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A FORETASTE OF THE PEERAGE

I

A worrying morning foreshadowed—or might have foreshadowed—to Egbert Hunt the strain and distress of the afternoon whose effect upon him we have seen. Normally his master was closeted in the study with the three young men who read with him for University examinations; his mistress engaged first in her household duties, then in her customary run on her bicycle before lunch; shopping, taking some flowers to the cottage hospital, exchanging the magazines for which her circle subscribed. These occupations of master and mistress enabled Egbert to evade with nice calculation the tasks that fell to him. This morning the household, as he expressed it, was "all of a boilin' jump," whereby he was vastly incommoded, being much harried. The three young men thoughtfully denied themselves the intellectual delights of their usual labours with Mr. Letham. "Lucky dawgs," said Egbert bitterly, hiding in the bathroom and watching them from the window meet down the road, confer, laugh, and skim off on their bicycles; his mistress—writing letters, talking excitedly with her husband—did everything except settle to any particular task. The result was to keep Egbert ceaselessly upon "the 'op," and he resented it utterly.

II

With the afternoon the visitors; the satisfying at last of the excitement that had thrilled Miller's Field to the marrow since the newspapers were opened.

A little difficult, the good ladies thought it, to know exactly what to say.

Some, on greeting Mrs. Letham, boldly plumped: "My dear, I do congratulate you!" At the other extreme of tact in grasping a novel situation, those who cleverly began, "My dear, I saw it in the 'Morning Post'!" a wary opening that enabled one to model sentiments on the lead given in reply.

"My dear, I do congratulate you!" "My dear, I saw it in the 'Morning Post'!" and "Ho, do yer, thenk yer!" from bone-tired Egbert, mimicking as he closed the door behind the one; and "Ho, did yer, boil yer!" closing it behind the other.

Between these forms, then, or with slight variations upon them, fell all the salutations but that of Mrs. Savile-Phillips who, arriving late, treading on Egbert's foot in her impressive halt on the threshold, called in her dashing way across the crowded drawing-room, "And where is Lady Burdon?"

She was at her tea table, closely surrounded, prettily coloured by excitement, animated, at her best, tastefully gowned in a becoming dove-grey that fortuitously had arrived from the dressmaker that morning and mingled (she felt) a tribute to her new dignity with a touch of half-mourning for the boy her relationship to whom death with a hot finger had touched to life. Thus Mrs. Letham—new Lady Burdon—took the eye and took it well. This was the moment of her triumph; and that is a moment that is fairy wand to knock asunder the shackles of the heavier years, restoring youth; to warm and make generous the heart; to light the eye and lift the spirit. Hers, hers that moment! She the commanding and captivating figure in that assembly!

Her spirit was equal with her presence. Physically queening it among her friends, psychically she was aloft and afloat in the exaltation that her bearing advertised. Each new congratulation as it came was a vassal hand put out to touch the sceptre she chose to extend. The prattle of voices was a delectable hymn raised to her praise in her new dignity. She was mentally enthroned, queen of a kingdom all her own; and as she visualised its fair places she had a sense of herself, Cinderella-like, shedding drab garments from her shoulders, appearing most wonderfully arrayed; shaking from her skirts the dull past, with eager hands greeting a future splendidly coloured, singing to her with siren note, created for her foot and her pleasure.

