stammering left with that excuse or resource either against her charge or the work she offered him had promised her and promised her moreover in his trepidation with more fervency than he at all liked to remember for about a fortnight perhaps he had gone to the court by day and had kept indoors by night so lately Rous were goading at him again he met Westall in the road Westall who looked him over from top to toe with an insolent smile as much as to say well my man we got the whip hand of you now that same night he crept out again in the dark in the early morning in spite of all Minter's tears and scolding well what matter as towards the rich and the law he had the morals of the slave who does not feel that he has had any part in making the rules he is expected to keep and breaks them when he can with glee it made him uncomfortable certainly that Miss Boyce should come in and out of their place as she did should be teaching Willie to read bringing her old dresses to make up for Daisy and Nelly while he was making a fool of her in this way still he took it all as it came one sensation wiped out another besides Miss Boyce had after all much part in this double life of his whenever he was at home after the fire with the pipe he read those papers and things that she had brought him in the summer he had not taken much notice of them at first now he spelled them out again and again he had always thought them rich people took advantage of you but he had never supposed somehow that there were such thieves such mean thieves as it appeared they were a curious ferment filled his restless inconsequent brain the poor were downtrodden but they were coming to their rights the creatures were for the people not for the idle rich above all Westall was a devil and must be put down for the rest if he could have given words to experience he would have said that since he began to go out poaching he had burst his prison and found himself a life which was not merely endurance pulsed in him the centre of the night woods the keenness of the night air the tracks and ways of the wild creatures the wiles by which he slew them the charms of his dog Bruno these things had developed in him new aptitudes both of mind and body which were in themselves exhilaration he carried his dwarf's frame more erect breathed from an ample chest as for his work at the court he thought of it often with impatience and disgust it was a more useful blind than his cobbling or he would have shamed illness and got quit of it then were sharpens that managed that business that totally end he fell thinking about it and chuckling over it as he smoked two of Westall's best covets swept almost clear just before the big shoot in November and all done so quick and quiet before you could say Jack Robinson well there was plenty more yet more woods and more birds there were those covets down there on the mellow side of the hollow they had been kept for the last shoot in January hang him, why wasn't that fellow up to time but no one came and he must sit on, shivering and smoking a sack across his shoulders as the stir and nerve of blood caused by the ferreting subsided his spirits began to sink mists of Celtic melancholy perhaps of Celtic superstition gained upon him he found himself glancing from side to side troubled by the noises in the wood a sad light wind crept about the trunks like a whisper the hours called overhead sometimes there was a sudden sharp rustle yet he knew every track, every tree in that wood up and down that field outside he had followed his father at the plough a sickly little object of a lad yet seldom unhappy so long as childhood lasted and his mother's temper could be fled from either at school or in the fields under that boundary hedge to the right he had lain stunned and bleeding all a summer afternoon after Old Westall had thrashed him his heart scorched within him by the sense of wrong and the craving for revenge was leading down the slope of the wood George Westall had once knocked him down for disturbing a sitting pheasant he could see himself falling the tall powerful lad standing over him with a grin then inconsequently he began to think of his father's death he made a good end at the old man Jim my lad, the Lord's very merciful or Jim you'll look after Anne Anne was the only daughter then a sigh or two and it was done and everybody must go the same way must come to the same stopping of the breath the same awfulness in a life of blind habit of a moment that never had been before and never could be again he did not put it to these words but the shutter that is in the thought for all of us seized him he was very apt to think of dying to ponder in his secret heart how it would be and when he came very soft towards Minter and the children not only did the life instinct cling to them to the warm human hands and faces hemming him in and protecting him from the darkness beyond with its shapes of terror but to think of himself as sick and gasping to his end like his father was to put himself back in his old relation to his wife when they were first married he might cross Minter now but if he came to lie sick he could see himself there in the future following her about with his eyes and thanking her and doing all she told him just as he'd used to do he couldn't die without her to help him through the very idea of her being taken first roused in him a kind of spasm a fierceness a clenching of the hands but all the same in this poaching matter he must have his way and she must just get used to it ah a low whistle from the further side of the wood he replied and was almost instantly joined by a tall slouching youth by day a blacksmith's apprentice at Gersley the Maxwell's village who had often brought him information before the two sat talking for ten minutes or so on the log then they parted heard went back to the ditch where he had left the game put two rabbits into his pockets left the other two to be removed in the morning when he came to look at his snares and went off home keeping as much as possible to the shelter of the hedges on one occasion he braved the moonlight in the open field rather than pass through a woody corner where an old farmer had been found dead some six years before then he reached a deep lane leading to the village and was soon at his own door as he climbed the wooden ladder leading to the one bedroom where he, his wife and his four children slept his wife sprang up in bed Jim you must be perished such a knight as Tiz oh Jim where are you been she was a miserable figure in her coarse nightgown with her grizzling hair wild about her and her thin arms nervously outstretched along the bed the room was freezing cold and the moonlight stealing through the scanty bits of curtains brought into dismal clearness the squalid bed the stained walls and bare uneven floor on an iron bedstead at the foot of the large bed lay Willie restless and coughing with the elder girl beside him fast asleep the other girl lay beside her mother and the stalkers which held the baby stood within reach of Mrs. Hurd's arm he made her no answer but went to look at the coughing boy who had been in bed for a week with bronchitis you've never been and got in West Hall's way again she said anxiously it's no good my trying to get a wink of sleep when you're out like this though you were at yourself he said to her not roughly but decidedly I'm all right this boy's bad mint her and I kept up the fire and put the spout on the kettle too she pointed to the grate into the thin line of steam which was doing its powerless best against the arctic cold of the room Hurd bent over the boy and tried to put him comfortable the child weak and feverish only began to cry a horse bronchial crying which threatened to wake the baby he could not be stopped so Hurd made haste to take off his own coat and boots and then lifted the poor soul in his arms you'll be quiet well and go to sleep won't you if daddy takes care of you he wrapped his own coat around the little fellow and lying down beside his wife took him on his arm and drew the thin brown blankets over himself and his charge he himself was warm with exercise and in a little while the huddling creatures on either side of him were warm too the quick panting breath of the boy soon showed that he was asleep his father too sank almost instantly into deep gulfs of sleep only the wife nervous overdone and possessed by a thousand fears lay tossing and wakeful hour after hour while the still glory of the winter night passed by