The Patrician
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THE PATRICIAN
By John Galsworthy
PART I
CHAPTER I
Light, entering the vast room--a room so high that its carved ceiling
refused itself to exact scrutiny--travelled, with the wistful, cold
curiosity of the dawn, over a fantastic storehouse of Time. Light,
unaccompanied by the prejudice of human eyes, made strange revelation
of incongruities, as though illuminating the dispassionate march of
history.
For in this dining hall--one of the finest in England--the Caradoc
family had for centuries assembled the trophies and records of their
existence. Round about this dining hall they had built and pulled down
and restored, until the rest of Monkland Court presented some aspect
of homogeneity. Here alone they had left virgin the work of the old
quasi-monastic builders, and within it unconsciously deposited their
souls. For there were here, meeting the eyes of light, all those rather
touching evidences of man's desire to persist for ever, those shells of
his former bodies, the fetishes and queer proofs of his faiths, together
with the remorseless demonstration of their treatment at the hands of
Time.
The annalist might here have found all his needed confirmations; the
analyst from this material formed the due equation of high birth; the
philosopher traced the course of aristocracy, from its primeval rise in
crude strength or subtlety, through centuries of power, to picturesque
decadence, and the beginnings of its last stand. Even the artist might
here, perchance, have seized on the dry ineffable pervading spirit, as
one visiting an old cathedral seems to scent out the constriction of its
heart.
From the legendary sword of that Welsh chieftain who by an act of high,
rewarded treachery had passed into the favour of the conquering William,
and received, with the widow of a Norman, many lands in Devonshire,
to the Cup purchased for Geoffrey Caradoc; present Earl of Valleys, by
subscription of his Devonshire tenants on the occasion of his marriage
with the Lady Gertrude Semmering--no insignia were absent, save the
family portraits in the gallery of Valleys House in London. There
was even an ancient duplicate of that yellow tattered scroll royally,
reconfirming lands and title to John, the most distinguished of all the
Caradocs, who had unfortunately neglected to be born in wedlock, by one
of those humorous omissions to be found in the genealogies of most old
families. Yes, it was there, almost cynically hung in a corner; for this
incident, though no doubt a burning question in the fifteenth century,
was now but staple for an ironical little tale, in view of the fact that
descendants of John's 'own' brother Edmund were undoubtedly to be found
among the cottagers of a parish not far distant.
Light, glancing from the suits of armour to the tiger skins beneath
them, brought from India but a year ago by Bertie Caradoc, the younger
son, seemed recording, how those, who had once been foremost by virtue
of that simple law of Nature which crowns the adventuring and strong,
now being almost washed aside out of the main stream of national life,
were compelled to devise adventure, lest they should lose belief in
their own strength.
The unsparing light of that first half-hour of summer morning recorded
many other changes, wandering from austere tapestries to the velvety
carpets, and dragging from the contrast sure proof of a common sense
which denied to the present Earl and Countess the asceticisms of the
past. And then it seemed to lose interest in this critical journey, as
though longing to clothe all in witchery. For the sun had risen, and
through the Eastern windows came pouring its level and mysterious joy.
And with it, passing in at an open lattice, came a wild bee to settle
among the flowers on the table athwart the Eastern end, used when there
was only a small party in the house. The hours fled on silent, till
the sun was high, and the first visitors came--three maids, rosy,
not silent, bringing brushes. They passed, and were followed by two
footmen--scouts of the breakfast brigade, who stood for a moment
professionally doing nothing, then soberly commenced to set the
table. Then came a little girl of six, to see if there were anything
exciting--little Ann Shropton, child of Sir William Shropton by his
marriage with Lady Agatha, and eldest daughter of the house, the only
one of the four young Caradocs as yet wedded. She came on tiptoe,
thinking to surprise whatever was there. She had a broad little face,
and wide frank hazel eyes over a little nose that came out straight
and sudden. Encircled by a loose belt placed far below the waist of
her holland frock, as if to symbolize freedom, she seemed to think
everything in life good fun. And soon she found the exciting thing.
"Here's a bumble bee, William. Do you think I could tame it in my little
glass bog?"
"No, I don't, Miss Ann; and look out, you'll be stung!"
"It wouldn't sting me."
"Why not?"
"Because it wouldn't."
"Of course--if you say so----"
"What time is the motor ordered?"
"Nine o'clock."
"I'm going with Grandpapa as far as the gate."
"Suppose he says you're not?"
"Well, then I shall go all the same."