Consider her state. The better to consider it, consider that something of these sensations is the lot of every woman when, on her marriage eve, a girl, sleepless she lies through that night, imaging the womanhood that waits her beyond the darkness. It is the threshold of life for woman, this night before the vow, and has no counterpart in all a man's days from boyhood to grave. How should it? The sexes are as widely sundered in habit, thought, custom, as two separate and most alien races. Love has conducted every plighted woman to this threshold and has so delectably engaged her attention on the road that she has reckoned little of the new world towards which she is speeding. Now, on her marriage eve, she is at night and alone: her eager feet upon the immediate moment beyond whose passage lies the unexplored. Love for this space takes rest. To-morrow he will lead her blindfolded into the new country; to-night, poised upon the crest to which blindfolded he has led her, she stands and looks across the prospect, shading her eyes, atremble with ecstasy at the huge adventure. Mighty courage she has—a frail figure, barriers closing up behind her to shut forever the easy paths of maidenhood; hill and valley stretching limitless before, where lie lurking heaven knows what ravening monsters. But she is the born explorer, predestined for this frightful plunge into the unknown, heedless of its dangers, intoxicated by its spaciousness, amazingly confident in Love's power and devotion to keep her in the pleasant places. And Love—he the reckless treaty-monger between the alien races—is prone, unhappily, to lead her a dozen entangling steps down the crest, and there to leave her in the smiling hills suddenly become wilderness, in the little valleys suddenly become abyss.

Mrs. Letham had enjoyed that intoxicating moment upon the crest. Something of its sensations were hers again now; but she found their thrill a far more delectable affair. Again she was upon the crest whence an alluring prospect stretched; but now she looked with eyes not filmed by ignorance; now could have seen desert places, pitfalls, if such had been, but saw that there were none. Or so she thought.

Already, in the congratulations she was receiving, she was tasting the first sweets, plucking the first fruits with which she saw the groves behung. For the first time she found herself and her fortunes the centre of a crowded drawing-room's conversation. For the first time she enjoyed the thrill of eager attention at her command when she chose to raise her voice. It was good, good. It was sufficient to her for the moment. But her exalted mind ran calculating ahead of it, even while she rejoiced in it. She had her little Rollo brought in to her, and kept him on her knee, and stroked his hair; and once and twice and many times went into dreams of all that now awaited him; and with an effort had to recall herself to the attentions of her guests.

As evening stole out from the trees, in shadows across the lawn and in dusk against the windows, like some stealthy stranger peering in, her party began to separate. A few closer friends clustered about her, and the conversation became more particular. Yes, it would mean leaving Miller's Field—dear Miller's Field; and leaving them, but never, never forgetting them. Elated, triumphant, and therefore generous, emotional, she almost believed that indeed she would be sorry to lose these friends.

As one warmed with wine has a largeness of spirit that swamps his proper self in its generous delusions, so she, warmed with triumph, was genuine enough in all her protestations. With real affection she handed over kindly Mrs. Archer, the doctor's wife, who stayed last, to the good offices of Egbert Hunt, and in a happy, happy glow of elation returned to her drawing-room. This was the beginning of it!

This the beginning of it! She drew a long breath, smiling to herself, her hands pressed together; through the glass doors giving on to the lawn she espied her husband, and smiling she went quickly across and opened them.

III

Mr. Letham was coming in from work in the garden. He had a watering-can in one hand, with the other he trailed a rake. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and his face was damp with his exertions around the flower-beds. "Hullo! All gone?" he asked.

The warmth of her spirit caused her to extend her hands to him with a sudden, affectionate gesture:

"All, yes. Maurice, you were an old wretch! You might have come in."

"Simply couldn't, old girl. I had a squint through the window, and fled and hid behind a bush. Thousands of you; it looked awful!"

She laughed: "Miserable coward! I was hoping you would."

"Were you, though?" he said eagerly. "I'd have come like a shot if I'd known."

That made her laugh again: he was always the lover. "Well, come and have a talk now to make up," she told him. "Out here in the garden. It's frightfully hot in this room."

His face beamed. He put down the implements he was carrying, wiped a hand on his waistcoat and slipped his fingers beneath her arm. "That's a stunning dress," he said.

She gathered up the trailing skirt and glanced down at it, well pleased. "It is rather nice, isn't it?"

"Fine! You look as pretty as a picture this evening, Nellie. I tell you, I thought so, when I squinted in through the window."

"That's because I'm so happy."

