Marcella Part 24

"My father never bought anything--my father can't. I believe we have chairs enough to sit down upon--but we have no curtains to half the windows. Can I give you anything?"

For he had risen, and was looking over the tea-tray.

"Oh! but I _must_," he said discontentedly. "I _must_ have enough sugar in my tea!"

"I gave you more than the average," she said, with a sudden little leap of laughter, as she came to his aid. "Do all your principles break down like this? I was going to suggest that you might like some of that fire taken away?" And she pointed to the pile of blazing logs which now filled up the great chimney.

"That fire!" he said, s.h.i.+vering, and moving up to it. "Have you any idea what sort of a wind you keep up here on these hills on a night like this? And to think that in this weather, with a barometer that laughs in your face when you try to move it, I have three meetings to-morrow night!"

"When one loves the 'People,' with a large P," said Marcella, "one mustn't mind winds."

He flashed a smile at her, answering to the sparkle of her look, then applied himself to his tea and toasted bun again, with the dainty deliberation of one enjoying every sip and bite.

"No; but if only the People didn't live so far apart. Some murderous person wanted them to have only one neck. I want them to have only one ear. Only then unfortunately everybody would speak well--which would bring things round to dulness again. Does Mr. Raeburn make you think very bad things of me, Miss Boyce?"

He bent forward to her as he spoke, his blue eyes all candour and mirth.

Marcella started.

"How can he?" she said abruptly. "I am not a Conservative."

"Not a Conservative?" he said joyously. "Oh! but impossible! Does that mean that you ever read my poor little speeches?"

He pointed to the local newspaper, freshly cut, which lay on a table at Marcella's elbow.

"Sometimes--" said Marcella, embarra.s.sed. "There is so little time."

In truth she had hardly given his candidature a thought since the day Aldous proposed to her. She had been far too much taken up with her own prospects, with Lady Winterbourne's friends.h.i.+p, and her village schemes.

He laughed.

"Of course there is. When is the great event to be?"

"I didn't mean that," said Marcella, stiffly. "Lady Winterbourne and I have been trying to start some village workshops. We have been working and talking, and writing, morning, noon, and night."

"Oh! I know--yes, I heard of it. And you really think anything is going to come out of finicking little schemes of that sort?"

His dry change of tone drew a quick look from her. The fresh-coloured face was transformed. In place of easy mirth and mischief, she read an acute and half contemptuous attention.

"I don't know what you mean," she said slowly, after a pause. "Or rather--I do know quite well. You told papa--didn't you?--and Mr.

Raeburn says that you are a Socialist--not half-and-half, as all the world is, but the real thing? And of course you want great changes: you don't like anything that might strengthen the upper cla.s.s with the people. But that is nonsense. You can't get the changes for a long _long_ time. And, meanwhile, people must be clothed and fed and kept alive."

She lay back in her high-backed chair and looked at him defiantly. His lip twitched, but he kept his gravity.

"You would be much better employed in forming a branch of the Agricultural Union," he said decidedly. "What is the good of playing Lady Bountiful to a decayed industry? All that is childish; we want _the means of revolution_. The people who are for reform shouldn't waste money and time on fads."

"I understand all that," she said scornfully, her quick breath rising and falling. "Perhaps you don't know that I was a member of the Venturist Society in London? What you say doesn't sound very new to me!"

His seriousness disappeared in laughter. He hastily put down his cup and, stepping over to her, held out his hand.

"You a Venturist? So am I. Joy! Won't you shake hands with me, as comrades should? We are a very mixed set of people, you know, and between ourselves I don't know that we are coming to much. But we can make an alderman dream of the guillotine--that is always something. Oh!

but now we can talk on quite a new footing!"

She had given him her hand for an instant, withdrawing it with shy rapidity, and he had thrown himself into a chair again, with his arms behind his head, and the air of one reflecting happily on a changed situation. "Quite a new footing," he repeated thoughtfully. "But it is--a little surprising. What does--what does Mr. Raeburn say to it?"

"Nothing! He cares just as much about the poor as you or I, please understand! He doesn't choose my way--but he won't interfere with it."

"Ah! that is like him--like Aldous."

Marcella started.

"You don't mind my calling him by his Christian name sometimes? It drops out. We used to meet as boys together at the Levens. The Levens are my cousins. He was a big boy, and I was a little one. But he didn't like me. You see--I was a little beast!"

His air of appealing candour could not have been more engaging.

"Yes, I fear I was a little beast. And he was, even then, and always, 'the good and beautiful.' You don't understand Greek, do you, Miss Boyce? But he was very good to me. I got into an awful sc.r.a.pe once. I let out a pair of eagle owls that used to be kept in the courtyard--Sir Charles loved them a great deal more than his babies--I let them out at night for pure wickedness, and they came to fearful ends in the park. I was to have been sent home next day, in the most unnecessary and penal hurry. But Aldous interposed--said he would look after me for the rest of the holidays."

"And then you tormented him?"

"Oh no!" he said with gentle complacency. "Oh no! I never torment anybody. But one must enjoy oneself you know; what else can one do? Then afterwards, when we were older--somehow I don't know--but we didn't get on. It is very sad--I wish he thought better of me."

The last words were said with a certain change of tone, and sitting up he laid the tips of his fingers together on his knees with a little plaintive air. Marcella's eyes danced with amus.e.m.e.nt, but she looked away from him to the fire, and would not answer.

"You don't help me out. You don't console me. It's unkind of-you. Don't you think it a melancholy fate to be always admiring the people who detest you?"

"Don't admire them!" she said merrily.

His eyebrows lifted. "_That_," he said drily, "is disloyal. I call--I call your ancestor over the mantelpiece"--he waved his hand towards a blackened portrait in front of him--"to witness, that I am all for admiring Mr. Raeburn, and you discourage it. Well, but now--_now_"--he drew his chair eagerly towards hers, the pose of a minute before thrown to the winds--"do let us understand each other a little more before people come. You know I have a labour newspaper?"

She nodded.

"You read it?"

"Is it the _Labour Clarion_? I take it in."

"Capital!" he cried. "Then I know now why I found a copy in the village here. You lent it to a man called Hurd?"

"I did."

"Whose wife wors.h.i.+ps you?--whose good angel you have been? Do I know something about you, or do I not? Well, now, are you satisfied with that paper? Can you suggest to me means of improving it? It wants some fresh blood, I think--I must find it? I bought the thing last year, in a moribund condition, with the old staff. Oh! we will certainly take counsel together about it--most certainly! But first--I have been boasting of knowing something about you--but I should like to ask--do you know anything about me?"

Both laughed. Then Marcella tried to be serious.

"Well--I--I believe--you have some land?"

"Eight!" he nodded--"I am a Lincolns.h.i.+re landowner. I have about five thousand acres--enough to be tolerably poor on--and enough to play tricks with. I have a co-operative farm, for instance. At present I have lent them a goodish sum of money--and remitted them their first half-year's rent. Not so far a paying speculation. But it will do--some day. Meanwhile the estate wants money--and my plans and I want money--badly. I propose to make the _Labour Clarion_ pay--if I can.

That will give me more time for speaking and organising, for what concerns _us_--as Venturists--than the Bar."

"The Bar?" she said, a little mystified, but following every word with a fascinated attention.