The Patrician
PART I
CHAPTER XIX
That afternoon the wind, which had been rising steadily, brought a flurry
of clouds up from the South-West. Formed out on the heart of the Atlantic,
they sailed forward, swift and fleecy at first, like the skirmishing white
shallops of a great fleet; then, in serried masses, darkened the sun.
About four o'clock they broke in rain, which the wind drove horizontally
with a cold whiffling murmur. As youth and glamour die in a face before
the cold rains of life, so glory died on the moor. The tors, from being
uplifted wild castles, became mere grey excrescences. Distance failed. The
cuckoos were silent. There was none of the beauty that there is in death,
no tragic greatness—all was moaning and monotony. But about seven
the sun tore its way back through the swathe, and flared out. Like some
huge star, whose rays were stretching down to the horizon, and up to the
very top of the hill of air, it shone with an amazing murky glamour; the
clouds splintered by its shafts, and tinged saffron, piled themselves up
as if in wonder. Under the sultry warmth of this new great star, the
heather began to steam a little, and the glitter of its wet unopened bells
was like that of innumerable tiny smoking fires. The two brothers were
drenched as they cantered silently home. Good friends always, they had
never much to say to one another. For Miltoun was conscious that he
thought on a different plane from Bertie; and Bertie grudged even to his
brother any inkling of what was passing in his spirit, just as he grudged
parting with diplomatic knowledge, or stable secrets, or indeed anything
that might leave him less in command of life. He grudged it, because in a
private sort of way it lowered his estimation of his own stoical
self-sufficiency; it hurt something proud in the withdrawing-room of his
soul. But though he talked little, he had the power of contemplation—often
found in men of decided character, with a tendency to liver. Once in
Nepal, where he had gone to shoot, he had passed a month quite happily
with only a Ghoorka servant who could speak no English. To those who asked
him if he had not been horribly bored, he had always answered: “Not a bit;
did a lot of thinking.”
With Miltoun's trouble he had the professional sympathy of a brother and
the natural intolerance of a confirmed bachelor. Women were to him very
kittle-cattle. He distrusted from the bottom of his soul those who had
such manifest power to draw things from you. He was one of those men in
whom some day a woman might awaken a really fine affection; but who, until
that time, would maintain the perfectly male attitude to the entire sex,
and, after it, to all the sex but one. Women were, like Life itself,
creatures to be watched, carefully used, and kept duly subservient. The
only allusion therefore that he made to Miltoun's trouble was very sudden.
“Old man, I hope you're going to cut your losses.”
The words were followed by undisturbed silence: But passing Mrs. Noel's
cottage Miltoun said:
“Take my horse on; I want to go in here.”....
She was sitting at her piano with her hands idle, looking at a line of
music.... She had been sitting thus for many minutes, but had not yet
taken in the notes.
When Miltoun's shadow blotted the light by which she was seeing so little,
she gave a slight start, and got up. But she neither went towards him, nor
spoke. And he, without a word, came in and stood by the hearth, looking
down at the empty grate. A tortoise-shell cat which had been watching
swallows, disturbed by his entrance, withdrew from the window beneath a
chair.
This silence, in which the question of their future lives was to be
decided, seemed to both interminable; yet, neither could end it.
At last, touching his sleeve, she said: “You're wet!”
Miltoun shivered at that timid sign of possession. And they again stood in
silence broken only by the sound of the cat licking its paws.
But her faculty for dumbness was stronger than his, and—he had to
speak first.
“Forgive me for coming; something must be settled. This—rumour——”
“Oh! that!” she said. “Is there anything I can do to stop the harm to
you?”
It was the turn of Miltoun's lips to curl. “God! no; let them talk!”
Their eyes had come together now, and, once together, seemed unable to
part.
Mrs. Noel said at last:
“Will you ever forgive me?”
“What for—it was my fault.”
“No; I should have known you better.”
The depth of meaning in those words—the tremendous and subtle
admission they contained of all that she had been ready to do, the
despairing knowledge in them that he was not, and never had been, ready to
'bear it out even to the edge of doom'—made Miltoun wince away.
“It is not from fear—believe that, anyway.”
“I do.”
There followed another long, long silence! But though so close that they
were almost touching, they no longer looked at one another. Then Miltoun
said:
“There is only to say good-bye, then.”
At those clear words spoken by lips which, though just smiling, failed so
utterly to hide his misery, Mrs. Noel's face became colourless as her
white gown. But her eyes, which had grown immense, seemed from the sheer
lack of all other colour, to have drawn into them the whole of her
vitality; to be pouring forth a proud and mournful reproach.
Shivering, and crushing himself together with his arms, Miltoun walked
towards the window. There was not the faintest sound from her, and he
looked back. She was following him with her eyes. He threw his hand up
over his face, and went quickly out. Mrs. Noel stood for a little while
where he had left her; then, sitting down once more at the piano, began
again to con over the line of music. And the cat stole back to the window
to watch the swallows. The sunlight was dying slowly on the top branches
of the lime-tree; a drizzling rain began to fall.