"So am I." He pressed her arm to show why, and "Maurice! you are a goose," was her gay comment; but for once his foolish loverlikeness pleased her; her mood was widely charitable.

They paced the little lawn in silence. She suddenly asked, "You don't mind my being happy, do you?"

"Mind! Good Lord!" and he pressed her arm again.

"Being excited about—about it, I mean. It's natural, Maurice?"

"Of course it is. Of course it is, old girl."

"But you're not—it doesn't excite you?"

Mr. Letham was too honest, even at risk of disturbing this happy passage, to pretend the untrue. "Well, that's nothing," he said. "That's nothing. I'm so beastly slow. An earthquake wouldn't excite me."

"I don't believe it would," she laughed, then was serious. "But I'm excited," she said abruptly. "Oh, I am!" She put up her face towards the veiling sky—a dim star here and a dim star there and a faint breeze rising—and she drew a deep breath just as she had breathed deeply in the drawing-room a few moments earlier. "Oh, I am!" she repeated. "Maurice! I want to talk about it."

He was not at all conscious of the full intensity of her feelings; but for such of it as he perceived he smiled at her in his tolerant way. "Well, you say," he told her. "You do the talking."

She was silent for a considerable space; her mind run far ahead and occupied among thoughts to which she could not introduce him, for he had no place in them. That he shivered slightly recalled his presence to her. That his presence had been deliberately shut from among the castles she had been building caused her one of those qualms which (if we are kind) often sting us back from our worser self to our better nature. And she was kind, alternating ceaselessly between the many womanly parts she had and those other parts we all possess; only to be pitied if the events now quickly shaping for her tempted her too much, led her too far from the point whence kindness is recoverable.

Recalled to him and to her womanliness, "Oh, your coat!" she exclaimed. "You've been getting hot and you'll catch your death of chill. You're dreadfully careless. Where is it?"

"In the summer-house. But what rot!"

"I'll get it." She slipped her arm from his hand and ran away across the lawn. "There!" she said, returning. "Now button it up. Ah! You're all thumbs!"

She fastened it for him and turned up the collar. The action brought her face close to his. "You're jolly good to me, Nellie," he said, and his lips brushed her forehead. A kiss it had been, but she drew back a step. "Not going to have you ill on my hands," she told him brightly. Then she slipped a hand into his arm and resumed, "What are we going to do—first? I want to talk about that."

She had talked to him of it all the morning; but as if it were undiscussed—anything to preserve these happy moments—"Yes, go on," he said.

She responded eagerly. "Well, we must write to Lady Burdon, of course—Jane Lady Burdon, now, you said, didn't you? Not to-day. Better wait a day—to-morrow."

"That is what I thought."

"Yes—yes—and then you will have to go to see her. By yourself. I won't come at first." She gave a little sound of laughter. "I don't think I shall much like Jane Lady Burdon, from what you told me this morning."

He asked her: "Good lord, why, Nellie? Why, what did I tell you? I've only seen her once, years and years ago."

"You made her out proud; you said she would feel this terribly."

"That poor boy's death? Of course she would. She was devoted to him. Look, he was no more than Rollo's age when his father died. She brought him up. Been mother and father to him all his life. Imagine how she'd feel it."

"Oh, I don't mean that; feel us coming in, I mean. Proud in that way."

It was an idea that another man, though he knew it true, would have laughed aside. Mr. Letham's hopeless simplicity put him to a stumbling explanation. "Ah, but proud's not the word—not fair," he said. "She has pride; you understand the difference, don't you, old girl? A tremendous family pride. She'll feel this break in the direct descent—father to son, as it said in the newspaper, ever since there was a Burdon. It is one of their traditions, at the bottom of half their traditions, and they're simply wrapped up in that kind of thing. I should think there never was a family with so many observances—laws of its own."

