The Patrician | Page 6

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