"I see."
"I might go all the way with him to London! Is Auntie Babs going?"
"No, I don't think anybody is going with his lordship."
"I would, if she were. William!"
"Yes."
"Is Uncle Eustace sure to be elected?"
"Of course he is."
"Do you think he'll be a good Member of Parliament?"
"Lord Miltoun is very clever, Miss Ann."
"Is he?"
"Well, don't you think so?"
"Does Charles think so?"
"Ask him."
"William!"
"Yes."
"I don't like London. I like here, and I like Cotton, and I like home
pretty well, and I love Pendridny--and--I like Ravensham."
"His lordship is going to Ravensham to-day on his way up, I heard say."
"Oh! then he'll see great-granny. William----"
"Here's Miss Wallace."
From the doorway a lady with a broad pale patient face said:
"Come, Ann."
"All right! Hallo, Simmons!"
The entering butler replied:
"Hallo, Miss Ann!"
"I've got to go."
"I'm sure we're very sorry."
"Yes."
The door banged faintly, and in the great room rose the busy silence
of those minutes which precede repasts. Suddenly the four men by the
breakfast fable stood back. Lord Valleys had come in.
He approached slowly, reading a blue paper, with his level grey eyes
divided by a little uncharacteristic frown. He had a tanned yet ruddy,
decisively shaped face, with crisp hair and moustache beginning to go
iron-grey--the face of a man who knows his own mind and is contented
with that knowledge. His figure too, well-braced and upright, with the
back of the head carried like a soldier's, confirmed the impression, not
so much of self-sufficiency, as of the sufficiency of his habits of
life and thought. And there was apparent about all his movements that
peculiar unconsciousness of his surroundings which comes to those who
live a great deal in the public eye, have the material machinery of
existence placed exactly to their hands, and never need to consider what
others think of them. Taking his seat, and still perusing the paper,
he at once began to eat what was put before him; then noticing that his
eldest daughter had come in and was sitting down beside him, he said:
"Bore having to go up in such weather!"
"Is it a Cabinet meeting?"
"Yes. This confounded business of the balloons." But the rather anxious
dark eyes of Agatha's delicate narrow face were taking in the details of
a tray for keeping dishes warm on a sideboard, and she was thinking:
"I believe that would be better than the ones I've got, after all. If
William would only say whether he really likes these large trays better
than single hot-water dishes!" She contrived how-ever to ask in her
gentle voice--for all her words and movements were gentle, even a little
timid, till anything appeared to threaten the welfare of her husband or
children:
"Do you think this war scare good for Eustace's prospects, Father?"
But her father did not answer; he was greeting a new-comer, a tall,
fine-looking young man, with dark hair and a fair moustache, between
whom and himself there was no relationship, yet a certain negative
resemblance. Claud Fresnay, Viscount Harbinger, was indeed also a little
of what is called the 'Norman' type--having a certain firm regularity of
feature, and a slight aquilinity of nose high up on the bridge--but that
which in the elder man seemed to indicate only an unconscious acceptance
of self as a standard, in the younger man gave an impression at once
more assertive and more uneasy, as though he were a little afraid of not
chaffing something all the time.
Behind him had come in a tall woman, of full figure and fine presence,
with hair still brown--Lady Valleys herself. Though her eldest son was
thirty, she was, herself, still little more than fifty. From her voice,
manner, and whole personality, one might suspect that she had been an
acknowledged beauty; but there was now more than a suspicion of
maturity about her almost jovial face, with its full grey-blue eyes;
and coarsened complexion. Good comrade, and essentially 'woman of the
world,' was written on every line of her, and in every tone of her
voice. She was indeed a figure suggestive of open air and generous
living, endowed with abundant energy, and not devoid of humour. It was
she who answered Agatha's remark.
"Of course, my dear, the very best thing possible."
Lord Harbinger chimed in:
"By the way, Brabrook's going to speak on it. Did you ever hear him,
Lady Agatha? 'Mr. Speaker, Sir, I rise--and with me rises the democratic
principle----'"
But Agatha only smiled, for she was thinking:
"If I let Ann go as far as the gate, she'll only make it a
stepping-stone to something else to-morrow." Taking no interest in
public affairs, her inherited craving for command had resorted for
expression to a meticulous ordering of household matters. It was
indeed a cult with her, a passion--as though she felt herself a sort of
figurehead to national domesticity; the leader of a patriotic movement.
Lord Valleys, having finished what seemed necessary, arose.