"Tell me," she said: and while they paced, he spoke of this family whose style and dignity they were to take; and while he spoke, sometimes she pressed together her lips and contracted her brows as though hostile towards the pictures he made her see, sometimes breathed quickly and took a light in her eyes as though she foretasted delights that he presented. She had no romantic sense in her nature, else had been moved by such traditions of the House of Burdon as, he said, he could remember. That white roses were never permitted in the grounds of Burdon Old Manor, that no male but the head of the family might put on his hat within the threshold, that the coming of age of sons was celebrated at twenty-four, not twenty-one—she scarcely heeded the legends attaching to these observances. "Rather silly," she named them, and did not condescend a reply to her husband's weak defence, "Well, they rather get you, you know, don't you think?"

He spoke of the Burdon motto, the arrogant, "I hold!" that was of the bone of Burdon character, so he said. "I remember my old grandfather telling me lots about that," he told her. "It sums them up. That's the kind they've always been: headstrong and absolutely fearless, like that poor boy, and stubborn—stubborn as mules where their rights, or their will, or their pride is concerned. Stubborn in having their own way, and stubborn in doing or not doing simply because the thing's done or not done in the traditions they're bred up in."

He stopped and bent to her with "Yes, what did you say?" but only caught her repeating to herself intensely and beneath her breath, "I hold!"

"Yes, it's rather fine, isn't it?" he said; and he went on: "Well, that's just what I mean about old Lady Burdon. She'll have felt that she was holding for her grandson, had held all these years, and now was the one, the only one, to see the tradition break, the direct succession pass. That's what I mean by saying she has pride and will feel it. That time I saw her, as I was telling you this morning, when that poor boy was about Rollo's age and I was doing a walking tour down in Wiltshire and managed to get up courage to go to Burdon Old Manor and introduce myself, I noticed it then. She was dividing all her time between the boy and a quaint kind of 'Lives of the Barons Burdon' as she called it, a manuscript life of each holder of the title, hunting up all the old records and traditions and things with the librarian; he was as keen on it as she. He … "

"Where will she be now, do you think?" Mrs. Letham interrupted. "In town?"

"In town for certain. She'd be sure to be where she could always get earliest news of the boy."

"In the town house? Burdon House in Mount Street, you said, didn't you? Have you ever been there? What's it like?"

"No, never been in. A whacking great place, from the outside. That's where she'll be all right, unless they've sold it."

Mrs. Letham gave him a sudden full attention. "Sold it? Why should they have sold it?"

"The ancient reason—want of money," he replied lightly.

She made no response nor responsive movement; yet some emotion that she had seemed to communicate itself to him, for looking down at her, half-whimsically, half-gravely, "I say, you don't think we've come into untold wealth, do you, Nellie?" he said.

She took her hand sharply from his arm. Much that he had said, though she could not have analysed why, had caused her kinder self to ebb. Now it left her. She answered him by asking him: "What of all those names you told me? Tell me them again."

"The property? The Burdon Old Manor property? Little Letham, and Shepwell, and Burdon, and Abbess Roding, and Nunford, and Market Roding: those, do you mean?"

"Yes, I mean those. How do you mean 'the ancient reason, want of money'?"

"Well, that's all there is, though. The money is all out of the estate. Nothing more."

She said impatiently: "Well? All those villages?"

"All those duties." he corrected her. "That's the Burdon way of looking at it. What they make on Abbess Roding they lose on Market Roding, so to speak. It's that 'I hold!' business again. They won't sell; they won't raise rents when leases fall in; they never refuse improvements that can possibly be afforded. The tenantry have been there for generations. No Burdon would ever think of turning them off or of refusing them anything; it wouldn't enter his head. That's why I said Burdon House in Mount Street might be sold. It's unlikely, but I remember there was talk of it in my grandfather's time. It belongs to an older day, when they were wealthier. They'd sacrifice that, if need be, though it would be like a death in the family; but anything rather than the bare idea of interfering with the people they regard as a trust."