The Patrician. John Galsworthy

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