"Any message to your mother, Gertrude?"
"No, I wrote last night."
"Tell Miltoun to keep--an eye on that Mr. Courtier. I heard him speak
one day--he's rather good."
Lady Valleys, who had not yet sat down, accompanied her husband to the
door.
"By the way, I've told Mother about this woman, Geoff."
"Was it necessary?"
"Well, I think so; I'm uneasy--after all, Mother has some influence with
Miltoun."
Lord Valleys shrugged his shoulders, and slightly squeezing his wife's
arm, went out.
Though himself vaguely uneasy on that very subject, he was a man who did
not go to meet disturbance. He had the nerves which seem to be no nerves
at all--especially found in those of his class who have much to do
with horses. He temperamentally regarded the evil of the day as quite
sufficient to it. Moreover, his eldest son was a riddle that he had long
given up, so far as women were concerned.
Emerging into the outer hall, he lingered a moment, remembering that he
had not seen his younger and favourite daughter.
"Lady Barbara down yet?" Hearing that she was not, he slipped into the
motor coat held for him by Simmons, and stepped out under the white
portico, decorated by the Caradoc hawks in stone.
The voice of little Ann reached him, clear and high above the smothered
whirring of the car.
"Come on, Grandpapa!"
Lord Valleys grimaced beneath his crisp moustache--the word grandpapa
always fell queerly on the ears of one who was but fifty-six, and by no
means felt it--and jerking his gloved hand towards Ann, he said:
"Send down to the lodge gate for this."
The voice of little Ann answered loudly:
"No; I'm coming back by myself."
The car starting, drowned discussion.
Lord Valleys, motoring, somewhat pathetically illustrated the invasion
of institutions by their destroyer, Science. A supporter of the turf,
and not long since Master of Foxhounds, most of whose soul (outside
politics) was in horses, he had been, as it were, compelled by common
sense, not only to tolerate, but to take up and even press forward
the cause of their supplanters. His instinct of self-preservation was
secretly at work, hurrying him to his own destruction; forcing him to
persuade himself that science and her successive victories over brute
nature could be wooed into the service of a prestige which rested on a
crystallized and stationary base. All this keeping pace with the times,
this immersion in the results of modern discoveries, this speeding-up
of existence so that it was all surface and little root--the increasing
volatility, cosmopolitanism, and even commercialism of his life, on
which he rather prided himself as a man of the world--was, with a
secrecy too deep for his perception, cutting at the aloofness logically
demanded of one in his position. Stubborn, and not spiritually subtle,
though by no means dull in practical matters, he was resolutely letting
the waters bear him on, holding the tiller firmly, without perceiving
that he was in the vortex of a whirlpool. Indeed, his common sense
continually impelled him, against the sort of reactionaryism of which
his son Miltoun had so much, to that easier reactionaryism, which,
living on its spiritual capital, makes what material capital it can out
of its enemy, Progress.
He drove the car himself, shrewd and self-contained, sitting easily,
with his cap well drawn over those steady eyes; and though this
unexpected meeting of the Cabinet in the Whitsuntide recess was not only
a nuisance, but gave food for anxiety, he was fully able to enjoy the
swift smooth movement through the summer air, which met him with such
friendly sweetness under the great trees of the long avenue. Beside
him, little Ann was silent, with her legs stuck out rather wide apart.
Motoring was a new excitement, for at home it was forbidden; and a
meditative rapture shone in her wide eyes above her sudden little nose.
Only once she spoke, when close to the lodge the car slowed down, and
they passed the lodge-keeper's little daughter.
"Hallo, Susie!"
There was no answer, but the look on Susie's small pale face was so
humble and adoring that Lord Valleys, not a very observant man,
noticed it with a sort of satisfaction. "Yes," he thought, somewhat
irrelevantly, "the country is sound at heart!"
CHAPTER II
At Ravensham House on the borders of Richmond Park, suburban seat of the
Casterley family, ever since it became usual to have a residence within
easy driving distance of Westminster--in a large conservatory adjoining
the hall, Lady Casterley stood in front of some Japanese lilies. She was
a slender, short old woman, with an ivory-coloured face, a thin nose,
and keen eyes half-veiled by delicate wrinkled lids. Very still, in
her grey dress, and with grey hair, she gave the impression of a little
figure carved out of fine, worn steel. Her firm, spidery hand held a
letter written in free somewhat sprawling style:
MONKLAND COURT,
"DEVON.
"MY DEAR, MOTHER,
"Geoffrey is motoring up to-morrow. He'll look in on you on the way if
he can. This new war scare has taken him up. I shan't be in Town myself
till Miltoun's election is over. The fact is, I daren't leave him down
here alone. He sees his 'Anonyma' every day. That Mr. Courtier, who
wrote the book against War--rather cool for a man who's been a soldier
of fortune, don't you think?--is staying at the inn, working for the
Radical. He knows her, too--and, one can only hope, for Miltoun's sake,
too well--an attractive person, with red moustaches, rather nice and
mad. Bertie has just come down; I must get him to have a talk with
Miltoun, and see if he cant find out how the land lies. One can
trust Bertie--he's really very astute. I must say, that she's quite a
sweet-looking woman; but absolutely nothing's known of her here except
that she divorced her husband. How does one find out about people?
Miltoun's being so extraordinarily strait-laced makes it all the more
awkward. The earnestness of this rising generation is most remarkable. I
don't remember taking such a serious view of life in my youth."
Lady Casterley lowered the coronetted sheet of paper. The ghost of a
grimace haunted her face--she had not forgotten her daughter's youth.
Raising the letter again, she read on:
"I'm sure Geoffrey and I feel years younger than either Miltoun or
Agatha, though we did produce them. One doesn't feel it with Bertie or
Babs, luckily. The war scare is having an excellent effect on Miltoun's
candidature. Claud Harbinger is with us, too, working for Miltoun; but,
as a matter of fact, I think he's after Babs. It's rather melancholy,
when you think that Babs isn't quite twenty--still, one can't expect
anything else, I suppose, with her looks; and Claud is rather a fine
specimen. They talk of him a lot now; he's quite coming to the fore
among the young Tories."
Lady Casterley again lowered the letter, and stood listening. A
prolonged, muffled sound as of distant cheering and groans had
penetrated the great conservatory, vibrating among the pale petals of
the lilies and setting free their scent in short waves of perfume. She
passed into the hall; where, stood an old man with sallow face and long
white whiskers.
"What was that noise, Clifton?"
"A posse of Socialists, my lady, on their way to Putney to hold a
demonstration; the people are hooting them. They've got blocked just
outside the gates."
"Are they making speeches?"
"They are talking some kind of rant, my lady."
"I'll go and hear them. Give me my black stick."
Above the velvet-dark, flat-toughed cedar trees, which rose like pagodas
of ebony on either side of the drive, the sky hung lowering in one great
purple cloud, endowed with sinister life by a single white beam striking
up into it from the horizon. Beneath this canopy of cloud a small
phalanx of dusty, dishevelled-looking men and women were drawn up in
the road, guarding, and encouraging with cheers, a tall, black-coated
orator. Before and behind this phalanx, a little mob of men and boys
kept up an accompaniment of groans and jeering.
Lady Casterley and her 'major-domo' stood six paces inside the scrolled
iron gates, and watched. The slight, steel-coloured figure with
steel-coloured hair, was more arresting in its immobility than all the
vociferations and gestures of the mob. Her eyes alone moved under their
half-drooped lids; her right hand clutched tightly the handle of
her stick. The speaker's voice rose in shrill protest against
the exploitation of 'the people'; it sank in ironical comment on
Christianity; it demanded passionately to be free from the continuous
burden of 'this insensate militarist taxation'; it threatened that the
people would take things info their own hands.
Lady Casterley turned her head:
"He is talking nonsense, Clifton. It is going to rain. I shall go in."
Under the stone porch she paused. The purple cloud had broken; a blind
fury of rain was deluging the fast-scattering crowd. A faint smile came
on Lady Casterley's lips.
"It will do them good to have their ardour damped a little. You will get
wet, Clifton--hurry! I expect Lord Valleys to dinner. Have a room got
ready for him to dress. He's motoring from Monkland."
CHAPTER III
In a very high, white-panelled room, with but little furniture, Lord
Valleys greeted his mother-in-law respectfully.
"Motored up in nine hours, Ma'am--not bad going."
"I am glad you came. When is Miltoun's election?"
"On the twenty-ninth."
"Pity! He should be away from Monkland, with that--anonymous woman
living there."
"Ah! yes; you've heard of her!"
Lady Casterley replied sharply:
"You're too easy-going, Geoffrey."
Lord Valleys smiled.
"These war scares," he said, "are getting a bore. Can't quite make out
what the feeling of the country is about them."
Lady Casterley rose:
"It has none. When war comes, the feeling will be all right. It always
is. Give me your arm. Are you hungry?"...
When Lord Valleys spoke of war, he spoke as one who, since he arrived at
years of discretion, had lived within the circle of those who direct
the destinies of States. It was for him--as for the lilies in the great
glass house--impossible to see with the eyes, or feel with the feelings
of a flower of the garden outside. Soaked in the best prejudices and
manners of his class, he lived a life no more shut off from the general
than was to be expected. Indeed, in some sort, as a man of facts and
common sense, he was fairly in touch with the opinion of the average
citizen. He was quite genuine when he said that he believed he knew what
the people wanted better than those who prated on the subject; and no
doubt he was right, for temperamentally he was nearer to them than their
own leaders, though he would not perhaps have liked to be told so. His
man-of-the-world, political shrewdness had been superimposed by life
on a nature whose prime strength was its practicality and lack of
imagination. It was his business to be efficient, but not strenuous, or
desirous of pushing ideas to their logical conclusions; to be neither
narrow nor puritanical, so long as the shell of 'good form' was
preserved intact; to be a liberal landlord up to the point of not
seriously damaging his interests; to be well-disposed towards the arts
until those arts revealed that which he had not before perceived; it was
his business to have light hands, steady eyes, iron nerves, and those
excellent manners that have no mannerisms. It was his nature to
be easy-going as a husband; indulgent as a father; careful and
straightforward as a politician; and as a man, addicted to pleasure, to
work, and to fresh air. He admired, and was fond of his wife, and had
never regretted his marriage. He had never perhaps regretted anything,
unless it were that he had not yet won the Derby, or quite succeeded in
getting his special strain of blue-ticked pointers to breed absolutely
true to type. His mother-in-law he respected, as one might respect a
principle.
There was indeed in the personality of that little old lady the
tremendous force of accumulated decision--the inherited assurance of one
whose prestige had never been questioned; who, from long immunity, and a
certain clear-cut matter-of-factness, bred by the habit of command,
had indeed lost the power of perceiving that her prestige ever could
be questioned. Her knowledge of her own mind was no ordinary piece of
learning, had not, in fact, been learned at all, but sprang full-fledged
from an active dominating temperament. Fortified by the necessity,
common to her class, of knowing thoroughly the more patent side of
public affairs; armoured by the tradition of a culture demanded by
leadership; inspired by ideas, but always the same ideas; owning no
master, but in servitude to her own custom of leading, she had a
mind, formidable as the two-edged swords wielded by her ancestors
the Fitz-Harolds, at Agincourt or Poitiers--a mind which had ever
instinctively rejected that inner knowledge of herself or of the
selves of others; produced by those foolish practices of introspection,
contemplation, and understanding, so deleterious to authority. If Lord
Valleys was the body of the aristocratic machine, Lady Casterley was the
steel spring inside it. All her life studiously unaffected and simple in
attire; of plain and frugal habit; an early riser; working at
something or other from morning till night, and as little worn-out at
seventy-eight as most women of fifty, she had only one weak spot--and
that was her strength--blindness as to the nature and size of her place
in the scheme of things. She was a type, a force.
Wonderfully well she went with the room in which they were dining, whose
grey walls, surmounted by a deep frieze painted somewhat in the style
of Fragonard, contained many nymphs and roses now rather dim; with the
furniture, too, which had a look of having survived into times not its
own. On the tables were no flowers, save five lilies in an old silver
chalice; and on the wall over the great sideboard a portrait of the late
Lord Casterley.
She spoke:
"I hope Miltoun is taking his own line?"
"That's the trouble. He suffers from swollen principles--only wish he
could keep them out of his speeches."
"Let him be; and get him away from that woman as soon as his election's
over. What is her real name?"
"Mrs. something Lees Noel."
"How long has she been there?"
"About a year, I think."
"And you don't know anything about her?"
Lord Valleys raised his shoulders.
"Ah!" said Lady Casterley; "exactly! You're letting the thing drift. I
shall go down myself. I suppose Gertrude can have me? What has that Mr.
Courtier to do with this good lady?"
Lord Valleys smiled. In this smile was the whole of his polite and
easy-going philosophy. "I am no meddler," it seemed to say; and at sight
of that smile Lady Casterley tightened her lips.
"He is a firebrand," she said. "I read that book of his against
War--most inflammatory. Aimed at Grant-and Rosenstern, chiefly. I've
just seen, one of the results, outside my own gates. A mob of anti-War
agitators."